I have experienced my small act of reading the Bible in Tamil as an act of renewal and of memory, and it connects me spiritually to my family members far away who are also reading the same Bible in Tamil. It has raised my awareness that I haven’t just been given a book to read, but a life to live with all its particularities, including my heritage as a Tamil.

The specter of exile was one that weighed heavily on the ancient Hebrews as they found themselves captives, forcibly moved from their ancestral lands, with the ascent of the Babylonian empire in the sixth century B.C.E. The sadness is expressed beautifully in the forlorn lyrics.