Witnessing Wonders

I love seeing grown men cry. Something extraordinarily monumental is happening when, in our society, male strangers break down and weep with joy. I am honored, elated and grateful to be alive today and witness the humanness of it all.

At 7AM, my partner and I went to our local movie theater that was showing the Inauguration speech on 2 screens and providing free breakfast. The line encircled the block and was chock full of white folks. They'd been there since 5AM. We hightailed it to a friend's home who was hosting a viewing of the ceremony.

As Barack Hussein Obama, the first African America to become this country's President, began to speak, I started to cry along with the other guests. I cried at the possibilities that pulled at my heart and debated with the cynicism of my mind. Each tear carried a prayer for unity between gays and Christians; each drop cleansing bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians, Iraqis and Americans, and every place and massacre kept stealthily hidden from the American public.

The enormity of the challenges that have been heaped on our collective plate is staggering. The difference is that we have a leader that admits and speaks of our mistakes, that calls all of us to work together and take responsibility for our past and future actions and who reminds us that not only are we in the midst of an abysmal economic, ecologic and spiritual maelstrom, we are a pertinent part of the solution.

When Bumpy Things Happen Between Good People

Sometimes when you least expect it, life just suckers you in the jaw. At such a time, you get to see if you've learned anything at all, during the abundant times. If you've filled up your bucket with enough confidence, enough trust, enough remembrance of goodness and connection, a poking in the bucket, shouldn't drain it of all the previous things.

I have a little issue you see. I am a spawn of the Incredible hulk and the Green-Eyed monster. Whenever I feel like my partner, as any previous ones can attest, wants to spend a significant amount of time with a special, single, unattached and looking, queer friend, my ears go back, like a threatened feline. I am ready to pounce. It can get pretty darn ugly. I am not proud of this fact. I did come by it honestly.

I could say that it was my ex's fault, the one who took off with our couples' therapist. I could say it was a different ex who had an affair with a man while we were together. I could even say it was my mother's fault for choosing to meet her own needs instead of her children's. But that really won't help anything. It won't transform it. It would be the easy way out. It would be a way to continue to feel not chosen. To feel abandoned. To feel badly. I've done that for years. At this point, I feel it's very passe.

The more honest thing is to take a look at what my part in that is or was. The more enlightened stance would be to realize that people don't always act in the most fair or trustworthy way, but that they really are just trying to navigate their own journey as best as they can. The most revolutionary act, on my part, would be to choose to see every instance as a new one, rather than build an ammunition of doubt, distrust and fear.

It would be quite a different scenario at the corral, if I showed up not with a loaded gun in my left full of "I told you so", and another one in my right brimming with "You are just like everybody else" bullets.

No, It would be a miracle if I showed up with a bucket of tears for the longings of what did or didn't happen in one hand, and the other, an outstretched open hand to hold yours or let it go.

It isn't an easy choice. I'd have to give up the familiar. I'd have to give up the need to blame anyone including myself. Then what would I feel? Then whom would I be?

Gifts of Gratitude

It's Shabbat. I hear the birds chirping through the door. I think they have Shabbat down. It's a daily meditation for them. They gather in communities, in nature. They don't get caught up in facebook, looking for a job, wondering what their purpose is on this planet. I am definitely not a bird. But I do have this amazing tool that brings me to a daily Shabbat, even if for a few minutes. It's my gratitude list. It is the antidote to resentment. It is one of the elixirs to a good life. It is a practiced reminder, because I am often forgetful of the truth, of the goodness that surrounds me, everyday.

This week was a very enriching, busy, full week. I went on a job interview and was offered another when the first interview was over. The miracle that I experienced was actually feeling that I had much to offer to whichever organization was interested in bringing me aboard. A year and a half a go I couldn't muster enough courage to write a cover letter, thought I had nothing to offer that was marketable and surpassed many jobs feeling highly under-qualified.

Truly, there has been an internal shift. This week I felt that I had insight, kindness, compassion hope and a myriad of skills that I could offer. I felt elated getting the chance to learn about the different kinds of opportunities that lay ahead and reminded myself that the universe has a plan already. I am just waiting for it to unfold.

I have also been blessed by a kinder, gentler Boot Camp program, or so I thought, until the day following the work out... It has been absolutely transformative and it is just the second week. It feels like I am actually inhabiting my body. I must, my neurons have been firing "You are in Pain" messages.

It's been fabulous to wake up before sunrise and get a chance to greet the day alongside a Great Blue Heron, a waddling skunk and a small community of zestful women.

Last night we started a Shabbat get together for a few friends. Thirty two people showed up and sang songs that ranged from Broadway to 1960's Israeli TV commercials. Some played Apples to Apples, the Jewish version, and some bounced on the trampoline until a child twisted her back the wrong way when someone bounced on her. The ambulance arrived shortly. It was definitely a most memorable coming together.

One of our non-Jewish friends asked what Shabbat is about. What a blessing it was to hear him and respond. We tend to forget, in a busy, multi-tasked life how to even consider the question. That's why we called our community together: To play and laugh, be silly and get close. To bounce and sing, feel connected and included. It is a contradiction to Jews who may feel even more isolated than usual these days.

My intention is to bring people together often. So we remember our blessings of the week as we take a break for 24 hours from work, from changing the world. We must refuel for another week of Tikkun Olam, the repairing of the world. So if you're in the neighborhood on the third Friday of the month, come by. The only requirement is the desire to connect, play and rest. That's Jewish enough. Dayenu.

Internal Catalyst Cartwheels

On my way to boot camp this morning,I watched the waning creamsicle moon sink at sunrise. The clouds dressed in magenta fire halted my breath. I felt lucky to be alive and kicking as I skipped across the pavement. It's a Monday. I had a hard time falling asleep last night. Who, after sleeping only 5 hours, skips at 7 am on a Monday?
Maybe it's the person who decided in the middle of the night to look at her own interpersonal wars. Maybe it's the inner child who saw two peregrine falcons catching thermal winds this morning, just because. Maybe it's the woman who decided to notice and hug closely any life-affirming, joyous images, happenings and interactions as a contradiction to the desecration to human life and dignity that spirals like a tornado around the globe.
I realized in the wee hours between night and dawn that I have contributed to feeling excluded, unwanted, foreign, unaccepted. Adamantly sustaining the need to feel badly, I have searched, found, plucked and gathered thorny bouquets of uninformed stereotypes, scathing words and actions and held them to my breast, all the while crying for all to stop the bloody trails landscaping across my body. I understand that Jews, immigrants and queers like me have had our share of fear, disappointment, ousting and rejection, to say the least. However, I am so familiar with those feelings that they often loom larger than kindness, generosity and graciousness. I hold those daggers so tightly and dearly that I ignore and discount the outstretched hands and heart offerings from imperfect folks.
On this past visit to my partner's Midwestern home, I was feeling isolated, a Jew in a sea of Gentiles. Maybe I was the only dark, curly-haired being for miles. And yes, the clerks thought I said Holiday Bread, when I asked for Challah bread. And yes, my mother-in-love does have four photos of my partner and her ex-husband on the walls and only one of our current family. But, every night my non-Jewish family lit up like a Chanukkiah when the candles cast warmth on their faces. Presents were given indiscriminately of faith, belief or legal relation. And cards offering love, inclusion and heart-felt acceptance were signed by Baptist born-again Christians wholeheartedly to me and to the child I brought into this family.
I do have a choice. I can focus on the things that keep us separate in order to continue the "us" vs. "them" that I condemn in the Middle East or I can take responsibility and shift the finger-pointing paradigm, extend the rest of my fingers out and offer my hand to hold. For today, for the long-term survival of my people, I choose to see acceptance.

15 Seconds at Sunset

I went for Shabbat dinner last night at an Israeli friend's house. She had recently returned from a month-long visit in Israel. She told of watching a magnificent sunset one evening with her two kids. They were within 10 miles of the zone. The zone that gets 100 missiles a day from Gaza. That's more than 4 every hour according to my math. As they were engrossed in the divinely inspired canvass, two fighter jets flew overhead. She and her family watched the bombs regurgitate from the steel mouths of the planes. Then the ground rumbled, like an earthquake. Consequently, they saw 2 missiles leaving Gaza towards Israel.

A friend of hers heard the sirens screaming over the loud speakers "Red Alert, Red Alert, Red Alert." Her friend knew she then had 15 seconds to get to the safe room. She grabbed her 2 year old child and ran to the "Safe room", their bathroom, with it's concrete walls and no windows. As she closed the doors, a missile hit, sucking out all the windows in the rest of the house.

This mother told me friend, "I couldn't take it anymore, so we hightailed it to a northern Kibbutz". Unfortunately, that kibbutz has been constantly bombed with the newer, further reaching missiles.
I asked my friend how she was able to not get confused in the mayhem? How could she continue to resist the actions that Israel is taking while being surrounded by so much devastation?
She told me that the continued bombing and killing on both sides have gotten the peace process no where. It has strenghtened the Hamas radicals. For the last three years, Israel's mission was to suffocate Gaza and weaken Hamas by placing an embargo on food and medicine and cutting off water and electricity. In their desperation, People have been more than willing to give their wasting away bodies to the cause that will grant them martyrdom.
What might be the solution to this massive spiritual, physical and emotional crisis? She said she didn't know. Maybe Israel should start flooding the area with financial assistance. It seems that when people are in better economic standing, when their families have sustenance and do not fear for their lives, they tend to be less willing to join radical factions.
What will it be then? A newer, better, far-reaching bomb or truckloads of food and medicine? Which would your child rather eat?

Backstab, Backlash and Back to Basics

I was ousted yesterday out of the Tribe of Israel. I apparently am no longer a Jew, not a good Jew anyway, but this is not the first time. I've been disowned before for other reasons. It was no fun then either. It was downright demoralizing.
My parents' vehement adherence to supporting Israel's actions at any cost has fractured the earth between us. Now there is a chasm widening exponentially as moral obligations are cast out the window, like six-pack holders in a sea of otters. I am at a loss as how to stop the Earth from splitting, as I look to a barren landscape for any material with which to build a bridge.
The sad thing is that I understand this mentality. It is the mentality of War. It is the mentality of a people who have suffered tremendously out of ignorance, greed, hate and exclusion and who have not yet, figured out how to heal from all those traumas in the face of more trauma. It is a life lived in a visceral contingency in which there is always an enemy lurking, waiting for the "weak" link in the fence in order to attack.
The odd thing is that I thought I came in peace. I truly believed that I was advocating for all people, and that this was the right thing to do. I prayed for everyone to stop fighting, insisted that all children be safe, begged that all blood to remain inside intact bodies and believed that all of us ought to have those basic human rights. For that, my own kin, unable to break from a divisive dual thinking, labeled me Anti-Semitic, Anti-Jewish and An Arab Lover. Haven't we been here before?
I look at history and think of other struggles between members of the same family and remember the discord and dissonance, the ripping of relationships, the battlegrounds soaked with loss from Florida to Maine. How did they ever come together? Did they? The Yanks vs. The confederates.
I still hear the scarred language pepper the Northerners' stereotypes of the Southern folk. I am certain the latter has a few misconceptions about the Yanks. Many of us still have some pretty confused ideas about the peoples that were here before we even landed on this continent. Are we bound in patterned chains that will continue to keep us from freeing ourselves from repeated injuries?
So what now? How do I reach to the baffled, appalled, angry family members who feel I am no longer one of their own? How does one stand for what one believes in when one's community is at stake? How far does one go in her convictions when the choice is not very choiceful? I take comfort that I am not the first or last in this dilemma.
Once again, I ask you all to take the hands of all whom you love, and all whom you feel that you don't (that's just confusion), and let us start with one thing we have in common- Let's begin with a single breath.

Gaza Cousin, You are my Kin!

This morning, once again, my heart is exploding, breaking, shards flying throughout my body and brain. Shrapnel has lodged itself in my head, another in my neck, a third in my back. Yet, many in this world cannot see the internal fragmentation of the spiritual collapse. I keep trying to dodge the bullets, the torrents of fear, the hate that is spewed on the email pages from people I love. My parents and friends, colleagues and the various organizations to which I belong, are sending a myriad of opines about Gaza. I am furious. I am appalled. I understand and I am confused. I ache spiritually, emotionally, physically and I am not, technically, in a war zone at all.

I make my Peet’s French Roast coffee, while my “cousin”, (as we Israelis refer to our brethren Arabs), on the other side of this imploding planet, eats the visions of carnage for her dinner.

I am a Jew, an Israeli who fights daily to remember that we are all human, in need of connection. I must choose minute by minute mantras that support love, compassion and trust - All those feelings and actions I have been taught to walk away from in order for my people to attempt to survive in a world that does often blame us for anything and everything.

That does not mean we, an oppressed people, are not culpable of wrongdoing at times.

Blame is passé. It’s futile and stunting. All of us are doing our best with the tools that we have. Some of us have very little tools. But, to me, it is unacceptable to point the finger at another, waiting for them to change, so that my own life can change.

What is my role as my cousin loses her home, her children or her desperate, trapped, Jew-hating brother? Do I wait for his hate to subside? Do I support the killing of his body spurring his spirit in a hundred others like him? Do I let understandable, yet inhumane, patterns of exclusion, fear and loathing be the swords of perceived justice in my name?

Absolutely not.

How can I bury my Palestinian cousin with a bloody hand and plant with the other an olive tree on her grave?

This is not a choice. We are all on the same side. The human side.

To call my cousins by any other name is to sign an endless war pact. It is short sighted. It is anti-human. It is an abomination.

I have been called naive. I have been told that I have been “Americanized”, an immigrant who has lived in the safety and ignorance of the American media sheltered from what Israelis face daily. It’s true. I left Israel when I was ten, but at the age of seven, I was in the bomb shelter, wondering if my parents would return from the front. Particular sirens heard today still make me hold my breath and feel as if an attack is imminent. The talons of war are deeply embedded and tear across the years, oceans and cultures.

I am confused often by the clashes of “information” from the left or the right. I experience anti-Semitism from the most loving of people and find allies in the most unlikely of communities. I may not be the most knowledgeable Israeli. I may be the most gullible of Jews. But for me, to live in the black or white, the “choose a side”, the “us “vs. “them”, the trust-no-one-because-they-will-knife-you-when-you-turn-around, is not only a way in which I choose not to live, it is detrimental to my hopes for all people. It is contradictory to my living fully as a human, not separated from any other. It is a way that I refuse to teach my children who would be bound to repeat this cycle of violence, apathy, terror and hopelessness.

No, I must reach, no matter what, to my grieving cousin. I must look in the mirror and ask myself: What will I do today to stop the destruction of the temples which we all inhabit?