Dear brothers and sisters,
At 2:15 PM this Sunday, June 9th I will be returning to the Land of Israel for good. I will arrive in Ben-Gurion airport on Rosh Chodesh [the first day of the Hebrew month of] Tammuz and summarily kiss the holy ground which has waited so long for the return of its people.
I intended to begin sending these emails ever since the beaureucratic beginnings of the Aliya processes, which took place in lovely Midtown Manhattan. In hindsight, documenting such a process only makes the amusing memories vulnerable to their being used as anecdotal fodder for our internal Aliya-excuse producers. Also, who knows how much longer midtown Manhattan will be around, should we really dwell on it? (No pun intended, but not regretted either.) In any event, let me know if you don't want to receive these emails and I will cheerfully remove you from the list.
I am writing to you from Teaneck, New Jersey. After weeks of sifting through old tangible memories stored in the attic and at the bottoms of drawers, life has completed its reorientation toward the Holy Land. I had a seudat Aliya where many friends shared a meal in honor of my ascent and offered blessings for me to take with me. I had a second seudat Aliya with my extended family, where I was given tearful blessings as well. A week ago I said a reluctant goodbye (not a big fan of goodbyes - always thought it better to hold off until deathbeds and the like) to the source of my strength and the sharer of my future as she returned to Montreal in preperation for her own Aliya at the end of the summer. I have been packing my possessions into duffle bags and boxes, sending some of them with a friend who is going to be on the July 8th flight of 400 JEWS ALL MAKING ALIYA TOGETHER (more on this to come).
Amidst all the packing, the tearful good-byes, and the debates with those who have lost hope in our God and the Land He promised us repeatedly, there is an unwavering excitement that makes it difficult to sit still. On my desk lies a ticket paid for by the Jewish Agency and I marvel at the fulfillment of a prayer I have mumbled so often - rarely grasping the depth of our request. In the Birkat HaMazon - arguably the most oft-recited prayer - we implore upon our Creator:
"Yolicheinu Komemiyut L'Artzeinu"
May You bring us, upright to our land.
And that is what God has given me and what is lying on the table in front of each and every one of us. Just a few generations ago, making Aliya meant crawling across deserts and dodging British bullets as you navigated a boat toward the Holy Land in the dead of night. Today I stand with my head held high as I stand upright and board a Jewish airplane for the Jewish State - more afraid of my plane being shot out of the air over Newark than I am of landing amidst a Land protected by a Jewish army. Sorry if I didn't fully develop this point - please think about it whenever you come upon those words in the Birkat HaMazon.
Right now, the words of King David fill my room here in Teaneck: "Gam ki Eileich b'gei tzalmavet lo ira ra ki Ata Imadi" Thought I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil because You are with me, God.
The question I am most often asked is: Aren't you afraid? I used to be a bit embarrassed about my lack of fear - afraid that it bespoke my own lack of depth in understanding. I, too, am victim of a society whose assumptions bludgeon us daily into confining God to the synagogue, kitchen and bedroom. We are told in deafening, unspoken assertions and through subtle op-eds that those who base decisions on God's will and who place their security in the hands of the Creator come from the same fundamentalist cloth as those who are trying to wipe us out. If belief in God and in a sublime difference between good and evil makes me a fundamentalist in the minds of those who believe themselves to be Gods - so be it.
I suppose I should let you all know that I am a settler. The fact is that we are all settlers. We are all being shot at daily. Our children are having their schoolbuses targeted. Our grandparents are being hunted and killed as they play chess in city parks. The commute home from work includes such things as sniper fire and roadside bombs in addition to the usual traffic. We are all settlers (or inheritors, as is the literal translation of the Hebrew: Mitnachlim) and the tragedy is that we still have yet to fully realize it. I am happy to address individual questions including the top ten suggestions for playing Russian Roulette with Israel's existence that the American Jewish Community has absorbed from a combination of our own ignorant media and a Foreign Ministry run by Shimon Peres, ("Why don't we just uproot those really isolated settlements in Gaza - What are we doing in Gaza!") but for the time being I just ask that from now on, as you read the news - know that your friend Ezra is one of those "settlers" that are always being spoken about. Know that I am creating facts on the ground by my returning to a Land that we have prayed for so hard that we have become "k'cholmim" - like dreamers - at its miraculous accessibility. We are slowly waking from our slumber but we need more people running from house to house screaming KUMAH! ARISE! WAKE UP!
On Sunday I will board the wings of an eagle. I am ready to pick up where our people left off two thousand years ago. I yearn to continue the project for which we were given our Torah. Our task as Jews is not to create perfectly comfortable societies, but a PERFECT society. Being a light unto the nations does not happen at our office water coolers and Federation "tikkun-olam" missions to South America - it happens when we lead by example. The world knows we are supposed to be doing something big. Jew hatred is on the rise (who wouldn't hate the guy who is supposed to be fixing the world and heralding the redemption but is instead building better and tastier kosher restaurants, fancier synagogues and addition after addition onto his home) and though it is clothed in every possible cloak of evil - there is a strong message from God in all of it, if only we open our ears and our hearts. The "cycle of violence" will continue just as the "cycle of Jewish forgetfulness" has continued unimpeded by any jolt of clarity (be it a split sea, Sinai, a holocaust, a six day war). The storm clouds that are encompassing the exile as well will continue and grow until we remember the project for which our people's blood has flown through the alleys and streets of history.
The world is watching us. Jerusalem has thousands of cameras pointed at her daily. The demands for our State to implement insane Christian ideals reach new levels of absurdity each day even though "turn the other cheek" came not from the lips of a counter-terrorism expert, but from a Jewish carpenter on an ego trip. The world is waiting for us to re-assert our only indisputable claim on the Land of Israel - Our Torah. As we see with the Shaba'a Farms in the North - all is takes is one press-release from some blood drenched terrorists to make parts of our eternal homeland into "disputed territory." It is time for us to take out our deed and if not slam it down on the desk of the world - then to at least read it ourselves. The Arabs know the power of our secret weapon - and they have been attempting to remove all remnants of our presence from the Temple Mount and other areas.
I bless us all to be able to view the world through the eyes of the Land of Israel and to liberate ourselves from the transient nervous eyes of the exile. Desperation for a man made peace has always been a prelude for unspeakable annihilation of our people - let us look toward our God and toward our brothers and sisters and lock arms as we move toward the Great Shabbat, when all will be made right and when swords, after having rid the world of evil, will be made into plowshares and used to make the Land blossom as our suntanned children frolic in our Land and sing songs of joy in the Holy tongue.
Thinking of all those who I love as I avoid your good-byes, and already waiting to greet each one of you at the airport,
b'ahavat yisrael,
Ezra HaLevi