Speaking Truth to Power: Theology, Politics and Protest in Israel

Abstract

Speaking Truth to Power: Theology, Politics and Protest in Israel Celia G Kenny Introduction In one sense, protest is a component part of all poetry.That is, if we understand that to pro-test is to make an emphatic and public declaration of the truth of things. Protestation found its place within ancient rhetorical techniques, exemplified by the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, who advocated on behalf of those who had no voice. Note that the noun ‘prophecy’ and the verb ‘to prophesy’ are commonly used reductively to signify the art of soothsaying. This raises an interesting connection, since what the protester asserts in one age often becomes, through time, the blueprint for changes in law and policy that governments are forced to implement. In The Redress of Poetry, Seamus Heaney quotes Wordsworth: ‘[Poetry is] … carried live into the heart by passion; truth which is its own testimony … ’1 If, however, poetry is a form of truth-telling, then central to that responsibility must be a willingness to attend to the Zeitgeist, in order to respond to concrete and particular signs of life and death, pain and joy. The telling forth ought to include a refusal to abstract human life by flattening out the shape and form of specific instances, whether beautiful or ugly. Bernard O’Donoghue, approaching the question of what poetry must do, wrote that, ‘In the end, the answer is that poetry means something different in every generation and an important part of the poet’s duty is to find out what its meaning is for their own time’.2 Such expression of meaning – when it is contextualised in terms of a particular historical and cultural framework – will be simultaneously literary and political. In some cases, it will also be overtly theological. My concern is with the conjunction of theology, politics and protest in Israel, focusing on the poetry of Tuvia Ruebner, a contemporary Israeli poet. Three marks of protest poetry In a 1955 pamphlet, the phrase, ‘speaking truth to power’was used to signify Speaking Truth to Power: Theology, Politics and Protest in Israel Studies • volume 107 • number 428 453 the will to overcome injustice through non-violence. These words, which may have originated with the Quakers in the nineteenth century, have now become synonymous with peaceful protest and call to mind the work of poets who choose to apply their art to draw attention to the specifics of human rights abuses and the imbalance of power. Poems, like people, are unique and open to multiple interpretations. Let me, however, suggest three elements which lend weight to the efficacy of a protest poem, three hallmarks which raise dissension to an art form. The first mark of poetic protest is that it is one moment in a process that aims for equality, peace and justice. Political dissent, expressed through art, should not be confused with blind rage or a conscious intention to provoke violence. The technique of protest literature, whether expressed through song, prose, poetry, drama or comedy, is most effective when it employs language that is capable of expanding our ability to empathise.3 The poet protests, not simply by spitting out words to punish or accuse, but through the use of simile and metaphor that engages the reader’s sympathetic gaze. At its most effective, a protest poem will reach reserves of empathy normally exercised in the face of those closest to us. The reader is encouraged to turn a discerning eye outward from self to other, potentially narrowing the gap between attention and action. A second mark of the protest poem is that it addresses societal dissonance. Here, dissonance refers to a type of anxiety that results from having to hold together belief and action when they do not correlate, particularly when traditional sources of authority lose their purchase. As the vision of human rights developed and expanded to include the voices that history silenced, poetry has emerged as a vehicle to convey the plight of men, women and children who are exploited and denied respect in terms of their labour, and constrained from making life choices according to personal belief. Such gross acts of disrespect, often perpetrated by majoritarian abuse of democratic freedom...