August, 2024
I read that one of the students at one of the schools that experienced demonstrations about the Gaza war this Spring had this to say: “Why aren’t they [i.e., my school, my teachers] teaching us about this?”
I thought that was a very mature comment.
I also thought the student’s implicit suggestion made sense. The Gaza war is a serious matter of real interest to students in high schools and colleges. And it is a subject worthy of teaching, as it presents issues and problems involving, among other things, History, Political Science, International Relations, Religion and Inter-Faith Relations, and Ethics. Yet the teaching vacuum was being filled by slogans and other propaganda.
The student’s question moved me to write what I call “A Teaching Through Poetry about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict over Jerusalem and ‘The Holy Land.’” That document is available to you by clicking on the prompt at the end of this brief introduction.
Perhaps one or more schools will see fit to use part or all of this Teaching in some constructive way.
This Teaching is not an attempt to persuade anyone that one side of the Israel-Palestine conflict (if I may call it that for shorthand purposes) is right. The perspective of this document is one of reconciliation.
This Teaching uses poetry as a teaching tool. The poetry used here is not poetry written by me. A good number of the poems in this teaching were written by famous poets, including Lord Byron, William Blake, Rudyard Kipling, W.H. Auden, Rumi, Hafez, Emma Lazarus, Muriel Rukeyser, Yehuda Amichai and Mahmoud Darwish. Other, less famous poets whose poems are part of this Teaching include Yehuda ha Levi, Ibn Arabi, Alicia Ostriker, Naomi Shihab Nye and several lesser-known Muslim, Jewish and Christian poets. The poems used here were written originally in English, in Hebrew, in Yiddish, in Ladino, in Arabic, in Persian, in Urdu and in Old French.
The Teaching begins with a discussion of why poetry can be a good vehicle for teaching this subject and perhaps also a force for moving from conflict to reconciliation. The idea that poetry can be powerful and healing is unconventional in our culture (but it is an important part of, among other cultures, Arab culture). The power of poetry is itself a worthy subject of teaching and is touched on at various points in the Teaching.
This Teaching also has a visual component. For every poem, there are multiple PowerPoint images that accompany the poem. Certain of those images are videos in which a poem is recited by the poet or by someone else. There are also PowerPoint images that illuminate some of the discussion in the Teaching about the history of Jerusalem and certain other relevant history. I have not posted the PowerPoint images/videos on the website, as I don’t have the computer competence or resources to do that.
Please feel free to use this Teaching document as you see fit. Should you decide to use it, I would appreciate your telling me how you use it.
If you want the PowerPoint images, let me know, and I will figure out how to get them to you.
And if you find anything in this Teaching that you believe to be factually inaccurate, please let me know so that I can correct as appropriate.
Marvin Wexler
(914) 632-8110