Finding the “Treasures that Prevail”

When I was invited by Daniel Sokatch to open the recent New Israel Fund Board meeting, I felt it was important to not only open the meeting itself but also to open the canon of voices we use for reflections, d’vrei torah, and moments of transition. So I chose to bring the poem Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich—a renowned American poet and NIF donor—both to broaden the range of Jewish women’s voices we learn from and because this poem offers language and imagery that can help us think about our present reality. It speaks to what it means to keep returning to the wreckage of our world, especially Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and to look clearly, recover truth, and chart a new way forward. It is now my pleasure to share my thoughts with the broader NIF community. 

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Adrienne Rich’s Diving Into the Wreck is a hauntingly beautiful poem. Difficult to understand, but hard to forget, the poem begins with an image of someone preparing for a dive—strapping on awkward gear, descending slowly. The journey is not glamorous, but it is necessary. The narrator goes, in her words, “to see the wreck and not the story of the wreck.”

This line makes me think about NIF supporters in relationship with Israel, and their willingness to look honestly at what lies beneath the surface. 

Sometimes what we see is beautiful: “It is blue, and then it is bluer, then green,” Rich writes. And indeed, there are a plethora of wonderful institutions and people in Israel. But sometimes, when we go deeper, like Rich’s diver, what we see isn’t pretty—in fact, it is downright uncomfortable to look at; “you breathe differently down here.” 

But look we must, knowing that many of the dominant narratives that people in Jewish and Christian communities cling to leave out the deeper truths, below the waters’ surface. Yet the truths of inequality, racism, occupation, eroded democracy, and curtailed civil rights exist in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza today. 

Solidarity is a second theme of Diving Into the Wreck that echoes the work of NIF. Though the diver at first writes as if she were alone, she discovers: “we are, I am, you are” all part of the same descent. This solidarity and shared responsibility is the very heart of NIF: from our world-wide supporters, to the NIF staff in Israel who represent all segments of Israel society, to NIF itself serving as a critical convener of coalitions and grantee organizations. NIF is an organization of people who know that change can only be created together, not apart.

A third theme is “making the hidden revealed.” Rich, towards the end of the poem, reminds us that official histories often erase voices. She writes about “a book of myths in which our names do not appear.” NIF, from its founding nearly half a century ago, has been committed to putting these names back into the story, individually and collectively. Names of Palestinians, women, Mizrahim…the list goes on. These are the stories that many seek to erase, but that must be told.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly: Rich’s dive is not about despair. Despite the despair and fear I may feel at times—for the future, for my children, for all children—Adrienne Rich insists that clear vision is the first step toward renewal and finding “the treasures that prevail.” By acknowledging the wreck, by naming what is broken, by working in solidarity: we open the possibility of repair.

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich (1929 – 2012)

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.