Brad Jacobson has been a volunteer in Israel in the Sar-El program for many summers. His Israel travel experiences are published in the American Development and Internationalization News at the University of Missouri. He has a M.Ed in literacy from MU and currently studies teaching English to second language learners in the graduate program there. He writes: "Both of these poems are inspired by my experiences in Israel. The first poem is built around being in a tailor shop in the Old City of Jerusalem. The second poem is about my jog along the beach in Jaffa."
Dreaming of Peace, Taking Notes Kiss my fingers (right hand)
Reach out, touch the mezuzah
Seven steps straight, seven steps left
L-shaped entry to prevent ancient enemies from invading
In the Old City, inside Jaffa Gate
My shorts torn
I search for a tailor shop
Turning right, I walk past the citadel, to the parking lot of the four synagogues. By Ram ban's Synagogue, a boy holds a kipoh on his head, while chasing a soccer ball over a buried Roman Sword. In the open square, Japanese take photographs of the Hebrew Alef-Bet art work by the Jewish Quarter artist, Ester Weiss. Over there, behind the ancient olive press, an Arab baker sells kosher bagels from an old green cart. The sweet fragrance reminds me of Aunt Nitza's cheese blintzes. I reach the Kotel- one hundred men dressed in black doven in a Hasidic choir to G-D, A worshipper wearing a Phillies cap folds a crying note carefully into a narrow crevice between 2000 year old stones and turns to smile for family pictures
I walk through a stone tunnel way
Yesterday a stone thrower wounded my friend right near here
A teenage soldier keeps guard. I shut my eyes. Dreaming of peace, Taking notes Broken spirited Arab boy passes by me, pushes a heavy cart of Kinafa shredded orange dough with saffron, from Ja'far Sweets in the direction of Damascus Gate. Two shopkeepers play shish-besh outside squeezed in shops. One of them calls out to me, "Look in my bazaar: Bedouin rugs, menorahs, jewelry--a gift?"Muslim man slips off his shoes in front of an eight hundred year old patched white stone wall to pray on an undersized embroidered rug, pointing towards Mecca. A woman wearing a white-fringed head scarf, a long black abayah, sits on a wooden stool selling grape leaves piled in a white sack reaches out to me and pleads... shesh shekals I stop by Michael's falafel stand and order pita with humus, salad and falafel
Next door is a sewing shop
so I go in
I sit by the tailor and watch him sew my shorts
He is an Arab, I am a Jew
Waiting in my underwear
A Prayer Yesterday
I have jogged here a hundred times
along the beach in Jaffa
Back in Israel, from Missouri
I have not run here since last September
Now a monument stands close by
Photographs of 22 victims
Suicide bomber at a dance club
Woman throwing a stick out in the water for her black Lab to fetch
People playing paddleball
Just like nothing had happened
Rocks touching the gentle sea
I stood by the monument
Saw young faces and life
There were no words
I prayed
Today
Standing in the post line in Jaffa
Standing with me, Arabs and Jews
A woman in front of me could be a college student,
wearing the traditional abayah and head scarf
In front of her, a Moslem woman was talking casually to a Jewish woman
I thought to myself
they should be our leaders
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