God of the Forty Infants

By Eric Rozenman (November 2023)

Mother with Babies, Roman Halter, 1974

 

In the name of their God
Who is no god
They beheaded forty infants
While the infants’ God
And the God of their fathers
Turned His head.
We returned to the God of our father
Grandfather and greater grandfathers
Back one hundred and thirty-two generations
Give or take a few
Since Moses descended Sinai
With the word of God
Including
“Thou shall not murder”
Not because He hadn’t turned His head
Many times before
In two millennia
But because the worst of His silences
Seemed in the past.
Yet there are always some,
And often a great many,
Who hating God and His word
And therefore His children
Refuse to hear that word
His people saw at Sinai
But rather glory in the act
Slaughtering His children
On the altar of their obscene idolatry.
But we take heart
Believing those other words
That promise “the wicked spring up like grass
Only to be cut down forever.”
And we pray
May it be soon.

 

Table of Contents

 

Eric Rozenman is author of Jews Make the Best Demons: “Palestine” and the Jewish Question (2018, New English Review Press) and From Elvis to Biden, Eyewitness to the Unraveling; Co-Starring Nixon, Warhol, Clinton, The Supremes and Obama! (Academica Press). 

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