It was the Sunday of Epiphany, but we, a group of Protestant college kids tired from touring, didn’t know it. Not, at least, when we set out for Bethlehem late that afternoon on January 8, 2023.
As we traveled into Palestinian territory to visit Bethlehem, we stopped at the West Bank barrier to contemplate its manifold graffiti. Among crude representations of Donald Trump, declarations of “Free Palestine,” and paintings of young children encountering soldiers, one phrase graffitied in all-caps upon the barrier particularly caught my attention: “Rachel is weeping.” The phrase is taken from the prophecy of Jeremiah and famously quoted in relation to Herod’s murder of the innocents in Matthew’s Gospel: “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more” (2:18).
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