Time To Rise Up
Dear friends,
Today, the day on which Jews around the world commemorate the Holocaust, is the day on which our spring festival, The Kumah Festival opens. We didn't intend to do this, but when the plans aligned in this way we felt it was a better plan than we could have come up with ourselves. What does one do with the act of remembering such a darker than dark time? What does one do with the broken shards of their history? With the broken pieces of her soul? Our answer this year is to to come together in an art studio to take in the work of a Jewish artist whose main material is the most fragile of all, glass.
In Talmudic fashion, artist Ghiora Aharoni views shattering as the beginning of creation. The Brachot tractate tells us what it means when something breaks in a dream.
"One who sees eggs in a dream, it is a sign that his request is pending. If one saw that the eggs broke, it is a sign that his request has already been granted, as that which was hidden inside the shell was revealed. The same is true of nuts, cucumbers, glass vessels, and anything similarly fragile that broke in his dream, it is a sign that his request was granted."
Breaking, the rabbis imply, is the release of energy of good things to come, like the breaking of the glass at a wedding.
That doesn't mean we let go of the brokenness. Like the Hebrews carried the broken tablets around the desert, Ghiora includes any shards of glass that broke during the artistic process in the final sculpture in what he calls a Geniza, or a sacred trash container (which is also, of course made of glass). But that Geniza is not necessarily painful, but an increaser of joy. One of his sculptures, which we will see this evening, is inscribed Genizat Sasson, A Geniza of Joy. Jewish history, even Jewish life as a whole might be boiled down to the ability to contain these two opposites, through the act of creativity in the shadow of death.
The following event in the Jewish calendar can be seen as a type of mirror image of this idea. Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day is, on the face of it a happy day. It wants to be about life and strength. But in the 21st century it can't do that without carrying deep and troubling complexities. We know that with all the incredible things happening there,1948 was the beginning of a continuing catastrophe for the Palestinian people, that Judaism and nationalism fused there since in sometimes scary ways, that Israelis live with fear, and that the Jewish State is a battleground for what being Jewish stands for.
One of the now classic films about the Israeli occupation, which many consider to be the core of the problem there is Ra'anan Alexandrovitch's The Law in These Parts. Through interviews with supreme court justices, politicians and military leaders, the film is an in depth examination of the legal system in the Occupied Territories. Our Kumah event to mark Yom Ha'atzmaut will be a discussion around this film with a person who embodies the triangle of faith-art-politics that the festival is devoted to. Professor David Kretzmer is a religious Jew, whose faith drove him to be a founding member of several of the most important human rights organizations in Israel, including the Centre for Human Rights, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and B'Tselem. His writing played a crucial part in the creation of the movie, and led to some of the questions posed to the justices in the film. Professor Kretzmer teaches a class on the film every year at Hebrew University. Sign up HERE to get the link to watch the movie before Sunday, and then to join our conversation via Zoom.
Two days later The New Shul is proud to join with dozens of Arab, Jewish and international organizations as sponsors of the Joint Israeli Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony.
The Joint Memorial Ceremony is the largest Israeli-Palestinian peace event in history. Last year 300,000 people participated in the live broadcast event and over one million people streamed it afterwards. It has become a focal point for the entire peace community. Nearly every peace-building NGO in the region participates in some way, and we are proud to be sponsors of the Ceremony this year! It has a profound impact on everyone involved in or witnessing the event.
The Joint Ceremony sets the foundation for widespread cultural change by shifting public opinion on a mass scale. Joining together to mourn each other’s pain challenges the status quo, setting the foundation to build a new reality based on mutual respect, dignity and equality.
Kumah means Rise Up, and that is what we believe these events will help us do. I hope you all can join us in these glass-breaking events. It's time to release the spring's energy of healing, newness and hope.
For more information and to register go HERE.
And to register for the Joint Ceremony go HERE.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha