Lughnasad, Time of the Reaper, and Gaza

A Time of Hope and Fear

Lammas Night—the ancient Celtic festival of Lughnasad, that marks the moment high summer begins to shift toward autumn. Lammas came from ‘hlafmas’ or loaf-mass, a festival that celebrates the beginning of the harvest season. I think of it as a time of hope and fear. The grain stands tall in the fields, the fruit hangs heavy on the trees—but the harvest is not yet gathered in,

On this Lammas night, I can’t help but think of those who have no bread to eat, no harvest to gather. I am haunted by the faces of the starving children of Gaza, the anguish of parents watching their children waste away, the unbelievable cruelty of making weakened people walk miles to collect a pittance of aid, only to face tear gas and bullets while they wait in line.

More than twenty years ago I was in Gaza as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, supporting the nonviolent resistance among the Palestinians. I am thinking today of a family I stayed with on the border with Egypt. At the time, Israel was bulldozing houses to make a no-man’s zone between Rafah town and Egypt. The houses were homes of old Gaza families, not the refugees from ’48 but those who ancestors had been there for generations.

I sat in Nahed’s home with her children, while outside tanks prowled and shot bullets into the walls. Mostly the kids did not react—they were used to it. When they ducked to the floor, I knew it was time to worry. Joe, another volunteer, and I donned our fluorescent vests and went out in the night to shout at the tanks and tell them there were children and internationals in the house. Whether our intervention helped or not, we all survived the night.

But that was more than two decades ago, when Nahed still had chickens in the back yard, and served us her own eggs with the same pride I feel when I can offer you an apple I grew myself or olive oil we pressed from our trees. It’s a common, quiet pride, universal to gardeners everywhere, and it is somehow the essence of what it means to have something, a home, a bit of abundance, a gift to share.

What does it do to a people to take that away from them? What does it do to children to pockmark their homes with bullets while they try to do their arithmetic problems? Who do they grow up to be, when snipers spray bullets over their heads while they play in the rubble left from the last assault? The attacks of October 7 were horrific, but they didn’t come out of nowhere. Gaza has been under siege for decades, and this final atrocity of mass starvation is just the last tightening of a noose.

And what does it do to the psyche of a young soldier to make it okay to shoot at desperate people lining up for food? To enforce starvation? To deprive children of food? Who are those soldiers going to become, when they go back home? When the last human impulses of compassion have been erased, what kind of parents, neighbors, coworkers will they make in turn? What monstrous thing will Israel have become?

Lammas night. The wheel turns. Harvest is coming, when we reap what we have sown.

I am a Jew by heritage, a Pagan by inclination, but whatever your religion, whatever spiritual or humanist creed you follow, there is one universal bottom line of morality I would like to propose: no decent human being forces children to starve.

If we can’t agree on that, what good are we?

Forcing children to starve will not make Israelis safe. It will, in fact, destroy Israel. It will shatter any moral authority Israel has. It has already divided the Jewish diaspora and horrified the world. The dream I was raised with in the post-war American Jewish community, of Israel as a refuge of last resort, a source of pride, a homeland where we could live finally without repression after 2000 years—that dream has turned into a nightmare when Israel becomes the oppressor, a pariah among nations, a despised place where no decent person will want to come.

I would like to end this on a ray of hope. It is, after all, Lughnasad and Lugh was the Celtic God of Light, wielding a spear like a ray of the sun. But I don’t honestly feel much hope tonight, only immense sadness and rage. But if there is—not a ray but maybe a glimmer—it’s this, that the world will rise up in outrage and stop this atrocity. So please, raise your voice. France and the U.K. have stood up to Netanyahu, pressure your government to do the same. If you are in the U.S. and your Senators voted with Bernie Sanders to withhold more arms from Israel until aid is flowing again, thank them. If they voted against it, let them know you are angry. Use whatever platform you have, even if you think it’s small, and amplify the voices of Palestinians crying out against the genocide. Raise the issue in your churches, mosques, temples and yes, in your synagogues. Jewish support for Israel is no longer monolithic, and rabbis of conscience are speaking out and taking direct action. Support them. Do whatever you can, and maybe we can turn this tide.

I left Nahed’s house early in the morning, but her mother woke up even earlier to send me off with bread and oranges for the journey. I can picture her now, reaching up to pluck an orange from the tree, her hands full of bread, like a Goddess of abundance. I want a world where that tree can flourish, where Nahed can live safe in her garden, where all the people of that troubled land can live in a peace rooted in justice. On this harvest holiday, let us vow to make a world where no child starves nor huddles in fear from gunfire or bombs—not in Gaza, not in any of the many conflict zones or climate disasters or poverty-stricken streets. Nature truly gives us more than we need, enough to be generous with, enough to share. We can make a world where there is bread for all.

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