UPON OFFERING COMFORT AND PRESENCE TO BESIEGED COMMUNITIES Ill be taking a day to step out of the worthwhile learning at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem to join a contingent from the Rabbinical Assembly and the Masorti Foundation who have lately arrived in Israel. We will be going south -- to the places where the missiles fly with the greatest frequency to visit communities that are on the front lines of the terror tunnels -- where radicalized human beings emerge from beneath the ground into Israel seeking to randomly kidnap and to kill. I would continue on to Gaza, if I could -- attempting to offer solace to families without options, regular people who are powerless against nihilists, wishing to stand up to marauders who flatten attempts for the pursuit of a regular life with intimidating, incendiary ideas and demands. From there, I would continue to Paris to stand against blind and ravenous hatred. To offer a calm and timeless face against slogans, chants of death, Molotov cocktails, and mob. To somehow defuse such odiousness by demonstrating the wisdom and the resilience of Judaism -- thus disbanding those inciting and scapegoating -- to recognize the complexity of claim and narrative, and that this time with the modern miracle of the Jewish State, Jews will neither be made to apologize for a different reading of the text, for wanting to be secure at home, nor submit helplessly to slaughter. Perhaps, at last, this bleak and imposing colossis of Jew-hatred, present in every age, will be leveled. For now. It will be enough to hold in my grasp this one day of standing with people who are heightened to grief, but not to hatred -- who bravely send their children to root out an evil so outside our own precious rational conception. I will call these people my brothers and sisters, and I am not naive enough to think that my footprints in the south will change anything -- and I am not looking to tempt fate. Rather, where would you go, when real choices are to be made? What would you do? The goal is to offer gentle strength, to sing and to say we are with you -- in our own fog, in our own frustration, in our tremor and conflict -- we stand with you and see you -- in your imperfect humanity. May our boundaries be open to uplift another, and past the agony of this very real war, may all hearts soften and comfort be given. Why do we do what we do? Do we have choices to do differently? Suffering is suffering. May each of us have the privilege to not bully, and to not think that we are unreservedly right. May we have the privilege to unclench our fist and to hold the hand of another, and to wish those who are doggedly fighting hatred and the dehumanization of others, life, success, support and spiritual recovery.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 21:19:37 +0000
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