A shattered Dream for one, a Blessing for others

Of all the verses of this week’s Parasha, one is branded in my mind more than others. It is Deuteronomy 32;52, where G-d tells Moshe:

“Therefore, you will see the land only from a distance; you will not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel."

Imagine coming very close to your life’s goal yet never fulfilling it. Imagine seeing your long-woven dream close to being realized and watcing it slipping away. How about running that marathon that you have been training to for months merely to find out that as close as you reach the finishing line, you will never get to it?

Must be awfully frustrating.

The above verse captures, in my view, the essence of that feeling, that sentiment. That bittersweet aftertaste is saturated with the emotions of grievance, irritation and desertion.

In 1992, on a trip to Jordan, I was standing where Moshe was when watching his dream fade away. I remember looking into the distance, seeing the Land I so love while feeling every fiber of my nationhood vibrating in me, bursting to break into an elating dance, the kind one experiences when one becomes united with the universe that surrounds us.  So close yet so far away. So attainable yet unreachable. Almost touching it yet more evasive than ever.

I can still feel the tears welling in my eyes soothing the flames of fire that the dry wind and the burning desert sun ignited and fueled. The growing lump in my throat chokes and stifles the soundless shrieks in the face of the injustice committed on that mountain. The deafening silence that surrounds me threatens to devour me.

Unlike Moshe, I walked the Land, I planted trees, worked, tended and helped free it. I am one of his humble servants who swore to guard it, watch over my People and defend it for our posterity. How much luckier can one get?

I, along with many other members of our wonderful People pledge to carry Moshe’s legacy and continue to fulfill the dream he led us to realize.

And “Our journey is just beginning.” May it continue, and may we go from strength to strength as we resume our life’s mission and the fulfillment of his vision along this Holy Land.

Shanah Tova and Gmar Chatima Tovah

That Land, That Place, That World

There is a Hebrew poem by a well-known Jewish poet, Shaul Tschernichovsky. It is called אומרים ישנה ארץ"” (They say there is a Land). In it, Tschernichovsky describes a Land bathed in sunshine, A Land where all that each hoped and wished for will come true (“ארץ אשר בה יתקיים כל אשר איש קיווה”). Though, he never mentions that Land by name and only hints at it, some of us, Jews, know which Land it is. That Land is Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Yisrael.

This poem which I read last weekend prompted the recollection of two very popular English songs. The first, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The second, “What a wonderful world.”

It is no secret that the first song, written in 1939 by two Jews, Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen has long been associated with Eretz Yisrael. According to Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg, “In writing it, the two men reached deep into their immigrant Jewish consciousness – framed by the pogroms of the past and the Holocaust about to happen – and wrote an unforgettable melody set to near prophetic words. Read the lyrics in their Jewish context and suddenly the words are no longer about wizards and Oz, Jewish survival.

Somewhere over the rainbow/Way up high/ There’s a land that I heart of/ Once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow/ Skies are blue/And the dreams that you dare to dream/Really do come through
Someday I’ll wish upon a star/ And wake up where the clouds are far behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops/ Away above the chimney tops/ That’s where you’ll find me.”

As a person who, like Harburg and Arlen, was reared and brought up in the Yiddish language and culture, I heard and sang several Yiddish lullabies about the yearning to That Place, Eretz Yisrael, the Land where my ancestors ached to live in for a very long time.  Harburg echoes similar sentiments to those of Tshernichovsky when he describes that Place where, “Skies are blue [and] the dreams that you dare to dream Really do come through.”

Walking the streets of my city, Herzliya, here in Eretz Yisrael, has brought about the reminiscence of a third, more recent and well-known song, “What a wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong.

Similarly to Armstrong, when I look around me here in Eretz Yisrael, “I see trees of green, red roses too,” in a place that once, not too long ago, was barren and deserted. As I raise my eyes I see the same “blue skies” that Armstrong is talking about.

Like him, I look at the faces “of people passing by, I see friends shaking hands singing ‘How do you do?’” Those who live here know that in a place like Yisrael, where people are bound by the same faith, same fate and same history, where people share a great love for the Land and similar experiences, one almost always comes across familiar faces of family members, friends or mere acquaintances.

Then, of course, there are “the babies,” the ones I hear “cry,” laugh or see smile, the precious future of our People, each a miracle on their own. “I watch them grow,” knowing that “They’ll learn much more than we’ll know.” I feel blessed living in That World.

True, This Land, This Place, This World, Eretz Yisrael, is far from perfect. For me and for many of my fellow Jews, however, it is as close as a Jew can get to it.

And in the words of Yip Harburg, “That is where you’ll find me!”