This piece is part of our Witnessing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the experiences of Jewish writers around the globe in the aftermath of October 7th.
It is critical to understand history not just through the books that will be written later, but also through the first-hand testimonies and real-time accounting of events as they occur. At Jewish Book Council, we understand the value of these written testimonials and of sharing these individual experiences. It’s more important now than ever to give space to these voices and narratives.
Thin Ice
1.
On the plane to Toronto, August:
is it a long enough flight
to shed my rugged Middle Eastern self,
back to my Canadian innocence?
2.
Anxiety is a thin ice
as I walk across it
at the end of summer in Toronto.
What went wrong?
A doorknob didn’t turn your way?
A waitress didn’t get your accent?
The guy who invited you to dance one moment,
boycotted you the next because you were born
in one place or the other?
With your backpack on
you are ready to split.
For at least a week
you’ll survive the living of it.
An immigrant with
broken English,
a broken country,
a missile-broken roof,
no building to point out
as your home
you sail
anchor
at the kindness of one friend to another.
You still find refuge in cafés,
solace in chitchatting with baristas.
What would Canada even be like
without its kindness to the foreign?
Like an old lady who loses her natural beauty
it relies on its good graces to be liked.
Toronto, a city with too many witnesses
who watch its behavior.
Do I patronize it?
O Canada, oh boy Canada,
my home and “native” land…
At least this time you placed me
on a street I can pronounce better
than any English-native Canadian,
Gough Avenue, like the name of the painter
with whom I share a birthday
and a tendency for self-harm.
I celebrate Rosh Hashanah in the diasporic
embrace of my Toronto friends,
none of us know
the correct blessings,
I don’t even know them in Hebrew.
Yet this is where I would have chosen
to celebrate again
if missiles,
or anti-Semitism,
won’t stop me.
The lines: “Oh Canada, oh boy Canada, \ my home and “native” land” reference the Canadian anthem that starts with the lines: “O Canada! \ Our home and native land!”
The views and opinions expressed above are those of the author, based on their observations and experiences.
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Gili Haimovich, is an Israeli Canadian poet writing bilingually in Hebrew and English. She was awarded prizes for best foreign poet at the international Italian poetry competitions I colori dell’anima (2020) and Ossi di Seppia (2019), a prize at the Proves Hong Kong International Poetry Contest (2017), a grant for excellency by The Ministry of Culture of Israel (2015), and more. She is the author of four books in English including Promised Lands (Finishing Line Press, 2020, US), as well as a multilingual book of her poem Note, (El nido del fénix, 2019, Mexico). In Israel she has published seven volumes of Hebrew, her recent one, Experiments in Parting is coming out these days. Her poems are translated into 34 languages and published worldwide in numerous anthologies and journals such as: The Best Asian Poetry Anthology, World Literature Today, 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium, New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust and A World Anthology of Border Poetry. In Israel her writing is widely published in major publications such as The Most Beautiful Poems in Hebrew – A Hundred Years of Israeli Poetry and A Naked Queen – An Anthology of Israeli Social Protest Poetry. As a poetry translator and editor, she was the first to bring Estonian poetry books into Hebrew, for which she received recognition from the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for her contribution and distribution of Estonian culture (2022). Gili is a graduate of the Create Institute, The international school for interdisciplinary studies and the art school Camera Obscura and engages also with visual art, editing and teaching writing from an interdisciplinary approach.