Perhaps because it is that time of year when every Jew is called upon to examine his/her soul, recall behavior in deeds, words and thoughts and proceed to atone and ask forgiveness. From Gd forgiveness comes we hope with our prayers and pleadings and regrets. Forgiveness from people is another story. That requires asking the person for it, not an easy thing to do at all. If the one asked for forgiveness denies it three times, well, it is now on him. Thus, all are required to rethink and revaluate not only one's own self vis a vis G-d, but also one's fellow being. It is hard, very hard and humbling, to be honest with oneself and petition another for forgiveness, truly meant. No, this is a tough time to be a Jew. That challenge, that hardship comes from within, rather than from without.
However, because we do devote lots of time at this time of year to thoughts and evaluation, we also think about other issues regarding ourselves as Jews. Part of that is general, as in what is happening all around us, in our families, communities, country and world. Certainly, that is not often a very pretty picture.
The other sphere of concentration arises from an historical imperative. Jews are never 100% at ease in any country. Always, even in the best of times, there is that fear, real at the time and internalized, genetic, after millennia of persecution at its very worst. Unfortunately, that feeling of discomfort and unease has been growing and we find ourselves in a time of burgeoning fascistic tendencies, highly unfriendly to us. Nor to people in general, as the rules and regulations change, rights are abrogated, and humanity is forgotten too often.
When we see the nation at large suffering under such a growing threat to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", well, then our shoulders hunch around our ears and we check our papers, evaluate suitcases available and search for a place of refuge, a haven, which is not always there. In fact, it is mostly more prominent in its absence rather than in its presence.
We are presently in a period of great challenge with a growing influence and presence of fascism within our politicians and country. Brazen supremacists of all colors, ethnicities, of anywhere on the political spectrum, dare to be open and in the public eye, marching, shouting, threatening, spreading vile falsehoods. Politicians are unafraid to bellow the precepts of it, and certainly there is no lack of adherents and camp followers.
There is no room for error or for the temptation to ignore, look away, engage in pollyannish wishful unrealistic thinking. Reality is as it is. There is a growing evil togetherness, an evil synergy, of deluded fooling themselves people. DeSantis fires people who disagree with his policies, engages in human trafficking, deports people even as the Nazis deported Jews into frozen, bare no man's land and not a nation of the world stood up, spoke up for them. Censoring of books and print media, use of online possibilities to spread falsehoods, vicious lies inciting people to pure nastiness of the worst kind. We buried 11 Jews, an ugly consequence of such words and have barely weathered a rebellion fostered by these sentiments.
Those whose views originate within the depths of the Dark Age, flock to their leader, no matter how discredited, criminal and disloyal he is. He appeals to the lowest common denominator, a manifestly bad omen for harmony among the people of a nation, certainly not for my people. His own words condemn him.
“The others are dirty, sick players, and the Republicans are very high class.”
“They’ve got to be a little bit lower class,” he continued. “They have to play tough and they have to be — and honestly, if they’re not willing to do it.”
As I close, upset, worried, I ask of you understanding, to feel the terrors and fear which history has engrained within our very atoms. Too often the fears have come alive, replete with fire and smoke, with blood and gore and rape and murder. Of old, young, babies and all in between. The limitations placed on Jews, owned up to or not, are frightening in their import. Princeton allows a grossly antisemitic syllabus, as CUNY, the university which educated so many first- and second-generation Jewish kids who went on to build this nation, to fight in its wars, CUNY too engages in antisemitic syllabi and in persecuting Jewish professors who dared complain. Jewish students are unsafe on too many campuses.
So, while we delve deep within our own souls, we ask the same of all. Delve just as deeply, Seek the areas needing work, atone for misdeeds, small and large, and vow to do better -and act on that vow.
Shakespeare, now in danger at being banned from Florida's benighted educational system, pleaded via Shylock that Jews are the same, bleed, cry, smile, and live, as all on this earth. We are all creatures of the One Above, meant to be free, to choose, hopefully to choose the good.
To think of people as individuals, not members of anonymous, dehumanizing groups which seems to empower oppressors to do their worst, guilt free. But it was not a bland unfathomable number, a group of six million who were murdered. It was not thousands who were butchered by the so unholy knights of the crusades, or those slaughtered in pogroms of eastern and even western Europe for no, these were individuals, mothers, fathers, teachers, doctors, carpenters, bakers, beggars and more. People. People with lives and dreams. People.
There is a song by Shulem, a singer with an album with a major recording studio. The song, entitled My Little Town can be found on Amazon or YouTube and probably Apple as well. It is plaintive, sad and heartbreaking and has bored into my soul.
It sings of a people living lives, the joys, the daily pieces of life in this little village of 600 people, who married, who worked, who interacted with each other. Until ...
" ... the day, that cold winter day, with the smoke, the running, the fear and the boxcars that took them away."
600 individuals, 600 lives and the ghostly presence of those denied lives as their progenitors were slaughtered. Of the 600, the voice of the song sadly remarks, "There were 600 people in my little town, - but I, only I, would survive."
Time for me to ask forgiveness from those I offended, purposely or by accident. I will try to do better, as we all should do, and let us hope for a good year for all of us, a year of peace, filled with health, joy and laughter, prosperity and humanity.
Let us use the concept and power of togetherness in a positive way, helpful rather than harmful. Every coin has two sides. Let us choose the brighter, better, sweeter one.
Together.
We can heal the nation.
HEAL THE WORLD.
HEAL YITZY!
Yitzchak Elimelech ben Chana Sarah
May he be granted refuah shelaymah bimheyrah beyameinu.
AMEN. AMEN
No comments:
Post a Comment