What the State of Israel means to me: a good question. A good Jewish question. I have a good Jewish answer.

What should Israel mean?

I perceive Israel through an array of lenses. One is the lens of the senses that reveals the purity of a desert landscape, the road coming up from Ben Gurion airport finally cresting above Jerusalem, the beauty of Jerusalem stone, the textures and colors of a marketplace, the shining Dome of the Rock, black olives in a dark caf é, the relaxed civic pleasures of the Tel Aviv beachfront promenade, the lineup of whores on the curve of road between Tel Aviv and Ramat Aviv, the dark hair of the young, the bright eyes of children.

Another lens is that of the imagination, in which Israel exists as story, as symbol, as Meaning. Symbol of promise. People —my intense people—once had an intense relationship with God here. Our mother Rachel is buried here. We crossed the Jordan River here and marched to Jericho. The land was promised to us and in return we promise something. We promise to construct a just society. We promise to make the land bloom. We promise to worship only.... Well, that keeps changing, doesn ’t it? What we mean by God keeps changing. The land, though—our blood and our myths attach us to it.

One lens admits bullets of light that almost blind me. “Justice, justice shalt thou seek.” “Love therefore the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation.” “My beloved is mine and I am his.” These missiles were locally manufactured and have a very long shelf life. They travel right through to my brain, where they inscribe themselves permanently; and they lodge in my yearning heart.

But my most piercing view of Israel comes with a set of double lenses. Over my right eye goes the lens of the Holocaust, by which the State of Israel continues to define itself, in memory of which it repeats Never Again, again and again, and views itself as eternal innocent victim. Over my left eye goes the lens of Al Nakba, the catastrophe/ cataclysm, in which a million Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948, in memory of which many Palestinians have vowed to destroy Israel, and view themselves as eternal innocent victims. Through one lens I see Jews in pain, through one lens I see Palestinians in pain.

I see wealth, I see poverty, I see oppression. I see bulldozed homes, sneering soldiers. “And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and there was none to comfort them. On the side of their oppressors there was power ” (Ecclesiastes 4.1). I see also zealots eaten by hatred, in love with death and with another kind of power, sending young people out to kill themselves and random Jews. The doubling is driving me crazy, and I cannot tear these glasses from my eyes.

Israel has entered my poems on many occasions. I was raised (full disclosure) a third-generation atheist socialist, but find myself often talking to God. Haranguing, you might say. One of the things I talk about is Israel. Here is an example, from my recent book of poems, No Heaven:

...Yet those who believe you chose them

break the bones of the unchosen

Those who trust in your righteousness

study death’s secret handshake

Those who remember you promised them the land

sow it with corpses

Those who await messiah

dream of apocalypse

in which their enemies burn—

I speak of all your countries, my dear God.