Lee Diamond – Grasping the Miracle, Because It’s Shabbat, and Golda
Grasping the Miracle
It’s in our midst
We are In the moment
It’s all around us
Yet we see It not
Eyes have we
Ears have we
Touch have we
Fragrance surrounds us
Yet our lips speak not
Of the miracle
3000 years since Egyptian slavery
And exodus
And yet another exodus and again
Exodus after Exodus
2000 years of dreaming
2000 years of slavery
Everywhere
The wandering Jew
Broken, powerless
Submissive
Foreigners everywhere
Living on memories
And prayers only
And tears chanting:
We remember
We remember
Thee Tzion
And a great miracle happened
Here and there
And everywhere
God gave us a chance
To start again
And our tongues were
Delighted
And sang
Songs of redemption
Eyes cried in joy
And heard the song
Of Hear O Israel
And we built
And were rebuilt
And our children
Saw the miracle and
Created more
And then we were
So much part of
The miracle
That we thought we deserved it
We became the miracle
But could no longer
Discern it
It was taken for granted
And became everyday
Miracles need to be seen
Need to be experienced
Need to shine in candles
On our window sills
And in our own eyes
When the miracle is everyday
It loses its luster, it’s heat, it’s passion
And without the brilliance
Miracles recede
And youth and renewal
Grow old and lose vitality
Jews, the world over—
Feel the beat
Of your hearts pumping
New purified
Blood
We are Israel
And Israel forever
IS a wonder of wonders
A miracle of miracles
And must be seen
Heard
Touched
Spoken
And relived
As we sit in our home
Walk by the way
As we lie down and we rise up
Write it on your doorpost
And on your gates
And on your arms
And forehead
For the miracle is in our midst
And we in its midst!
Because It’s Shabbat
Once upon a time
On a Shabbat morning
In Jerusalem
An observant Jewish tourist
Looked from the balcony
Of his host’s home
And observed a man
Washing his car
He asked his observant host
“Why is this man washing his car TODAY ?
Why on Shabbat?”
And the host replied with a gentle smile:
“Because it’s Shabbat”
3 Jews:
- An observant Jewish tourist
- A secular Israeli Jew.
- A religiously observant Israeli Jew
- The tourist was left totally puzzled by the answer.
- The secular Israeli who observed “his” Shabbat
- The religiously observant
Israeli who “got it.”
Are you puzzled ?
You don’t “get it”?
How can Shabbat be secular?
Isn’t Shabbat by definition
A day imitating God’s
Completion
Of creation
Yes my fellow Jews
Shabbat CAN be secular!
For many in Israel
Shabbat is special
It Is family time
It Is a day of appreciation
Of the Land
Of the beauty of creation
Of Eretz Yisrael
Of family meals and
Family rejoicing
Together
With no agenda!
It’s time to spend
Doing the special Things
That time doesn’t allow
In the daily flow of life.
Shabbat is different from the
daily flow of everyday time
Why ?
Because for all Jewish Israelis
“It’s SHABBAT !”
Get it?
Golda
Golda : the Apikoras and the Am Haretz
“We came here to create a nation of apikorsim
And instead we created a nation of ignorant Jews” “Amhaartzin” Golda
An “Apikorus” is a deeply educated Jew
Who on the basis of serious knowledge and thought rejects The Jewish God idea.
An “Am HaAretz” is the Jew who is ignorant of Jewish thought, knowledge and history and yet rejects it all as irrelevant.
For Golda, a knowledgeable Apikorus was a
Compliment. Only an Apikorus could rebuild the new Jew.
A Jewish fool, an empty shell of a Jew had no basis or content upon which to build.
A new nation needed a foundation.
A new nation needed the old.
A new nation needed content.
Before one renews one must have a past.
Herzl referred to it as the Altneuland
The Old New Land. He knew that a castle
Must be built on foundations and not on shifting sands, not on dunes, but by knowledgeable builders.
Tel Aviv needed the Tel
But we threw away the baby with the wash waters .
We became a nation of amharatzim (Jewish ignoramuses) and rejected the unknown.
Knowledge was left to Jewish extremists
Knowledge was cordoned off to the Mea Shearim and B’nai Brak Black world of the old, knowledgeable but rejecting the new Jew,
Why don’t our kids study the Siddur?
Why don’t our kids study oral law?
Why don’t our kids study Jewish values?
Why don’t our kids learn Rashi ?
Rambam?
What about modern Jewish philosophy?
We condemn Jewish knowledge
To the black ghettos of Israel
And build a State based upon our
Own Jewish ignorance
Passed on to a new generation
Of modern Jewish am “ha Aretzim”
The Haredim will stay in their self imposed
Ghetto and contribute little
The new Jew still has a chance
To be “Re” New Jewed”
And with it to
Re Create a
“RE KNEWED NEW JEWISH STATE”
pics: Haaretz
