Shi­va: Poems of Octo­ber 7 is a poet­ry anthol­o­gy by Israeli poets doc­u­ment­ing the pain and suf­fer­ing in the months after Octo­ber 7, 2023. In the Intro­duc­tion, the edi­tors write, ​“The poems col­lect­ed in this anthol­o­gy come from a broad Israeli ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum and were col­lect­ed dur­ing the first six months fol­low­ing Octo­ber 7th, or, in the Jew­ish cal­en­dar, from Sim­chat Torah to Pesach.” Each poem is includ­ed in its orig­i­nal Hebrew along­side an Eng­lish translation. 

Divid­ed into sev­en sec­tions – ​“Ter­ror,” ​“That Shab­bat and Oth­er Appoint­ed Times,” ​“Hostages,” ​“Lan­guage,” ​“Loss,” ​“The Oth­er Side,” and ​“The Future” – these poems span a wide range of emo­tions and expe­ri­ences that are uni­fied in their col­lec­tive grief. The poem ​“Strong as Death” by Shlomit Naim Naor opens with the lines, ​“There’s no point in sleep, images sur­face / There’s no point in wak­ing, the visions are real.” This feel­ing of a con­tin­u­ous night­mare resur­faces in many poems as oth­er poets cry out in anger at G‑d for His absence. Oth­er poems focus on the rit­u­al of Shab­bat and how dif­fi­cult it is to cel­e­brate joy­ous hol­i­days when there is no joy in the mid­dle of war (how do we cel­e­brate our free­dom on Passover when our peo­ple are being held cap­tive?). Osnat Eldar’s poem ​“In a Sin­gle Utter­ance” plays with the bib­li­cal word­ing of ​“Keep Shab­bat” and ​“Remem­ber Shab­bat” by writ­ing, ​“Keep your daugh­ters close” and “…remem­ber that Shab­bat / the anx­i­ety that drove a wedge into your sleep.” 

Many poems in this anthol­o­gy are in con­ver­sa­tion with bib­li­cal texts, prayers, and Jew­ish rit­u­als as a way to weave the tragedy of Octo­ber 7 with a his­to­ry of Jew­ish suf­fer­ing. Elchanan Nir’s poem ​“To Run Away” invokes frus­tra­tion with G‑d by ref­er­enc­ing the des­e­cra­tion of the Tem­ple at the time of the Mac­cabees: ​“They’ve breached every­thing – the fences, the wall, the tow­ers, / They des­e­crat­ed the oil. Tell us, when are You com­ing, / Quick­ly, be stronger, every­thing is going up in smoke.” Com­par­isons are drawn between a sense of help­less­ness from the inten­si­ty of the sit­u­a­tion but also extreme dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing lan­guage to write about this trau­ma. Poet Eva Mur­ciano express­es the dif­fi­cul­ty of writ­ing poet­ry after Octo­ber 7 in her poem ​“After That Ter­ri­ble Day”: ​“The words fell face down on the ground / In a hap­haz­ard pile of cry­ing and fear.” 

One of the most pow­er­ful poems in this col­lec­tion is ​“One Tiny Seed” by Rachel Gold­berg-Polin, which she orig­i­nal­ly recit­ed at the end of her speech to the Unit­ed Nations in Gene­va in Decem­ber 2023. Her poem envi­sions anoth­er cry­ing woman in Gaza who is just like her, and asks, ​“Can we take [our tears], gath­er them up, and remove the salt, / And then pour them over our desert of despair… / And plant one tiny seed / A seed wrapped in fear, trau­ma, pain and hope? / And see what grows…” These hope­ful, empath­ic words com­ing from Rachel Gold­berg-Polin along­side dozens of poems of grief, despair, and long­ing express the dev­as­ta­tion of this peri­od of darkness.