UPON ENTERING A GROUND WAR The wind has picked up today in Jerusalem, bringing periodic gusts into the stalemate of a stubborn hamsin. People around me, part of the community fabric, are quietly leaving -- locating their Madai Bet (Reservists Uniform), and with their Tsav Shmona in hand, their Notification of Deployment, they slip away to the south. The south -- not a mythical place -- a place just a couple of hours from where I sit, where the grinding machinery of war meets the minefield of rabid, and benighted ideas. The south, where so many residents are trapped in bomb shelters and where innocents are offered as fodder for overturned conceptions of maniacal meaning. The terror comes from beneath the ground -- insurgents rising up, attempting catastrophic damage -- and an organized fighting force, left to weigh absurd decisions about how to preserve life and meet objectives -- as the missiles still fly overhead towards haphazard, civilian targets, seeking to dismantle a people and a civilization. All morning, a jackhammer sounded outside of the open window -- a repetitive thud, piercing the earth, unsettling and yet, constructive. As we sat down to learn this afternoon, one of my teachers thought that he had just received the text -- his call up notice -- and he sat with us for a moment, contemplating the prospect of leaving his family to fight a war he knew was now necessary -- yet to acquiesce with trouble and pain to something greater than himself, that seems to live on its own, gaining life from hate spewed so long ago. The Jewish Question, even on Israels borders, is not solved. Where can we be at home? We did not learn with him -- he left to attend to his immediate needs. On Shabbat afternoon, I walked around the Old City -- into deep warrens, visiting parts of the Arab Quarter that I do not remember ever seeing. Perhaps this was meant as a kind of remedy -- a determination that really all I can do, is attempt a non-threatening presence in this eternal city -- a reminder that as intractable as things may appear, we and we are still here. Ma Laasot -- what can we do? And this morning, I am greeted by the tear-stained face of another teacher, as rumors fly about family and friends. Each of us calls out from our narrow places -- as we cope in our singular ways, with uncertainty, and stress -- and as we hold the trauma that we see and hear. How are we to go on? Do we recruit all mothers to band together, to shame their brothers, fathers, husbands, and sons to stop -- to quit the bluster, to mitigate disaster? And amid our fears of a febrile narrative that repeats again and again, we know that this terrible conflict is part of a larger whole -- a small tributary of infection that afflicts a greater region. There is no cure. Just an eventual ceasefire, where judgment and culpability abound, across this world, circling back again. May we all recover our sense that life is precious. May it be this preciousness that is normal. May we strive to keep all of our children safe. May the footholds of trust reveal a vista of shared responsibility and neighborhood -- and may evil be trounced by the common good and generous action of all. We recognize that in all these words, what is there really to say? We pray, and we sing -- for love, for silence, for restoration, for mercy, and again for love.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 15:13:11 +0000
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