written by Rabbi Eli before the signing of the Oslo Accords
Messiah is coming!
Generation years of longing, of long-term expectation, of hopes and disappointments. And here, here, he is coming.
True, we expected him in a slightly different character. The more generation, the more noble. What's up with that ?! The short, stubborn beard, double chin, watery eyes, and devilish smile. Did they shy away from them? God forbid.
And what about what comes from our Messiah is, not the smell of heavenly heavens, but the smell of blood, sweat and tears. The blood of the slaughtered, shot and burned Tapino, at his command. The sweat of our soldiers skipping between the wasps of his soldiers and the tears of our mothers, which a poisonous cup of bereavement and sorrow of worlds, fills is frequent.
The idea is conceptual. Great days are coming upon our nation. Talk hello!
And that it is not an apocalyptic vision? We, the poor of the world, the wolves and the lepers, gain the recognition of the noble of the peoples, a wise and prudent people, whose moral spirit hovers and penetrates all mankind, with the honesty and justice, grace and liberty, whose name goes before it. And this people, known for their suffering and majesty, are ready to recognize us. Real recognition!
Redemption times. An ultimate vision.
Talk hello.
Messiah. Messiah. Messiah.
Only these voices need to be silenced. The annoying, shouting, whispering, harassing voices. The voices of the chief of staff and his deputy warn, warn, arouse false panic, as if we could not guarantee our security, the true peace of the Land of Israel, Ashkelon and Tel Aviv, Netanya and Hadera. That unarmed armed forces be organized in Gaza and Jericho, under the auspices of the Palestinian police and representatives of the nations. Hundreds of thousands of refugee battalions will flow, with their eyes fixed on Jaffa, Lod, Ramla, Acre and Jerusalem.
Hess. Heso, all short-sighted. Thus will speak the unbelievers who do not know how to rise in the rest of the spirit above any petty account. After all, Abu Amar was sent to understand. He, the friend of truth, will save us and protect us. And everything is written and signed. The Convention was amended. The time has come for an end.
And from the north the good will open. A warm and warm man, ruler of Syria. Did we see right? The unbelievable believer? For a few miles of poor rocky land, and what a thousand or two inhabitants, a surely symbolic price, he is willing to give us the most precious, most coveted gift - peace.
Demilitarized zone. American guarantees. Christ is coming.
And again the jarring voices erupting. The Golan The eyes of the state. Insults by light rebels: "The people with the Golan." Dusty memories of his captives being slaughtered with axes on the accursed Syrian soil. The train of weapons and ammunition that flows daily into southern Lebanon, to claim young victims, in fact the days of "peace."
And the skeletons of American guarantors rise from their graves in South Vietnam (the late), and familiar sounds - forget about being a free people in our country.
Hess. Hess. The sounds of defeat and small-mindedness. A new day has come. Will you eat a sword? We will not miss the hour. Yesterday's Jews - Stop. To the future all our desires. We will break the cycle of terror and bereavement. With boldness and pride we will march, at a calculated risk, towards the fulfillment of the Zionist dream. To the magnitude of the hour we will ascend - a star of redemption illuminates the sky of our land.
After all, the fathers of the founders will begin on this day. Rising heat waves and joy. "Founding Fathers" are such beautiful, sweet words. If only they could be with us on our happy day. With what cordial embrace would Ben-Gurion receive King Arafat. With what paternal grace would Tabenkin hand over the Golan Heights to the Syrian president. And putting the shed on Berl's face - no words.
The stinging mosquitoes are eliminated with a wave of the hand. Ben-Gurion's demand for the building and settlement of Hebrew Hebron, Tabenkin's confused hallucinations about our right to the whole of the Land of Israel and priest and priestess. Cow hysteria. Childhood fantasies. The eccentric madness of another generation.
Quiet at last. A smile spreads across his lips. The voices were all silent. A pleasant serenity surrounds all. The opposition is old. The domes and tories were gone. The agreements are signed. A moment of rejuvenation. A moment of solitude. Of man's specialization with himself.
Then the other voices begin, the silent voices, rising one by one. Are they new or ancient? And maybe there always have been, but not a boredom in the turmoil and volcano of the hour.
And in silence - immigrants are the characters, from the abyss of oblivion and the hiding of the heart. Sounds with a virtue, a wondrous people, that four thousand years walk on the stage of human history. Kingdoms are rising, thriving, aging and crumbling - sinking into doom and oblivion. And the people of Israel, the grandfather of the nations, like a tree planted on streams of water. Young forever.
"In light of the chronicles and experiences of the special people, the divine leadership outlines in Scripture the way for all man and nations," Goethe wrote. Does not watch from the sidelines on human drama, but stands in the middle. Says and does. Acts and influences. The heart of the nations, for "his sublime and mighty right in world affairs," Schiller wrote.
And the canvas is spread out slowly, with many shades and sounds, and the consciousness penetrates little by little, that the present cannot be torn from the past, the hour from the generations.
And suddenly, the "historic opportunity" and the fulfillment of the "Zionist dream" shrink and are ashamed - and in their place is space.
To hide from the harasser, to establish a democratic, socialist state in the Middle East. To develop an imitated Western culture - to strive for us to have all the pleasures of America. Why did we go through everything we went through?
And suddenly the dream comes true in the eye of the mind. A Jewish population sits safely along the coastal strip with access to the international Jerusalem. We finished the war episode, took off our uniforms, sprawled on the beach, ate to our heart's content, enjoyed our retirement. Dancing and praying, thriving and fattening. And walk all over the country. With all peoples.
What obituaries will be carried at the funeral? And what will they write about the tombstone?
And the ancient sounds - which are renewed, resonate among us, and the idyll is cracked and dissolved. And the claim of the depths is heard: we are only in the middle of the road. We have and we have what to say, what to sing, what to perform and influence. We are peace-seekers, but a mighty peace that embraces the world and its fullness. We began to say something great, among ourselves and in the ears of the whole world, and we have not finished it yet. We are standing in the middle of our speech, and we will not want to stop and we will not be able to stop.
But how do you proceed? And what did we actually start to say? And where is our life headed? In fact, what are we and what is our life and what is our certificate?
Only in the silence of self-communion, far from the noise and bustle, the quarrel and the commotion, in the open ears - will the sounds of firstness be heard among us. And when they play on the strings of our souls, grow stronger, fill us with goodness and goodness - only then will we know how to proceed.
Look at the flint of their quarry and the pit of their pierced pit. Look at your father Abraham and Sarah you will be born, and the eye looks, inward, at that great, nuclear figure, who is the beginning of the Israeli race and the boundless object of goodness, flowing from his supreme spirit to all sides, near and far.
The deep eyes, the caressing hands, the mental identification with each depressed and difficult day, and the finished object to help, to save, to rejoice, to bless. And this object expands and spreads to the burning desire to get all of humanity, all peoples, out of the abyss of evil and ignorance in which they are immersed. To bring them out from under a terrible suffering of spiritual and material troubles, and to bring them to a life of freedom full of majesty and heaven. In the light of the divine idea.
And these calm and intense sounds - how exalted they are, how far they are from our lives, and how close they are and familiar, beneath the piles of masks and costumes.
And the individual characters join one by one, and the divine decision emanates and rises with certain intensity: it is not false dreams that are not, not fantasies about an impossible utopia. "Let there be a blessing" "And may all the families of the earth be blessed in you."
But not by individuals, followers and saints, will the world of peoples be perfumed, for that a nation is needed, a political public in the midst of human culture, rooted in its land, that the divine good light revives it and its land. With chosen. The Chosen People. "And I will make you a great nation."
Nablus, Beit El, Hebron, Beer Sheva - Jerusalem. The letters, syllables, sounds - nice and good. Vague memories rise and float. Unfamiliar memories full of oneness and glory. And the heart beats, something opens.
nostalgia? Sentimental sentimentality?
And from the depths a kind of consciousness grows. Breaks in and rises. There, in these places the tap of our lives. The vision and reality, the aspiration and reality of Israel, have grown and are growing out of this country.
And who knew in the melody of the depths, to put a boundary between man and earth, between a people and his country? And who will be able to separate the thin, infinite capillaries that bind and connect? And who would want that? After all, in this wonderful, divine harmony, the self of life in all its drama, in all its heroism, is revealed before us, within us.
Not with the book we are, capable only of air business that has no land but a guest hotel. Nor as much as the Gentiles immersed in the darkness of earthliness to the point of not being able to bear the vision of distances.
A kingdom of priests and a holy nation whose entire cultural wealth is embraced in the land of its mines and air to the earth. The currents of vitality that flow from the land to the people and from the people to the land - these are the living points, until even in the temporary settlement in exile, the expectation and longing for the land of the patriarchs, they sustain the nation in depletion. And the land, too, expecting, desolate, deprived of its gifts until its sons again.
Not a legend of the ancients, but a terrible moral claim. And the sounds go louder and louder in the sound of the shofar in Sinai, filling all the capillaries of the soul, to the ends of the earth - sharp and clear sounds that call for life - to be good, to be a blessing and to bring out into the world the divine honesty hidden in our souls.
Come and inherit the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, to give to them and to their seed after them. And in this you will be what you are - and the light of your life will shine from the darkness of the world.
Joshua was soaked in these voices, as he mourned Jericho, as he recognized the divine goodness in his heart, which required the rooting of the people in his inheritance and the extinction of every enemy established to thwart a supreme counsel.
And Naim Zmirot Yisrael, King David, whose longing for the mighty soul of God gave the world the highest in his songs and prayers In the full breadth of their land.
Hence the source of all glory, all glory and all blessing - for Israel and man. And from generation to generation, vertebral vertebrae, melodies melodies - melodies of praise and praise, melodies of mourning and lamentation, tides. New horizons and ancient melody.
The eyes are heavy, dark. The thick fatigue surrounds all. We are tired of the wars, the tension, the horror. We did not come to Israel, but to find a safe haven, a quiet corner. And here, here it comes. Why should we go big, we are a small and weak nation. Let them just leave us to our own devices, that's not all we asked for.
And a deep slumber falls upon us. And the voices are silenced. Death silence.
And out of the silence the voices emanate. If you are small in your eyes, you are the head of the tribes of Israel ...
And the sequel? The symphony is not over. We're just in the middle of the road.
Eli Horovitz
Comments