Jerusalem

The only gift that time does not supply is more time.

King David – for reasons not known – established the city of Jerusalem as the capital.  Until then, it was just another town in Israel.  With great fanfare the King paraded and danced as the hewn stones from Sinai were carried into Jerusalem to make it official.

In the next generation, Solomon went a step further: he built the Temple.  On Mount Moriah the glistening edifice was testimony to a unified universe.  Three thousand years ago there was peace in the land.  With Jerusalem as capital of Israel, leaders traveled leagues to gain inspiration and insights from Solomon’s breadth of knowledge.

Three millennia later we again find ourselves gazing at Jerusalem as the pivotal core of the world.  There is no strategic reason for this.  Israel does not sit on any natural deposits that make it indispensable.  It simply lies amid an ocean of oil-rich Arab states.  Nothing more.

Astride the ancient outer wall of Jerusalem, the Kotel, there is a place reputed to be the place where Jacob has his vision of a ladder that reached from earth to heaven.  In his vision, the patriarch saw angels climbing and descending.  According to the Sages, this was the doorway to the Upper World.  Jacob’s inner vision enabled him to see what others could only vaguely sense.  The name for this passage is gevilon.  The gevilon, or hole in the firmament, allows the souls of this world to sense something infinitely greater, more wondrous than their physical senses would allow.  Jerusalem is that point of conduit.

The name Jerusalem comes from two words which, when joined together, mean “City of Peace.”  Can there be such a place, especially in this time of great pain?  The city seems to be misnamed.  Yet, pilgrims continue to gather at the foot of the kotel and insert notes of hope and prayer into its crevices.  Countless people have collected at the Wall, each coming away awed and inspired.  Nations wrestle with the future of this impractical city.  In fact, the world seems poised, breathing anxiously, over its fate.  Perhaps they suspect what our tradition indicates.

“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning.”  Frankly, this old Biblical proverb is a self-fulfilling aphorism.  Once Jerusalem has been forgotten, once the gevilon has been ignored, our life’s meaning has been lost. 

Jerusalem is about peace and yet it so often has become the center of anguish.  Perhaps people become too confused when they reflect on the city’s proximity to God.  Perhaps they become fearful that they will lose the ability to own “holiness.”  Whatever the reason, I eagerly await the day when the nations of the world can allow healing and wholeness to traverse the gevilon one again.  Then perhaps once more Jerusalem shall be known as the “City of Peace.”

Looking for Gold

On the flight back from Chicago (American Airlines!) some time ago the flight attendant announced, “Please collect your garbage and someone will be coming around to collect it.  Do not discard your empty soda cans.  We will recycle them.  Also, any unopened food packages please return to the stewardess.  We give them to a food shelter.” 

Wow.

Best flight I ever took.  With all the pain America has endured these past two months and the economic kick that all the airlines have received, this was unexpected and welcome.

At the airport and on the aboard airplane I had my photo checked three times; tickets checked four times, endured tedious lines to get clearance for the plane.  And everybody was happy.  Passengers happily chatted with one another.  The flight attendants were eager to assist and bright. 

People have told me that it is adversity.  The reason why people are so helpful and kind is because we are all suffering from the trauma of the World Trade Center and then the anthrax scare.  That may be true.  It would not be the first time that fear has brought out the best in people.  Our common enemy has caused countless Americans to bravely wave their patriotism from their cars, houses, in the streets.  Acts of goodness abound because we feel vulnerable.

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The ancient ones used the two tales to illustrate relationships; Amnon and Tamar and Jonathan and David.  Amnon desired Tamar.  Desperately he wanted her: Amnon dreamed of being with Tamar day and night.  He could not get her out of his mind.  After relentlessly pursuing her in his heart, he forcibly took her.  After the act, Amnon hated himself for what he did and, subsequently, hated the woman he had defiled.

David and Jonathan, on the other hand, had a love that developed from the soul.  They had no agenda, just love.  Love, the Sages tell us, can be based on getting a desired outcome, i.e. the status that comes with keeping company of influentials; or it can be based on the feelings of the heart.  If we ‘love’ someone to a desired outcome (read: Amnon) the relationship will eventually fail.  Only genuine love will be strong enough to survive tumultuous times.

Perhaps Americans are banding together because we need one another.  That is a conditional love.  Mutual fear of the terrorists has caused Americans to join hands in song.  We have marched miles with candles forging a blazing trail of light snaking through the blank nights on the streets of America.  Children have stood proudly with their parents once again, bearing placards that read “Honk for America!”  For those who grew up in the Vietnam era, this is the United States’ proudest moment.  For older generations this time is a vivid reminder of the gathering of the American psyche during the Second World War.

So what happens next?  Back to angry fingers and curses directed at cars moving too slow along route 9?  A return to the disconnected, unconcerned society?  Amnon and Tamar?  Or Jonathan and David?  In fact, what is really the underlying difference between them?  Is it just that one wants something from the other?  Are all such relationships doomed from the outset?  If that is so, why do anyone a favor unless we are absolutely altruistic?

There is an old argument in the Talmud about motivation.  It goes something like this: Mitzvot should be done for the sake of love of God.  What then if a person does the mitzvah out fear instead of love?  Does that cheapen the deed?  Is this kind of mitzvah inferior in God’s eyes?  Better, concludes the Talmud, that the mitzvah be done for the wrong reason.  If it is done often enough, perhaps it will eventually be done for the right reason.

Did you know there is a brakha (blessing) to be said when you see someone with a different appearance?  In the past such people were placed in circuses and had pages reserved for them in Guinness books.  The Jewish response is totally different.  We are supposed to say “Barukh Ata…Mishaneh haBriot,”  Blessed is the Lord God, Master of the Universe, who has made such diversity among His creations.”

In other words, the weak and strong, tall and short, well-built and handicapped are all made in the image of God.  They are all as holy as one another.  Every one is utterly precious and irreplaceable.  Perhaps if we were to say this brakha each time we would see someone different it would drive home the necessary point treating others with disrespect gives us the ultimate disfigurement.  Saying such a blessing is a learning tool to make us more refined, better human beings.

Perhaps we can say the same for the full love which embraces America.  Practiced long enough it could become part of our fiber.  The same goes for us as individuals: give love for the wrong reason long enough and it will eventually turn out to be for the right reason.