Israel: Off the Beaten Path
5776 - 2016
"Day 1"

KA'ASHER SHAMANU, KEN RA'INU
What we once heard, we now have witnessed (Psalm 48)
And so we begin ... and as we do I share a poem that has served as the lens through which I have approached these journeys for many years ... a poem by Yehuda Amichai:
Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.
Once I sat on the steps by agate at David's Tower, I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists was standing around their guide and I became their target marker. "You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!" I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them, "You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family."
May that man be one we see ... may we taste his fruits and vegetables.
It was already dark when we arrived. However, there was much to see ... a land, a people ... life being lived.
We stopped by the windmill at Yemin Moshe for a view of the Old City, a "L'CHAYIM" and a welcome. I introduced our theme (KA'ASHER SHAMANU, KEN RA'INU: What we once heard, we now have witnessed) with the reading of a bit of Psalm 126:
When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion, we were like men who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing;
When they said among the nations, The Lord has done great things for them.
The Lord has done great things for us; we are glad.
So often we wait until "they" give us permission to live our lives as we are meant to live them - pursue our destiny as we have been charged. However, the Diaspora is exactly that - out there. We are here. And as we proceed we have no one from whom we need approval.
I am not sure if the significance of our gathering in that spot sank in ... The area was built over 150 years ago to provide a place for Jewish settlement of The Land to expand beyond the Old City. Now, as central to Jerusalem as that spot is, it is hard to believe that it once stood on what was more or less a barren piece of earth. Our being there was proof of/for what it was meant to accomplish ... and what its presence symbolizes even today.                
We said/drank L'CHAYIM and it is now off to sleep.

Congregation Anshei Israel
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CONGREGATION ANSHEI ISRAEL
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