Frankly, the title is the truth. There is simply no fitting title to this posting, no title, no words to convey the agony, the sadness at the state of the world today and its path leading only to catastrophe.
I marvel, in a most negative manner at the state of world Jewry, the frightening future glimmering over the horizon, even closer than that. The deaths of so many, instigated by Hamas and a world more accepting of their egregious lies, validating them, as they trash the proof, the truth, clearly visible. If one takes off the hateful blindfold, that is. The awful heart-rending videos of hostages, young girls looking middle-aged, eyes dead of life, and one resembling a Holocaust survivor. The world? The silence of the absence of condemnation is deafening.
The worst for us, as a family, as a community, is the glaring gap in family pictures, the missing pitcher and hitter on baseball rosters, the empty seat in the classroom, the missing sight of father and son on nature walks, enjoying the beauty of God's world. Why? Because Yitzy is missing, gone, alive via thoughts and memories, via photos and videos, but never again to bless us with his signature grin, the depth of his faith, the ability to catch that busy child to give a hug and a kiss, to laugh and cringe at his presentation of the latest find - be it a snake or lizard or the sighting of a beautiful bird. With us via the lump in our throats, the ever-ready tears, the sobs barely contained. Or not.
Even as that calming blanket or feeling wrapped me within its folds, the horror, the negative amazement at the ugliness in and of the world, the hatred of Jews growing exponentially, remains front and center. Shocking is the hypocrisy of nations with memorial ceremonies and grandiose, empty speeches and promises, false vows, wreaths laid. These are visible scenes meaning nothing when not followed up, backed up with supportive action, with change, with a visible change in rhetoric and the cessation of vilification and negation of Israel's right to exist, for one little space on the planet to be a Jewish state, the only one, and the only source of refuge for endangered Jewry.
The world today is rife with violence, threat of more and increasing violence, hate rampant, encouraged and championed, with chaos, anomie, anarchy growing, people either not understanding or not caring, or actively contributing to this terrible reality. We, the human race, have devolved. We have turned our back on millennia of progress, so difficult to achieve, and returned, descended to the depravity of war and hate, of nationalism beyond reasonable degree.
We have hurried to declare enemies and betrayed allies, changing them as often as does one with clothing before a date. We and we alone, have endangered a future of hope, replacing it with a dreary, gray one, good for no one and nothing other than for the scum which rises to the top for a short time, until overthrown by other, worse juntas. No more unity of nations to fight that which is wrong. We leave that behind, tossed on the trash heap of history. Democracy, real progress, vigorously declined.
America is no different, perhaps worse as so many looked to us as a role model, to learn from, to breathe in fresh air and ideas. Now? Now we have devolved into opposite status and image. What can one say when an indicted soon to be convicted, demented, incompetent, authoritarian and threatening caricature of a human, is running for the second time to be president of a nation he desired and attempted to overthrow.
The other day I came across this statement. Read it and weep, pour ashes on heads, shred the sackcloth. This is what we face today. Monsters so evil, so powerful, that shock, overwhelming, terrifying overwhelms us. Only instead of monsters we think we did not have a hand in creating, blameless, we claim, we need to look, deep and true, into mirrors of the soul, and see, accept the truth. We have looked far too long into that abyss and become the very monster we were ogling.
"For we do not know what beasts the night dreams when its hours grow too long for even G-d to be awake." (Hildred Castaigne)
We are those monsters. We enable that long night. We. Us. Only we can end the reign of these monsters. We have the power to go either way, to choose and formulate our lives. Whether G-d is sleeping or observing, ruminating re those quite annoying humans, is your opinion, your choice. Either way the onus of change is upon us. Do not look for miracles, for there are only miracles that arise from hard work and then perhaps, maybe, the One Above will validate these efforts and add that small push of a mighty finger and, well,... as the song states, "There can be miracles..."
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Yitzy, so missed and loved, you thankfully, perhaps, in a bitter way, are spared this anguish, but how much you could have done if you were allowed the gift of life.
I, we, all miss you so.
Always and forever. Always and forever.
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