Before Pesach most years, I revise the Haggadah I began to compile decades ago. I gather material from traditional sources as well as from more recent alternative Haggadot created with various agendas in mind – political, ecological; or from commentary, unrelated literature, and remarks of friends and colleagues relevant to our family or to whomever we might be hosting at our seder table that year. I insert images that I find or create. Some years ago, I placed on the back cover of my Haggadah a photograph of a goat I met in the Jordan Valley, to recall the traditional song Had Gadya, an only kid, sung toward the end of the seder. It begins with the verse “an only ,kid, an only kid, my father bought for two zuzzim, and continues with a litany of woe, as the goat is eaten by a cat, that is then bitten by a dog, and, after a series of beatings and burnings and slaughter by various agents, including objects and living creatures animal and human, the song ends with retribution by the angel of death, who in turn succumbs to the Holy One, blessed be He, thus ending the carnage on a peaceful note, none of the predators left standing, like the end of a bloody Elizabethan play.  

To me, the kid that graced the back of my Haggadah represented hope in the future, tempered by fear: for goats, for the people who shepherd them, and for the pastures where the goats find grass and thistles to munch on even in on a dry summer day, even when an army jeep or other threat looms in the background. It evoked memories of happy grazing, pauses for tea, and – on good days – serene long walks through a magnificent landscape. Sheep, goats, often several flocks, left their villages and their pens behind in the early light of dawn and spread out over the hills, left to their own carefree devices until it was time to start the long walk home.

It was not always peaceful. Sometimes soldiers would arrive. Sometimes they succeeded in driving away the shepherds. But sometimes not. Early on in our association with the shepherds in the Jordan Valley, two consecutive days of undisturbed grazing – a first – ended with a celebration. Tea all around, blessings, tears.

***

When the war with Gaza began, the walking and grazing on the slopes, already greatly curtailed under the current coalition of fanatic settlers in the government, stopped almost completely. Under cover of war, settlers stepped up their attacks. Itamar Ben Gvir, once convicted of incitement to racism, but now Minister of National Security, purposefully armed settlers and deputized them for this purpose. Our friends in ‘Auja mostly gave up and sold their flocks. Some shepherds left their villages; many villages have disappeared altogether.

Those that remain are confined to grazing within within 100 yards of their communities. Sometimes the limit of the range is made obvious by the construction of a settlers’ post. The shepherds must generally purchase food and water for their sheep, who for the most part languish in pens.

Now only birds play in the generously wide pastures where flocks once grazed, birds that we mistake at first for sheep.

We pass these settler birds on our way into the town of Mu’arrajat, a village near ‘Auja that used to sprawl along the road, but is now largely confined to a small area in its eastern edge. Settlers have taken over Central Mu’arrajat, and the shepherds of East Mu’arrajat are generally afraid to take their flocks to pasture.

Goats and sheep continue to graze, however, around Mu’arrajat and other villages. Lots of them. But these flocks do not generally belong to the villagers. They belong to Israeli settlers who walk with their sheep and goats the long and sometimes arduous distance to the villages from their outposts (illegal under both Israeli and international law, but supported by the Israeli government), for the specific purpose of intimidating the villagers. That’s because these animals are weapons.

The strategy was pioneered by the settlers of Malachei HaShalom around 2018, in order to drive away the villagers of Ar Rashash. They grazed their flocks in the same pastures that the shepherds of Ar Rashash favored, knowing that the army would find an excuse to expel the Palestinian shepherds. Using this strategy, they made great headway after the last elections, when a right-wing, settler-driven coalition came to power, and they succeeded definitively soon after the war with Gaza began. At Mu’arrajat, because the settlers have already taken the grazing land away from the shepherds, they escalate the strategy by grazing their flocks not in the pastures where the village sheep once grazed, but close to the village itself, and, where possible, even inside it, so that the inhabitants are afraid to leave their homes.

We spend a good part of our days next to settler shepherds and try to keep their flocks out of the villages, or at least away from the houses, until they head off on their trek home. They have cultivated an air of impassivity as a way of letting us feel the power that gives them the right to intimidate local shepherds with their intruding presence. Developing this impassivity must have taken some training.

***

We spend a long time with this shepherd. He remains motionless and expressionless even while we talk – in English – over him and occasionally about him, ignoring, or not understanding, the occasional reference to him as a “terrorist” and to settlement outposts as “terror nests.” But mostly we remain as silent as the settler and try to stay attuned to the motions of the sheep. These motions are few; they appear to lounge, rather than graze.

Today, however, something comes up that we need to communicate to the settler shepherd, who sits on the side of the road, ignoring the sheep and goats and us with a look of passive aggression, or just boredom. To attract his attention, we motion to him and call him to come to us. Without success. The rocks he sits on might have been more responsive to us.

Finally, we yell out “Tinook, tinook” (baby!), and he slowly rises and comes over, not meeting our gaze. It is spring, and many female sheep and goats are pregnant. One of them seemed agitated; her water broke, and we realized that she was about to give birth. The shepherd threw out his hands with a gesture that appeared to mean “this was not in the job description,” and made a phone call. I imagined what would happen if I ran to fetch one of the Palestinian shepherds to help. They have considerable experience with the tender care of baby goats.

But a moment later, the settler pulled gingerly on the mother goat’s leg, and then waited.

Not long after another tug, the baby goat landed on the ground and the mother turned around eagerly to lick it. I gave the settler a smile and a thumbs up, which he answered, or rather did not answer, with his accustomed stoneface.

By the time we were summoned to watch another settler, the goat was well on its way to standing on its own and starting its life as a weapon.

***

These are dark times. Throughout the years, my family sang a lighthearted Had Gadya. The pace of the song would speed up as the list of predators got longer, but the violence and retribution initiated by the death of the only kid never registered as it has this year, when atrocities are spiraling out of control. In the occupied Palestinian territories these days, the beatings are mostly of people, the burnings consume their homes, the slaughtering goes unpunished. And all this is to say nothing of Gaza. Hag Sameach.

text and photographs margaret olin © 2024