Naso

This week’s Torah portion contains the priestly blessing.  “The Lord spoke to Moses: Speak to Aaron and his sons: Thus shall you bless the people of Israel.  Say to them: The Lord bless you and protect you!  The Lord deal kindly and graciously with you!  The Lord bestow His favor upon you and grant you peace!”  (Numbers 6:22-26)

In ancient times the priests uttered this blessing on a daily basis.  In Sephardic synagogues as well the priestly blessing is recited during the morning prayers.  In Ashkenazi synagogues, however, it is only recited on Passover, Sukkot and Shavuot and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  This priestly ritual, known by its Yiddish name dukhanen, is re-enacted by those who trace their lineage to the ancient priests. 

Among those who attend Reform synagogues, this threefold priestly blessing is associated with the blessing the rabbi offers at weddings, baby namings and b’nai mitzvah.  On these occasions it is offered not to the Jewish people as a whole but to an individual or couple.

In its traditional formulation it was a blessing offered for the Jewish people.  “Thus shall you bless the people of Israel.  Say to them…”  But the grammar is then incorrect.  The “you” of the blessing is in the singular not the plural.  Why would a blessing directed to “them” be formulated in the singular?

Rabbi Simhah Leib, a Hasidic rebbe, comments: “The priestly blessing is recited in the singular, because the most important blessing that the Jewish people can have is unity.  This was attained at Mount Sinai, where our Sages tell us on the verse, ‘and Israel camped there’—and the word for ‘camped’ is in the singular—that ‘they were as one person with one heart.’”

People often mistake unity for agreement.  A group can be unified but not always agree.  Disagreements, passionate debates, are part of any marriage or community. There must, however, be a unity of purpose and mission.  Sometimes I wonder if the Jewish people have lost this unified vision.  Do we continue to share the belief that the purpose of leading a Jewish life is not only to teach Jewish observance to our children and our children’s children, to make sure that each and every child has a bar or bat mitzvah, but instead as Elie Wiesel once said, “to make the world more human?”

That remains the vision I hold before my eyes.  “The mission of the Jewish people has never been to make the world more Jewish, but to make it more human.”  Perhaps this is why unity is our most important blessing and prayer.  Can we ever fulfill such a grand vision if we remain divided? 

Unity must remain our most fervent prayer.  “…May the Lord grant you peace.”

The Forgotten Holiday

What follows is my May-June newsletter article.

One would think that a holiday that offers cheesecake as its required delicacy would be among our most popular.  On Shavuot it is customary to eat dairy foods so cheesecake and blintzes are its traditional foods. 

Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.  Contained in the Torah are the laws for slaughtering meat.  Thus we can only eat dairy until the time we receive these specific laws.  In addition the Torah is likened to milk and honey.  It is as sweet as honey and as pure as milk.  It is for these reasons that we eat dairy.

Still, despite these favorite foods, Shavuot remains the forgotten holiday.  It could not of course be more important in its message.  So why is it neglected?  Perhaps this is because its primary observances are not found in the home, like the seder of Passover, but instead in the synagogue.  At Shavuot services we read the Ten Commandments.  In addition it is customary that we stay up all night studying Torah in a Tikkun L’eil Shavuot. 

Sometimes I wonder if this holiday is better suited for college students with their late night study habits.  Purim, with its wild parties and drinking, and Shavuot with its similar last minute, all night cramming for an exam, should be most appealing to college age students.  Then again the reason for Shavuot’s neglect can also be found in the Torah.  The Torah does not in fact delineate an exact date for the holiday. 

Instead it is calculated in relation to Passover which is accorded the date of the fourteenth of Nisan.  We are commanded to count seven weeks from Passover to Shavuot.  Shavuot’s name means “weeks.”  The Omer period connects the freedom from Egypt with the revelation at Sinai.  The Jewish contention is obvious.  The freedom celebrated on Passover is meaningless if not wedded to the Torah revealed on Shavuot.

Still, in this lack of a fixed date we discover Shavuot’s true meaning.  One day alone cannot be assigned to Torah.  This must be our occupation each and every day. 

The fulfillment of being granted freedom is only discovered when married to something greater.  We may be free to do whatever we want and whatever we please (and of course eat anything we desire).  But meaning and fulfillment are only discovered, and revealed, when tied to something.  On Shavuot we receive the answer.  Torah is how we discover this meaning.

Shavuot grants meaning to Passover.  Torah lends fulfillment to freedom.

Shavuot

The holiday of Shavuot begins this evening.  It marks the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.  Each of the major holidays has a megillah assigned to them.  On Passover we read Song of Songs.  On Sukkot we read from Ecclesiastes.  On Shavuot we read from the Book of Ruth.  This fascinating story tells the tale of Ruth, a Moabite, who marries into the Israelite family of Naomi.  Sadly their husbands die and so Naomi urges her to return to her own country.

Ruth refuses and pledges herself to Naomi and her people.  “Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.  Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.  Thus and more may the Lord do to me if anything but death parts me from you.” (Ruth 1:16-17)

And with these words Ruth pledges herself not only to her mother in law but to the Jewish people.  Why is this story assigned to Shavuot?  One reason is that just as the Jewish people choose the Torah so too does Ruth.  Her personal choice is mirrored in the people’s communal decision to accept the Torah’s privileges and responsibilities. 

There is, however, another reason hidden within the tale.  Ruth is a Moabite.  The Moabites were Israel’s enemy.  She is therefore the stranger par excellence.  No one can be more distant from the Jewish people.  Yet she still chooses to wed herself to the Jewish people.  Even more significantly she is welcomed into the communal fold.

When Ruth and Naomi arrive in Bethlehem, one of the city’s leading citizens, Boaz, treats them with compassion.  Boaz lives by the Torah’s command: “When you reap the harvest in your field and overlook a sheaf in the field, do not turn back to get it; it shall go to the stranger, the orphan, and the widow—in order that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings.” (Deuteronomy 24:19)  The Book is therefore a test of society’s ability to live by the commandments of the Torah.  Ruth is a stranger.  She is an orphan.  She is a widow. 

These categories represent the powerless in ancient Israelite society.  They lack a protector.  Boaz rushes, without hesitation and doubt, to Ruth’s defense. “When Ruth got up again to glean, Boaz gave orders to his workers, ‘You are not only to let her glean among the sheaves, without interference, but you must also pull some stalks out of the heaps and leave them for her to glean, and not scold her.’” (Ruth 2:15-16)  The fact that Ruth and Boaz are later married, and live happily ever after, is secondary.

Boaz welcomes the stranger, the orphan and the widow.  His act reminds us of our own obligations.  The Book of Ruth calls us once again to the demands of a life wedded to Torah.  As we celebrate the giving of the Torah we must also ask about its central obligations.  The Book of Ruth spells out these obligations.  Always reach out to those in need. 

Each and every year when we read this book we are asked by its story if we are living up to these demands.  Are we treating with compassion the weakest and most vulnerable in our society?

Boaz and Ruth have a child and a measure of joy is restored in Naomi’s heart.  She is told, “Blessed be the Lord who has not withheld a redeemer from you today!” (Ruth 4:14)  And then we read the most unlikely of epitaphs.  Their great grandson is King David.  From David’s line, the tradition teaches us, the messiah will be called.

The redemption of the world does indeed begin with one act of kindness.

Bamidbar

There is an interesting, and perhaps even strange, verse that concludes this week’s Torah portion.  Its meaning, and understanding, is dependent on how we translate its words.  “But let them not go inside and witness the dismantling of the sanctuary, lest they die.” (Numbers 4:20)

In ancient times the Israelites traveled through the wilderness, carrying with them the portable tabernacle and its sacred objects.  Their sanctuary was portable.  It was the job of certain members of the Levites to dismantle this tent of meeting as they journeyed from place to place.  In essence they had to break down camp and pack it up.  Apparently no one else could witness this task.  This could diminish the power of the sanctuary in their eyes.  To see it as it was dismantled could lesson its holiness.

All of us have attended concerts, shows, or even weddings and b’nai mitzvah.  There is a certain majesty that is of course absent when you see the empty room before it is set up for the ceremony or performance.  The magic is not yet there.  It is even more disheartening to see all of the trappings of the pomp and circumstance dismantled, or (and I find this especially disquieting) the leftover food discarded in trash cans.  The excitement and enthusiasm of the celebration are now behind us.  They linger only in our memories.  The Torah suggests that to see the sanctuary taken apart diminishes these memories.

Perhaps this is the message that Jackson Browne sings about.  Sing it with me!  “Now the seats are all empty/ Let the roadies take the stage/ Pack it up and tear it down/ They're the first to come and last to leave…”   Such appears the plain meaning of the text.

But the literal translation of the verse offers another interpretation.  The verse is literally rendered: “Let them not come and look at the sacred objects even for a moment, lest they die.”  Here it is not the dismantling that causes problems but instead just looking at these sacred objects.  How could looking at an object lead to death?  There must be spiritual message that we can uncover.  How we look at objects and the meaning we invest in them is now our question.

In our basement are piles of forgotten things.  There can be found old toys, discarded furniture, even computer hard drives.  Over the years we have accumulated too many things.  To wander in our basement is to tour our family’s history, from cribs to toddler beds to now (and years behind schedule) a new queen size bed.  Shira’s bunk bed was only just given away to our neighbor’s young daughter.  (May she enjoy many happy sleepovers underneath its covers!)  We seem to find it difficult to discard these once precious objects.

We should take counsel from our tradition.  Judaism views objects as tools.  They do not have meaning in and of themselves.  We invest meaning in them.  An ordinary piece of jewelry becomes a wedding band, a silver goblet a kiddush cup.  How are these ordinary objects transformed and invested with holiness?  It is by our use.  It is how we use them day in and day out that gives them meaning.  It is also of course how they were used by generations prior to us.  In fact our most precious kiddush cup is rather plain.  It is treasured because it was given to us by Susie’s grandparents who in turn received it from their grandparents.  It is for this reason that many couples use a grandparent’s wedding band at their wedding ceremonies.  

Other times we invest too much meaning in objects.  Our children believe that they must have the latest iPhone or iPad, the best sneakers or lacrosse stick.  Is your computer running Windows 8 or perhaps Mountain Lion?  Are you playing basketball in the sneakers that Lebron James recommends?  We are led to believe that our gadgets and clothing must be the most up to date and contain the latest innovations.  Advertisements prod us with suggestions that we can buy greater meaning, and of course better athletic prowess, by purchasing ever-newer products.  We come to believe that meaning is immediately seized as soon as we take hold of these objects.  In truth it is always how we use them.  We grant meaning to them.

And here we discover the greater lesson contained in the Torah portion.  When we look at objects, and fail to see the people grasping them, when we invest life saving or life altering qualities in this gadget or another, then a spiritual death creeps into our souls.

We invest meaning in the objects we hold.  They can never confer meaning to our lives.

Behar-Bechukotai

The Torah is quite literal in its understanding of human events.  It proposes the following: if you do good then you will receive many blessings.  If you do bad then evil will befall you.  This week’s portion proclaims: “If you follow My Laws and faithfully observe My commandments…you shall eat your fill of bread and dwell securely in your land.…  But if you do not obey Me and do not observe all these commandments …  I in turn will do this to you: I will wreak misery upon you—consumption and fever, which cause the eyes to pine and body to languish…” (Leviticus 26)

This theology does not of course comport with reality.  Each of us can name any number of righteous people whose lives were sadly cut short.  Far too many people who fill their lives with noble pursuits are not blessed with a fair allotment of years.  We can also name others who never, for example, gave a penny to tzedakah yet who still live a long, healthy, untroubled life.  The equity and justice that the Torah promises is never apparently realized or matched by our everyday experiences.

Our tradition offers many explanations for this discrepancy between the Torah’s promises and our observations.  I favor the suggestion that what we read in the Torah is not so much theology but instead a prayer.  Who among us would not pray that everything be perfectly measured and fairly balanced?  I pray that the world and our lives could be measured by such perfect justice.  Such is not our reality.  But it remains my prayer.

Yet in one regard the Torah’s literalism appears to match recent, contemporary experiences.  The Torah also declares: “You shall faithfully observe My laws and all My regulations, lest the land to which I bring you to settle in vomit you out.” (Leviticus 20:22)  The Torah is of course speaking in particular about the land of Israel.  That land remains the place to which we lavish the most concern.  The Torah contends that continuing to reside in that land is intimately tied to our behavior. 

Still this phrase has been whirling in my thoughts these past months.  Our experiences of this past year suggest even more that nature has a temper.  My hometown is, for example, once again besieged by record breaking floods.  Our own Long Island is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Sandy.  High school students in the Rockaways only just returned to their school on Monday.  Why is there still debate?  Scientists agree that many of these changes are caused by global warming. 

We are indeed responsible for these changes.  We have failed to live up to the Torah’s mandate “to till the earth and tend it.” (Genesis 2:15)  We are stewards of God’s nature.  While Judaism clearly teaches that we can use nature for our own benefit we also have a responsibility to care for it and ensure that our children and grandchildren can derive the same benefit.  There are not an infinite number of natural resources to forever be exploited.

We have failed to live up to this challenge.  The hurricanes signal our failure as much as they indicate nature’s fury.  Yet there is time to mend our mistakes and fashion a different future for our descendants.  There are opportunities to renew our commitment to this biblical command to be stewards of the earth.

Only one time does the Torah state that God will remember the land.  It occurs in this week’s portion: “Then will I remember My covenant with Jacob; I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham; and I will remember the land.” (Leviticus 26:42)  What prompts this remembrance by God?  It is our repentance.  It is our recognition of our failures.  God is moved by our repentance.  We need only change.

I wonder.  Is it possible that the Torah is correct and that our present reality is the realization of its prophecy?  Is it also possible that God could be moved by our repentance and that we can once again live in harmony with the land?

For Our Teachers and their Students

Tom Friedman writes:

And that’s why the faster, more accessible and ultramodern the Internet becomes, the more all the old-fashioned stuff matters: good judgment, respect for others who are different and basic values of right and wrong. Those you can’t download. They have to be uploaded, the old-fashioned way, by parents around the dinner table, by caring but demanding teachers at school and by responsible spiritual leaders in a church, synagogue, temple or mosque. 

And our prayerbook reminds us:

When Torah entered the world, freedom entered it. The whole Torah exists only to establish peace. Its highest teaching is love and kindness. What is hateful to you, do not do to any person. That is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it. Those who study Torah are the true guardians of civilization. Honoring one another, doing acts of kindness, and making peace: these are our highest duties. But the study of Torah is equal to them all, because it leads to them all. Let us learn in order to teach. Let us learn in order to do!

All the emails, blog posts, Facebook friends, Tweets, Instagram photos in the world cannot replace the good old-fashioned stuff of Torah and the hard work of its most important teachers, parents and grandparents.

"For our teachers and their students, and the students of the students, we ask for peace and lovingkindness, and let us say, Amen."

Leon Wieseltier on the Boston Massacre

The Boston Massacre and Our Emotional Efficiency | The New Republic

Leon Wieseltier observes that we might be better served by some righteous indignation and anger rather than by the suggestion of far too many that we move on, rebuild and even put the Boston Marathon attack behind us.  He writes:

Vigilance, increased and intense, is not a victory for the terrorists. Mourning, and the time it takes, is not a victory for the terrorists. Reflection on all the meanings and the implications—on the fragility of our lives—on terrorism and theodicy—is not a victory for the terrorists. A less than wholly sunny and pragmatic view of the world is not a victory for the terrorists. What happened on Boylston Street was not a common event, but it was not a singular event. There is a scar. Taking terrorism seriously is not a victory for terrorism.

The cliches about rebuilding and standing taller are not always the best responses.  They are unhelpful when mourning the loss of a loved one.  Time does not in fact heal.  What time instead offers is how to keep on living despite the loss.  We learn how to live only with those imperfect memories.  We struggle to continue telling our father's or mother's story or as in this case, a child's.  But is that ever possible when the loss is outside the natural order and one discovers oneself mourning a child, ripped from one's arms by the anger of a terrorist?  Is anger really then a misplaced emotion?

Years later there still must be tears.  There is nothing wrong with that.  In fact crying is sometimes the best, and only, response, we have.  Jeremiah laments:

A cry is heard in Ramah—

Wailing, bitter weeping—

Rachel weeping for her children.

She refuses to be comforted

For her children, who are gone. (Jeremiah 31:15)

When approaching this massacre continued tears may in fact lead to continued anger and perhaps even prevent us from moving on.  Is that wrong, Wieseltier reminds us.  We are angry that these two human hearts can be so twisted by hate that they would construct a kitchen made bomb whose only intention was to murder, and especially maim, as many people as possible.  Those tears should continue to burn in our hearts.  Anger can serve a noble purpose.

Being angry at the right things, and people, can serve to make us better--and perhaps even our world better--or at least safer.  The attempt to quickly repair the destruction and erase the anger can turn us away from the work that must be done.  Moving on may be incorrect.  Moving forward--and now in a new and different direction--is the only task.

Emor

I just started reading Jack Kornfield’s After theEcstasy, the Laundry.  Here is the observation that informs his book: “We all know that after the honeymoon comes the marriage, after the election comes the hard task of governance.  In spiritual life it is the same: after the ecstasy comes the laundry.  Most spiritual accounts end with illumination or enlightenment.  But what if we ask what happens after that?”

It occurs to me that the Book of Leviticus is all about the laundry.  After the ecstasy detailed in Exodus, the liberation from Egypt and the revelation at Sinai, we confront the details of how to lead a Jewish life.  “These are the set times of the Lord, the sacred occasions, which you shall celebrate each at its appointed time…” (Leviticus 23:4)  What follows is a list of our major holidays.  It is an exhausting list of chores.

People often think that religion is about ecstasy.  It is about returning to Sinai.  It is instead about the laundry.  It is about order.  The Jewish prayerbook is called of course a siddur.  This name comes from the same Hebrew root as seder and means order.  Our prayers are not about ecstatic moments but instead about following a prescribed order. 

People pine after what today we might call a spiritual awakening.  They run after euphoria.  Everything must be inspiring.  All must produce an ecstatic high.  Perhaps this is one explanation as to why people commit adultery or experiment with drugs.  They want to rediscover that ecstatic moment they imagine once was.  They go to extraordinary, and sometimes even destructive, ends to recapture a mythic past.

Life is instead about the laundry, not the ecstasy.  Religion in general and Judaism in particular orders ecstasy.  It seeks to frame the ecstatic.  Why?  We cannot exist for too long in these ecstatic moments.  One need only look to the prophets for evidence of these inherent dangers.  We read their words for inspiration, chanting the Haftarah every Shabbat morning, but look away from their lives as models for our own.  They were intimate with God but distant from people, often painfully standing apart from their very own families.   The everyday stuff of life will not get done if we spend our days as if we were also ecstatic prophets.  The meals will never get cooked.

Too much ecstasy is a dangerous thing.  After the people experience God at Mount Sinai they cry to Moses, “All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance.  ‘You speak to us,’ they said to Moses, ‘and we will obey; but let not God speak to us, lest we die.’” (Exodus 20:15-16)  Too often people think that Sinai is our religious ideal.  The ecstatic is the religious goal.  Instead it is the Shabbat table.

There we find order.  We discover joy.

Leviticus gives us the holidays.  It offers us brief days of ordered illumination, rejoicing and celebration, punctuating the year.  Leviticus introduces us to the laws of kashrut.  These are at their best moments of religious awareness discovered at each and every meal.  We discover these not on some lofty mountaintop but instead in our homes, at our tables, in our kitchens.

Religiosity is found doing the laundry.  Piety can be discovered in everyday chores.

Recently I was kibitzing with our students as they enjoyed their pizza before the start of class.  I am not sure how the discussion started, but I found myself talking to them about taking responsibility for their own actions and doing things for themselves.  That is of course the underlying meaning of the bar/bat mitzvah celebration.  So I told them that they should learn to do their own laundry.  They stared at me as if I was from outer space, then laughed and looked knowingly to each other affirming that it was I who really did not understand the ways of the world.

Still I stubbornly believe.  I continue to teach that life is not only about what is fun and enjoyable.  It is not all Sinai.  It may be as simple as if you cannot fold your own clothes how can you order a life of meaning?  The exhausting details of the Book of Leviticus are actually where life is lived.  Exodus inspires.  It can provide meaning.  But it is the chores of Leviticus where we live.

That one moment of ecstasy must often last a lifetime.  The remainder is doing the laundry. 

Achrei Mot-Kedoshim

The Israeli author David Grossman writes in his recent collection of essays, Writing in the Dark, of his worries that Israel is letting go of its dream for peace, that decades of war have eroded its most cherished vision.  He writes:

If we ever achieve a state in which we have no enemies, perhaps we will be able to break free from the all-too-familiar Israeli tendency to approach reality with the mind-set of a sworn survivor, who is practically programmed—condemned—to define the situations he encounters primarily in terms of threat, danger, and entrapment, or daring rescue from all these….  The survivor thereby all but dooms himself to exist forever within this partial, distorted, suspicious, and frightened picture of reality, and is therefore tragically fated to make his anxieties and nightmares come true time and time again.

The most insidious danger of terrorism is that it erodes our dreams.  In its randomness it can never kill millions of people, but it can destroy a million souls.  It can prevent us from doing the ordinary things of life, a morning jog, catching a flight to see relatives, frequenting the movie theatre or a favorite outdoor café.

One of the most remarkable things about our tradition is that it was magnified under duress.  While the Romans oppressed us we authored the Mishnah, while the Crusaders persecuted us we penned some of our most remarkable prayers and while the Arab armies attacked us we built a vibrant Jewish democracy.  We fought to maintain our most cherished beliefs and values despite the fact that we were attacked or tortured, persecuted or terrorized.

In this week’s Torah portion we are given a number of ethical mandates.  Only three times does the Torah command us to love.  In the Shema, appearing in Deuteronomy, we are commanded to love God.  The other two mitzvot appear this week.  Here in the Book of Leviticus we are commanded to love the neighbor and love the stranger.  “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him.  The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt…”  (Leviticus 19:33-34)

Here, in the Torah, we discover a people who recently escaped from 400 years of slavery.  It would have been understandable had they codified a law that said, “Never allow yourselves to become victimized or enslaved.”  Instead the Torah says that because we had such intimate knowledge of suffering we must be on guard never to allow others to be cast aside as other. 

In our new reality, where tests of endurance become instead testimonies to survival, many will be labeled stranger.  Foreigners will be pointed.  Others will be blamed.  In fact, only a small few are guilty.  In this country stranger and citizen are one.  And that belief is our best response to terror.  No one is ever cast outside.  That is the vision we must protect.

Since Monday’s bombing I have received a number of emails about security briefings.  I am certain that soon we will see new security protocols for marathons.  We might even see restrictions placed on the purchase of pressure cookers, as we have to come know the all too familiar removing of our shoes following the shoe bomber.  Some of these changes will be welcome.  Others not.  Some might provide a brief measure of comfort.  Others will soon become an annoyance.  No amount of additional security measures will prevent all future terrorist attacks.

There is only one response.  That is to focus on our values and beliefs.  Our answer is to forever hold on to our visions and dreams.

At morning services we sing a prayer authored millennia ago, and penned amidst the pains of sufferings and destructions.

Grant peace, goodness, and blessing to the world; grace, kindness, and mercy to us and to all Your people Israel.  Bless us all, O our Creator, with the Divine light of Your presence.  For by that Divine light You have revealed to us Your life-giving Torah, and taught us lovingkindness, righteousness, mercy and peace.  May it please You to bless Your people Israel, in every season and at every hour, with Your peace.  Praised are You, O Lord, Bestower of peace upon Your people Israel.

Such is the Sim Shalom prayer that we sing each and every morning, in each and every generation.  We began praying this prayer when peace was but a distant hope.  We sang its words not only to reach upward begging God for peace but also to reach inward so that our souls would never be hardened by the violence and terror our bodies experienced.

I believe it is possible to be vigilant about life while holding on to the dreams that nurture our souls.  In truth, we must come to recognize that we can never fully protect ourselves.   We can however guard our souls.  We can preserve our values.  I will not have it any other way.

Boston Marathon

Our hearts our joined in sorrow and outrage with our neighbors and friends of Boston.  Again an American city has been struck by terror.  We pray that those injured may find healing and the families of those murdered will find a measure of consolation.

As in Israel, the joy and celebration of today’s Yom Haatzmaut, Israel Independence Day, is tempered by yesterday’s Yom HaZikaron, Memorial Day.  My rejoicing is diminished.  And so I turn to Israel’s poetry.  I find myself once again pulled toward Yehuda Amichai’s poems. 

What follows is the poem Amichai read at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony when Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasir Arafat were awarded the 1994 prize and although that peace agreement is fractured I continue to cling to its dream. The poem seemed fitting for the hope of that occasion.  It gains poignancy with each passing year.  The urgent dream of peace is renewed with even greater force after yesterday. 

Not the peace of a cease-fire
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,

that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds—

who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)

Let it come
like wildflowers,  

suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.

Peace remains my prayer—for Israel, for America, for the world.  I vow.  I will never allow terrorism to diminish my choices.  I will not allow it to destroy my dreams.  May our children, and our children’s children be granted a world free from terror.  And may peace come soon—because we must have it.