Reflections by Dave Grishaw-Jones
6 November 2011 ~ in Tel Aviv
Storm Clouds
Storm Clouds
On a broad plaza in the heart of
Tel Aviv, Sharon (Morgie) Morgenstern describes the night, sixteen years
earlier, when Yitzhak Rabin was shot to death by an ultra-orthodox bible
student. Her voice shakes with sadness;
and behind her, my good friend Rabbi Paula Marcus is weeping openly, looking to
the platform where Rabin had spoken before being shot. So much was lost that night: a viable path to
peace, a progressive voice in Israel, a sense of optimism and creativity. Tragically, the assassin was inspired by
ultra-orthodox rabbis who blamed Rabin for perverting Jewish faith and
compromising with hated enemies. Sixteen years later, to the day, it takes all kinds of courage to
believe that love might yet dispel these stormy clouds of fear.
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| 16 years later, Kikar Rabin |
Two Spirit People
Dana Peleg was born and raised in
Jerusalem. She speaks with a quiet
dignity, and searches for the right words to describe what troubles her. “In so many native cultures,” she reminds us,
“queer people represented the spirit world.
They were ‘two spirit’ people, shamanic and holy, with special gifts
connecting to the unseen dimension.” A
journalist and activist, Dana shares her experience as an intellectual and
bisexual in modern Israel. It’s another
in a string of inspiring conversations: she speaks softly, deliberately, with a
kind of gentle fierceness.
Dana makes important connections
between Israel’s occupation of Palestine and homophobia she’s experienced in
life and work. She’s critical of gay
friends who advocate only for themselves—without integrating other struggles
for liberation and peace. “I don’t
believe in separation,” she says. “We
are all worthy of liberation and freedom.”
There’s a powerful echo of Martin King in her presence and her words: a
threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Dana Peleg seems to have internalized this
truth, seems to live it through breath and word and action.
There’s an important gift, she
suggests, in the queer experience, a gift that may prove sweet and decisive,
even here in this holy and fractured land.
“We embody something beyond the binary categories of male and female,”
she says, “something more than socially constructed patterns of masculinity and
femininity. We ought to be the spirit
people who point us forward.”
I guess I’ve heard something like
this before. I haven’t had my head
completely in the sand. But Dana’s
prophetic approach, her gentle presence: this unlocks something within that’s
been fighting this week to get free.
What’s needed now—here and perhaps all over the world—is a new human
being: a human being beyond category and identity, a human being committed to
wholeness and generous liberation. In so
many ways, difference is ritualized here, almost made sacred: at the western
wall of the ancient temple, around the Dome of the Rock high above it, at
checkpoints all over the West Bank. Are
you Arab or Jew? Christian or
Muslim? Israeli or Palestinian? Are you friend or foe? Are you a threat to be feared or an ally to
be trusted? Suspicion is the new
religion. And monotheism suffers badly.
Suspicion and Terror
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| Young people praying in Abraham's Mosque, Hebron |
In the
carpeted hall of Abraham’s Mosque in Hebron, our Palestinian guide tells the
story of Baruch Goldstein, a New York doctor who entered the mosque in 1994 and
opened fire on Muslims at prayer. Our
guide describes the bloodbath in grisly detail: the way Goldstein knelt and
took aim, the way the blood pooled beneath defenseless bodies. Twenty-nine were killed that day; dozens and
dozens, injured. Abraham and Sarah seem
something of an afterthought, monotheism almost absurd in this place. It’s the violence this Palestinian remembers,
the narrative of suspicion and terror.
It cycles round and round in this land of faith and fear. Looking around the mosque, I can’t help but
remember Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial: how we’d walked through the
children’s memorial as a million names were chanted in darkness, names with
stories, names with families, terrible deaths.
Where does this stop?
Ha Adam
Cyprian
reminds me of Paul’s daring declaration that “in Christ there is neither Jew
nor Greek, neither male nor female, neither slave nor free” (Galatians 3). Rabbi Paula reminds me that God creates one
being, a single human being, ‘ha adam’ in Genesis 2. Opposites are reconciled in love. Differences invited to communion and
community. The radical vision
here—Paul’s and Israel’s—is one of brotherhood, sisterhood, human
community. It’s not one in which all
practice the same faith, or one in which difference is whitewashed by pure
religion or cultural conformity.
Instead, it’s a new human being, something like Dana Peleg’s ‘two spirit’
person. It’s a human being gratefully at
home upon the earth, capable of bearing strange contradictions, yearning for
the kind of justice that reconciles, the kind of peace that heals.
In Jewish thought, human vocation
has something to do with ‘tikkun olam.’
Roughly, in Hebrew, the phrase invites active participation in healing
the world’s brokenness. Something
happens in creation that shatters the one light, the holy splendor of God, in a
zillion pieces. Believers worship God in
piecing the whole together again.
Reconciliation. Community. Communion.
Justice. Peace.
I Believe in Mercy
Several days ago, our delegation of
nineteen sat quietly on benches in Nazareth’s “Synagogue Church.” It’s a simple stone building, sitting on a
spot where some believe Jesus first pulled out a scroll from the prophet and
began to read to friends and family.
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,” he read. “And God has anointed me: to bring good news
to the poor; to bind up the brokenhearted; to build up the ancient ruins; and
to set the captive peoples free.” There
are so many captives here: shackled by fear and suspicion, separated from
family by walls and checkpoints, betrayed by prejudice. In this old church, it’s easy to sense Jesus
stirring in the streets. The time is
now! Heal the broken! Good news to the poor!
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| Reverence in the Synagogue Church |
Suddenly, a song. A familiar voice, Lori’s, and a tune we sing so
often at FCC in Santa Cruz. “I love
everybody, I love everybody, I love everybody in my heart.” Quickly, all pick up the melody, the urgency;
harmonies rise and then return, to amaze and inspire one and all. “I believe in mercy, I believe in mercy, I
believe in mercy in my heart.” I
honestly can’t believe how beautiful this is.
Harmonies reverberate and surround and plead. Everyone’s singing. A Sufi leading us all.
I look around the room and I see a
friend who’s just converted to Catholicism and another who’s just now
converting to Judaism. I see one of the
bravest women I’ve ever known: a rabbi who binds up the brokenhearted and
speaks truth to power. And I see our friend Cyprian Consiglio, a Benedictine
monk singing now like an angel. His eyes
are closed, but his face is open. And he
sings as if the earth’s rotation depends on every sweet phrase.
Here, for a moment is ‘ha adam,’
the new human being. There is no
fear. There is no blood pooling in the
floor. There is no wall. If I could make this moment last forever, I
just might. That’s not in the cards, of
course, but there is, praise God, one more verse. “I know freedom’s coming, I know freedom’s
coming, I know freedom’s coming in my heart!
I know freedom’s coming, I know freedom’s coming, I know freedom’s
coming in my heart!”
Sometimes, freedom seems like pure
illusion, hidden in a torrent of salacious journalism and bad news. But today, surrounded by harmonies and a
gathering community of hope, freedom seems real. Like a promise we intend to keep.
