The Morning Star

The very first day, she had dragged him off to the Wailing Wall so she could insert between the stones a letter to God that she had carefully written. Wishes and messages reached Him in all languages, and, before that multitude, he thought about the apocalyptic atmosphere that had reigned in the days leading up to the Six-Day War. Haim had gone to Israel at the time, and in the face of all the real threats of annihilation, he had thought that it may well spell the end of the Jewish people. But, for two thousand years, hadn’t each generation also thought that it was the end? The world would certainly do without Jews, but it could do even better without mankind.

“Look,” she said, pointing at the crowd. “They’re alive…they’re alive. They’re not ghosts.”

They had come from all continents, witnesses from all the races and traditions, Jews of the East and of the West, white Jews, black Jews, yellow, red, right down to those mysterious Jews from Cochin China, whose eyes seemed to gaze upon a different sky; right down to those beings who seemed to step straight out of legend, Falashas from Ethiopia, who still remembered the Queen of Sheba; right down to the Jews of Harlem, who carried the two heaviest legacies in human history on their shoulders. She said that this country of Israel was first the act by means of which all these scattered people asserted their common identity. But it was also the singular history of each and every one of them, it was the past that they’d torn themselves away from and that lived on in them. It was Cairo, Baghdad and Teheran. It was the mellahs of the Maghreb and all the memories of Arab civilization. It was the shtetls of Poland, Lithuania, White Russia, and all the vestiges of Eastern Europe. It was also Paris, Berlin, New York, and it was Palestine itself, where the Jews had never stopped being, in spite of everything, while the Romans and Byzantines, the Arabs, Egyptians, Mamelukes, Turks and English had run the country. It was a planetary tribe: you’d have said that the totality of humanity’s past had poured into this place and so it thereby reflected, by the sheer nature of things, the whole set of contradictions of the modern world.

Page: 170-171, ‘The Morning Star’, Andre Schwartz-Bart

From the heart, to the heart

If you see your fellow Jew traveling down a self-destructive path, and you seek to set him straight but fail, the fault is yours. The reasoning behind this conclusion is both profound and simple. Our sages have declared that "words that come from the heart enter the heart." So if your words did not enter his heart, this can only mean that they were not spoken in complete sincerity. Had you been truly sincere--had you spoken with no objective in mind other than his good--your words would have entered his heart and would have had their desired effect.

Broken and whole

Only the human heart can be broken and whole at once. - Rabbi M. M. Schneerson

Boston you're my Home

Raising a glass and finishing packing. Boston its been an amazing 2.33 years, I know that we haven't always gotten along (almost a hundred inches of snow this winter) but when I think of this place I'll remember the clouds rolling in from the sea and many late nights with friends. Though I'm reluctant to leave, the road calls and I'm excited for new possibilities and adventures. I'm smiling but my eyes are misty and it feels good.

Shalom A'He

On oneself

In legal questions, one should always decide as permissively as possible and not burden people. One should make things hard only for oneself.

Page 199, Maimonides, Abraham Joshua Heschel

I sleep

I sleep, but my heart is awake.

Song of Songs, 5:2

Mist on my breathe

Woke up this morning, padded out into the kitchen and walked outside, there was mist on my breathe, it was the first subtle sign of winters approach, the sunset is beginning to recede slowly now, getting early and earlier by the week. Summer is coming to a close, autumn and winter are beginning to touch the landscape and I’m smiling. For now it’s a smile of excitement, of anticipation and the approach of shorter days and longer nights, of the explosion of color in the trees and the bird’s winter dance in my backyard. I shudder at the thought of the swirling winds and heavy snow but delight in the silence that it will bring. So on this beautiful last summer’s morning I wrap myself in the early morning air and sense the coming of the harvest and the days of our Awe.