I think that any Jew alive today, and living as a Jew is a descendant of heroes. Any Jew today is of high lineage. Why? Because our ancestors chose to walk out of Spain and not become a Marrano. They chose to remain poor and uneducated in tzarist Russia and not become a Christian. They made all those choices, each and every Jew in his own lifetime. A long chain of heroism, self-denial, acceptance, faith. I hope and pray every day that my children will carry the mission on and not be the ones to break the chain of generations.
To love means to put your own life on the line. To accept a possibility that your heart might be broken into a thousand pieces. To trust another human - imperfect and fallible - with everything you have. If you don't trust completely, it ain't love. It's convenience. Love is not only giving, and mutual, and caring, and being. Love is trust. That there isn't a monster hiding inside the other. To not have a plan B and a person B in mind. Possible? I don't know.
Love is trust and trust is love. But the ultimate trust is death. Think about it - your body - your own precious body - in the hands of others. Unable to speak for itself, defend itself, express anything at all. Naked. Exposed and alone. With all its cellulite, grey hair, fat, and every blemish you've been striving to hide your whole life, stripped of all of its possessions, any protection. The deceased has no choice but to trust, that's why in Judaism we treat them with the utmost respect. So so wise. Godly. it's not for them who died, it's for those who are still alive and watching, knowing that this is the end of all living things.
We are all crazy. There is this continuum of insanity, and we all are on it somewhere. Nobody is perfectly sane. It's impossible. We all have our psycho moments, when we lose touch with reality, become obsessive, we panic and suspect, deny and lie. Sometimes we get aggressive and lash out at those who don't deserve it. And then we say, what on earth has happened here? Don't ever look at those who are deeper than you on the psycho continuum. After all, you're on it, too, forever bobbing up and down like the float in the toilet water container, sinking when things are low.
Each person lives in a see-through bubble. We wave and gesticulate and yell to others, locked in their identical bubbles. And sometimes they get the message, but most of the time it's distorted. Our entire communication is distorted. We think we understand each other, but in the end of the day the bubbles of the "self" prevent any real understanding. We see others through the prism of self. We think we know them, but
in reality, we're only seeing our expectations, hopes, illusions of what
others might be. And then suddenly we wake up, thinking, how can that be? A minute ago we had such perfect understanding, and now there are pieces of us and our relationship on the floor. A heart may be next to a heart, but the bubble still separates them.
The biggest fear is not that of death. It's of public humiliation. Of sticking out. of being the odd one out, the black sheep and the white crow - choose the imagery your language likes the most. The age does not even matter, adults are just as guilty as teenagers. Don't believe me? Go out in a wheelchair one day. I think one of the greatest achievements of the civilization we call ours is that it's working on welcoming all people. One of the greatest achievements of our army is not the Iron Dome, but the unit where Down syndrome kids serve the country. It makes me cry just to think of it. At least in a declaration, in the Western world we are all equal. At least we are instructed to treat the "other" with respect. It only took 2000 years of religious wars, witch hunts, slavery, and a few genocides here and there. The society is judged by how it treats the "other". However, there is still an animal underneath it all. If tomorrow the people wake up with famine at their doorstep, it would all be reversed in an instant. May we never be tested. May our humanity remain unscratched an unadulterated.
