Remember the other day I invited you to an evening of poetry about the war?  I was asked to hold an evening like this so people can know what the different moods are in Israel.  From what I could tell the poems were to be ones of mourning and grief, so I decided to lighten mine up with a few poems of comic relief.  After the reading I commened everyone on the resilience of the people and was rewarded with a strong criticism of my ‘childishness’ by someone who has not let a reading go by without a public criticism of me or a speech of self-praise.  This to me ruined the entire purpose of the event, and after years of this I’m ready to give up trying and concentrate instead on people who need my help.   Anyway, here’s my introduction:

Welcome to a special event of the Israel Association of Writers in English, “we’re still here.” 

All of us have been experiencing the events since October 7 in different ways, perhaps with different degrees of intensity.  But most of us have not had the opportunity or the desire to share our specific experiences with each other.  Some of us have been wordless, unable to express our feelings, even to simply describe what is happening to us, and some of us have escaped into humor or fantasy. Others have tried to express directly the pain and helplessness of the situation. And still others have expressed the sense that no one is listening anyway, and there is no use in writing.

It was Ann Bartov who suggested that it might be a good idea to share with each other what we have been writing, and she has done the hard work of organizing this event.  Mike Stone kindly offered to take over the hosting.

Whatever the reasons and the results, I’m hoping this event will encourage people to write and communicate their thoughts and feelings on this subject.

I’m Karen Alkalay-Gut, the chair of IAWE, and I know that I have already benefitted from reading the unique works from the participants.  They have encouraged me to listen and share – and I hope you too will feel this.

Let me add one important note.  We are not opening this reading to discussion at this time.  We’ve even limited the discussion of the participants.  Please respect that this is a reading of poetry and prose, not a Q and A.  Sit back and enjoy our work.  

The readers are: (in the order of appearance)

Ricky Rapoport Friesem

Pesach Rotem

Ann Bar-Dov

Michael Kagan

Karen Alkalay-Gut

Wendy Blumfield

Helen Sarid

Libi Siporin

Reuven Goldfarb