The finale of the Israeli award-winning documentary NAZA, a Hebrew acronym for "collateral damage," captures a father trapped in a furnace of grief. Heat radiates from the tangled grid of collapsed iron and melted plastic. Coughing through blinding smoke, he drags broken blocks of drywall away, his cries echoing off the smoldering rubble that traps his children.
calm between fireballs
an armless girl gazing
heavenward, yet ...
FYI: The title invokes Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:1 (22a): “Whoever destroys a soul, itis considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”
The concluding word " yet ..."opens a painful gap between the ideal and the reality.
If every life is an entire world, yet a child can be left maimed by war, what becomes of that world?
If saving a life is an act of immeasurable significance, yet lives are destroyed amid the rubble, what meaning can we give to that teaching?
If the girl gazes heavenward, yet ..., what can follow? Hope? Prayer? Accusation? Silence?
Furthermore, the ellipsis refuses to answer. It leaves the moral and spiritual contradiction unresolved.
Without it, the haiku ends with “heavenward,” a word that can suggest transcendence, faith, or hope. The image is poignant, but it permits a relatively consoling interpretation.
