‘...where ignorant armies clash by night…

I don’t really want to be part of the conversation around what’s happening in the Middle East. I don’t have to, actually. I’m not a public figure. I live in London. No one is after me. My relatives got out of Kiev two generations before I was born a Jew.

I go to sleep at night after yet another glance at the headlines, wondering what the score will be in the morning: how many dead will be Palestinian, how many Israeli. At times, it feels like watching a scorecard, bloodsoaked but distant. I check in with friends and relatives who have family in Israel. I text my Palestinian contacts, hoping to get through.But I’m having a hard time seeing this as a real event in real time. I’ve become inured to what’s reported to be real, what’s actually happening, what my opinion is supposed to be.

Mostly, I rage, filled with contempt for what Hamas has done and terrified at the vengeance Israel will exact. There are no winners. There are just dead people, enraged and bloodthirsty people, grieving people. And lest we forget, there are stupefying responses from world leader people.

If I follow the dominant narrative, there is no question as to how I am to respond: Israel must be defended at all costs. She is in danger from an enemy who will destroy her. Countries which dominate the world outperform one another by beating the drums for more munitions, more fightback, more revenge. There is little to no talk of restraint, to consider carefully how to respond and what it will mean to bomb innocent people in retaliation for terrible atrocities committed by a crazed, religio-fascist, Jew hating armed force.

What can I add to the conversation? I don’t know. I’m unwilling to root for the Israelis over the Palestinians. This is in no way to diminish the brutality of Hamas, an embodiment of masculine, blind, indiscriminate blood lust. Their world view places them, as men, in a position of dominance over anybody they see as weaker. There are no leavening influences, no feminine input to temper testosterone rage. They are as wild as men when they clubbed their first bear cub to death. That’s Hamas.

But what of my people, what of us Jews? Who are we in this combat? Alas, we are also filled with blood lust, our warriors ready to destroy first and ask questions later. It’s ironic that at this moment, much of the world is on ‘our’ side. Go, Jews. Ironic given our place in world history as expendable humans. Now it’s the Palestinians who are expendable. As we were vermin to the Nazis, they are animals to far too many of us.

The situation will change. It always does, as it has over centuries. Wars come and go; peoples come and go; the villains and the good guys change places. Jews and Palestinians have both been around a long time. Once upon a long time ago , they lived compatibly in surroundings near to one another. Perhaps they will find a way to do so again. But right now, it’s hard to see the cycle of violence receding.

…………

The title for these remarks is taken from Matthew Arnold's 19th century poem, Dover Beach. Below are selected stanzas.

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

....

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

...

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery;

...

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Rose Levinson is the founder and managing editor of Emerging Voices. Read more from her here

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Update on Rachel Jacobs’ Future Machine

Rachel Jacobs, a contributing editor to Emerging Voices, first wrote about Future Machine in March, 2020. She has contributed ongoing updates on her work as an artist, thinker, climate activist, and academic. You can read other posts at

Conversations on Crises

This latest update provides insight into where Rachel is now, mirroring both her optimism and her challenges in being part of the urgent conversation around climate change.

2023 has been an inspiring yet difficult year as I accompany Future Machine on its uphill climb into the future. The climate modelling at the heart of this project appears to have been proven right, even understated. The tipping points and uncertainties of climate change are happening sooner than expected. Now the sea ice in the polar regions is melting faster, and the Arctic and Antarctic are warming up more quickly. At times, the rise is 35 degrees above their average temperatures.

Meanwhile, in England 2023, we had both a heatwave and a drought in June. Then we were on the cooler side of the increasingly confused Gulf stream. In September, a heatwave returned. My mum recently found a diary entry from the 1970s, noting that 21 degrees was too hot to walk up mountains. Over the last few years, I have become used to walking in the mountains in 25 – 28 degree heat.

The world suffers fires, floods, unbearable heat, earthquakes. Despite all that is happening, Future Machine is having a quiet year. Funding and partnerships are increasingly hard to secure. Cuts to public funding indicate major changes in the way art and research is valued in England--very little. With all this in the background, Future Machine has continued its journey across England.

In February, a small cardboard Future Machine maquette went for a walk with my collaborators Juliet Robson and Glenn Bryant along the lanes of Rotherfield Peppard village as Winter turned to Spring, meeting villagers and a donkey along the way.

In April, the Nottingham local council did a brutal clearance of the shrubs and flowers that were our friends in Nottingham’s Christ Church Gardens, where we had worked with the local primary school after lockdown in 2020. Then ‘something amazing happened’. We met under the blossom trees, with a visit from Mr X, an artist from London who has been collaborating with Frank Abbott, my collaborator in Nottingham.

Mr X's amazing artwork on wheels appeared under the blossoming trees, the first time he and his work had been out of London. Alongside Future Machine and Mr X's appearance, Frank lit up the year 2023, beacons cut out of huge cardboard boxes. We ate samosas and drank tea and coffee as people spoke to the future via Future Machine and listened to messages from its past as we walked through the park.

On Saturday, November 11, Future Machine will celebrate the season in north London's Finsbury Park. All are welcome. For more information and to learn more about Rachel and her Future Machine, go here.

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Our Food Will Make Us Proud!

It’s not a surprise that Zimbabwe's culinary culture is one to be greatly celebrated. After all, the country is shaped like a teapot and even has a ‘smoke that thunders’ steaming on its tip.

Across many parts of southerly Africa, ice cream is not an everyday treat but rather a special one for noteworthy occasions. In many African households, an ice cream container in a refrigerator often contains frozen stew, meat and frequently beans from the week before. After ice-cream has been consumed on a unique occasion, what remains are the ice cream cartons. Finding actual ice cream inside an ice cream container in your refrigerator means one of two things: a special event is coming up or your folks are very affluent and live a comfortable life.

The types of foods one consumes can be status symbols. The same way that ice cream is seen as a luxury which conveys financial stability, certain food items are viewed as reserved for the poor. In most cases these include the traditional and indigenous foods of Zimbabwe. Food such as Mufushwa, Maputi, Chimodho, Maheu eChirema just to mention a few. Mufushwa are sun-dried leafy vegetables prepared as stews. Since they are seasonal and mainly found during the rainy season, the fresh ones are preserved to be enjoyed during the dry season. The vegetables include traditional ones such as rape (brassica napus), covo (marrow-stem kale) and muboora (pumpkin leaves). Indigenous varieties include mutsine (black jack leaves) and mumowa (red amaranth). Maputi are popped maize kernels; chimodho is cornbread prepared using flour and maize meal, and maheu is a fermented beverage made from maize meal and a mixture of other grains like sorghum or finger millet or pearl millet.

Tapiwa Guzha, the owner of TAPI TAPI ice cream parlour in Observatory, Cape Town, South Africa, creates a melangé of two worlds, creating the best ice cream known to humans. Using the flavours most available to poorer citizens, Guzha infuses the taste of Africa's indigenous delicacies into ice cream. His craft is cunningly oxymoronic. Imagine finding a mine of ice-cream flavours borrowed from our rich indigenous culinary heritage; flavours such as salty Maputi and Mufushwa Masala. Mufushwa is a highly nutritious food, but is not widely consumed in urban areas as the middle class and bourgeois associate it with rural areas and poverty.

In Zimbabwe’s culinary culture, mufushwa and ice cream are polar opposites. Guzha introduces this wonderful combination in both vegan and non-vegan options. TAPI TAPI is beyond ice cream. From the contrast between the ice cream and its flavours to the symbolism of such a store being found in the “Mother City”, the parlour is a Pan-African treasure. Cape Town is referred to as “Mother City” as it was the gateway between Europeans’ first contact with the people of southern Africa.

Guzha’s work interrogates the status quo. A huge poster in his parlour reads “Our flavours are not weird! We’ve all been socialised to believe Eurocentric food should be the global norm.” Meanwhile, painted as a mural on a wall adjacent to the door and hung in a picture frame are words Guzha titles “A reminder to you, my child”.

The message goes on to say, this is your home my child, land of your people. One must nourish oneself from the land, tend it so that others may enjoy it too. He instructs the child to remember that their stories, lives and histories do not begin in1488. (In 1488, Bartholomeu Dias became the first European navigator to round the southern tip of Africa. His discoveries established the sea route between Europe and Asia.)

On the mural, Guzha goes on to cite how a great and ongoing injustice has occurred because of colonization. He says this injustice rots the mind and decays the heart. He laments how these have been inherited over centuries. His child must not hold onto oppression, but cast it out. Guzha tells his child not to allow their story to be written for them, but rather to create space for self and room for others. He reminds his child of the need to build community and embrace diversity. In this way, “we are stronger together.'

From the aesthetics of the ice cream parlour to the mural on the wall. it is clear Guzha is a man on a mission. His push for authentic cuisine is an attempt to break down barriers. He creates cuisine which mirrors the people around it and empowers the people to whom the food belongs.

Tapi Tapi is beyond ice cream. From the contrast between the ice cream and its flavours to the symbolism of such a store being found in the “Mother City”, the parlour is a pan-African treasure. Guzha’s work breaks known mental barriers in African cuisine, pushing for renewed sovereignty one lick at a time.

Webster Makombe is a regular contributor to Emerging Voices. Read more from him here.

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