Month: July 2023

Herzl Crying

/ howardshapiro / 6 Comments

It is Tisha B’Av – the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av and for many Jews it is a fast day; it is a day of mourning – remembering the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem and some say the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Maybe because of its placement in the middle of the summer this is not one of my top ten holidays. Maybe because I have that old Reform theology in my head that asks where would we be if we were still offering animal sacrifices on a centralized altar in Jerusalem. Would we have synagogues; would we have Rabbis; would we recognize ourselves?

But this year Tisha B’Av snuck up on me and said: pay attention. When the Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem laid waste, our national identity was destroyed. The second Jewish commonwealth disappeared and although not erased from history, we began our dispersion, our wandering, our dependence on the tolerance of emperors, monarchs, religious leaders, dictators, and political systems we were not a part of. And so began the slow and tortured march to the Inquisition and the Holocaust.

It took us almost 2000 years to regain Jewish sovereignty. When Theodore Herzl championed a national homeland for the Jewish people and created modern political Zionism, he envisioned an open society where Jews of all stripes and colors, all beliefs and cultures could feel at home. You can read about it in his utopian novel, “AltneuLand” (Old-New Land), published in 1902. If you are following the current Israeli political crisis, you know that many observers believe that the crisis concerning the “judicial overhaul” is about Israel’s national identity. Will it continue to be open and innovative, pluralistic, democratic? Will it be the Israel we are so proud of?

Tali texted me yesterday and asked – are we an ethnicity? I don’t know if she was filling out a form or where this came from. (Texts are limited in the amount of information they impart.) But I answered: “Yes, and more. Its complicated.” Well, it is and it isn’t. We are a people; we care about each other; we care what happens to Jews wherever they live. Do we care more than we care about non-Jews in Asia or Africa or Central America? Well language tells a little bit of the story. We divide the world into Jews and non-Jews. We care about people in need everywhere, but we begin by caring about our own.

And so Tisha B’Av. If nothing else, tells the heartbreaking story of Jewish powerlessness. It reminds me how much and why I care about the future of Israel society. I am so proud of the scope of the Israeli protesters who are writing a new chapter in Herzl’s novel. They are fighting for the soul of the nation. They give me hope and that’s not a small thing. I am proud of every step they take in their march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, in their willingness to stand up for their ideals. I may be idealizing them and maybe a little naïve, but I think they could teach us a thing or two.

Hello Again

/ howardshapiro / 4 Comments

We were in New York a few weeks ago.  Saw two shows and went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art squeezing into two exhibits: Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty and Van Gogh’s Cypresses. The exhibits and the shows were radically different: Parade – about the Leo Frank lynching somewhere outside of Atlanta in 1915 and A Beautiful Noise – the story and music of Neil Diamond from Sweet Caroline to Coming to America. We can talk about Parade in a different post.

Eileen and I were captured by A Beautiful Noise; loved the music; you could sing it; loved the glitter and the sequins; felt so good, so good, so good. Things I did not know: unlike many contemporary actors and performers, Neil Diamond never changed his name. He was born Neil Diamond and still is. He didn’t pick up the guitar till he was 16. Many of his songs are deeply personal mirroring different stages of his life. And so much of it is about acceptance and loneliness. I hear his music differently now: self-reflective and even soul searching. You got to get past the façade of bright lights and shiny costumes. Just like when you love someone you love not only their persona but also the person they are within, with all the beauty marks and all the flaws, with all the strengths and weaknesses. You see, I am not a music critic, and I am not a psychoanalyst. “I am I said, to no one there and no one heard at all, not even the chair…” We all want to be heard, noticed, felt that this one life we have is impactful.

Some of us sing; some of us tell stories; some of us write; some of us nurture; some of us teach; some of us provide; some of us heal; some of us listen, some of us create; some of us grow things; some of us paint. And some of us struggle and can’t find the road back. It might be ridiculous or ludicrous to pair the two but the Van Gogh exhibit at the Met wants “in” to these words. The image at the top of this is Van Gogh’s “Country Road in Provence by Night”. He was obsessed with these cypress trees. He calls them “flame like” and even writes, “no one has yet done them as I see them.” Maybe it’s the loneliness theme. I often wondered do you have to be lonely or besieged to be creative. Is suffering the secret ingredient in the paint on the palate?

The painting isn’t as famous or as intense as Starry Nights, but it speaks to me about the life we have been given and the road we all are invited to take – one that winds through and by the trees. There are probably many paths, and they change as we grow, age, mature, become. The challenge is to recognize it, stay on it, celebrate it, affirm it, walk it with as much joy as we can muster no matter what God/Life/Chance/Luck bring us. Van Gogh died of suicide. Neal Diamond has Parkinson’s. What do we really know?