I Watched the Temple Fall Lyrics

[Verse 1]
This year a fast of witness
I long and crave but with this
Long to know what longing's for
(I know this is a time thick with dying)
Remembering temples falling
I watched the wall ascending
(The names and places are erased, replaced)
I watched cities consume cities
(Killing history)

(And yet today my people are mourning)
With each village they're erasing
I'll witness them replacing it
With new walls in new tongues
(An endless, timeless span of tragedy)
We can't see the chance that's there
To build temples everywhere
Not in space but in time

(I know this is a time thick with dying)

[Hook]
We live like we’re always afflicted (I watched the temple fall)
But I’m not, I’m sick (I watched the temple fall)
From the blood all over our hands (The borders of my heart)
How the land soaks it in (Release and come apart)
So the desert can finally bloom with this colonial hate
No heart, no heart could really beat love for this state
(The state is not my temple)

[Verse 2]
Fall to the ground with thirst
What should we build first?
What is our builders' stone?
(I know this is a time thick with dying)
Pour out your heart's cement
(The names and places are erased, replaced)
In time for this lament
To see this new destruction
(Killing history)
Today my people are grieving
(An endless, timeless span of tragedy)
But never quite believing
What walls can trap inside
(And yet today my people are mourning)
You watched Schindler's List this morning
To create generic mourning
Where the state means salvation

(I know this is a time thick with dying)

[Hook]

The state cannot replace it
The state cannot replace it

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About

Genius Annotation

The “inflammatory” anthem reportedly cited by Washington DC Jewish Community Center head Carole R. Zawatsky to singer Louisa Solomon when Zawatsky informed Solomon of the sudden cancellation of The Shondes‘ headlining concert at the center’s 2014 Washington Jewish Music Festival. Zawatsky’s public comment:

This band, which embraces boycotting Israel, exceeds the redline limits of the DCJCC’s open policy.”

The song, which combines Jewish liturgical music with the philosophy of Abraham Joshua Heschel to explore the failures of Zionism and condemn the occupation of Palestine, can be found on the band’s debut lp, The Red Sea. Solomon says:

We wrote “I Watched the Temple Fall” because we were thinking a lot about what Jews put our faith in, and where that faith really lives. We’d been talking about Abraham Joshua Heschel’s notion of Judaism as a religion of time, not space, and thinking about how that related to Zionism. Confining ideas into spaces (temples, states, what have you) can falsely polarize us and take us away from the big, important stuff. We wanted to write a song that clearly said, “Look, it might be devastating to face, but the state of Israel commits actions daily that violate the basic tenets of Judaism.”

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