Old/New World Discourse: 60th birthday thoughts: bits and pieces

The banners were blue and white. The flags were blue and white. The girls, in their neat braids and modest skirts, too, were blue and white. Even the sky reflected all of this tribute back to us in blue and white.

It was not so much a scene where swords were beaten into ploughshares as it was a scene in which basketball hoops had been converted into nests for paper doves. It was not so much a scene about remembering, about hasty, makeshift attempts to recall, as it was a scene about not forgetting, about rehearsed, intentional efforts to not leave behind the lessons of the past.

On the sidelines, we mommies and grandmommies, sisters and aunties, friends and teachers watched and appreciated. We were members of an audience composed of snoods, of hats, of sheitels, and of scarves. We were members of an audience poised to take in all that the youth, who performed for us, had to offer us about their dreams, about our dreams, and about our sacrosanct nation.

We members of the audience were there to watch the little girls, who were dressed in kerchiefs and in flowing clothes and who were meant to emulate the state's pioneers. We were there, as well, to watch the bigger girls, who were dressed in sashes and in modern shirts, who were meant to reference the joy with which our people prepares to greet the next parsha.

For almost two hours, we members of the audience became participant-observers in a gala in which prayers were said, songs were intoned, flags were waved, feet were stomped, and hands, arms, and entire torsos were swayed to an inner narrative that recalled our people’s history not as consisting of the forty years of Jerusalem's reunification, or of the sixty years of the modern state, but of the thousands of years since Hashem first Designated this land as ours. In response to such an observance, we sang, we smiled, and we cried.

From my bench, beneath a bit of canvas stretched overhead to ward off the worst of the desert sun, I breathed in the circumstance in which I was fortunate to find myself. I am grateful to be alive. I am grateful for my husband and for my children. I am especially grateful to be living in Eretz Yisrael.

For almost all intents and purposes, living in Israel is like living on an island, on a piece of real estate that is surrounded, and isolated. Such remarkable geography is okay when we trust in The Big Landlord, but is problematic when we put our faith in "chariots and horses."

Recently, we read the Pesach Haggadah. A lone individual trusted The Plan and jumped into the not-yet-divided sea. The rest of our ancestors became frozen or hostile given the impending arrival of the Egyptian army. Those forbearers had a sensibility about man-man devices and about works of nature. In the excitement of the moment, they had forgotten, as likely most of us would also have forgotten, that Hashem, and not even the merit of our deeds, had brought us out of slavery.

Today, the State of Israel, not to be mistaken with the Nation of Israel, or with the Land of Israel, is again in a situation in which the armies of the enemies are pursuing us and in which there seems to be no logical response. It seems evident, therefore, that our response must be supernal.

The hostile realms exist if only to spur us toward making the most significant type of connections. As a people, we have lost the habit of listening deeply and of attending to what we hear.

It's nice, but hardly sufficient, that we locate ourselves within the boarders of a democracy. It's nice, but hardly sufficient, that we are in communication with many world powers. It's nice, but hardly sufficient, that our standard of living is enviable from many perspectives.

Sure, my family attached a blue and white flag to our car. Sure, we accepted friends' invitation to a lunchtime barbeque. However, such behaviors, at best, if thoughtfully examined, can be realized to be superficial.

More important, is that the following day we Jews were able to envelope ourselves in Shabbot. More important, is that every day we Jews have the ability to seek opportunities, B'ezrat Hashem, to be of use to other people, and thus, indirectly, to Hashem, whether that utility is derived from giving a handful of coins to a stranger or from reciting an extra paragraph of Tehillim on behalf of someone we know intimately. More important, is the belief that our salvation will not come from the hands of a general, of a president, or of a prime minister, from a secretary of state of an alien land, or even from smart commerce, but from Shemyim. Salvation is HaKadosh Baruch Hu's to dispense and our job is to merit it.
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Towards the end of Yom Ha'atzmaut, as Computer Cowboy and I were driving through the city on one of our many joint efforts to accomplish certain tasks, we witnessed what has become the epitome of this holiday's celebration. It was not fireworks overhead, as those had taken place the night before and were rather disappointing, both as a use of tax money and as an outright display. It was not a parade of beribboned celebrants, either, as my family had been elsewhere during that portion of the festivities.

Rather, what my husband and I observed was a gathering of maybe thousands of people, of all types of headcoverings, and with all type of gear; from tables to chairs, from blankets to baskets, and from flying discs, jump ropes, coolers, and dogs to sun screen. We had driven past Gan Sacher and had seen the barbequers in their closely-packed, happy holiday, charcoal-based glory.