Shir HaMa'alot Fall 2023/5784
Yesterday a friend who I work with in the office here in the Arava Institute received the phone call from her daughter that her daughter's good friend from a nearby kibbutz had been gunned down in cold blood when Hamas attacked young people at on outdoor celebration in southern Israel nearby Gaza the first day of this war. Hope he had been kidnapped and taken to Gaza was no more...to think that was the hope... My friend left the office crying to go comfort her daughter. The funeral is today. To add to that we have murdered babies...where is a U.N. Resolution condemning this!?! Shylock said, " If you prick us do we not bleed?" As of this writing, The UN Security Council apparently thinks not. Hamas' targets are civilians, not as collateral damage, but as their clear and direct targets. I have Palestinian friends in Gaza who I am in touch with who are also in danger, and my heart goes out to them as well. In fact the letters I write to my Israeli and Palestinian friends is the same letter - I cut and paste and just change the names. A friend's apartment building was hit in Tel-Aviv (they were there at the time but not injured; they are now living in a hotel); a daughter of the kibbutz had her car completely destroyed up north by a missile. I now have two aps on my phone in case missiles come towards the kibbutz. Classes were cancelled on Sunday for the day at the Arava Institute and a Conference we were going to hold this week on Water-Energy Nexus in the Face of Climate Change has been postponed. We have an armed guard at the gate of the kibbutz now, and others walking around the kibbutz. Children of the kibbutz are being called up by the army. Young kids who hear "kibbutz, terrorists, killed, kidnapped" on the TV fear it is this kibbutz and are scared. So far it is quiet here and we are far from the violence and danger. Roi and Dori moved from Beersheva (that has been hit) to Kibbutz Mashabe Sade (about 20 miles south of Beersheva) about five weeks ago -- quiet still there. Dori, who is due with our first grandchild next month, decided not to go to Beersheva for a birth checkup today because of the situation. We are supposed to move to another apartment on the kibbutz next week and we were going to start to move stuff there this week - but instead, till next week, it is being used to house some people from the north - the kibbutz has taken in some 100 people, as have the other kibbutzium here in the southern Arava valley.
This morning I took some of the students from the Arava Institute on a hike. As we have seen before the Israeli, Palestinian, and other students want to be with each other, more so than their families during times like these.
Sunday I was walking getting ready to leave the Arava Institute office building at the end of the day. Since the day before the reality of the war has always been there -- sometimes at the forefront and sometimes beneath the surface, but always there. That awareness was hovering in my mind as I was getting ready to collect bottles to fill with water and place in the bomb shelters of the kibbutz should those shelters be needed. In that mindset, David Lehrer said to me, "I think you would want to hear this," as he invited me into the institute's conference room. Sitting at the long table was a group of Israeli Jews, Israeli Palestinians, and Palestinians from the West Bank; about half were alumni from the Arava Institute. They were there to present to a number of the staff of the Institute their idea for a joint Arab/Jewish community in the southern Arava valley of Israel.
A bold idea in and of itself, but in the context of the brutality and violence, and chaos taking place along the border with Gaza, and in Gaza, it was an audacious and fearless idea. As one of the participants said, "we are trying to establish sanity in the insanity." This idea has been percolating among them and their group of some 70 individuals for the past five years. Their goal is not only to establish such a community, but a multi-cultural association of individuals dedicated to building a transformative space and society. One goal: get rid of the minority/majority definitions of identity as a path to challenge both perceptions of each other, as well as self-perceptions, to defy the limitations of such labelling. Related, they want to create a place where they can each be themselves, and not wear the "masks" the different societies they come from pressure them to wear. As the poet Robert Frost framed it, and an aspect of their goal, "Home is the place, when you have to go there, They have to take you in."
My spirits were lifted by what they represented and what they hoped to accomplish. They were actualizing, at that moment, the spirit of the mission of the Arava Institute, "to advance cross-border environmental cooperation in the face of political conflict." The play-write and political activist Vaclav Havel wrote about hope, " It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons." These young activists, in the midst of a horrible war, are still able to see and work towards a new and better horizon. I left the meeting feeling lighter and more hopeful, even as I went to fill those bottles of water.
Shir HaMa'alot Fall 2023/5784
the violence, horror, and death of the war came to me in a hushed whisper
across the sanctuary of the kibbutz synagogue
as I heard her words,
"gaza... terrorists...attack...dead...war"
she then crossed the room to explain,
but the words soft and quiet needed no amplification
to translate and make audible the muted sounds
only denial could
erase the reality
we had gathered to celebrate
the holiday of torah;
a decision was made to mute the joy
as a response to the news of the morning
one is "called up" to the torah
to bless its holy words before it is read
at the same time a general "callup" was taking place
around the country; for the army
at the holiday of simchat torah
we finish reading the torah by chanting the final verses of the book of deuteronomy
and immediately
we roll the torah to the beginning
to start to read once again the book of genesis
and its opening tale of "darkness" and "light"
most books are put down once they are read
and maybe never picked up again, or only after many years
but not the torah
why?
one thought...we learn new lessons each year that we
may have missed previously
because we have had experiences that make us different
and so, we see things anew
in this way the annual reading of the torah becomes a rorschach test of who we are,
how we have changed to see things anew
again a war with gaza,
missed lessons cry out to us
we say a number of times in our prayers,
"oseh shalom bimromav hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu v'al kol yisrael ve al kol yoshvei tevel,
may the One who creates peace on high bring peace to us and to all israel and to all who dwell on earth"
with all due respect
i don't care about God helping with peace in heaven
there are enough righteous souls/tzadikim and angels there to figure it out
but here on earth we need so much more help
we read in the torah, "it is not in heaven,"
our focus is here
not there
so, God let heaven make peace on its own,
but down here
your help we need,
so much more than they do, on high.
Rabbi Michael M. Cohen
Director of Community Relations, Friends of Arava Institute for Environmental Studies
Teaching Students Today So Nations Will Work Together Tomorrow
www.friendsofarava.org
www.arava.org
Conflict Resolution Faculty
Center for the Advancement of Public Action
Bennington College
Rabbi Emeritus, Israel Congregation
Manchester Center, Vermont
www.israelcongregationvt.org
https://www.jpost.com/Blogger/Michael-M-Cohen
www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-michael-cohen/
http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/author/michael-margaretten-cohen/
