I've received a lot of requests to share the poem in written form, out loud, with various groups or audiences, etc. Thank you for your concerns in checking in with me, but please hear me: the answer to all such requests is YES of course! (So please, no need to check in with me about sharing this or any of my public work). I would love for this piece to be shared far and wide. Let it be a tool for change and shifting culture. That is why I do the work I do.
I first wrote “This is the Year” in the fall of 2011 in the wake of the Occupy Wall St movement, during my final year at Hampshire College, as I was being radicalized by the student-led Occupy Hampshire effort to address the crisis of capitalism and neoliberalism at our own institution. The poem is based on “Imagine the Angels of Bread” by Martín Espada, the revolutionary writer who I had recently gotten to take a couple poetry classes with at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He and his contemporary Aracelis Girmay both instilled in me the importance of what they called “poetry of the political imagination,” and it became a personal practice of mine to rewrite the poem every year to reflect the changing times. In 2017 I first recited it during the prophetic section of the liturgy at our Rosh Hashanah services at Tzedek Chicago, and it subsequently became tradition for me to rewrite and share the poem at this point in our services every year since then. This is an honor I do not take lightly.
This year, I knew I couldn't do it alone. I put a call out for Tzedek congregants to send me their own poetic and prophetic visions, and dozens answered the call. Thank you. I have done my best to weave our many imaginations into a new communal version of the poem that I hope represents us as a community.
This is the Year
This is the year the temple falls again and we rejoice
This is the year we return at last to our homeland of diaspora
This is the year Palestine is free
This is the year t'shuva means Land Back
and making aliyah means devoting a lifetime
to rebuilding Gaza with and for her people
replanting groves of olives, almonds, strawberries
and reassembling infrastructure with raw steel, copper, rubber
from dismantled fighter jets, missiles, and tanks
This is the year the grandmothers still clutching keys
to family homes in Safed, Haifa, and Al-Khalisa
return to frame and mount their keys above their fireplaces
and brew pots of spiced coffee on the stove
This is the year
This is the year justice hits like hurricanes
as we the people impose peace on all the profiteers of war
This is the year Lockheed makes saxophones
General Dynamics starts a line of cookware
and Mar-a-Lago is transformed into a solar farm
This is the year we melt and hammer guns into shovels
bullets into ankle bells, and rockets into bicycles
This is the year we arm teachers with choice and living wages
and equip students with bulletproof layers of history and truth
This is the year banned books become best sellers
and poems like this are classified into non-fiction
This is the year we look back on 5, 10, 50, 100 years from now
to mark the anniversary we made the racists, bigots, ruthless
capitalists and fascists irrelevant
This is the year students wake from encampments
to news of their historic victories
and cultivate food gardens on those sacred grounds
with fruit trees to mark the year we all rose up
to nourish future mouths and minds and visions
This is the year
This is the year that bikes take over streets
and cars are forced to drive on narrow lanes
that suddenly disappear
This is the year we institute
composting toilet systems worldwide
and at last truly deal with our shit
This is the year we redistribute luxury housing
to folks living under the viaducts
and temporary shelters and tent cities on the edges of town
to displaced bankers and real estate developers
This is the year our skylines turn a lush and verdant green
and those who last year woke in prison cells, bug-ridden
beds, and worn-down tents awaken at dawn
to sublime views of sunrise glittering on the lake
This is the year every country, city, and state
declare a budget surplus from taxing the “elites”
and everywhere the people work and play
in neighborhoods with thriving parks, schools, hospitals, homes
This is the year we walk into grocery stores without a wallet
and walk out with heaping armfuls of fresh produce
This is the year that living “paycheck to paycheck”
means planning which new musical instrument
or international flight you'll get next month
This is the year
This is the year we honor the treaties
national parks are restored to indigenous sacred sites
sweetgrass sprawls from George Washington's ears
sage bursts through Teddy Roosevelt's nose
and the Pahá Sápa grow wild and holy again
This is the year stories of hope and return
shared by refugees across generations
come to life in every cherished homeland
This is the year those forced to flee their homes
are welcomed everywhere with bread and song
the million anthems of our common plight
in every mother tongue
This is the year
This is the year the mob awakens, poor people unite
and choruses of women, queer and trans folks, the scorned, disabled, with tortured
mouths, with molars cracked and pained from centuries of biting back
their righteous words open their lips and sing like birds
emboldened, joyful, free
This is the year we humans hear the cries of choking rivers
of ailing streams and wetlands, every gasping body of water
every parched patch of forestland
every buzzing, burrowing, soaring creature
This is the year we embrace what's left of earth's precious bounty and beauty
and unite to rescue our blessed home for future generations
This is the year we break the forced fasts
of all who hunger for that bounty
This is the year our prayers and chants and songs
pierce the palisades of psychic static
and penetrate the walls of armored bunkers
and even reach the halls of world powers
enough to calm the feverish toxic minds
of rulers who for once will hear the cries
of all the wounded children, displaced
people, grieving mothers, and lost souls
and finally come to look directly
in the face of one starved, thirsty child
whose promise of a peaceful future they have stolen
This is the year
This is the year the world reveres the rights of every human
and the rights of nature, of all life, as much as human rights
This is the year forever ending the age of normalization
of violence and destruction, of genocide and war
This is the year we find the faith and summon the courage to act
upon our values, hopes, and visions rather than remaining paralyzed
by our hates, fears, insecurities, prejudices and doubts
This is the year
we choose life for ourselves and for all children
inscribing seven generations in the Book of Life
This is the year
this one, not next, Jerusalem reflects her name –
a city shining with peace in a world filled with sacred places
flowing with open permeable borders
facilitating life, autonomy, empowerment
without police or border walls or prisons
This is the year
Zion is wherever people live
without dominating each other or the land
This is the year
we can be fully Jewish
and, what's more, human for the first time
This is the year
we make known what has been made invisible, hidden from view
the year we acknowledge that which has has been tucked away
because it disturbs, or seems unfit, foreign, unJewish
This is the year for the prophetic
– unadorned and naked –
to be in full view, embodied
This is the year
O hear, Israel
This is the year
the Breath of Life is Our God
This is the year
All Life
All Liberation
is All One
(Ameyn)
Thank you for this glorious poem and for making me feel hopeful in one of the darkest moments of the year.
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