Those are the key questions and the even more key answers that we must find for ourselves - if we can. The most important result that emerges from such an introspective examination into our souls should be, would be, if we are honest in our conclusions - the truths that should provide structural and emotional support of ourselves. It should be answers, or at least directional answers on a map of our true being. True thoughts without hedging even if their honesty proves to be uncomfortable. In fact, if that is the case, we must be able to reach back inside and more closely define perhaps what we had thought was true but was no longer true or remains even more affixed to us than we had thought - or had admitted.
Another important fact that that comes into play in this matter is how much of that self-evaluation is caused by the inclusion, or exclusion, of the opinions of others. Do you accept their definition of you or their boundary lines into which you must remain and crossing those boundary lines will not be acceptable to masses of other people.
In fact this self-introspective evaluation is something that not only one nor two or thousands of our people should be doing for all of the people of the Jewish nation and the world, must look deep within and deside who indeed we are. In an aside, most of the population of the world is seriously lacking in the truth of who they are. Too much of their thinking and behavior are driven by the whims and thoughts of others.
Even as they know they must, for their own sake, and for the sake of the world in general, think for themselves, who they are and what they wish to be, it is simply too easy to give others one's own self. To make the hard choices. Easier if we cede that privilege and responsibility. Let others pick up the slack and opine those opinions.
What we call people of the world must to do to is to look and delve deep within ourselves and find that last piece of Independence. That little piece that cringes with every false step one takes. With every principle abandoned. Every ideal, every bit of idealistic soul with which one is born, and we ignore or are immune to the knowing, feeling, of a slow fadeout and absorption into the cacophony of life.
We become deaf to the little voice within which tries to remind us of the proper way of life. It is uncomfortable. It's challenging and it brings upon us limitations which we would rather not have. So who exactly are you? Who exactly am I? Who exactly are our people? That question is most difficult to answer and even more difficult to pry honestly out of rather reluctant people, of those who would rather forgo that effort. Too uncomfortable, perhaps too unsafe, for the lifestyle which one has chosen to live.
Some take a stand, make a decision and stay strong in the face of consequences of those actions. Those Jews who stand at the dais castigating their family within the Jewish people, debasing and disavowing the State of Israel, choosing to separate themselves from the body politic of Jews and Judaism, from the various themes of life which run through it - well, the time will come for all of us to truly evaluate our lives and face the judgment that awaits all of us.
At times we do not have to wait too long for that judgment. Within our lifetime, here on this surface of the Earth, our turning our backs on others that are of our own will face demands of recompense in the now. The souls that are abandoned alongside, in muddy, dirty, smelly trenches will make themselves seem and felt and heard at most in opportune times. These people will come upon the hard truths of life.
One who turns on one's own is never once again to be part of the whole. Memory forbids that to happen. These memories are of lifelong trauma, not only about our lives, but the lives of generations of the Jewish people. It is a trauma of genealogy. The fact that we are indeed one of the Jewish people and how much we deny it, will return almost immediately upon hearing of tragedies reminiscent of those rained upon the Jewish people over the millennia.
This morning as the world awoke, the chills took off. They reverberated in our minds and hearts, down our spines. What we heard was a replay from the hijackings of planes and the loss of life and the kidnapping of people some decades ago, and only a mere blink of an eye ago. It is a chill of the spine that breaks our hearts at the same time.
We raise our voices to the Heavens Above and say, ad matai, until when, when, when will You hear the voices, the cries, see the blood spilled, hear the voices of Your people? When will You declare it Enough, but not enough in the sense that we are indeed worthy of most severe consequence, but rather the enough of seeing others beat down on Your People?
Today's event did not end as the tragedy we had feared; how much more of this can we take? How much more of events and the sinful inhumane behavior of all those who have declared us as unworthy of naught but that? Our heads and our stomachs a roil and and a broil with what could be, what has been and might be down the block or around the corner.
Worse and growing even more so, is the behavior of the world deeming us as 'others', of not worthy of our peoplehood, our nationhood, our beliefs, our very existence. But we will stand no more for this. There is no difference between the swords of the Crusades and the knifes of the terrorists or the missiles of our enemies.
We know our history. We know our responsibilities. We know that we must pay attention to those within who are as bad, as dangerous, perhaps even more so, as they trash and deny their own. Themselves.
Their questions and answers are false.
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.
Amcha! The password of recognition of those in hiding, fighting, the beasts of the Nazis.
Amcha = Your nation.
They have denied, forgotten or deliberately so, but the knowledge and the feeling are alive in the hearts of most of us.
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