We belong!!!
That was the profound sense we got from our trip to Israel. Emphatic and impassioned. The people of Israel are our people, our extended family. The Land of Israel is our spiritual, and of course historical, homeland. And therefore, rightly and justly, our national one too.
Walking up Masada on my third lap I melancholically contemplated the great irony that we are called colonisers yet the very last natives on the patch of dry land beneath me, were my ancestors. And it was right here that they put up their last stand against the greatest coloniser of all time, the Roman Empire.
Shabbat in Jerusalem and a walk to Temple Mount likewise screamed out against the nonsense of the left and their fundamentalist Islamist friends. Visiting the only Shule which survived the destruction of the entire Jewish Quarter and touching the stones touched by my ancestors over thousands of years literally, was therapeutic like never before.
And of course there was the intense roller coaster of emotions. Walking in to Ben Gurion airport and seeing the photos of the babies being held hostage by monsters in a dungeon only a hundred kilometres away, was simply heart wrenching.
Though life in israel away from the borders has a semblance of normalcy, the stark reminders are everywhere. From the burnt out cars from the Nova massacre perched on top of busy roads, to the rows of chairs with pictures of each hostage lining so many roads and boardwalks all over Israel. A deeply traumatised people forced yet again to confront human monsters.
And yet we were in Israel to celebrate the wedding of one of our brothers. With the hills of Jerusalem as a backdrop we sang and danced to the ancient words ‘Od Yishama beharey Yehuda uvechutzot Yerushalayim kol sasson vekol simcha kol chatan vekol kala’ – It will again be heard in the mountains of Jerusalem the sound of joy and merrymaking, the joyous sound of a groom and a bride. These words were uttered after one of the worst tragedies of the Jewish People, the destruction of Israel by the Babylonians.
Dancing with my brothers and sisters at this event was truly a spiritual experience for us all. Wearing the t-shirts emblazoned with ‘We will dance again – Am Yisrael Chai’ was our modern cry of defiance and hope.
