Storms a Brewin’
It’s 1am and the wind is starting to gust and the rain starting to fall. It very rarely, if ever, rains here. Here being the Negev desert of Israel. There are threats of flooding which happens once every 10 years or so. It’s an exciting time. I obviously can’t sleep. I sit here in the field kitchen of our solar powered dome neighbourhood sipping fresh mint tea listening to the sounds of the goats and the wind and I wonder what’s going to happen next…will it just blow over? The wind seems to get stronger as if in response.
Earlier tonight I received a spontaneous lesson in Judaism when I asked my friend Nissim what it means to be Jewish. It’s not an easy thing to explain. He began with the book of Genesis and ended with the 10 Commandments and I sense we had only just scratched the surface. And the ensuing discussion had only just begun when it was time for me to leave, being far past my bedtime. I left at the point of discussing the controversial term ‘the chosen ones’. This has always been a point of contention for me, not feeling like I was one of ‘the chosen ones’, only being half Jewish and that half being on my father’s side. Before I had asked Nissim what it meant to be Jewish I had explained to him how I had grown up not connected to or identified with any religion or group, never really feeling like I belonged, even in my own family. We talked about how it can be difficult having ‘free choice’, he feels his choice was made before he was born, having been born Jewish. I really do feel like I very rarely, if ever, know what to believe. At that point we discussed how dangerous ‘belief’ can be, sometimes locking someone into their own prison and of course be the cause of many conflicts and even war. A perfectly understandable conversation to be having in the middle east as a storm is brewing.
I just stepped outside to feel the wind and allow some drops of rain to fall on my face. Coming from British Columbia I would have not thought rain drops to be so rare and precious.
I came here to make peace with my heritage, my roots and inside I feel as turbulent about it as the storm outside. I still don’t understand how a group of people that sets themselves apart from others is a ‘good thing’. I sense there’s a lot more discussion that needs to happen. As I left Nissim’s he was translating the section in the torah where it supposedly makes the infamous statement about being ‘chosen’ and he surprisedly (even to himself) said that it doesn’t even say ‘chosen’, it says ‘deemed to be holy and wanted’. I can accept that, if everyone else is deemed that way to. I wonder… there really must be something that I am missing. I am definitely intrigued even a little excited…will I truly make peace with being part of a Jewish family and not ‘feeling’ Jewish? They say world peace begins with inner peace. I have often felt like the microcosm of the macrocosm of this huge, no, grandiose issue. Being the spawn of Russian/Polish Jew on the one side and pure German on the other. My grandfather liberated my grandmother from the concentration camps in Poland. I know it’s heavy shit. I obviously chose this ‘crazy’ situation for a reason. Perhaps it is nearing time for it to all become clear to me, or perhaps like many of life’s mysteries, it never will. God only knows and time will tell. I’m feeling a little cliche this evening. I thinks it time to go feel some more rain on my face and try going back to sleep. Perhaps I’ll be enlightened in my sleep!
