AND WHENCE?

  Indeed, in deed, in life, where do we go? Is there in fact any place to go? I, along with so many others, are tired, an exhaustion beyond comprehension to those who have not faced this reality, who have not walked down the street with swiveling head and hurrying feet, especially so when walking hand in hand with a child. Who's around? Where is the next person crazed with hate? Will someone jump out of a doorway? Shoot from a window? Or come screaming for the death of that child, all the children of Israel? Will I be able to save the child and myself? And then what? And then what?     

But it is not just this child, this imaginary, not so imaginary child. The answer to the question of the title "And whence?" is really hence, and forever, seemingly indelibly inked in the minds of those who already feel it or see nothing wrong in it. Or, in fact, perhaps is quite positive even now in their minds. And what is the hence the whence of it all? It is yesterday. It is today; it is tomorrow. It is the foreseeable future or perhaps there are those who intend to make it no future at all. And I am tired. So very tired. How many millennia will it take to extirpate the roots of violence, of mayhem and murder? How many more millennia will it take to rid the world of this most energized, JewHatred? Evidently the number of millennia has not yet been reached, and the bold and blatant question is - will it ever be reached?

Yesterday was a brutal day. It took the lives of yet two more beautiful young people on the verge of a life together, serving people, all people. Now gone, their families bereft, their people mourning and grieving with them. Gone. Yet another manifestation of the oldest theme of persecution and approval of murder. A manifestation that was and is inevitable, given the world's attitude and viral endemic hatred that thrives on bloodlust and bloodshed. Are the centuries not enough? Has not the thirst for blood ever been quenched? Or has it hidden, barely beneath the surface, at the ready for that propitious moment, barely a flick of a moment, to uncover it all? A bursting forth of vigor, opened in the air, rejoicing in its newfound freedom, given life in a no holds barred world? Anything and everything from vitriol to slaughter condoned and even praised. Make no mistake about it, for when official members of governments round the world speak mealymouthed words carrying no truth or emotion, no real anger or outrage within, when the world so eager to condemn Israel remains silent at the shooting of two young diplomats, what is there to say? 

Or do they feel a sense of relief that it did not occur to their people, their nation? No, it doesn't work that way. Hate when released from a bottle with stopper cracked and inefficient, the contents burst forth with no distinction, no separation. Hate is patient, bides its time, until it is time for another violent explosion of savage hate. When will that next hate arise?  When the Jews of the world, not only of Israel, will be eliminated. When there will be no more a Jewish question, no need for a final solution updated. Then the haters will find themselves hated and chased around the world. Condemned to wander, condemned to find no place of home and safety. Do not think otherwise, for hatred never dies. It simply morphs from here to there and from there to here and back again.

Yesterday was brutal for another reason, a first cousin to yesterday's horror. Yesterday we spent an entire day in a private tour, no, not a tour. That is for enjoyment. A journey of hate, of evil, of blackness of soul so dense that there is no light ever passing through. 2023. Nineteen months. Of hate. Of intent to dismantle not merely, only, the State of Israel, our eternal, ancestral home from whence we were exiled so many millennia ago. To which we have always been connected to, with every beat of our heart. With every tendon and ligament of body. With every ounce of our souls. Never abandoning it, Jewish people always in residence, always venturing via dangerous roads to see, visit with prayer and dream, to see their ancient homeland and to ask, when?  

The remnants of the holiest place, the Temple. The graves of our matriarchs and patriarchs. To walk the land of our ancestors and our descendants denied to us. But we persist, insist, that we are home in that land. Not the Kingdom of Judea or the Kingdom of Israel, but now the State of Israel, the state of all Jews, the defender of Jews worldwide, our Home.  Our haven of safety, or so we thought. 

So we thought wrong. So blind to the continuing reality, of a violence and viciousness that never dissipates. Never even seems to lessen. Always waiting there for a moment of freedom to wreak havoc and grief upon the face of this earth. The more Jews caught up in this violence, the more visions of a positive future disappear, fade into the ether. The happier these perpetrators of hate are, the more successful they become. The more attractive the lure to others who join in and wallow in the blood of more Jews, who celebrate the slaughter of men, women and children, who boast of the Jews they killed and the items they stole. Or the vicious way in which they imposed death upon their victims: burning them alive, wiring them together, shooting parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents. Manually strangling babies and torturing young men and young women, refusing to release the kidnapped victims of brutal, rampant, never ending, purposely taught hatred and incentive to violence, to slaughter. and to spread that round the world. No holds barred.

There I was, returned to the place of slaughter. The killing fields of a dance festival of the young and the not so young, celebrating life, celebrating the beauties of nature, the rising of the sun, a feeling of togetherness. Suddenly all shattered by rockets from the sky and guns and knives, armored trucks and the screams of the victims confused. For this cannot happen, not in 2023! But yes, it can and yes, it will, always be so unless the hypocritical voices of the world finally and honestly, admit their complicity. The activation and reactivation of this hatred will persist until they speak up with words of meaning and power, and act upon those words rather than the reaction of mealymouthed words which mean nothing. Which carry no meaning, no intent to do anything about this. An even more empowered JewHatred, once condoned, unfolds itself dripping venom. In their silence, their refusal to condemn without rationalizing, they endorse it. Complete and total destruction of the State of Israel. The dispersal, or better yet, the slaughter of all Jews within those borders and then all Jews without, in the borders of other nation states who inevitably turn their back on citizens. And why? Because they are Jews.

And so yesterday I cried. All day. And all night I tossed and turned. Is the fate of those 400 slaughtered on October 7th and until now, and on and on, as Israel fights for its very existence, to be the forerunner of more? Slaughter, rape, kidnapping. Is this fate, the fate awaiting all of our young as they venture into an unforeseeable future? Is it to be that in our death is the vindication for this ugliness of mankind that people of the world now rejoice and reflect? Blame the victims as   instigators? As deserving this fate?  For merely living their lives?   

Does it end? Does it ever end? Are our children of three and six and ten to cower in fear and silence, a silence internalized and passed down to them via a traumatic genetic trail? Knowing, by instinct, not to cry, not to move, but to stay deeply immersed in a silence deep on the outside even as the insides are screaming, crying, without end, without hope.

Why are people who violate brutally the integrity of a nation praised for doing so? Why are their lies rationalized and accepted? Why are their brutal actions and intents praised, excused. All reality distorted and diffused, for reality is unpleasant to the people of the world. It is that reality they reject, for it reflects who they are right back at them.          It is a reality where 20 young people inside an ambulance with a big Red Cross on it are fragged with grenades, bathed in a sea of bullets and insured of death by a fire infused with chemicals, so fierce in power that it took months to fully confirm who were the victims of those ambulances. Who were the victims torched in the dumpster in which they were hiding from the animals who desired to rip them from their lives? 

The entire world needs to be walked through the consequences of this hate, which they have condoned, even praised, just as the people of Germany around the concentration camps were walked through that world of shadows and danger. A world of bloody hatred of the worst of mankind. The world needs to understand what they have allowed. To be assigned a victim and have them live their lives up to and including the ending of it or to the not ending of but a world of continued starvation and torture. Perhaps then, maybe then, if then, this demonic hatred and behavior will end.

Lord God, we screamed to you from down here. We Your people are desperate. We need to know why. Why again? Why again and again? When will the perpetrators of this slaughter reach the end of their lives and be awarded the righteous and rightful, well-deserved consequences - over and over. Equally as over and over we prayed to You, believed in You, and continue to do so.  Where are the words of Your promise, as You gaze down upon the earth, upon Your creations, at those who were so busily engaged in the slaughter of Your children, Your people, Your servants, Your subjects, as You promised us that our blood will not be spilled in vain nor be unavenged.

Lord God in Heaven do You not think the time has come?  Do You not think the time has been reached to return these 'favors', tenfold, a hundredfold upon them? And yes, I know that I will be condemned with these thoughts for we are not to expect revenge. Not in this oh so civilized world. No, we are supposed to be above it, always worrying about the rest of the world. Always concerned about their safety. Their benefit. Their pleasant lives. But when, dear Lord, when can we say enough? When is it enough? When? When? When? When is it our turn?

Has not the blood spilled on all our yesterdays not been enough? How are bloody todays not been enough to protect and ensure our tomorrows. Or is there more to follow, ever to follow.

Lord God I am tired. Oh, so tired in body and soul and heart. I don't want to spend the day lighting memorial candles. Watering the ground with my tears as I walked among friends and family still weeping for their brutally slaughtered. We are told "Ani encome damam." That You will avenge the blood of Your children.  God, when is enough, when will the world stop condemning us when we fight for the lives of those who cannot any longer? As we fight to maintain our integrity as a nation state, an equal among equals. As deserving of life. 

We are beyond sad. We are torn this way and that. Even as our enemies rejoice. Even as once so-called allies and friends of the State of Israel, as respecter of their own Jewish citizens turn their backs upon us all. Their motivations as dirty as their souls.

I leave today's posting with these words of another. Read them. Hear them. Feel them. Know them.

"Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt posted to X, “We still are confirming details of this heinous crime, but this shooting strikes a nerve because it comes after an unrelenting, ongoing campaign of hate and harassment targeting the Jewish community simply because of who we are and what we believe. Our hearts break for the families of those who were murdered even as our will hardens in the face of those who threaten us. What they fail to grasp is that we will not be intimidated.”

We know that, even as the words of the Shemah from the dying and the fields of slaughter in Israel and round the world fly to the Heavens, accompanying the holy souls of our martyred, even as these words of faith and belief and trust fly alongside, we shout and cry and plead. The Lord our God, the Lord is One with our dying breaths.

We have not forsaken You. Do not forsake us.  

Avenge our blood crying from the earth below.

Keep the truth of

Am Yisroel chai. Lanetzach.

The People of Israel live - Forever.

Amen. Selah.