Ah, the importance of wee little words. Yesterday I wrote about the word "nu" and today I am thinking about the itty bitty words in front of the identical phrase - "you hear me' - and the impact is quite different. Unlike the old ad featuring a man wandering with a phone asking or being asked if he can hear or be heard, there is a far more serious meaning to the three questions of the title.
At times there are misconnections, and no one is to blame. There are technical difficulties, glitches unforeseen. Then willing hands go all out to fix the problem and voila - hearing is restored. So do you hear me can have a positive response. Hope remains, tattered a tad, but still - hearing is ongoing with open channels of communication.
However, the problem of hearing, or inability to hear, or wishes to remain unhearing can grow apace. It is easier to continue on the wrong path, to knowingly commit or inflict harm upon and to others if one can claim to never having heard anything against one's activities or verbalizations. It's a great way in which to facilitate the growth of Afred E. Neuman's iconic question: "Who, me?" Innocence claimed, though innocent the denier is not. Splits begin to appear, cracks grow steadily and hearing is seriously impacted. Hand in hand along with the inevitable consequences, this difficulty in hearing, once involuntary and now increasingly voluntary, challenges any effort to restore the hearing to society. The entire process of communication is strangled, the noose tightening and the process of hearing becomes calcified faster and faster. with no chance of reprieve in sight.
Finally, we arrive, unfortunately, at the third stage. "Do you want..." There is an acknowledgement voiced or not, that there is no more wish to communicate nor hear each other. No, the chosen path now is reliant upon voluntary deafness, a growing and encouraged inability to hear another viewpoint. No ability nor wish to communicate, instead ramping up the temperature, ignoring the chasms wreaking havoc on the integrity of the foundations of society. And here we are today.
Shamefully, dangerously, so.
Today, in America, there is stone cold hardening of hearing along with hardening of the arteries feeding blood to the brains and hearts of Republican leadership. They champion those imprisoned for their part in the J6 insurrection even as the heads of it remain free, to exacerbate the already fraught with danger atmosphere. Dragging this country to perdition and dissolution. Their vision, hearing and thinking followers see neither trees nor forests. And here we are with the inevitable consequences.
What breaks my heart though, where once I had hope, even as I grew increasingly hopeless re an improved America, re a denial of fascism, I did have hope for and in Israel. There was a land where I could remove myself from the dangers, increasing in number and violence, 3700 reported incidents this past year alone. The tip of an ugly iceberg of inhumanity and hate, of eternal antisemitism. But my place of refuge, where I should, would have been welcomed, is now shutting those doors of hope.
The sight of Israeli police using force against protesters, peaceful, with flags of the state flying high, sent a monumental shake to my bones. The use of water cannons against their neighbors, children, the elderly, anyone and everyone, indifferent to them, to their service, active and reserve, in defense of this nation. The water shot out -Jew against Jew - and images of the Jewish police in the ghettos, the kapos who turned on their fellow prisoners, flooded my horrified mind.
Has the government lost its collective mind? Have we not enough, more than enough, outside enemies? Do we need to fulfil the Biblical prophecy and warning, yet again, that that the most dangerous enemy is the one from within? Must we emulate the failing USA in this, as their enemies surface from within as well? Why can we not all choose to follow yet another prophecy, a much brighter one, where nations shall not lift sword against each other- nor themselves - and swords can be beaten into tools for life, not death. Is it that impossible to visualize and build?
And all the while I think of Yitzy, lying in bed, in the throes of a nausea most of us will never know. I think of the latest prediction of less than a decade before we have irretrievably doomed this earth of ours - of G-d, who lent it to us -to a definite death. I wonder what we are leaving to our descendants? What terrors will they face because of our stupid intransigence beyond words and comprehension. As we watch the floodwaters of California or the devastations caused by once in a century, once in 500 years storms almost on a weekly time basis, tornadoes where there never were before, - what hath man indeed wrought?!
We have wrought our own demise in a painful horrific predicted future. All the Yitzys, all the children, the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the dictators and the dictated to - no one will escape the consequences of our own intransigence. To think otherwise is to be a fool. To hope that there will arise another Abraham to plead for humanity, or an Esther who will rise to heights unknown and save her people, or a Judah Maccabee - get real. Do we in fact, have anyone of that caliber alive?
Will G-d even listen or hear or want to hear our pleas? Why would He? Why should He? How many times can we expect forgiveness? In fact, we have trashed His world and perverted the truth of religion, of belief that should encompass all whatever format chosen, not exclude those we deem insufficient and/or unworthy.
When I write in every blog- heal the world - I mean it.
Without a healed world, all our Yitzys, all our beloved kids, will face torments we can wish on no one, not even our worst enemies. There will be no survivors here, not a TV show. Way beyond that.
So... let us hear and heal.
HEAL THE WORLD.
HEAL YITZY!
Yitzchak Elimelech ben Chana Sarah
May he be granted refuah shelaymah bimheyrah beyameinu.
May he be granted a timely and complete healing.
May Hashem hear all our voices raised in prayer.
Amen. Amen.
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