Dear Lord,
This is a letter from the heart from one of your most insignificant worshippers. Please give me a second of your time, whatever piece of it you can spare and hear the words, feel the heartbreak, and yes, feel the pain and the worry, the love and concern, the intense fear that we are once again to undergo another test, a brutal one, replete with the horrors of both the past and the present, evermore powerful in effect and harm.
Or is it a time of payback, a reminder of how we have fallen down on the job, forgotten to acknowledge to whom we owe it all. It is especially frightening in that we are reading the section of the Torah called Haazinu, a most powerful and frightening reminder of what happens we veer too much from the required and most deserved services of gratitude to You and immerse ourselves in a mistaken vanity of success, pride in our own accomplishments, ignoring once again, blind to the truth that we owe it all to You.
Will we ever learn? I truly do not know the answer to that. I would hope yes, but history has shown me that we do not, until Your patience is exhausted. We ignore the warning signs of a growing disappointment in us, and tell ourselves it will be better, it can never be as it was; people know better, are better. But we are fooling only ourselves and not even that if one were to be honest.
At incremental speed, the crisis has been growing apace. From growing numbers of words spoken dripping with hate, to encouragement to test the bounds of acceptability of consequences of hate speech, to initial first steps of action, from 'protests' conveyed with speech to active protests, to purposeful discrimination and isolation of Jews from society, drawing the line tighter and tighter, and the world where Jews can walk freely, with no fear of violence grows smaller and smaller. More and more we are pressured into denying who we are, losing our souls, and we are confused.
How did we get here? Again. What happened? Where was the point of no return and how did we ever miss it? Where were our leaders to pull us back on to the right paths? How did we once agin fall for the "hevel havalim" of life, valuing that which truly means nothing and ignoring, even rejecting, the truth. We looked at our hands, admired the strength in them and their power to build successful lives for us and our families. We admired our faces in the mirror, but the reflection is dimmed and darker. Somewhere along the line we lost sight of who we actually are and how we got here.
We forgot, ignored, purposely denied hearing the commandment we received many times from our leaders of old - to study, learn and live the Torah and its precepts. To recognize the true Power of this universe and understand our insignificant piece of it. We forgot that between the Heavens and the Earth, the witnesses to the covenant G- d gifted to us, we were always to serve the Lord, our Lord, to remain faithful to Him and in so doing bring this knowledge to the people of the world, to know the true G-d. We have failed abysmally.
We have lost our way, fallen upon tempting paths whose end is ugly with violence and despair, with grievous harm to us, our families, the entire nation. Now we are shocked at the virulence, the long lasting and well powered campaign of hate, yet another determination to destroy the People of the Book, the Nation which was delivered from slavery into a land of milk and honey. We let the images of life before fade from our minds from our consciences, and fell into the religion of success, of material wealth, of surface prayers rushed through and hypocritical statements which actually highlighted the growing emptiness within our souls.
We had turned a blind eye to the truth of the world and suddenly, our eyes are cleared to see, our ears are cleaned to hear, our minds are reopened to full comprehension of cause and effect, of history. In forgetting or ignoring the purpose of or life on earth, we reopened the door to the horrors of the past. Now our hearts are broken, riven with fear for the future. Are we once again to undergo a reenactment of the past, of violent war waged upon us? Will its unimaginable terror of an entire world standing against us, maligning us, demonizing us, with no place to go, nowhere to turn, burned alive by a hate whose most intense and innermost goal and driving desire to is to extinguish us, erase us.
Now is where I raise my puny voice, hoping that somehow You will be able to distinguish it from the shouts and cries of a world in desperate straits. Will you hear, allow the words of those who recognize truth to penetrate to your deepest soul, to respond to the appeal for mercy? We acknowledge that we indeed went wrong, strayed afar, but have returned and more will follow. We have come to our senses and plead for more time, to halt progress of evil and for the return of a true faith, a full and open confession of our sins, of our offenses against you.
If not for ourselves, then for our children and their children and all the generations to follow, to worship you and not the false gods to be found along the paths of life. For You as well, for we are the ones who will serve you in the present and in the future, even though we have moments where we stray, for we are humans.
So You created us and so we are always in a battle with ourselves, to use the Free Will we have, to empower the instinct for Good over the instinct and temptations of Evil within us. Allow us yet another gift of time, an extension of time to earn forgiveness, to come to a comprehension again of the Eternal Truth of You, Our Lord. To display the Truth of You to the peoples of the world.
No more this conversation.
Q. "But we are citizens!
A. But you are Jews."
No more to have governmental officials hide, suppress, information of the slaughter of Jews, killed by application of an insecticide to "kill vermin". Or to hide behind flimsy excuse as to inability to rescue Jews, allow them sanctuary. To be forced to acknowledge the stain of blood on the hands, of all who perpetrated this crime against humanity, from the Cabinet of the USA, to the British, to Vichy France, the police who gleefully and cruelly rounded up Jews for death, the drivers of the trains of death, the civilians who rushed to plunder that which the Jews left behind, to take over homes and businesses, to people able to turn off their humanity an become mass murderers, willing torturers. Complicit and implicit, to their elbows and over their heads.
When the deed is done. When the words of "horror", the words of shame, come after, it is too little, too late, particularly when it is obvious these words and promises and exclamations of disbelief and disavowal are as real and long-lasting as is fairy dust. Especially when the very same words, only at faster pace, with earlier intent, a speedier turn into violence and a fast-growing worldwide acceptance of such sentiments and ultimate plans, are met with vocal and unvoiced approval and encouragement and mealy-mouthed statements of horror, disavowal, and confusion as to "how such a thing happened, how it must be avoided" and then go on, same old, same old, in voice, action and intent.
Dear Lord, hear my voice, speaking for so many, speaking for my little ones, all of them, so bright and shiny, for what future are You planning for them even as you take revenge, as threatened, as promised as has materialized, again and again?
Mercy, not revenge on Your People.
Yet one more chance.
Show the nations of the world that You are with us still, prorect us, and save us from ourselves.
Anger is easy, mercy and restraint are more difficult.
Show us the way, Lord.
Lead us.
Please.
The cries of yesterday, from the graves of the murdered, of today's wounded and killed, and the fears and concerns for and of the tomorrows -
Listen Hard.
Listen with open heart.
Hear me. Hear us.
Hear Me.
