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US teen deported, Israeli rabbi wounded as tensions mount for Jewish activists in the West Bank
JERUSALEM — Having spent the night in an immigrant detention center in Ramle, Israel, Leila Stillman-Utterback, still handcuffed, began to daven shacharit, the morning prayers, as dawn broke.
“I think the police officers were very confused, because that was not the image of an activist that they had,” said the 18-year-old Vermont native.
Now, after being deported and banned by Israel for 10 years, she is unsure when she will be able to confuse people in Israel again.
In two separate incidents this past week, the right-wing Israeli government’s conflict with the Jewish left, both at home and abroad, reached new heights as American and Israeli Jews attempted to accompany Palestinians during their olive harvest in the West Bank. Harvesters have faced repeated restrictions by the Israeli military and a string of threats and attacks by local Israeli settlers.
In the first incident, Stillman-Utterback and another Jewish American were accused of violating the terms of their tourist visas and entering a closed military zone. The two were detained, deported and banned for 10 years from Israel.
Days later, armed Israeli settlers confronted a delegation of Jewish American activists. An Israeli dressed in partial military fatigues shot a live bullet into the air and a drone struck and injured a rabbi on the scene. The incident was caught on camera.
“These two incidents, one after another, are just evidence both of the danger of what’s happening, and that the Israeli government has made a decision that, rather than address the horrific violence by settlers, they’re going to … penalize American Jews who are here because they care about this land and the people who live here,” said Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the executive director of the progressive Jewish organization T’ruah, who was present at the second incident.
The clashes and deportations of American Jewish activists, most of whom with deep connections to their Jewish communities as well as Israel, left Jewish groups and those affected dismayed.
The rabbinical associations for the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements issued a joint statement saying they were “appalled by the attack on a group of rabbis, including members from all three of our organizations, by radical settlers” in the West Bank.
“We demand that the attackers be held accountable for their actions and that the Israeli government use its authority to end such provocations and attacks,” they said. An Israeli Reform rabbi and member of parliament, Gilad Kariv, plans to raise the issue in the Knesset.
This year has seen an uptick in Israeli and international activists providing a protective presence for Palestinians attempting to complete the all-important olive harvest, which is a cultural touchstone as well as an economic lifeline for rural Palestinians facing high unemployment.
Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 27, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs documented 126 olive harvest-related settler attacks against Palestinians resulting in casualties, property damage, or both, a record pace. In addition, Palestinian farmers have been consistently presented with closed military zone orders for up to 24 hours in the areas they wish to harvest.
A drove hovers overhead as Jewish volunteers participate in an olive harvest in the West Bank on Nov. 4, 2025. (Courtesy Jill Jacobs)
In mid-October, Israel detained and deported 32 foreign activists who were accompanying Palestinian harvesters near Burin.
Stillman-Utterback joined 10 other Jews — seven Israelis, and three other foreigners — on Oct. 29 as part of a solidarity harvest in Burin organized by Rabbis for Human Rights.
When she graduated from high school this past spring, Stillman-Utterback knew she wanted to spend a gap year in Israel. Stillman-Utterback’s mother is a rabbi, and she worked as a Hebrew school teacher while spending her summers at Eden Village, a Jewish summer camp in upstate New York. She was also on the Jewish Youth Climate Movement’s executive board in high school, and she was named a Bronfman Fellow, a cohort of high-achieving Jewish teens, two years ago.
“My anchors in my life and a lot of my communities that are really important to me are all Jewish,” Stillman-Utterback told JTA.
Having gone on multiple summer trips to Israel over the years, Stillman-Utterback spent the 2022-2023 school year living in Jerusalem with her family. She attended many of the pro-democracy protests outside the Knesset that year, calling them “inspiring.”
“I learned about Israel through the perspective of Jewish values like tikkun olam and b’tselem elohim,” she explained, using Hebrew terms meaning social action and the concept that all humans are created in God’s image. “That every human being is made in the image of Hashem, and that is how I was learning about and looking at the conflict.”
Along with the other woman deported by Israel, Stillman-Utterback had come to Israel this fall as a part of the Achvat Amim program, which is connected to the socialist Zionist youth group Hashomer Hatzair. The five-month volunteer program in Jerusalem focuses on “self-determination of all people.”
Israeli forces intervene against Palestinian farmers harvesting olives in the village of Sa’ir in Hebron, West Bank on Oct. 23, 2025. (Wisam Hashlamoun/FLASH90)
Stillman-Utterback joined half a dozen harvests before the one that led to her deportation.
Before the latest and last action, the activists were stopped by Israeli soldiers at a “flying checkpoint” at the entrance of the village of Burin. An organizer was handed a closed military zone order, prohibiting the group from entering the area. According to one of the volunteers, they decided to take another route to join the harvest in an area that they believed was not included in the order.
Shortly after arriving at the new area, organizers learned that their bus drivers had been detained by the Israeli military, with their keys confiscated. Upon hearing this, they decided to bring the group to the soldiers, according to one volunteer present. The volunteer asked for anonymity because Israeli authorities later demanded the activists sign a statement promising not to speak publicly about the incident.
After the activists were held for 90 minutes by the soldiers, Israeli police arrived and announced they were detaining the entire bus because the participants were aware they had entered a closed military zone. The volunteers were escorted to the police station in the Israeli settlement of Ariel. Those with Israeli citizenship or with visas other than a student or tourist visa were released shortly thereafter.
According to Michal Pomerantz, the lawyer for the deported women, Stillman-Utterback and another Jewish-American woman on tourist visas were brought to an immigration tribunal in Ramle. With the proceedings carried out in Hebrew, they were unaware that it was a deportation proceeding and that the man they were speaking to was a judge, according to Pomerantz.
Israeli authorities say the participants ignored the initial warning and were aware they were in a closed military zone. One of the other detained participants said the group believed they had moved to an area that was not under the order.
“The policeman asked [Stillman-Utterback], ‘Why didn’t you get off the bus?’” recounted Pomerantz. “I mean, it was an 18-year-old in the middle of the West Bank. She had no idea where she was.”
Palestinian farmers and foreign volunteers harvest olives near the Palestinian village of Silwad, northeast of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Oct. 29, 2025. (Zain Jaafar/AFP via Getty Images)
The head of Hashomer Hatzair wrote a letter to Israeli authorities vouching for the two women while asserting they were engaged in a Zionist program oriented around “coexistence.” Pomerantz says this plea didn’t make a difference to immigration officials. Neither did telling Israeli officials that they were Jewish.
Faced with either appealing the decision and spending the weekend in an immigration prison or accepting a flight out of Israel, both women accepted the offer to be flown out, leaving the country on Friday.
“They basically are getting deported over being in a closed military zone for a couple of minutes,” said Becca Strober, the executive director of Achvat Amim.
The deportation of foreign Jews engaged in solidarity activism with Palestinians is a relatively new phenomenon. Strober recalled one such action she and others took in 2016 in which they deliberately entered a declared closed military zone. In that case, while six Israeli activists were detained, the American citizens were left alone.
The closest example to the case in Burin is that of Leo Franks, a British Jew who arrived in Israel last year on a tourist visa with plans to immigrate. After being detained for pro-Palestinian activism work in the West Bank, Franks had his immigration application denied and was ordered to leave the country within seven days.
“For a state that claims to be a Jewish state for all Jews,” said Strober, “if you just show up one day and stand in support of Palestinians by doing something as basic as picking olives together, actually, then your Jewishness is irrelevant.”
Jewish and other groups organizing solidarity harvests this year complain that while there were previously mechanisms for coordinating harvests with the military, this year they are largely unable to do so.
Organizers for Rabbis for Human Rights say they have been presented with closed military zone orders the majority of the time they arrive at Palestinians’ olive groves. Pomerantz and a team of lawyers have been involved in an ongoing case with the Israeli Supreme Court for the last three years, claiming that military zone closures are being misused by the army for political instead of security purposes.
“Our ability to be protected by the army has really broken down,” said one of the other Jewish volunteers who was detained in Burin. “And especially with this Netanyahu-led coalition, we’re treated as traitors. We’re treated as suspects, as anarchists, as people coming with some kind of foreign agenda.
“But we affirm that we’re doing this for the sake of Israeli society, as much as we’re doing it for the liberation of Palestinians.”
In a joint statement made by the IDF and Israeli police after the incident, authorities said they had conducted an operation in Burin together with the Population and Immigration Authority after discovering activities by Israeli and foreign activists in the area that were “endangering public security and causing friction on the ground.” Subsequently, they worked to “locate and stop foreign elements involved in incitement and provocations which create disturbances of the public order.”
The statement went on to say that the two women had violated the terms of their tourist visas. Though at first promising to do so, a spokesperson for the IDF did not comment further to JTA.
Rabbi Jacobs said she organized a trip to the West Bank this year in response to the changing conditions on the ground.
“Settler violence has just gone up extraordinarily in the last couple of years during the war,” Jacobs told JTA. “When we’ve been watching it from afar, as many of our Israeli and Palestinian colleagues have been affected by it, it seemed appropriate that even if we can’t as Americans be here every day, that we would at least find a time for a group of us to be here.”
Working with Rabbis for Human Rights on the ground, Jacobs and eight other rabbis — several of whom had already flown to Israel to attend the World Zionist Congress — first went out picking olives in the Palestinian village of Battir before staying overnight with Palestinian shepherds in the Jordan Valley. Such shepherds report an onslaught of physical attacks by Israeli settlers while being mostly prevented by settlers and soldiers from grazing their flocks in lands now often located in military firing zones or nearby Israeli settlements or outposts.
On Tuesday, the group then went to fields near Deir Istiya to pick olives with local Palestinians, joining other solidarity activists, a few of whom wore markers of Jewish observance such as tzitzit and kippot. The local Palestinians had been unable to reach their olive groves this year due to restrictions from Israeli soldiers and local settlers. The rabbis and Palestinians managed to pick the olives for a short time as a drone buzzed overhead. At times the drone came close to the harvesters.
At one point, the drone swooped down and struck Rabbi Dana Sharon from Rabbis for Human Rights, leaving a deep gash on her shoulder.
Soon after, two armed Israelis arrived, dressed in partial military fatigues and claiming to be a part of the security coordinator team of the nearby settlement of Revava. “The drone is a property of the [settlement security guards]!” shouted the men. Though the drone was returned, shouting ensued, with one of the harvesters shouting back. One of the men then shot a live round in the air before retreating.
Soon after, Israeli soldiers in uniform approached the group of olive harvesters, saying they were told by the two armed Israelis that the group of rabbis and olive harvesters had taken their drone and attacked them. These soldiers relented when shown videos by the harvesters suggesting otherwise.
The shock of the encounter was palpable among the group of visiting American rabbis, who hailed from a combination of Reconstructionist, Reform and Conservative congregations. One stunned rabbi asked an Israeli working for Rabbis for Human Rights about the gunshot, “That was a blank, right?” It was not.
The men have not been identified but appear to reflect a blurring of the lines between settlers and soldiers in the West Bank.
In a statement to JTA, the IDF identified the men the group thought were armed settlers as soldiers.
“IDF soldiers operated a drone that hit harvesters,” the statement said. “The incident is under review.”
According to the IDF, the soldiers arrived “to collect the drone, during which they fired shots in the air.” The incident was “unusual” and ”included unprofessional behavior” by the soldiers, said the IDF, which said without offering specifics that “disciplinary action” would be taken.
According to Jacobs, different IDF soldiers in uniform were present from the beginning when the group began the harvest. By Jacobs’ account, these soldiers did nothing as the drone came closer and when the armed men confronted the group.
“I don’t think this [incident] is unusual, though,” she said. “Settlers in IDF uniforms harass Palestinians every day and sometimes wound and kill them. What was unusual was that this group included American and Israeli rabbis, which is likely the reason the IDF is responding at all [to requests for comment].”
Rabbi Sarah Reines, of Temple Emanu-El in New York, looks back on her three-day trip in the West Bank heartened by the Palestinian communities she visited and committed to continued solidarity.
Reines praised “these people’s resilience and their ability to discern the difference between Israelis who threaten them and cause them harm, those who are neutral, and those who are friends.”
She added, “The rising danger only increases my resolve to represent the highest Jewish values of respect, lovingkindness, peace and preservation of life in the land Jews call home.”
In the case of Stillman-Utterback, her deportation and banning left her with “a sense of betrayal,” one that she is now processing from back in the United States.
“It sent me the message that, despite being Jewish in a state that was created for Jews, I’m not the right kind of Jew, or maybe not even Jewish at all, in the eyes of the state and the army and the police,” said Stillman-Utterback.
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The post US teen deported, Israeli rabbi wounded as tensions mount for Jewish activists in the West Bank appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘We’re saying ‘no’ to Mamdani’: Orthodox teens demonstrate outside Gracie Mansion
In a sea of kippot and black skirts, more than 200 Orthodox middle school and high school students gathered outside Gracie Mansion on Friday, conducting morning prayers and giving speeches.
“I like protesting against Mamdani,” Rami Fishman, a 16-year-old student, told the Forward. “He’s not a great guy. I’ll take an opportunity to speak out against him.”
Prominent Modern Orthodox preparatory schools Ramaz and SAR organized the gathering with Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, the synagogue that sponsors the institutions. Organizers said that comments Mayor Zohran Mamdani made over the summer attacking AIPAC and Israel drove their efforts. Rabbi Bini Kraus, principal of SAR, said the experience was also intended to teach students about “their civic responsibilities.”
“It’s fun,” Fishman said. “We’re praying and we’re saying ‘no’ to Mamdani.”
Fishman, a junior at SAR, said he liked waking up late and he was enjoying meeting students from another school. Kraus told the Forward students were missing three periods by participating, but noted prayer is part of the school’s curriculum and the gathering wasn’t taking away from their studies.
Students and parents could opt out, with Kraus noting some declined to participate. Nearly 400 alumni and members of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun signed a petition against the gathering.
In their speeches, students touched on fears of antisemitism, being proud Jews and supporting Israel openly. One 8th grader called on Mamdani to prioritize the safety of the Jewish community.
Neturei Karta, a Haredi group that opposes Zionism, protested against the student group by waving Palestinian flags, chanting and holding signs in support of Mamdani. The NK group chanted “Antizionism is not antisemitism,” and called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be arrested during his visit to New York next week. Mamdani, who campaigned on arresting Netanyahu, recently acknowledged he does not have the authority to do so.
Michael Rapaport, an actor and staunch supporter of Israel, came to support the students saying it was “moving,” and “not a political statement.”
“These are kids,” Rapaport told the Forward, “they can’t even vote. This is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful prideful thing.”
Vigil? Demonstration? Protest?
Organizers did not describe the gathering as a form of protest, instead referring to it as a vigil or communal prayer. However, the event involved classic hallmarks of a protest. A handful of participants waved or wore Israeli flags, and organizers acquired a permit for noise amplification.
“Our students have been going out for decades, really, when things matter,” Kraus said.
He noted he demonstrated for Soviet Jewry when he was a student at the school.
A reporter asked Mamdani about the demonstration at a press conference Wednesday.
“I welcome them,” he said. “They can have a vigil, or I’ve heard some describe it even as a ‘protest.’ Whatever it is intended to be, they have the room and space to do so outside of Gracie Mansion. I think that at the time that they are there, I will probably be somewhere else across the city.”
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, senior rabbi at Kehilath Jeshurun, said Thursday, “That’s the right response.”
Kraus, however, said he hoped the mayor would change his mind and attend. If he did, he would hear singing, praying and concerns “expressed respectfully.”
“Maybe that will move him,” Kraus said.
Some alumni and parents opposed the demonstration
The petition against the demonstration stated, “This gathering needlessly inflames tensions between the mayor and the Modern Orthodox Jewish community, as opposed to inviting him into conversation as a potential ally working for the shared safety of all New Yorkers.”
Much of the signatures are anonymous, with only school and class year listed.
The petition also said the schools risked portraying the Modern Orthodox community “as a political monolith opposed to the mayor.”
“They don’t want it to look like the Modern Orthodox community is a monolith, but the Modern Orthodox community really is a monolith on this,” Steinmetz said. “The Modern Orthodox community is, by and large, quite Zionist and really takes the security and safety of the state of Israel very seriously.”
A 2024 poll conducted by Nishma Research found 94% of the Modern Orthodox community identifies as Zionist, compared to 51% of Haredi Jews.
Halachic Left, an observant organization that says its members have “deep connections” to institutions in the Modern Orthodox community, helped circulate the petition. In a statement to the Forward, the organization insisted there is a “full range of views in the Modern Orthodox community on Israel, Zionism, and Mayor Mamdani.”
“The mayor has shown a willingness to respect and speak with our community,” read the statement. “We should be partnering with and engaging the mayor rather than castigating or insulting him.”
The post ‘We’re saying ‘no’ to Mamdani’: Orthodox teens demonstrate outside Gracie Mansion appeared first on The Forward.
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I love ‘Seinfeld’ — why doesn’t the rest of my generation?
Seinfeld had a mythic presence in my childhood. The show went off the air three years before I was born, but that didn’t stop it from permeating my psyche.
When I was little, growing up in Bethesda, Md., my parents would regale me with summaries of their favorite family-friendly episodes. There’s the one where George quits his job in a huff, then shows up the next day and simply pretends he never quit. Or when Elaine runs out of toilet paper, only to have the woman in the next stall refuse to “spare a square” — a scene that prompted my mom to start carrying tissue paper in her purse.
Around middle school, I finally became old enough to watch Seinfeld myself. I recorded the reruns that aired on TBS on our DVR and set out to watch every episode, eager to see the stories that had become a part of my family lore.
Suddenly, all the times my dad warned me against the perils of “double dipping” made more sense. (See: Season 4, Episode 19, “The Implant,” when George gets into a fight at a funeral reception for putting a half-eaten chip back into the communal dip).
I had never felt quite so represented by a piece of media: the dry humor, the cynical outlook, the blunt banter, the overbearing parents. It all felt like home.
The Jewishness of Seinfeld was undoubtedly part of the appeal. It wasn’t just that Jerry was Jewish; it was the sensibility — the neuroses, the kvetching, finding the comedy in life’s everyday absurdities. The characters felt like caricatured versions of my craziest relatives.
My affection for the show was strong enough that I skipped a classmate’s bar mitzvah party to see Jerry Seinfeld perform stand-up live at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. I don’t remember any specific jokes he told that night, just how wowed I was that Seinfeld was just as funny in person as on TV.
But explaining my newfound obsession to my peers, I was often met with blank stares. Few of my friends had watched Seinfeld at all. Those who tried an episode on my advice reported back that they found the show dated. Yet the lack of interest could not be explained by a lack of nostalgia for ’90s TV; those same friends came to love Friends and Sex and the City.
This Gen Z disinterest in Seinfeld seems to extend beyond my inner circle: A 2022 YouGov survey of 1,000 adults found a generational divide in the Seinfeld fandom: 14% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they loved the show, versus 22% of those 30 to 44, 27% of those 45 to 64 and 32% of those 65 and older.
To be sure, Seinfeld still has its young fans, as evidenced by the show’s continued life in memes and modern riffs on the plots. But that enthusiasm seems to stop short of the broad, mainstream appeal the show once commanded. Today, shows like The Office or Parks and Recreation seem like the cultural touchstones that Seinfeld once was.
So why hasn’t Seinfeld caught on more with my generation? I have a few theories.
For one, much of the humor in Seinfeld revolves around awkward situations: a date gone wrong, an annoying friend you can’t get rid of, a social obligation you can’t escape. Whether trapped in conversation with a “close talker” or endlessly waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant, the characters are constantly stuck in situations they’d rather avoid.
But modern technology has made it increasingly possible to live a frictionless existence. Awkwardness has become less relatable and more readily labeled “cringe.” Instead of asking someone on a date in person, just use the apps. Instead of breaking up, ghost. Want to avoid the Soup Nazi’s wrath? Just order Uber Eats.
Indeed, Kramer’s entire character is more difficult to imagine today. He’s constantly barging into Jerry’s apartment unannounced, eating out of his fridge and answering his landline phone. But Americans have grown less connected to their neighbors over time; only a quarter of young adults regularly interact with those who live around them — a sharp drop from 51% of young adults in 2012.
Another reason may have to do with how my generation watches television. Today, the entire series is on Netflix, alongside thousands of other shows competing for our attention. Contrast that with my parents, who watched Seinfeld one episode at a time as it aired, every Thursday night over Chinese takeout.
Famously dubbed the “show about nothing,” Seinfeld isn’t especially suited to binge-watching. There’s no need to watch the episodes in order. There are no major cliffhangers, and any romance is fodder for jokes rather than character development.
Some of the disconnect may also be cultural. When Seinfeld first aired, NBC Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff — a New York Jew himself — famously worried that the show was “too New York, too Jewish” to connect with a wider American audience.
“Who will want to see Jews wandering around New York acting neurotic?” he asked.
Evidently, many people did. But amid rising antisemitism, I wonder whether Jewishness has lost some of its cultural cachet.
These days, it seems increasingly difficult to enjoy a Jewish artist’s work without being asked to account for that artist’s views on Israel. Seinfeld’s outspoken support for Israel after Oct. 7, along with his inflammatory comments comparing the pro-Palestinian movement to the Ku Klux Klan, have prompted calls to boycott his acts. Ironically, the exception to this rule seems to be the invincible Larry David, who has managed to escape cancellation perhaps because his comedic persona is built around being the butt of every joke.
Of course, it’s also possible that Seinfeld is just old. The laugh track is annoying. The production quality looks unmistakably ’90s. Its references are dated.
But I’d hate for a new generation to write off Seinfeld. So if you’re under 30 and not already a fan, watch a few episodes. You can start with my favorite: “The Marine Biologist.” Once you get to the punchline, maybe you’ll see some of what I see in the show.
Or, maybe, I’m just an old soul. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
The post I love ‘Seinfeld’ — why doesn’t the rest of my generation? appeared first on The Forward.
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An Israeli poet was scheduled to do a reading in New York. Then her publisher called.
It was supposed to be a party to celebrate the revival of a nonprofit poetry press and to welcome a beloved Israeli poet back to an America quite different from the one she visited decades ago.
But politics in that new America intervened, canceling the party.
Hamutal Bar-Yosef, a contemporary icon of Israeli poetry, had planned to be in New York City this week to read from the new English translation of her collection The Miraculous Mistake.
Bar-Yosef’s book is one of three volumes coming out this fall by Sheep Meadow Press, an American nonprofit that had been dormant since its founder, renowned Jewish poet Stanley Moss, died in 2024.
The scheduled reading was also part of a new chapter for Poets House, a national poetry library and meeting place in Manhattan, which, after a four-year hiatus sparked by the pandemic, reopened in 2024 and began offering rental space.
But as conversations about the upcoming event unfolded, Greg Miller, the new head of Sheep Meadow, grew concerned. Bar-Yosef, who is 86, had just received one of Israel’s most prestigious literary awards, the Bialik Prize for a lifetime of achievement in poetry. But not everyone at Poets House seemed enthusiastic about welcoming her, he told the Forward.
Given her elevated profile and the anti-Israeli climate now pervading the literary world, Miller called off the event. He said select staff from the Poets House offered to help him find a new venue in the spring.
“As a result of this conversation and others it was important for someone who is representative of Israel right now to have security,” Miller said. “And so I made the decision we were going to postpone and find a more appropriate venue, the right spot for her that will give her the audience she deserves.”
Poets House did not respond to the Forward’s inquiries. Bar-Yosef declined to be interviewed for this story.
Sheep Meadow and Poets House have a long history, going back 40 years since Sheep Meadow founder Moss also helped found Poets House as a place that “exists to create a welcoming home for poets, poetry readers and for those who are exploring poetry.”
Moss, whose Almost Complete Poems won the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry in 2016, founded Sheep Meadow Press in 1977 as a nonprofit press with a particular focus on international poets in translation.
Thursday’s event was going to feature a reading of poems from Soon, Moss’s final collection of poems completed in his 99th year. Miller also planned to share the stage with Bar-Yosef to read from his own new collection Green Runs Through It.
Moss and Bar-Yosef appeared together for a reading at the 92nd Street Y when Sheep Meadow published an English translation of Night, Morning, one of her nine poetry collections.
But much has changed for Israeli and Jewish authors since then and especially since the Israel-Hamas War began on Oct. 7, 2023. According to a PEN America report published in July, editors have increasingly ignored submissions, rejected them outright or asked agents not to submit Israeli authors in the future.
Miller said it comes down to what the word Zionism means for audience members. Bar-Yosef believes in a homeland for the Jewish people and the state of Israel, Miller said. For years, she has helped transport Palestinian children from the West Bank to hospitals inside Israel. She has Palestinian family members. A prolific prose writer, literary scholar and translator, at least three of her poetry books have been translated into Arabic. She also has published in journals that include Arabic and Hebrew writers.
But because others have imposed their own meaning on the Z-word, finding a safe and welcoming space in the U.S. for an Israeli to read poetry free of indictment has become a challenge.
“I don’t want to be the shillelagh of the left or the right,” Miller said. “I don’t want Hamutal to be that either.”
Bar-Yosef’s latest collection of verse, originally published in Hebrew in 2020, explores grief through the various losses in her life including the death of her older brother in the War of Independence, the suicide of one of her sons, the murder of family members in the Shoah and choices that have become clear long after the fact and too late to right the wrongs.
“It is poetry that addresses harsh realities directly, eschewing pathos and sentimentality, and refusing to hide behind musicality or fluidity—qualities that can otherwise veil the blemishes and scars of reality,” one reviewer wrote in Haaretz when the original Hebrew edition was released in 2020.
A description of the collection by its distributor, Wesleyan University Press, describes it as “a glimpse of holy solidarity, of a time, perhaps some 500 years in the future, where there will be no need for steel doors and bomb shelters” – a reference to the poem Five Hundred Years, which opens with: “It’s hard to believe, but five hundred years ago people like us had slaves.”
It ends with: “That is how they will talk about wars and terrorist attacks as a way of settling disputes or salvaging pride after five hundred more years, perhaps even less.”
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