SLEEP? WHAT IS THAT?

  Sleep is often the balm needed to heal deep wounds, those which penetrate deep into body and soul. Wounds that are unthinkable, yet there they are.  Sleep, its healing qualities, are denied. Shakespeare wrote, "To sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream", and Lady Macbeth could not sleep, walked in terror and regret through the night trying to clean her hands of blood spilled to satisfy her ambitions for her husband. Sleep and the refuge it provides, the healing it can provide, is denied for the degree and intensity of the horror, the insanity of it all, the inhumanity, the savagery will rise to the surface, unwanted, dreaded, but there it is. Truth seeps through barriers we have set up within. It jerks soothing sleep away. No, not for us, now. Sleep is an endangered species at present and when it will return, if indeed it can ever return - the answer is unknown.

I cannot sleep. I dream during those short lived attempts; those dreams far too realistic and I cannot remain within. I need to get the hell out of them. So I jerk myself awake, or find myself punching out, shouting, or flying off the bed as I tackle a cretin in the dream. No, not for me the relaxing, soothing rhythms and promises of sleep. I cannot. I cannot unsee babies with slit throats, overturned baby strollers, bound hands and charred bodies of families. Identification is difficult beyond words, recovery challenges the sanity of all, the barbarity beyond the Pale, skulls and bodies separated via decapitation and the number of hostages grows daily with new input of data.  Sleep, dreams, nightmares, as the tentacles of horror reach deep within our souls denying us its powers to heal. Can one even heal from such a wound? I think not, not as individuals, nor as a nation. Instead, it will meld with prior transmitted trauma, become part of our DNA.

And the hits keep coming. Oh, not the musical hits of fun, of beauty, of restorative and expressive abilities, but rather the music of jarring atonal composition, of discordant rhythms, and shrieking combative instruments. It is music that does not soothe the soul. Instead, it insults the ears and minds of listeners, of audiences forced to endure its awfulness. It is the sound of that shriek of chalk against a chalkboard, one that sets teeth on edge and shoulders up to the ears. 

To this most unappetizing menu of events and effects, add the threat right now, growing daily, hourly, exponentially, of a vile, physical racial hatred, seemingly never to be allowed to disappear. There it is again, the slogan of "from the river to the sea" - goal of a Judenrein Middle East. No rightful homeland for Jews, no refuge for oppressed Jewry, denial of historical truths and imperatives. Inflated with an extension of hate which says, no room at the inn for any Jew. Anywhere. Everywhere. Forever. And that includes those addled, arrogant ignorant college kids who chant for their own death and neutralization. Jews they are. Jews they remain. Cooperation with those who would just as soon see them permanently gone will not save them, for they will remain within the boundaries of hate. 

This supposedly new version of hate, of antisemitism, is actually quite old, as old as the hills, as old as time. Its end goal is clear, the words of its motto simple yet vicious. 

Message to world Jewry:          

"You can't live here.

 You can't live there.

  In fact, you can't live anywhere." 

Well, folks, I cannot and will not accept this ugly turn to an ugly past. I will not tolerate a vicious present, not so much for me, as for the generations to follow.  It is on us, the older generations to reteach, reeducate our young, reorient them to the truth. We need to actively, proactively, resist   stigmatization of Jewry. We must fight, powerfully, for the cancellation of any legitimization of antisemitism and its growing vicious physical expression.     

We cannot cower within our homes. 

We cannot skulk in the streets, praying to disappear.

We cannot, must not, should not, hide who we are.  

We must confront the bullies, bring the fight to them.    

 Ony, only, only, if we do this together, united, differences put aside in the face of a real in your face existential challenge, a threat that is all too real. 

Unite. Together. Strong. Together. NOW!

     HEAL OURSELVES.

• HEAL THE WORLD.

  HEAL YITZY!

  Yitzchak Elimelech ben Chana Sarah

  May he be granted refuah shelaymah

  • bimheyrah beyameinu.

   

  AM YISROEL CHAI.

•  Amen. Amen.

"May the Omnipresent One have mercy on our brothers the whole House of Israel who are in distress or captivity, whether on sea or land. May He lead them from distress to relief, from darkness to light, and from oppression to redemption, now, swiftly and soon - and let us say: AMEN. 

Always together. Only together.