Henry invited Tanya and me to join him
And his new friend Laura Bronstein
For a mid-May commemorative event
At the very liberal Reform synagogue
Henry and Laura had met
At an anti-neo-liberalism conference in Boston
They had several mutual friends it turns out
Including in Guatemala
Henry said to me on the phone in his wry way
“Laura’s the opposite of me
Hold on to your seat
It’s going to be a bumpy ride”
But when I met her I was totally charmed
She was a very attractive fifty-eight-year-old woman
There were two speakers that night
Two perspectives on the events of May 1948:
The establishment of the State of Israel
The Palestinian Nakba
One member of the congregation read from and commented upon
The letters of a young American Jewish man who was in Palestine, later Israel, at that time
In addition, a guest of the congregation, a Palestinian-American,
Told of the dispossession her family experienced in those months
After the two speakers, the rabbi gave us instructions
How to process what we heard as we sat in a big circle:
“Just tell us one word of what you are feeling now…
One word… and make sure it is a feeling”
There were sixty people gathered
I was sitting between Laura and Henry who was next to Tanya
We were to go around the circle
One person following the person sitting next to her
And people did as the rabbi told them to do
Keeping their remarks to one word
“Sad”
“Angry”
“Irritated”
“Confused”
I turned to Laura and whispered with a smile
“One word now…”
And so it was Laura’s turn
(Fasten your seat belts)
“Good evening…”
That’s two words, I thought
“I’m Laura Bronstein …”
Three more
“I was born in South Africa…”
OK, here we go
“I immigrated to the State of Israel at age 19…”
I saw the rabbi shift uneasily
“I must tell you what you don’t want to hear…”
Henry looked at me so as to say, “I told you so”
“What Israel has done, is doing to the Palestinians is criminal!”
I gently touched her arm, beginning to remind her of the “process,” saying, “Laura…”
She shook her arm loose from my hand
Looked at me with lips pursed in a scowl and quickly turned back to address her audience
“I am also an attorney, and I represented Palestinians in Israel’s courts, and…”
No one interrupted her
No one was telling her to shut up so she kept going
(And she would have gone on anyway)
She had not one word
But a thousand words
All charged with feeling, indignation, outrage, wrath
(Maybe this is how the prophet Jeremiah sounded)
“If I don’t tell you this, who will?
You have to know what’s really happening, and do something about it”
At last
She was finished
I don’t remember much else about that night
What the other people said
Though most were still mono-syllabic
Dutifully following the rabbi’s directive
Walking out in the parking lot afterward, I said to Laura
“You know, you may have antagonized a lot of people in there”
She stopped, turned to face me directly
“Not at all, Perry! Nine people came up afterward to thank me, to say that they agreed with me!”
Having lived in Louisville
An image popped up from my memory bank
Laura was fiercely aglow
Like the young Cassius Clay after he took down Sonny Liston
A crime of historic significance is occurring
And Laura refuses to silent, moderate, nuanced
That night
Laura Bronstein was a steamroller for justice
–from my novel, Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine
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