Meital Trabelsi - Oh Captain

I think about posting this song every year near Rabin's memorial day but something always stops me. It always feels too dramatic and not relevant enough. The song captures the mood in Israel in 1996 but when I hear it today I can only think of the shrinking left camp, not the entire nation. Yet it's the first song that came to my mind when I heard about the horrific shooting in Pittsburgh last Saturday afternoon and it's stayed with me all week. This poem was originally written by Walt Whitman following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Naomi Shemer translated it and wrote music for it in 1996. The lines "the prize we sought is won" and "the victor ship comes in with object won" were understandably not part of the Hebrew version because these lines allude to the preservation of the Union after the end of the Civil War. Lincoln was assassinated after the Civil War had ended but Rabin was assassinated at a peace rally and the peace process he fought for was never completed.

I also thought about this song this week because the shooting in Pittsburgh confirmed my shaky feeling that there is no captain to steer the ship through stormy waters, not in Israel and not in the U.S. The rhetoric of hatred and incitement flowing freely on social media channels which fueled the shooter's vile actions is all too familiar to Israeli citizens who recall the incitement against Rabin before his murder. An incitement which was recently denied by today's right-wing government. We're heading into an election year (the latest date for the general elections is November 2019, but they might happen earlier) and the organizers of tonight's memorial rally for Rabin said that the rally "will focus on warning against an atmosphere of division and incitement ahead of the upcoming elections". The stormy waters cannot be avoided but we can choose how to steer the ship.

Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!":

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
                          But O heart! heart! heart!
                             O the bleeding drops of red,
                                Where on the deck my Captain lies,
                                    Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up - for you the flag is flung - for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths - for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
                        Here Captain! dear father!
                            This arm beneath your head!
                                It is some dream that on the deck,
                                   You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
                         Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
                            But I with mournful tread,
                               Walk the deck my Captain lies,
                                   Fallen cold and dead.