Leah’s Blog Nov 10th 2017
AN OPEN LETTER TO JASON GREENBLATT AND JARED KUSHNER
There was an event that preceded the hunting down and massacre of my father’s entire family in November 1942 in Nisko Poland on a cold broken day, a day an old world was shattered. It was the November of 1938 in Berlin Germany, and towards evening a crowd of well -dressed perfectly groomed Germans screamed “Jews Go HOME!” as they scrawled the words all over the synagogues desecrated, the schools and business and even on the bodies of the hundred victims of that pogrom. The writing was on the wall even before this night of broken glass, a foreshadowing of things to come, which changed the course of history. But not in the way the curse was intended. It would see the shoot coming out of my father’s sole surviving family be planted through me in a Land unsown right here on the mountains of Israel.
They said, “Jews go home!” and that is just what we did.
70 years ago something moved in the world that forever changed our destiny. While old worlds shattered, new ones were created. G-d also created universes before this one and destroyed them. Is this what it means in the book of creation about old worlds shattering and new ones created I wonder, a prophecy for the end of days? On that cold November night, the vessels of exile as a place for the wandering Jew shattered. In that dissolution and descent, of confusion and chaos, a complete breakdown of identity swept minds souls and later bones and bodies into the abyss.
But there was a primary purpose.
It wasn’t but three years after the war and a birth happened. A great miracle as the Land of our Matriarchs bled, but with life. The milk and honey began to drip and the baby suckled. The child grew into an army like no other. The Land collected the shattered shards, a broken people made beautiful, strong – a Nation.
As G-d hides, He also reveals Himself. Before prophecy can exist in the land of Israel, it must be settled and inhabited by a majority of Jews in the world.
This November, as we learn about our Patriarchs and Matriarchs in these portions, about their life stories right here on this foundation stone, this primordial first stop on a journey inside the Land, up and down its backbone right smack in the center between the Jordan and the Great Sea, about their life stories about struggle and fixing, take a stand! Wonder at this miracle- We invite you to come and to identify, to not divide but to collect and be a lighthouse to the world so thirsty to know.
Come close to the source- Jews go home!
Shabbat Shalom
Leah Goldsmith – Itamar Israel
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