SIN'AH: Hideous can be different

Either we have time or we don't; or we miss time terribly. It is a professional trend: to be overburdened with work, family task, virtual and real contacts, traffic jams. Agendas are full, each of us are like heading and holding the society and a microcosmic part of it that desperately try to find some rest in some gym club. A young family man has recently lost his mother and had to go to the milluim - to serve his periodic time in the army. He enjoys this time of "cheshbon nefesh - meditation" in serving the country, waith his friends and comrades waho are compassionate but also oblige him to consider a life that is gone and the life he has to accomplish.

Yiddish has an old talmudic saying: we cannot educate our children the way we have been educated because we belong to a time that is over. We have to bring up our children as if we were anticipating the education of our grandchildren because they will survive us and build the future. Thus, it is not possible to state: 'I have plenty of time" or "I don't have time - I miss time terribly" which may turn to be a good reason not to do what we have to do, while much time could be a sign of how empty our lives can really or supposedly be.

Yom HaShoah 5768 is the day commemorated by the State of Israel. In some way, with the project readily developed in 1942 of a Yad VaShem - Deportation and extermination camp center, it is the unique place that takes more and more importance to recall the event of the Endloesung, the final solution to liquidate the Jews and erase them as such from the earth, to begin with Europe. But time passes. The transmission from the survivors to their children, the ability or difficult distance to examine what mainly has happened during World War II in Christened Europe seem to raise new forms of interrogations and this requires a lot of prudence. The existence of the State of the Jews is not even a political fact. Yes, Jews gathered in a country that birthed 60 years ago for giving a shelter to Refugees and Displaced, floating Jews individuals and families.

In the course of the sixty years, silence very slowly paved the way to some kind of word and description, but it took more than 40 years. Some people think they have "time to kill or they can kill time". Absence of action was not the case. Jews faced a hideous shame in being survivors, many of them abandoned and left the Community and the faith of the ancestors. At the end of the war, most communities had lost all their talmidei chacham, professors and we shall miss them for a very long time ahead of one or two generations. They will recompose but in another context of Yiddishkayt.

As time passes, silence is replaced by a sort of constant Holocaust discussion. Indeed, the Jews must understand they were not the only targets of those who wanted to exterminate them. We assist since some years at a breaking down into different options of Yom HaShoah. The UNO day on January 27th calles to human memory and alerts the conscience of the all the nations. In that view, it recalls, but it focus on Jews while other nations do not fel concerned in any way by what has happened. This requires a tremendous pedagogical work and exceptional teaching and understand capacities.

Then, living memories also have the curious ability to remove, not totally wipe out but to consider most of the event of the Shoah as something that will be cured by the good relationships which will be created in the century, say. I don't believe in that. And simultaneously, Jews' descendents consider the event in a specific way that is often superseded by many Christian movements throughout the world. It is possible now for Christianity to "christen" the Shoah. In that case, it is interesting to note that the "Holocaust" turns to be a Christian question of morals and theology that would make the Churches feel allowed to dispose - once again - of the destiny of the Jewish people. The project to go beyond the drama, and at least allow Jews and Arabs to meet - learning how to work together was the genius idea developed for years by the Kibbutz Lochamey HaGettaot (Akko) and the Greek Catholic priest, Emile Shufani. They launched a reflection as how to understand violence in extermination and analyze how to make Jews and Arabs. The challenge is open.

The third breakdown is linked to the "Katastropha/e" in Russian and Greek. This is the official name of the event in these languages. The State of Israel has received a huge amount of former Soviet ans Easyern European newcomers. The will not remain Russian for long. After 10-15 years many serve in the army, feel Israeli minded and Russian by background. The absence of a specific adapted response to their identity as members of this society as Jews, mixed or Orthodox does not help. They are acting at many levels of the society. Locals forget that a newcomer is an immigrant and will not proplonge what what extant at home. Or it may clash.

The rabbinic tradition states (Talmud Eduyot 1:4) that the Talmud like to recording minority points of view. It allows to keep flexible and accept that open opinions can avoiding them to parroting they are always right!

Have a bright week,

Av Alexander

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Wag-'n-bietjiebos - The Buffalo-Thorn Tree = Ziziphus Mucronata

South Africa has very rare trees and cactuses, plants of all sorts, ancient, antique, remote and splendid, huge, immense, high, tremendously "pragtig, wonderful". Just as we have them in Israel, the ancient times that spread from the coast and reached the Middle-East. A kind of phlegmatic nonchalance that can listen to the noises of the earth, of the soil, as dust and sand of bushes and small woods are covered with much history that tracks back to the cradle of all civilization. When humans somewhere mutated from fish to apes, apies, then turned to some inmates with social life and brains, souls and language.



There are a lot of trees in South Africa and they developed in small bushes and woods or forests. We have no forests in Israel. We were used as members of the Yiddishkayt/Jewishness of the East to cross and even dwell in immense forests in Russia! I remember that when I crossed Ukraine and Belarus from Kiev to Chernobyl and then to Minsk, whitened trees over miles of damaged areas, kale bome, trees that got white and "lanky". As trees as like humans in the Biblical and Talmudic traditions, they looked "kaalkoppe, baldheaded"; right at the moment, they are threatened again with fires and nuclear attacks and blows. Psalm 1 underscores the role of trees as the image of the fruitful body and the soul of a human being and a Jew, a beleiver who trusts in God and in whom God can trust and entrust the beauty of creation. "The man who scans, meditates and studies" the Law of the Lord, i.e. the man who is like a cow that ruminates God's Word and think of It, refle'cts on It, dink oor "yehgeh" It day and night (Hebrew order...!). It sounds so sweet in Afrikaans: "soos 'n koei wat herkou..., (zoals een koe, die herkauwt (Dutch))", which just corresponds to our love for chewing.



But most of the trees and plants have thorns down there! Just as we have so many in the Holy Land. In English and Afrikaans, the word for "tree" can be either "bos" or "boom (Germ. Baum)" which is comparable to "bush" and "tree" in the local description of the landscape and the nature. One tree is definitely striking!It is called in English "Buffalo Thorn Tree" and traces back to Latin "Ziziphus mucronata" that came from Greek "Ziziphos". The word is not Indo-European at all, it is rooted in the Semitic languages that haunted from old the coasts of the Mediterrean and down through Zanzibar to the South and the Arabs. "Zizûf" exists in Arabic and constitutes the radical of a name that primarily might be misunderstood for some Westerners.



Afrikaans has a very special name for the tree: "Wag 'nbietjiebos - Wag 'nbietjieboom or: Blikbaar wag-'n-bietjiebos". It is very clear and quite amazing. It means: "Wait A Little Bit Tree". It is full of thorns everywhere; very green with some fruit, and it definitely looks mice and appealing, charming, but it is full of thorns. The word "Zizuf" does not exist in Aramaic or in Hebrew and is not mentioned in the Talmud. On the other hand, the tree is cell-known in the Middle-East and in particular in the Holy Land and Eretz Israel: we have such a tree with thorn, not exactly the same. But, according to the Christian tradition, the Thorns that were put as a crown on Jesus' head came from the same "Ziziphus micronata, Buffalo-Thorn Tree" and thus from a "Wag 'nbiejtiebos". It is evident that the local thorns and those of the Southern african bush tree have been compared and somhow identified as being of very close species.



It is amazing in our context. In 1938, Albert Einstein, questioned on the possibility of a Jewish State, was a bit suspicious and prevented that the Jews should carefully handle such a project in order to work together. They are used to worked in other countries and various cultures, but not to build up their own "self-identity country". He then added that, if God willing there would be a very special and unexpected reason for the creation of a Jewish State, i.e. in order to shelter and harbor the Jews, yeas, it would make sense and the dream may come to be true. He said: "Tolerance (patience) and wisdom" which in his mother-tongue was "Geduld und Weisheit".



The words are everywhere in Israel. "Todah al hasavlanut: thanks for being patient", "savlanut = patience" are blah-blahed night and day and at every minute in the country and the area, both by the Hebrew-speakers and the Arabs or any other ethnicity. It is our national "must, duty, plight, obedience, awareness". I would consider that the same is real for South Africa on this 100-year anniversary of the official recognition of the Afrikaans tongue (1925-2025). A creolized Dutch speech, mixed with local Zulu, Tswana, Swahili, African dialects, Arabic, Malaysian-Bahasa Indonesia Esperanto in Asia and a lot of words from India. 

The amazing part is that there is a tree, a bush-tree, full of thorns that, in the Christian faith, reminds that we need to wait with much patience and decency for the Second Coming of Jesus, in glory, just as the Jews expect with much patience the Adventus, the coming of the Messiah Ben David, Christ Son of David as stated in Talmud Sukka 52b.



Patience: the word is always connected to "suffering, "pathos"" in the Western cultures as it is also in "sevel", in Hebrew. But the thorns, as our trees or cactuses have more: they protect against violence and abuse. Once the thorns are removed, the bush-trees are soft and mild, tender, just as the famous "sabra, local desert cactus, also the name for the Israeli youths".



Some youths these days are maybe lost or confused, as teens or just-after-teens and post-adolescents can be when they only met with thorns or fences. Patience becomes then a tremendous fight against framing ourselves; the others that did not share such an experience and cannot be patient because as we say in English "I can't wait" that curiously also can be Afrikaans "ek kan nie wag nie!". We do not live in cultures that are fed with history. Short-sighted about our past, even 80 years ago from Auschwitz to Hiroshima. "There are times and delays, yesh item uzmanim" as stated in Kohelet/the Book of Proverbs. This bows us not to act like lazy carpets, but to kneel down and be patient, with patience that drives us to something merely divine and not generated by our own desires.



In South Africa, the model is also striking for another reason. In May 2008, a series of xenophobic attacks accompanied by widespread looting and vandalism left at least 62 people dead, 1,700 injured and 100,000 displaced in South Africa. The violence began in Alexandra in Johannesburg after a local community meeting at which migrants were blamed for crime and for “stealing” jobs. Some pop singers sang then a special song, a great hit called "Wag-'n-bietjie, wait a little bit", like the tree and the fact that when people are planted in such a soil, they must identify with the nature and surely with the care of waiting some time, a little bit. The following year, in 2009, South Africa recovered economically for the first time in 17 years of turmoil.



"When you have suffered just a little bit, I shall reinstall you..." (1 Peter 5,10) is a key word in the Gospel that complies with the Talmud thought and makes sense in Jerusalem and the Land. There is a tree, and if the psalmist says we are like trees, we may have to behave like the Ziziphus i.e. like the Wag-'n-biejtiebos.



av aleksandr (in my South African blog "Cradle of the World/Wieg van die Wêreld)





August 20/8, 2010 - 10 Ellul 5770 - 10 RamaDHaan 1431

Hebrew in the Church: celebration in Jerusalem

It is evident that, in Israel, we live in a country, also in Jerusalem, where "dreams come true" and have to come true, in ways that are often unforeseeable. These are the famous words of Theodor Benyamin Ze'ev Herzl whose 150th anniversary of the birth is commemorated in the country. as readily mentioned on several occasions, some time ago we could celebrate the 153 anniversary of the birth of Eliezer Ben Yehudah in the Empire of Russia, in Belorussia and Lithuania, the reviver of the Modern Hebrew language. And this year we als could mention Schalom Aleichem, the famous Yiddish writer and Scholem Asch, whom I had met in the 80ies, one of the best Yiddish writers and special character inside of Judaism, on the verge of some Jewish understanding of Oriental Christianity as it was also the case for Marc Chagall.

"Ich habe einen Traum = I have a dream" does not exactly sound as it echoes in the Talmud Berachot 55b "chalom chalamti = חלום חלמתי ": I dreamt a dream and then the dream,( by a specific encounter between East European and Slavic and Jewish Talmudic spirits) allows to jump into impossible challenges because miracles are natural". Especially if they proceed of a call to implement and carry out actions that are "free", do not try to show off, certainly not our pride or arrogance. The revival of a language has a tremendous significance for all of human intellectual and human, psychological, religious, comportemental, selective choices and meaning of what we are intended to do.

As a young Jewish child, I have frequented Herzl, Eliezer Ben Yehudah (along with Joseph Trumpeldor and the Rav Kook, with whom it is supposed we had a connection via Rav Frenkel) since my early age. I met with Marc Chagall as a child for family connections and much later as a lecturer in Yiddish, just as it also happened with Scholem Asch who died at the outskirts of Judaism because of his tendencies to describe, from inside, a special Christian life in full parallel with the tradition Judaism he had known and depicted.

When I entered the Church, the first thing I did was to translate the Holy Prayers into Yiddish. There may be several reasons for this. The purpose was definitely not connected, as regards my position to any sort of proselytism among the Jews at whatever level or age; my inner experience of a profound and extant Judaism would never have accepted things like that. Christianity for the Jews must certainly not become or be proposed as a "Zulu Bushmen creed, faith or way to salvation and redemption". Similarly, it is somehow a bit ridiculous to prented, thos it is historically totally correct and extact, that the Jews are the "natives" of the Church. Indeed, the first disciples were Jewish; maybe things were a bit more somphisticated with regards to the faithful. But this "Zulu and Bushmen" compararison had been given to me by my colleague and senior professor of Yiddsh, a trained linguist, who as many Jews in the Universties, never would accept to convert to Christianity but had a sort of intense and interior understanding of the Gospel and Christendom. Hearing I got converted, he slapped me, which I considered as a norma lact. He then told me I should immediately join the "Judaism's regular "Salvation Army" and wear a hat. I got the Dollar many years afterwards.

He read the translations and found it was nice and rooted in Judaism. I mean that when we speak Yiddish, we do not speak any Indo-European dialect or language. The "Mume-laush'n" includes about 22 languages and dialects from Western and Eastern Europe, from Bavarian, Niederdeutsch, Slavic, Romanian, Turkish, Greek, French and even Breton, and so much more via Aramaic and Hebrew and the Semitic languages as a whole. But these are for sounds and lights, or appearance, let's say often true and false friends in terms of etymology and meanings. "Heint/היינט " apparently means "today" and indeed comes from German "Heute", but it basically refers to "today as eve of tomorrow", which has a liturgical "evening-morning" significance and roots and drives the day in other Weltanschauung than found or understood in the European cultural area... through not foreign at all.

The real reason why I translated the texts into Yiddish was firstly I made a sort of Memorail, though the Divine Liturgy and the Service always intend to be "memorials" in the Jewish and Christian traditions, which creates an immense spiritual connection between them that cannot weighed by some odd comparison system.

Yiddish had dropped into the terrible bloodsheds of War War II. We were many to think that it would survive due to its huge importance in the spiritual scope of Jewish world conception and analyzing the Talmud and the whole of the Oral and Written Traditions. But it was not that evident some 35 years ago. Today, things are clearer and Yiddish will survive and may even develop, indeed it might be difficult to continue on the tradition Kanaan (Poland and Eastern Europe) basis.

Secondly, I may have translated the texts of the Prayers because it was a way to understand their spiritual meaning in depths. I often quote this example of a young catechumen confided to my wife to be baptized. She was of a very well educated Afghan family and her sister, who did not convert but accept to be present to her baptism, used to talk with my wife. One thing, she would scarsely accept as a catechumen - though definitely a full "Christian believer" - was that God can pardon sins. The ingraved sense of Islam showed up at once. I asked a famous Orientalist to get a Persian version of the Gospel and I guess we even got a Pashto short version. She read it thoroughly and started to ask questions to my wife and very quickly got to the meaning of sin and forgiveness of sins in the Gospel and the Words of Jesus. There are things that need to be clarified in your own cultural mother tongue, other wise ideas can continue to hip hop the wrong way. This happens quite often with a lot of converts and should be carefully taken into consideration before approaching any Jewish soul.

I dedicate my life to Hebrew in the Church. This includes the language and the Jewish languages, but mainly the cultural approach, tradition, way of thinking, analyzing, considering the world and the environment, our contexts - even the Christian reality - as a consequence of the specific Jewish ever-extant and significant, pertinent, meaningful envisionings of faith and Divine realities. We have formed chains of generations of different clergy and teachers, professors who decided to get into such a "border line" position. This is why I had the great chance to be with Fr. Kurt Hruby and Mgr Georgyi Rochcau. Both introduced me to the realm of a limit situation and how to face it with faith, courage and confidence and some realism. But again, I could do that because they were the "historical" links of the chain that tracks back to the first centuries and wil anywayl be carried over in the future.

I have always believed in "Hebrew in the Church" and have composed at the demand of late Cardinal J.M. Lustiger a specific Oriental Euchology book ("The Sacrifice of Thanks giving") rooted in the Oriental Traditions and published for the use of special Judaeo-Christian groups in the Church (1989). I had the promise to come to Israel that I alwayas have considered as my only home country and serve here. It took some more time. But the direciton has always been trustful to the line governing unity through the In gathering of the Exiled in Eretz Israel, firstly, then by the in gathering of some intermingled gorups of various Western and Eastern rite tradition of the Church that, in Jerusalem only can be "Catholic and Orthodox = open to the plenitude/fulfillment-plerome" giving the sens of the "true faith, the authentic faith".

I also focused on a possible meaning of the Church that is not that common for the moment but should be studied in the forthcoming decades and generations, in particular in Israel. That the Klal Israel/כלל ישראל or "Great Assembly of the Fulfillment of the Communities of Israel" is extending to the world Nations and is on the way to move forward and not backward, ahead of the fulfillment of the Divine Community of Israel that invisibly and without much awareness from both sides incude the Church and the Jewish People as a wholeness and ONE and Unique achievement.

Thus, language plays an immense role in such a development. Language is the medium human beings have at their disposal to scrutizine and scan, survey, study, examine, detect, get insights about the whole of mental and invisible scopes of various realities that should never be framed or sterilized in dogmas. This confers a huge important to the ancient religious speeches, parlances, words and tongues. This has definitely marked our "tekufah/תקופה - era and civilization" as being the time of Sumerian civilization with regards to "Oneness of God and Divine Revelation".

All through my life I have studied the different meanings that link traumas and psychological damages (nezikin/נזיקין ) and spiritual "survival". This is an important feature. We often -especially in Israel - consider history as a series of fragmented events that are linked in a row of historically traceable facts. We do not feel how much our brains "are surviving" various fractions, splits and we are not entitled to judge who is first or last or why this happens here and not there . This is the for the moment invisible part or portion of our human development.

This is why the manifold layers that constitute our history are often scattered much wider into other splits because we do not consider the factor of memory or we change "election" into a stiff background; it is merely an "element for the future or "forthground"!

Most "Holy, sacred, divinely inspired" languages have shown a rare tendency to "become like fossiles or rigid, stiff, normalized, standardized according to sophisticated patterns. Some languages have disappeared, other are maintained articifially or along to another more vivid form of dialects. It is supposed that, in the monotheist world, languages have died out. Usually this (partly wrongly) refers to Latin, Sasncrit, Coptic, Gheez, Church Armenian, Syriac/some forms of Aramaic and others languages. This does not apply to Arabic or to Slavonic. Of course, Latin has ceased to be a colloquial tongue, but, normally, in the Church and in different countries in according to oppcupations, it can be used for writing or even sharing ideas: priests, Russian doctors, I often met with German lawyers woh had "fluent possible Latin". It happens to speak Ltin in the Old City of Jerusalem.

The case of Greek is very interesting because it is supposedly and until now the real language of the Gospel since we know that the Gospels were written in Greek. We did not find any comparable Syriac version. On the other hand, Aramaic texts seem to show a real Aramaic substract to the Greek, even if the text were written down much later.

The Greek parlance of the Bible and the Gospel is due to Jews. This is clear for the Septuagint. In the case of the Gospel and the Epistles or the Acts of the Apostles, the Greek New testament language is full of Semitism and errors with regards to the classical Greek grammatical rules. We cannot speak of a Judeo-Gospel Greek as there was a Judeo-Greek dialect at Corfu, for instance. On the other hand, it is quite possible that a lot of mental parameters induced in the Semitic Hebrew and Jewish speech entered the Greek Gospel tongue, juste as the Greek language did enter the language of the Talmud significantly.

Interestingly, Slavonic was created by Cyrill and Methodios from a Bulgarian or "Ukrainian-like" then rather Central if not Dalmatian slavic dialect and developed over the centuries of inculturation and Christendom into a real tongue. The language continues to vivdly nurture the faithful. It has a mental and cultural impact that show the line of civilization split that is persistent between Western and Eastern Christianity, but also, curiously enough, inside of European Judaic ways of thinking.

The Slavonic liturgical texts are basically - though definitely not always - a word-to-word copy of the originally proposed Greek version. One of the major difficulties for the Slavic faithful of the Orthodox Church at the present, in the context of more freedom, is to switch with precision and adequacy from the Old united Slavonic speech to God to the local languages. The Russian Church has been very careful in this process. It has always had over the past century, different personalities and individuals who sketched out how to produce a correct and suitable translation.

Many translators are thus drifted toward the Latin and Roman Catholic Church. Interestingly, the Russian version of the Credo" for the Catholic Latin rite is a duplicate from the Polish version and words. Per se, the thing maybe understood. It could be possible to propose a common Catholic/Orthodox Russian version resolving the Filioque as it always had been in the Ukraine, for example. In reality, each version does not only refer to a specific Church as such, but to a specific "mentality". This makes a huge difference.

The language is a living sign of life and life-giving. Thsi is why the traditional Church languages aim to preserve keep and maintain the unity among the faithful. It is a sort of spiritual care, based on fixed and vivid word of God. Hebrew has the same as in Sota 1,7 that states that God understands all languages but would prefer to be addressed in Hebrew. Beyond the mental aspect, we have to take into account the "divine-inspired" prospect that is a major factor.

I was recently asked by a Greek priest to teach him some Talmud. His explanation is very much at the heart of the whole problem of free prayer and attitude to God and some stiff aspects due to "preferred election". He explained that he was willing to learn the Talmud in order to understand how the jews think and proceed to think the way they do!

This should be respected as an attitude because we all behave, to some point, in the same way. He speaks current Hebrew. There is no reason for him not to understand the Hebrew he hears within the Israeli society. Still, he feels there is something more. I asked him why he wanted to learn Talmud and Talmudic Hebrew. He then said that "he wants to understand the way the Jews think because it is incumbent upon the Greeks, as having received in Greek the message of Jesus Christ, to get into the special way of reasoning of the Jews. And having gotten to the core to be able to "translate and explain" to them the reality of Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Savior."

Such a discussion belongs to moments of grace: they allow to understand the profound estrangement procedure that does not only affect the Greeks. At least, it is honest and this attitude is more than current in the Slavic world today or the Orthodox way of trying to convert any soul. It has not disappeared at all from the Western and Roman Catholic Church and it cannot disappear because it is a tremendous mental and spiritual reflexive reaction. It put clear where the gaps are and remain "put".

In the case of Hebrew, the language we speak today in the State of Israel is of course a strongly Semitically grounded tongue or dialect. It is new. it has been chosen not to oblige to special directions. In the course of the decades, I could feel the important development of the speech and writing within the society. The case is considered as unique and is indeed because of the fact that it allows today to bridge together people of all possible backgrounds and personal biographies. This is definitely a special miracle with regards to Judaism as the Body of the Klal Israel. It suddenly woke up something that has always been kept alive (and this is the major point) and now germinates ahead of something that we hardly can anticipate. Both a theological an a colloquial language. When we participate to any public debate, it is interesting to note the strong connection between secular and spiritual speech, Old, Biblical, Talmudic Hebrew and the new "half-Slavic or East-European dialect of Hebrew origin" that is developing.

This is the second aspect of Hebrew today. Is it the Biblical tongue or something else? Prof. Wexley suggests that Hebrew has revived with strong Slavic and East-European and Yiddish influences. Eliezer Ben Yehudah as also those who decided to speak Hebrew came from the Yiddishland. There is no doubt that there is indeed an extraordinary interconnection that showed historically between this part of European multi-cultural and pluri-religious substracts. Indeed, Modern Hebrew sounds very often closer to some Yiddish-translated dialect with some spices of pan-Semitic inputs.

I have always been convinced of this very deep and meaningful connection that also could link Judaism and Christianity. Usually people can misunderstand. On the one hand, there are indeed, very important connections between Hesychasm and the Russian Byzantine Church. This is also to be felt in the Greek texts. But then we speak of a spiritual proximity between two different and separate religions. They are not only separated, they are estranged and they are framed by mutual ignorace and most often "long-distanced hatred systems".

But Yiddish is much more the possible linguistic link that could have allowed a sort of encounter between Judaism and Chrsitendom in these regions of the East. It failed. It remains that, even in its aversion toward Christianity, Yiddish has a lot of phrases, expressions, words, often also present in the Talmud or used to explain it, that are found in daily speech and normal linguistic use. Hebrew is too "hieratic" and "astray" from any appertaining. It is the language of the Jewish people and has always remained. Yiddish is the language the jews took among the Nations and combined with Talmud and their special spirit in order to include the world of Judaism in a reality that bridges the two people of the Jews and the Gentiles. This has a very powerful Church or spiritual and Israel Community aspect of plenitude.

It is not sure that the Churches are able to comprehend with such a dimension, and definitely not at the present in the State of Israel. On the other hand there is something more that may have a much deeper significance over the decades to come.

Towards the middle of the 19th century, most Churches have tried to convert all the "pagan" nations and the Jews. The Catholic Church got largely belated because of the importance of Latin that had erased local tongues and ecclesiastical rites. In 1841, the Russian Orthodox Synod of Moscow, i.e. previously to the reinstallation of the Patriarchate of Moscow by the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, accepted and blessed to celebrated the Divine Liturgy and the Service of the Russian Orthodox Church in both Hebrew and Russian. The text dated 1841, was due to Fr. D. Levinson who the nserved in Jerusalem. This is the text I have always used for the prayer for two major reasons.

To begin with, the text is and remains official and has been accepted by an official and large body of the Eastern Orthodox Church and seemingly also accepted by the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem at that time.

It makes more sense to use with slights updates an official text rather than darfting different translations. It is an act of faith in the Church "unity". Till new versions - maybe only one - could be accepted and blesssed by the official Church authorities.

There is more: 169 years ago, with a project of conversion of the Jews that is profoundly under question as such in the State of Israel for different reasons, Fr. Levinson could instinctively make use of the Talmudic and Rabbinical language to translate the liturgical texts of the Russian Orthodox Church. Bishop Salomon Alexander Pollack, the first Anglican bishop of Jerusalem in the same years (a former chasan, cantor), also used tradiitonal and Talmudic lexicon. It gives to their translation a sound an a spirit of authenticity and not of some odd "Zulu-like" pidgin essay of inculturation.

The other Western rite Churches are not in such a position. They mainly "refuse if not reject" the Oriental rites that were born from Jerusalem and the Middle-East. I have the text in Aramaic of the Liturgy of Mar Yaakov/Saint James in hebrew script that was used by the small first group of Roman Catholics around 1952. Mgr Eugène Tisserant had convinced Pope Pius X they should be allowed to pray in Hebrew. The Pope had then asked "if Hebrew is a liturgical language"? The cardinal had answered by a question: "Holy Father, in which language was it written on the Cross that Jesus is the king of the Jews?". The Pope admitted it was in Hebrew, Latin and Greek (John 19: 19) and subsequently decided to accept that the brothers could pray in teh Assyrian-Chaldean rite that is the closest to the Hebrew tradition. The community chose rather quickly to switch to the Western and Latin rite in common language.

Is Hebrew a liturgical language for Christianity? This is indeed a real question. It interrogates about how Christians can use Jewish terms to confess, explain, teach and discuss of the reality of the faith that has been condemned and rejected by the Jewish Community. This "excommunication" has not been cancelled or denied by the Jews and it is far too early to consider any possible and substantial change in this matter.

On the other hand, something special happens and continue to show in the new, recent and Modern State of Israel. The language, Hebrew, is riviving and getting reinvigorated. It tracks back to the most ancient times and makes it in a way that, evidently, questions the world. Which nation has ever pretended to be at home in a place their ancestors had left over two thousands years ago. Beyond any political views, this simply challenges our understanding of "belonging, being at home over time, inculturation, survival and development, apparent erasing and new sprouting".

But then, the Eastern Orthodox Church is placed in a special context as also the East-European societies. Hebrew has been used in the Orthodox Church before the birth of Eliezer Ben Yehudah and Theodore Herzl (who has not always been likely to support the use of Hebrew)!

When we served in Hebrew according to the blessed version at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Jerusalem on June 12th with the blessing of Patriarch Theophilos III and of the Russian ecclesiastical Moscow Patriarchate, it was the first time, at our common knowledge, that the text also "revived" with local Israeli choir members, in a living Hebrew spirit and bridging the Slavic cultures that are so intimately intertwined on this earth.

We have felt totally at home and not like guests. Fully welcome and more faithful had come, just because it was a Saturday and the opportunity to participate in the Divine Liturgy. There was a visible and very emotional feeling of doing something we could not even anticipate. We are not in a period of great theological or ecumenical dialogue. But here, this was not the point: everyone felt it was "normal", obvious".

It was normal to hear the main parts of the Liturgy in Hebrew and some slavonic litanies and prayers. It was norma lto read the Gospel in Hebrew and normal to hear some words of a sermon in Russia nand Hebrew. It was more a real moment of "One Church of Jerusalem". Just having a look at the faithful, it was obvious that they were intermingled, Jews, Hebrew Christians, Gentiles, former Soviets and others, certainly some people going to different places. But the place was simply there that morning.

What will be next? God gives in due time. But the point is that on that Saturday, the memory of the local Church of Jerusalem tracked back, beyond all acts of hatred, persecutions, pogroms, extermination, ignorance, slander, destruction, to the original text that preceeded the birth of Eliezer Ben Yehudah, the reviver of Modern Hebrew, himself being a man from this Slavic area.

It is important that memory could also be "revived" in a positive sense: we took from old and felt it is new.

Av Aleksandr (Winogradsky Frenkel)

17 - 4 of June 2010 - 5 deTamuz 5770 / ה' דתמוז תש''ע

Qui a le mot de passe

(from abbaa blog in the daily LE MONDE)
A nouveau, il n’y a plus de saison en Terre de Canaan et d’Israël… Les températures varient en un printemps qui bourgeonne comme les amandiers tôt en fleurs près de l’hôpital de Hadassah, non loin de Eyn Karem. L’autobus serpente vers les nouveaux bâtiments de l’université-faculté de médecine. La route peut aussi descendre vers le monastère russe « Gorninskii » juché sur la paisible colline.

Hadassah-Eyn Karem est sans doute le signe le plus limpide de ce que l’Église pourrait être en tant qu’ « Ecclesia universa - Qahal rav = Convocation de tous les êtres et Grande Assemblée ». C’est une certitude qui s’est vite imposée depuis le temps que j’y conduis les malades aux urgences, visite les malades et surtout les enfants leucémiques. La plupart viennent de Biélorussie (Belarus), d’Ukraine ou de Grèce. Quelques enfants ou jeunes adultes passent parfois de nombreux mois dans ce havre de soins… Ils meurent trop rapidement.

Un peu tout le monde, toutes origines confondues, vient se détendre à la source où, selon le christianisme, Marie, mère de Jésus rencontra sa cousine Élisabeth qui était enceinte de six mois. Une rencontre pleine de promesses de vie pour deux femmes, l’une vierge, l’autre stérile. L’une était trop jeune, Élisabeth était âgée. Il y eut un sursaut du bébé Jean dans le ventre de sa mère à la rencontre avec la jeune cousine ; comme au temps où Rébecca sentit les jumeaux (Jacob et Esaü) bondirent dans le sein maternel à l’orée de Karem, dans ces lieux mêmes, lorsqu’ils perçurent le bruissement l’enseignement sur la Parole de Dieu… « ruminée » par anticipation de la révélation au Sinaï, pleine de vie fraîche comme les prés de Karem (les anciens vignobles alentour).

La Parole fait vivre ; des mots peuvent tuer. C’est banal, commun. La tradition juive insiste sur le fait que la langue est l’un des plus petits muscles. Mais son mouvement, combiné en une cavité appropriée et singulière, articule des sons d’une façon inexplicable. Ces sons lient consonnes et voyelles en des mélodies prétendument harmonieuses, des tonalités qui s’accouplent en de riches tessitures. Le langage bruite pour bénir. Il peut maudire. Il peut tuer. Vocables et lexiques sont souvent riches, opulents. Ils peuvent être concis et s’affirmer avec profondeur. La concision peut électriser des significations claires, précises ou, au contraire, exprimer, comme dans les tchats virtuels, un code simplifié à l’extrême.

Ernest Renan soulignait avec justesse que l’hébreu est « une langue à lettres comptées, mais ce sont des lettres de feu » (Histoire des Langues Sémitiques). L’hébreu — comme toutes les langues sémitiques — apprécie la brièveté, comme beaucoup de langues acérées au sacré comme des flèches directes. En hébreu, les sons restent succincts. Curieusement, les jeunes blogueurs venus d’ex-Union Soviétique préfèrent la richesse de phonèmes tendres et contrastés du slave dont la grammaire et le lexique leur paraissent bien plus étendus, nuancés sinon enracinés dans des terres immenses comme le mystère de l’âme.

Le rabbin Shneur Zalman de Lyadi, initateur du mouvement Lubavitch ou CHaBaD (Sagesse, intelligence distinctive, conscience/connaissance/foi) a ainsi décrit, dans son livre-clé « Tanya » (« Enseignement » en araméen) un exploit du Créateur.

Ce miracle inexplicable unit la cavité buccale à la langue, la luette, le pharynx et les cordes vocales et résonne par des sonorités intelligibles, voire cohérentes, parfois maitrisées, souvent insaisissables. Et tout cela est émis par notre genre humain sous forme de langues qui se font écho les unes aux autres comme la musique d’âmes dont on ne distinguerait pas le chef d’orchestre.

Pendant la liturgie byzantine orientale, le célébrant s’apprête à chanter le Trisagion/Sanctus ou la Triple Sainteté de Dieu. Il prononce ces mots: « chantant (comme les oiseaux), criant (animaux), s’exclamant/rugissant (fauves) et disant (la parole humaine ayant sens)» ces paroles « Saint, Saint, Saint, le Seigneur Dieu de l’univers » (Isaïe 6,3). La source hébraïque met l’accent sur les anges (invisibles) qui s’interpellent dans le monde visible. Il s’agit bien d’une évolution qui affirme un « chant sonore et progressivement cohérent ». Il part du cri animal et culmine dans la parole chargée de sens. Il y a aussi les intonations : le miaulement d’un chat semble dialoguer avec d’autres félidés ou des humains. En yiddish, il y a 19 manières de prononcer l’interjection « Nou! », ce qui peut conduire à une véritable conversation animée sur syllabe pour tons et contre-tons.

Il reste que la faculté d’émettre des sons et de leur donner sens est un don unique dont l’être humain use et abuse sans vergogne. « Toute parole dite est mensonge » affirme un poète russe. En Israël, sans doute pour des raisons socioculturelles, le dialogue s’établit par le regard et reste vague dans des conversations qui semblent ne rien dire d’intime ou de profond.

La tonalité humaine exprime et maille l’oral et l’écrit, le dire et la pensée « par parole, action, volonté, conscience ou inconscience, sentiments ou passions » (sources de la tradition juive aux mots des traditions chrétiennes). Et le Tanya rendait implicite ce que l’analyse continue de scruter : sons et mots peuvent être inversés, rouler sur eux-mêmes, cacher des intentions. Ils conduisent souvent à se méprendre entre l’audio, le vidéo, le sonore et le muet, le silence.

Pendant les semaines de Carême ou Grand Jeûne, les Églises byzantines orientales (orthodoxes et catholiques) introduisent une belle prière attribuée à Saint Éphrem le Juste d’Edesse dont on connaît le texte en grec et en slavon sans original syriaque. Le texte est magnifique de perspicacité humaine et de recherche de divines :

« Seigneur et Maître de ma vie, ne me donne pas un esprit de paresse, de curiosité (indiscrétion), d’ambition (vain désir de pouvoir) et de (vaines) paroles (bavardage). /

Veuille accorder à ton serviteur un esprit de sagesse (sophrosune = non “chasteté”, mais “pleine conscience”), d’humilité, de patience et d’amour (charité). /

Oui, Seigneur mon Roi, donne-moi de voir mes (propres) fautes et de ne pas juger mon frère. Car Tu es béni pour les siècles des siècles. Amen. »

On notera le caractère sémitique du texte qui pourrait être prononcé par tout croyant monothéiste, comme le « Notre-Père ». Il va d’emblée à l’essentiel de ce qui constitue l’universel et s’adresse au tréfonds de l’être.

Différentes versions ont été utilisées dans les traditions slaves, soulignant « l’appétit des richesses ». On a souvent mis l’accent sur la paresse, la déliquescence de la volonté, des sens faits de perceptions ou de capacités psychologiques. De même, la chasteté ne peut se réduire à une dimension sexuelle ou physique.

Prenons le cas de cette marée pédophile « cléricale » qui sort des mémoires dans le monde anglo-saxon, scandinave, germanique, néerlandais, autrichien. On oublie soudain les terribles bourrasques causées par des pervers mariés ou en couples de Belgique et de France. Là, les sociétés néerlando-alémaniques ont été profondément frappées par « l’ouverture à la sexualité ». Il suffit de vivre un peu dans ces pays pour sentir à quel point le rapport à la chair est perçu différemment de ce qui est une réalité universelle. Les cultures « latines » vivent autrement l’émergence du sexe comme s’imposant par imprégnations massives dans la société. La société israélienne affronte ces mêmes démons qui se nichent encore dans les cavernes les plus archaïques.

Il faudrait mettre alors en parallèle les profondes crises économiques, les banqueroutes financières. Il va de chaos moraux ; alors que des milliards sont injectés pour sauver l’édifice international, l’Islande, l’Irlande sont pratiquement en faillite — tout comme, à d’autres niveaux les États-Unis et en ce moment la Grèce. On colmate les brèches sans résoudre les situations.

La spiritualité invite alors à regarder ce que cela peut bien signifier que d’être sage, sans désir de puissance et parler de manière positive, constructive. Le professionnalisme des religieux est tel qu’il peut s’abîmer dans des flots de bonnes paroles. La Parole bâtit, les bonnes paroles peuvent stériliser, tuer ou blesser. L’âme est tellement fragile, ténue et assoiffée ! La « coachisation » sous forme de perroquetage, de reprints, de cooptation, voire de « formatisation » conduit à des périls redoutables. L’être humain languit jusqu’au fantasme après la liberté. Il est bien plus lourd de trouver son équilibre. Il est quasi héroïque de ne juger personne.

Si le célibat des prêtres et des évêques relevait uniquement de décisions humaines et historiques connus, il serait absurde, réduisant Dieu et les sociétés à des marionnettes. Lorsqu’Eve est menée à Adam, Dieu lui donne de parler enfin car il n’avait pas de « créature semblable ». L’image est puissante, car Adam trouve une interlocutrice.

Les juifs insistent sur la séparation de l’homme et de la femme mariée. Le discernement se porte sur le calendrier physiologique de la femme. Aux jours de « petits Kippourim » au début de chaque mois puis au Jour de Grand Pardon-Expiation, le jeûne et la cessation de relations sexuelles impriment une compréhension autre du temps.

Le prêtre marié orthodoxe ou catholique oriental — avec l’ensemble des fidèles (!) — sont invités à jeûner et suspendre les relations intimes avant d’aller célébrer l’Eucharistie, la Résurrection. Ils ne vont pas chanter avec art et/ou conviction ou tiédeur. Seule l’intime conviction de la foi peut conduire à une conduite pareille.

La chasteté ne s’oppose pas alors à la conscience droite et pure. Il n’est pas question de déviances ou de fantasmes. D’autres portes s’ouvrent à ceux qui ont le don de la parole.

Qui a le mot de passe ?

Av Aleksandr [Winogradsky Frenkel]

17/4 mars 2010 — 2 nisan 5770 — 1 Baby al-THaany 1431

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updated March5/February 19 2010 - אדר א' י''ט תש''ע

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65 ans sont comme mille ans, le jour d'hier - LeMonde.fr

65 ans sont comme mille ans, le jour d'hier - LeMonde.fr

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Metropolitan Andrii Sheptytskyi: 65 anniversary of his repose

Metropolitan Andrii Sheptytskyi: 65 anniversary of his repose

On Saturday, November 1, 2008, I published this note. Today, one year later, it is the 65th anniversary of the repose of this great man of the Church. It should be noted, that certainly for various reasons, this “deadline” date is not that mentioned. The problem is not to know whether Metropolitan Sheptytskyi was a Greek Catholic Ukrainian head of a Church that pathetically suffered during world war II and of course before. The point is the width, length, breadth, the in-depth insights that this remarkable servant of God has shown during his life.

I refuse to fence him in his “national” Church or inside the Eastern Catholic Rites. The Ukraine is a place of hardships at the moment. This concerns the political situation but also and mainly the sort of permanent “split” and taming process that shows in this place of God-seeking experience. I had underscored that Israel is a real social and political laboratory as Ukraine is in many ways. The personal destiny of Metropolitan Andrii meets with all the various elements that connect Judaism, Israel and The Ukrainian Church between Orthodoxy and other tendencies.

Present-day rlationships between Ukraine and Israel are somehow difficult. The late Metropolitan had written and thought a lot on his part and he saved a lot, extraordinary number of Jews in outstanding situaitons and actions. This should continue to pave the way for real dialogue.

°°°°°°°°°°

Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytskyi / Слуга Б. митр. Андрей Шептицький of L’viv-L’vov/Львiв=Льов-Łwów-Lemberg\לביב-לעמבערג of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church passed away 65 years ago on November 1st [Greg. cal.]/Oct. 19 [Julian cal.] , 1944 - Heshvan 15, 5705 - ט”ו דחשון תש”ה. He was born in Prylbychi to an old Ukrainian family that then belonged to the Polish Roman Catholic noblesse. He decided to return to the Oriental rite, reinvigorated the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, revived the Basilian Studite Byzantine tradition, wrote and preached in Ukrainian. He was made a bishop in 1899 (Stanyslaviv). Assigned metropolitan of Lviv in 1900.

A Polish Ukrainian-born in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire then under Ukrainan self-ruled short period of independence, heading his Church over Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Belorussia, Romania and the related diasporas, he was in jail under the tsarist regime (1914-1917), he had to face the Ukrainian civil war during the Bolshevik and Soviet period, then the first German occupation, the Nazi invasion, the Soviet rule.

During the Russian revolution, he heartedly welcomed in his monastery of Lviv his former jailer-keeper, Archbishop Eulogyi [and Abp. Vladimir] appointed by the Moscow Orthodox Patriarch St. Tikhon (murdered in 1927). He obtained the required documents for these two envoys of Patriarch Tikhon, which allowed them taking spiritual care of the Russian Orthodox refugees in Western Europe. Before World War I, he visited the Holy Land with groups of pilgrims. He also organized the Ukrainian Church in North and South America. He surely helped the Orthodox Church to get organized at the beginning of the 20th century, when for the first time after centuries, East and West rediscovered their heritage and roots. This slowly shows up at the present in the long series of encounters and missed rendezvous. He gave the example of conveying a constant dialogue with others, which is so important at the moment. He was a man inspirited by eternity.

He had been given special rights by the Popes from the very beginning of his ministry. They were confirmed by Pope Pius XII in order to resolve on his own the unbelievable confusing situation during World War II in his territory. During WWII, being lame in a wheel-chair, he conducted a permanent Synod sending “pastoral messages and letters” that were read in his eparchy/diocese of Ukraine. In his “труди - [Works]”, he fought all the then ongoing spiritual, moral, ethical, societal conflicts of a profoundly affected region. His famous pastoral letter “не убий - [Thou shalt not kill- לא תרצח “] ” condemned anti-Semitism and the deportation of the Jews.

Metropolitan Andrei fluently spoke many languages, i.a. French, German, English, Russian, read and spoke Hebrew and Yiddish (as late Moscow Patriarch Tikhon also did and showed when he was the Metropolitan of Vilnius). He had frequent meetings with Chief Rabbi Lewyn of Lviv who was murdered by the Nazis. He saved the son of the Rabbi and thousands of Jewish people. After the Shoah, the son of the Chief Rabbi, Kurt Lewyn, described his remarkable attitude in a book “A Journey through Illusions”. He is the only head of the Church who directly protested to Himmler and then Hitler [telexes] against the deportation, mass murder and extermination of the Jews. In the meanwhile he also had to face the Nazis and the Communists, being totally isolated though assisted by his brother Fr. Klement and a wide network of assistants. He was a man of prestige and unusual spiritual insights that influenced far beyond the framework of his own Church. He was a man of knowledge, a theologian, “a man beyond all standards/norms” as stated Prof. Gutman (specialist of the Shoah) in a meeting I attended some years ago in Jerusalem. There were few people of good will, a survivor and a specialist of his exceptional biography.

His brother Klement has been canonized by the Roman Catholic Church and recognized as a “Righteous among the Nations” by the Israeli Institute of Yad VaShem. The cause for the recognition of the unique attitude of the late Metropolitan was opened in the Roman Church on December 5, 1958. It is still pending: he has been denied by all parts although the prestige of his actions and positions are widely known. His personality was much respected: he died on November 1st, 1944. Stalin did not dare touch him or do take any action till the end of the 40 days of mourning. It appears that the Soviets deported the clergy and decided to erase his memory.

For years, I have been in contact with those in charge of his recognition. Metropolitan Andrei was considered by his flock as “the national [Ukrainian] Moses - рідним Мойсеєм”; he was definitely not a narrow-minded or stubborn nationalist. In the most hideous times of confused sequences of horrible periods, he became a true and outstanding witness. This deals with our own problems. Firstly in Israel: a rare man of knowledge and insightful prophetic views about the existence of the Jewish people in his area. His views about social care and welfare, dignity and ethics, economy and politics. He undoubtedly knew and experienced the in-depth meaning of true Christianity submitted to real vital faith and an incredible fighter for the life of every human being.

It will take a lot of time to understand such a character who confronted all sorts of paradoxes and messy events that continue to affect the development of the world today. He spoke with the words of his generation. He remains tremendously astounding in the present. We often think that we are open-minded and “universal” but we get afraid; then we frame, fence and block ourselves in all possible ways in our quest for identity, revenge or ignorance. Metropolitan Sheptytskyi never forced to foreign or alien creeds. He respected the souls and protected numerous peoples, in particular the Jews during the period of a full idolatry period of apostasy.

His writings and social activities should be a plus for Israel that encompasses the whole of the diversified multi-faceted aspects of humans that came from the Ukraine as survivors of the “Holodomor - голодомор” (mass murder through hunger in the Ukraine 1932-35). The Supreme Soviet intentionally assassinated through famine all the nations in Ukraine, to begin with the locals and Jews, Czechs, Gypsies and other peoples.

This is why the peaceful construction of a Jewish State will someday - in due time, when it will be a bit accessible for our faculties to reach out to the uniqueness of such a rare personality and man of faith. At this point, we are all, striving against the shading devils that have split our unity as human beings. It is not a time of opacity or blindness. We are marching in the future in the pangs of a long-term birthing process.

65 years ago, a man passed the borderline that connects the world of beneath and the world of above by witnessing in silence to the hope of his faith. There are borders and lines that constantly seem to postpone full understanding of out-the-way souls in exceptional situations. This happens with regards to Andrei Sheptytskyi. Still, his repose leads us onto a journey that will overcome one day the many illusions that continue to harm and hurt our generation. Contradiction is often a sign of positive struggle for life.

av aleksandr [winogradsky frenkel]

November 1st/October 19th, 2009 - י”ד דחשון תש”ע

Bereishit 5770

Acharei hachagim\אחרי החגים: "when the feasts are over" is a popular saying and a refreshing song full of true nostalgia and a touch of shmaltz, sort of mixed excessive emotional mush combined with some banality. The other folk's best is then "geshem-גשם/rain", the yearly hit that "will enable us to continue to march on the way"... It is quite amusing how Israeli society that may be crafty suddenly falls into a state of pathetic needs to be cuddled and pampered with a touch of childlike desires to be overprotected. Fall can be indeed a time of transition. A bit red as some of our hair cuts of the automnal leaves: "'s fal'n di bleter\ס'פאלן די בלעטער - the leaves are falling" is also an after world war II hit firstly sung by Yves Montand in French, then in Yiddish... Yossi Banai made it in Hebrew... "Listopad-лiснопад" means "November" in Ukrainian and Polish and means "leaf fall". The approaching month of Marcheshvan\מרחשון is thus a time of "sweeping away old stuff" and regular fasting days paving the way for the clarity of Kislev and the Feast of the Lights (Chanukkah).

It is very trendy to feel down. Of course, e.g. we live in a society that is approximately contented. This was shown in a recent poll and the Israelis are definitely optimistic compared to the way they are looked at from abroad as living in a threatening and dead-end situation. But as regards privacy, we respond with constant equanimity that is on the verge of puzzling perplexity. Just try the poll. It is very forward to play with insightful polls. Just ask: "How are you doing?" to some ordinary anonymous Israel inhabitants. Whatever tongue, the respond is: “Good - beseder - tayeb/kwayes (Arabic version = to:yeb in Jerusalem) - sheyn". The Russian-speaking inmates would tend to say "normal'no\нормально (normal = seemingly good)" but if you continue the poll, Russian will turn to "bolee li menee = more or less (well), cf. "chetzi-chetzi\חצי חצי - fifty-firty". The same happens in English, Yinglish, Arabic. There is a Hebrew, Greek and Russian/all-Slavic hip-hop hit:"Baruch HaShem (yom-yom: day-to-day)! = Gr. Doksa tou Theou! = Slava Tebe, Gospodi! (glory to You, Lord - interfaith version)". It does mean that things are going well at all. This is the plain answer of plain people who squelch spontaneous emotion to maximum private neutrality. We are sorts of firewalls. The problem is that it may kill because human beings are born to talk and need to speak out what they feel, from their insides to their brain and heart.

Can we say that we live in a gentle and kind society? Basically, Israeli society is geting tempted by mor and more internal violence. Justice and righteousness are still relevant but are deeply endangered by different tendencies. It is difficult to say that Israel is not a free state. It is. The biggest part of the country is powerfully dynamic, young, full of creativity. Young and elderly can achieve their goals if they are able to speak out and want to reach specific goals. Israel is an internationally developing country, on a universal basis. In the forthcoming years, some elements might be strengthened: ties with Asia, Africa. The United States and Canada are considered a part of the "golden State - Goldene medine" but it is not sure that the real dynamics come from there although the general trend is to "think Anglo".

Times may show that the connection with the former Soviet Union and its satellite republics or autonomous regions together with China, Japan and Korea may be far more meaningful. This is due the cradle of the State of Modern Israel. It has inherited something very strong from the "Eretz Knaan = Poland and the the border regions of Great Russia" as we used to say in Yiddish. We have been used for two centuries that emigration came from Eastern Europe to Europe and then America or via the Far East to Hong Kong, Manchuria, Mongolia, Harbin down to America and/or South America, in particular Argentina, Uruguay, Chile or Mexico. The move is now a "classic" of international people flow.

It is deeply present in Israel and progressively raises inside of the country some significant signs of constant seeds. It is rare that a country is steadfastly nourished and nurtured from the same basic human, linguistic, spiritual, mental area as it has been the case from the first aliyah till now. There is a permanent level of educational system between my great grand parents, parents (they would be 108 this year) and my cultural background that copes with that of late R. Yeshayahu Leibowicz born in Riga. He discovered with stupefaction that the young former Soviet youths had the same roots and education as he was given in Latvia a century ago.

This can easily be felt in Israeli society when speaking with the various actors of this part of the population that is going through a deep and quick assimilation process of Hebraization. This does not only relate to the language, but to cultural and mental positioning. It is a trend toward freedom and control over personal conscience. People interrogate themselves about the way they can be free, which is a typical Slavic and curiously Eastern Orthodox way of putting things on the table. It does not mean that people would reject the freedom they gained. They need to feel protected, much more than the in-born Israelis or those who arrived before 1967. Slavic people are also "mentally born gamblers". Those who came continue to develop the country on the verge of legacy in many cases. It can also imperil the State, but, on the other hand, such people are ready to start new lives because "games, plays, theater, gym, moves" are always on air and constant standards of reference. This is not the case of the European and American immigrants.

Soviet and Ethiopian people bring natural links to Christianity. This matter is important because of the mixed nature of the newcomers. The Halachah can hardly be proven. In fact, the same situation is applicable to the United State migrants because they often cannot show evidence of all the required certificates of ketubot/marriage of their parents and family. But the importance of the ex-USSR immigration has superseded this defect as well as the coming of the Ethiopians.

On the other hand, the constant defense of Israel and the way the State has to assume this protection question a lot of people that would prefer to leave and settle abroad. This problem is real and is taken into account by the Israeli authorities.

It is exact that a society needs joyful relaxing times; once New Year 5770 started up, it seems the countdown switched on and we may scrap the plans and continue to go around without finding the true way-out. To be honest, what can be new? Fashion? we use 5th to 18th century clothes and hats to makes a distinction between our social and religious groups. Modern chardal (modern ultra-Orthodox = mustard in Hebrew!) women covers and hats were created in Western Europe around 1920 and circulated to the America before showing up here again lately. The planet-wide jeans (even with holes and stigmas) appeared in Genoa(= /jeans/), Italy, just before Christopher Columbus left for some Indian "unzoned area".

Things are new everyday though we grow old at the same time. So is it bad or good to march in the development of a New Year? Blasé apathetic characters would say - as for the daily "alright" - that Kohelet, read at Sukkot is correct: "What has been, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun. Even the thing of which we say, "See, this is new!" has already existed (in the ages that) preceded us."(Kohelet 1:9-10).

This can refer to the immensity, the width, depth, breadth, length and thus plenitude of God in His Written and Oral Law. Everything is present in the Talmud, i.e. not only morals, but materials and instruments that progressively seem to be created in our culture: e.g. micro-wavers, computers, fashion, nuclear skills or freezers... The problem is how to get to newness and its encoding.

Tractate Yevamot 62b states that God has a huge reserve of all the souls that have to be hosted in the bodies that show in the development of the human generations. As for the Christians: there is a great similarly between the Oral Law and what the Christian world receives through the Holy Spirit. Thus, when Jews remove the Talmud studies as the Karaites (the Samaritans did the same as the Sadducees), they stop to truly believe in the into the World-to-Come. When the Christians cancel or lower the action of the Spirit, they ritualize and reduce the intensity of their faith and reject the resurrection.

Newness is inscribed in the soul of the Semitic speech. In Hebrew, two past tenses (more in Arabic) that seem to speak about what already was and indeed focus on the future. Monotheistic speech is prophetic, opens the way to any event or creation. "Asher asah la'asot\אשר עשה לעשות - that (God) has been making in order to (continue the action of) being creating” (Genesis 2:3). The Gospel shows the same: "The Father and I (Jesus) are always at work"(John 5:19).

In Hebrew "davar\דבר" is both "word, speech and object". We take a great responsibility in renewing the world with words of beauty and creativity. We are often hurt or injured and human speech can be terribly cruel. There is something we have in Hebrew: we always speak of the future, are obsessed by newness. God was also deceived when he looked at His creation and decided to wipe it out (Genesis 6:5-8). Thus, since we are survivors, we cannot even think of stopping the move toward future, betterment and being real "mentchen\מענטשען", humans with a tender and good heart.

In the Gospel it is said:"You, brood of vipers, how can you say good things when you are evil? For from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks. I (Jesus) tell you, on the day of judgment, people will render an account of every careless word they speak. By your words you will be acquitted and by your word you will be condemned” (Matthew 13:34-37).

We have to prove that we are not a "brood of vipers"... In the new year 5770, the State of Israel will have to show that it is indeed a State of freedom of conscience and faith according to its law regulations. I always refer to the example of Prof. Nissim Dana who was heading for a time the Minister of Interior - Christian Communities Department. A professor at the Haifa University, he is specialized in the life of the Druse communities. In his book dedicated to this population, he underscored how the Tel Aviv embryo of Parliament and government was very carefully checking that each non-Jewish community should be treated with full justice and according to their rights. This was during the Independence war.

Recent turmoil with in the Armenian Quarter, i.e. on the way to the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter, constant embattlement with other Christian Churches, the absence of real prevention of missionary actions on all sides - both Jewish and Christian - according to the Laws in force are not positive. Interestingly, there are groups in Los Angeles and other West Coast cities who would be ready to "shelter" the imperiled local Jerusalemite Christian communities (sic)! It is the duty of the Churches to recognize Israel for who and what the State of the Jews is. It is not a problem of everlasting Shoah issue that does fit with either party's commitments. It has to deal with much more than that: daily experience of living seeds of theology, Living Word in a real and living society of the Jews that has to accept to be grafted onto the tree and branches of very old Christian communities. We have to overcome and leave our pretense and though it is a Divine commandment, it is a terrible hardship to carry out.

It may sound a bit tough. But we are blessing-beggars… So if, in the end, we get a lot of flooding rain that renews the soil and the land, it means that we also can plant new good ideas, opinions, wit and insights when our mouth speaks heartfully. On air at the present: clean up our Word system and turn over a new leaf… It may lead us, God willing, to some real step forward toward Gan Gan.

av aleksandr [Winogradsky Frenkel]

October 16/3, 2009 - 28 deTishrei 5770 - כ"ח דתשרי תש"ע

Who is the Other ?

This is the text of the lecture that I gave at the Swedish Center at Jaffa Gate on October 22, 2009. It is a theological and open reflection about who is "the other, the neighbor", in particular how we can or need or may, must recognize Israelis as a part of the society we live in. The lecture included other words and lively expressions. You have here the framework or the pattern...

WHO IS THE OTHER?

THE TITLE OF TONIGHT's lecture evolved from "who is my neighbor" to "who is next" and now "who is the other?" We may see that the real subject may not really be included in those titles and thus encompass some of their realities.

As a matter of fact, when we speak of "neighbor", we systematically, or most often, switch to the core verse of the Bible "Love your neighbor as yourself/ואהבת לרעך כמוך" (Leviticus 19:18). To begin with, it should be noted that the Torah does not underscore any special meaning for this verse. But all Jewish and further on, the Christian traditions have seen a specific significance and place in God's commandments as shown in the verse. Thus, R. Akiva (2nd c.) said that the commandment of "love your neighbor" is the major principle of the Torah" (Nedarim 9:4).

One century earlier, Hillel presented the commandment in an interesting and reversed/negative way: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor”. He added - in a very similar way to Jesus' statements "This is the whole Torah, all the rest is commentary” (Shabbat 31a). The commandment sounds as the Golden Rule; many commentators declared that Hillel's words are more pragmatic and genuine, realistic because "And you shall love your neighbor" looks a bit vague and dreamy even if it seems positive. Medieval Tanna D'Bei Eliyahu shows that God proposes a request to the Jewish people and subsequently to all creatures: "The Holy One said: ‘Children, I only want that you love each other and treat one another with dignity’".

Let's be frank: these words are repeated the way parrots love to do it every day by very pious people and we are of course among those, here at Jaffa Gate and in the Holy City of Jerusalem, but at the same time we would easily admit that daily experience shows us the contrary of what God told the Jewish people and moreover all subsequent traditions.

Jesus Christ was indeed very close to Hillel. "If you then, being evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more shall your Father in Heaven give good things to them that ask Him? Therefore all things whatsoever you would like that men should do to you, do even so to them: for this is the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 7:11-12).

Jesus quotes the full commandment as stated in Leviticus 19:18 “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself" in the three synoptic Gospels: St. Matthew 19:19 - 22/39 = St. Mark 12:31 = St. Luke 10:27. The quotation is moreover to be found in Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14 and James 2:8. Intriguingly, Leviticus 19:34 states "You shall love the foreigner/stranger" as mentioned in Deuteronomy 10:19.

St. Mark includes a special logon: "To love God with all the heart, all the understanding and all the soul and with all the strength and to love his neighbor as himself is more than all whole-burnt offerings and sacrifices" (Mark 12:33). Jesus’ answer is: "You are not far from the Kingdom of God = korbanקרבן, karov Matzdiki/קרוב מצדיקי = He is close to me the One who justifies me" (Isaiah).

And here we are tonight in the heart of the Old City of all sacrifices from the most ancient days and traditions, from the Temple Mount and Mount Moriah to the NAOS - the Temple par excellence or Church of the Holy Sepulcher = the Anastasis, the place of Resurrection from where all whole-burnt sacrifices were brought to redeem the entire creation...

We have to carefully note - though it has been noted throughout the ages - but still, we have to note the context in which Jesus Christ mentions the Rules of "to love your neighbor as yourself". It does not come out of a sudden, let's put that way that may keep us alerted. Jesus of Nazareth mentions the commandment in the three Synoptics as the natural connection with the "S'ma Isra'el- שמע ישראלl: Listen Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart (bechol levavcha- בכל לבבך), and all your soul (or life, being - uvchol nafshecha - ובכל נפשך) and all your strength (uvchol me'od'cha – ובכל מאדך= all that constitutes you as very good - tov me'od - me'od - טוב מאד מאוד\מאד\אדם = much living, Adam, a member of economic system as strength refer to "possessions, assets"; and non of us can escape from any economic system).

It should be noted with much attention that the commandment to "love the neighbor as yourself" is directly and solely connected in both the ancient Judaic and Christian traditions to the fundamental logon in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 : "Hear Israel". Jesus combines the greatest commandment that concludes Moses' life and became the proclamation of the Jewish faith with the "love of the neighbor as yourself" in St. Matthew 22:37 : "He said to a Pharisee: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind this is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:36-40).

Another question that shows in such a context: When Jesus is put to the stake, it is traditionally accepted that his quoting of Psalm 21/22 "Eli, Eli lema sabachtani - Elohi, Elohi, lama azaftani – אלהי אלהי למה עזתני" - "Oh God, my God why have You forsaken me" which implies the full recitation and quoting of the whole psalm. It is also possible to ask ourselves how far the mention by Jesus of the great commandment in its first verse only, should not also imply and spiritually include the whole of the “Sh'ma Israel” as it is in Deuteronomy 6 (ss. 6-9): "And the words that I command to you today take them to heart, impress them upon your children, recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind then as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a frontlet (crowns) between your eyes; inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

This leads to consider different aspects: the commandment is not vague, or only directed towards God and the "personal self". It is trans-generational, it obliges to give instructions and to teach God's Reign from generation to generation. The commandments have to observed at home (a fixed place) and on the way (when going on a journey, a trip, a pilgrimage and we know that "regalim - רגלים" used to bring the Jewish people and the followers to Jerusalem, mainly to this City and not to some mere dreamy place located out there through the world. Of course we all know of New Jerusalem (Moscow) or numerous Bethlehem throughout the planet. Still, the places existed and remain consistent here, at least to begin with. The great commandment also requires to attach God' s Presence to our physical bodies and existence.

This is in such a spiritual stage of consciousness, awareness, conscience that indeed, it is possible to admit that reaching God's Image and Likeness allows us, as a consequence to be able to show some positive feelings toward our neighbor! It does not mean we can love, or even like our neighbor. It means that we can understand by God's great commandment confirmed by Jesus Christ how much we come near to ourselves, our inner individuality and identity and therefore look positively to the "neighbor".

At least, it is always dangerous to cite the two commandments outside of their full contexts because we may not understand that God spoke in a special place, to a special people and for a certain context that develops and includes more and more generations with exclusion.

Please note that in the Book of Leviticus the commandment to "love the neighbor" is directly preceded by strict prohibitions against taking revenge or bearing a grudge. It is more than important because, all things being equal - more or less let's say - we spend our time hurting the others, the neighbors, the parentage, the foreigners with the fervent hope that they will never take revenge against us. Interestingly, this also concerns the animal world. Rabbi Abraham Twerski said: "Carrying resentments is like letting someone whom you don't like live inside your head rent-free, without paying any rent". We all can behave like elephants at this point.

This is why the first path is to feel comfortable with who we are, on a personal and societal level. This is a very hard task. Still, if we cannot change people in order to make them as we are, we could accept the phrase: "I can't make people like me, but if I wasn't me, I would like me"...

We come here to the "virtual" part of the society we live in. At the present, we can be moved to tears by the terrible events that affect fictional characters in movies; we may not be able to react with any similar intensity when the same sort of horrible events hit the people we know or when we are a part of such dramas. We cry and we sob when the hero or heroine fall in love, not when our neighbors do.

The commandment to be good or to love the neighbor is expressed in most cultures and civilizations, in particular in the Greek culture, which is next door and always has been present in the area. The same is applicable with regards to the Hindu(ist) and Mazdean traditions. But let's focus on the Biblical background.

Now, the real problem is to understand the commandment correctly. VEAHAVTA LE'REACHA KAMOCHA – ואהבת לרעך כמוך, does it indeed mean: "an you shall love your neighbor as yourself"? I comment the verse in English right now. In Russian, for example, "vozliubish blizhnago kak i samogo sebia", can either refer to "neighbor as being very close to you or a person who is known as being closely (bliskii chelovek) "acquainted, provided, inter alia, that "close relationships are long to be fixed and defined in the Slavic and Russian society, this from ancient days.

"REA - רע" is a parodox in Hebrew as in most Semitic roots: they usually include both a positive and a negative aspect. Horayot 10b shows it: "Even the good which wicked men do is an evil with the righteous (= they can't enjoy it)"; The same in Berachot 1c: "Don't be like the fools who sin and offer a sacrifice, not knowing whether they offer it for the good they have done or for the evil".

The precise meaning of "re,acha - רעך" is thus "your fellow", which, like "your neighbor" suggests someone with whom we routinely have contact. This is the way it is understood in most cases. "Fellow" implies a person that accompanies, but the word is Old Norse = Félag = Verlag = laying money to join!!! Reah\רעה" is connected to Hebrew and Aramaic that means to join, welcome, gladden, rejoice. This is why the paradox is present: dark turns to light, what is bad or evil turns to good or goodness "joined efforts" - companionship = sharing bread along the way; sputnik = sharing the same direction. But it does include the mental attitude to turn from bas to good, to tame what is alien. Otherwise, it is evident that we could have "sheykhen - שכן" as it is the case in Aramaic.

But "neighbor" is not the person who is "close or near to us". Let's say that Scandinavian "När = close = Germ. Nah and Nächst = the thing or person that is most to the closest!! It does not mean the person or proximity: the thing is near! This is remarkably to be found in Yiddish: "no'ent \ נאענט= nah but it is not a NEAR OR CLOSE AT HAND THING OR PERSON. IT REQUIRES A MOVE TOWARD A PLACE OR INDIVIDUALS OR A PERSON. And interestingly "kroyv קרוב - = cousin = people who can be connected by some family or blood links, but not living closely to each other. The same is valid in Swedish: "att naa = to come near", which means a movement. To love a neighbor can never mean to remain/stay put. It obliges to a series of psychological and physical moves.

At this point, it is quite possible to consider that Hebrew: "veahavta lere'acha kamocha – ואהבת לרעך כמוך " implies the view to love the people who are next to us, but also those who can cause evil or bad things to us, and also our enemies. Even if Today's Judaism would reluctantly admit such a position as being self-evident, it would interrogate the tradition the same way "ger toshav – גר תושב" is either a resident and a part of the community or a idolater who is a full foreigner. To begin with, it was Abraham's status to be protected in all Middle-Eastern traditions.

Psalm 90/91 shows how demons can be overcome and how people in the desert or in situation of profound solitude could be afraid from other human beings. This fear is constant and taming is a great par of some form of healing or getting to be humans.

One constant rule is that, in principle, people would say they love humanity. And the more they would love humanity, the more they would serve humanity, but if we have to stand the same people in reality that has to meet in daily life, the more we share with them, the less we maybe able to simply stand them as appears in the monk's confession in Dostoyevsky's "the Brothers Karamazov".

In fact, "To love our neighbor as yourself" include a profound human balance of feelings and dignity.

The problem is not of "neighborhood" or vicinity. The problem is to get together as Saint Paul defined it, especially in the epistle to the Ephesians: "Now therefore, you are no more strangers or foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God (and you are built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner stone) in whom all the building fitly framed together grows unto a holy Temple of God; in whom you are also built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit”. This is the real meaning of RE-ACHA = רעךjoined/built together. (Ephesians 2:19-22).

As a consequence, we must come to the fact that building together proceeds from a spiritual and full of faith because it is founded in the major verses of Ephesians: "That that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promises, having no hope and without God in this world: But now in Christ Jesus you who were sometimes far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.”

“For He is our peace, who has made both (Israel and the pagans) one and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us having abolished in his flesh the enmity (even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of two one new man, so making peace)" (Eph. 2:12-14).

Indeed, we slowly can come or reach to some meaningful understanding, something that may make sense if we consider that we are faithful and pious people, and we all are. You cannot avoid Divine matters in Jerusalem, but it depends how it works in our relationships.

In any way, and this can seem to be a bit "crazy" or "torn up side down", but "to love the neighbor as yourself" is just as impossible as to show any sort of evidence that God is real, alive, living, life-giving and the Sign of Resurrection. In that sense, LOVE = GOD'S LOVE THAT CALLS HUMAN BEINGS IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCE OF LIFE. Love does not mean "cuddles, hugs and kisses". Why not? But when the bride calls "Yishakeni – ישקני - Kiss me" to the bridegroom in the Song of Songs (1:1), it should be noted that they never meet!!

Saint John's chapter 21 after the resurrection has it: Jesus speak of perfect love (Agapein) and Peter answer he likes Him (philein). In the same verse, Aramaic has "richam = like, love with our viscera, intestines, insides", but then it is a love of lovingkindness and not directly the love of all the Divine Attributes.

In the commandment, as following the “Shma Israel”, we are merely called to know or get aware of what those we like, dislike, have to stand, frequent, encounter, love or maybe hate NEED. WHAT THEIR NEED ARE. In that sense, love commences to get a bit consistent. Not when worstate that things were much better in the good old days. Psychology and attitudes, from pride to lack of self-esteem, shyness. We are then commanded to accept who is facing us and reciprocally.
IF WE CANNOT ACCEPT HELP, WE CANNOT GIVE ANYTHING EITHER.

This is also very useful in marital life: spouses need to be given what they need and not mere gifts. But in general the commandment goes far beyond anything that we can conceive or understand.

This is shown during the Byzantine Divine Liturgies of Saint John Chrysostomos and Basil the Great. The celebrant, having blessed the faithful with peace, opens the Royal Gates and says: Let's love each other in order to confess in one spirit/soul - neehuv ish et rehu uvlev echad n’hoodeh/ vozliubim drug druga da edinomysliem ispovedim
נאהוב איש את רעהו ובלב אחד נודה -
Возлюбим лруг друга да единомыслiем исповемы
and the celebrant goes out and bowing in front of Christ icon, saying: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

We do not need to shake hands, or to kiss those we know and turn our backs to those we hardly can look at. This sort of "love" is "at-one-ment", makes and creates us ONE beyond what we can even understand and imagine when we share this peace. It is funny and strange how we always want to share and receive something and participate. Here, participation consists in receiving the One we cannot see and Who keeps us alive. Thus, it has nothing to do with shaking hands!

Now, we have to be frank, okay!!? I lecture tonight not because there are so wonderful and nice and cute ideas we could share a bout our spiritual backgrounds, future and cannot agree upon in our daily life here, in this city and country. We meet everyday, every week, every month, sometimes once a year. We would hardly frequent each other.

One of the best opening-up movie is certainly "Gaestebud" "Babette's banquet", a remarkable Danish film. A French woman is sheltered by the time of the Restauration in Jutland in Denmark, in a small village where nobody can talk and share. They meet just to face each other. The woman becomes a servant. One day, she wins a huge fortune at the French Lottery. She decides - she was a famous fine cook in Paris - to prepare a gaestebud, inviting everybody for a splendid banquet and she spent all her fortune. Joys and laughs, hospitality and conversations come out of this exceptional banquet which has been interpreted as a real theological reflection about Eucharist and the Presence of the Holy Spirit.

I came to lecture because I said - in between - that it was more than intriguing if not strange and bizarre that on a day dedicated to "Pilgrimages in Jerusalem" not a single word has been said - I repeat no a single word and I did pay attention with much care about the Jewish pilgrimages! Looking through the window, they were precisely coming up to Jerusalem and to the Kotel - כותל (Western Wall, among other places)!!! I thought it was a bit, just a bit too much! Hajj in the Muslim and Christian and Bulgarian and Orthodox traditions, please, no problem. But not a word about the very nature of the God-seeking attitude that abides the Jewish soul from Ur-Kasdim to Egypt, Beersheva and Mount Moriah over the past 3500 years if not more, because a positive and definitely not a judgmental question.

Israel does exist. Just you to know and you do know! All of you know about that. It may itch or be pleasant. This is not the problem. We cannot oblige anybody to accept the one or those who are in front or next or close to us. On the other hand, we can pray, reflect upon how we behave towards ourselves and our fellowmen/women. It does not mean the yare wrong and we are right. It means we can slightly open up our eyes and conscience.

Emotions exist, both positively and negatively. Rejecting of keeping silent about people, nations, humans is never neutral. It is a way to come closer to what is unbearable - sometimes to each other and most of the time for irrational reasons. The rest is a matter of needs as I mentioned: time overshadows an covers our needs and requirements and slowly joins those who can hardly cope together. This move is of great importance. It shows that the eschaton is moving ahead of us.

With regards to the faith of Israel, there was an interesting statement made in 1968 by some Rabbis: "It is precisely that that Christianity brought to the world that hid Israel to the Nations”. It continues to be the case. But when we come back to our own room, just inside, let's think of what we can positively share and do share without being able, for the moment, to speak too much of that.

Archpriest Alexander Winogradsky
October 22/9, 2009 – ג' דחשון תש"ע

Bereishit 5770

Acharei hachagim\אחרי החגים: "when the feasts are over" is a popular saying and a refreshing song full of true nostalgia and a touch of shmaltz, sort of mixed excessive emotional mush combined with some banality. The other folk's best is then "geshem-גשם/rain", the yearly hit that "will enable us to continue to march on the way"... It is quite amusing how Israeli society that may be crafty suddenly falls into a state of pathetic needs to be cuddled and pampered with a touch of childlike desires to be overprotected. Fall can be indeed a time of transition. A bit red as some of our hair cuts of the automnal leaves: "'s fal'n di bleter\ס'פאלן די בלעטער - the leaves are falling" is also an after world war II hit firstly sung by Yves Montand in French, then in Yiddish... Yossi Banai made it in Hebrew... "Listopad-лiснопад" means "November" in Ukrainian and Polish and means "leaf fall". The approaching month of Marcheshvan\מרחשון is thus a time of "sweeping away old stuff" and regular fasting days paving the way for the clarity of Kislev and the Feast of the Lights (Chanukkah).

It is very trendy to feel down. Of course, e.g. we live in a society that is approximately contented. This was shown in a recent poll and the Israelis are definitely optimistic compared to the way they are looked at from abroad as living in a threatening and dead-end situation. But as regards privacy, we respond with constant equanimity that is on the verge of puzzling perplexity. Just try the poll. It is very forward to play with insightful polls. Just ask: "How are you doing?" to some ordinary anonymous Israel inhabitants. Whatever tongue, the respond is: “Good - beseder - tayeb/kwayes (Arabic version = to:yeb in Jerusalem) - sheyn". The Russian-speaking inmates would tend to say "normal'no\нормально (normal = seemingly good)" but if you continue the poll, Russian will turn to "bolee li menee = more or less (well), cf. "chetzi-chetzi\חצי חצי - fifty-firty". The same happens in English, Yinglish, Arabic. There is a Hebrew, Greek and Russian/all-Slavic hip-hop hit:"Baruch HaShem (yom-yom: day-to-day)! = Gr. Doksa tou Theou! = Slava Tebe, Gospodi! (glory to You, Lord - interfaith version)". It does mean that things are going well at all. This is the plain answer of plain people who squelch spontaneous emotion to maximum private neutrality. We are sorts of firewalls. The problem is that it may kill because human beings are born to talk and need to speak out what they feel, from their insides to their brain and heart.

Can we say that we live in a gentle and kind society? Basically, Israeli society is geting tempted by mor and more internal violence. Justice and righteousness are still relevant but are deeply endangered by different tendencies. It is difficult to say that Israel is not a free state. It is. The biggest part of the country is powerfully dynamic, young, full of creativity. Young and elderly can achieve their goals if they are able to speak out and want to reach specific goals. Israel is an internationally developing country, on a universal basis. In the forthcoming years, some elements might be strengthened: ties with Asia, Africa. The United States and Canada are considered a part of the "golden State - Goldene medine" but it is not sure that the real dynamics come from there although the general trend is to "think Anglo".

Times may show that the connection with the former Soviet Union and its satellite republics or autonomous regions together with China, Japan and Korea may be far more meaningful. This is due the cradle of the State of Modern Israel. It has inherited something very strong from the "Eretz Knaan = Poland and the the border regions of Great Russia" as we used to say in Yiddish. We have been used for two centuries that emigration came from Eastern Europe to Europe and then America or via the Far East to Hong Kong, Manchuria, Mongolia, Harbin down to America and/or South America, in particular Argentina, Uruguay, Chile or Mexico. The move is now a "classic" of international people flow.

It is deeply present in Israel and progressively raises inside of the country some significant signs of constant seeds. It is rare that a country is steadfastly nourished and nurtured from the same basic human, linguistic, spiritual, mental area as it has been the case from the first aliyah till now. There is a permanent level of educational system between my great grand parents, parents (they would be 108 this year) and my cultural background that copes with that of late R. Yeshayahu Leibowicz born in Riga. He discovered with stupefaction that the young former Soviet youths had the same roots and education as he was given in Latvia a century ago.

This can easily be felt in Israeli society when speaking with the various actors of this part of the population that is going through a deep and quick assimilation process of Hebraization. This does not only relate to the language, but to cultural and mental positioning. It is a trend toward freedom and control over personal conscience. People interrogate themselves about the way they can be free, which is a typical Slavic and curiously Eastern Orthodox way of putting things on the table. It does not mean that people would reject the freedom they gained. They need to feel protected, much more than the in-born Israelis or those who arrived before 1967. Slavic people are also "mentally born gamblers". Those who came continue to develop the country on the verge of legacy in many cases. It can also imperil the State, but, on the other hand, such people are ready to start new lives because "games, plays, theater, gym, moves" are always on air and constant standards of reference. This is not the case of the European and American immigrants.

Soviet and Ethiopian people bring natural links to Christianity. This matter is important because of the mixed nature of the newcomers. The Halachah can hardly be proven. In fact, the same situation is applicable to the United State migrants because they often cannot show evidence of all the required certificates of ketubot/marriage of their parents and family. But the importance of the ex-USSR immigration has superseded this defect as well as the coming of the Ethiopians.

On the other hand, the constant defense of Israel and the way the State has to assume this protection question a lot of people that would prefer to leave and settle abroad. This problem is real and is taken into account by the Israeli authorities.

It is exact that a society needs joyful relaxing times; once New Year 5770 started up, it seems the countdown switched on and we may scrap the plans and continue to go around without finding the true way-out. To be honest, what can be new? Fashion? we use 5th to 18th century clothes and hats to makes a distinction between our social and religious groups. Modern chardal (modern ultra-Orthodox = mustard in Hebrew!) women covers and hats were created in Western Europe around 1920 and circulated to the America before showing up here again lately. The planet-wide jeans (even with holes and stigmas) appeared in Genoa(= /jeans/), Italy, just before Christopher Columbus left for some Indian "unzoned area".

Things are new everyday though we grow old at the same time. So is it bad or good to march in the development of a New Year? Blasé apathetic characters would say - as for the daily "alright" - that Kohelet, read at Sukkot is correct: "What has been, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun. Even the thing of which we say, "See, this is new!" has already existed (in the ages that) preceded us."(Kohelet 1:9-10).

This can refer to the immensity, the width, depth, breadth, length and thus plenitude of God in His Written and Oral Law. Everything is present in the Talmud, i.e. not only morals, but materials and instruments that progressively seem to be created in our culture: e.g. micro-wavers, computers, fashion, nuclear skills or freezers... The problem is how to get to newness and its encoding.

Tractate Yevamot 62b states that God has a huge reserve of all the souls that have to be hosted in the bodies that show in the development of the human generations. As for the Christians: there is a great similarly between the Oral Law and what the Christian world receives through the Holy Spirit. Thus, when Jews remove the Talmud studies as the Karaites (the Samaritans did the same as the Sadducees), they stop to truly believe in the into the World-to-Come. When the Christians cancel or lower the action of the Spirit, they ritualize and reduce the intensity of their faith and reject the resurrection.

Newness is inscribed in the soul of the Semitic speech. In Hebrew, two past tenses (more in Arabic) that seem to speak about what already was and indeed focus on the future. Monotheistic speech is prophetic, opens the way to any event or creation. "Asher asah la'asot\אשר עשה לעשות - that (God) has been making in order to (continue the action of) being creating” (Genesis 2:3). The Gospel shows the same: "The Father and I (Jesus) are always at work"(John 5:19).

In Hebrew "davar\דבר" is both "word, speech and object". We take a great responsibility in renewing the world with words of beauty and creativity. We are often hurt or injured and human speech can be terribly cruel. There is something we have in Hebrew: we always speak of the future, are obsessed by newness. God was also deceived when he looked at His creation and decided to wipe it out (Genesis 6:5-8). Thus, since we are survivors, we cannot even think of stopping the move toward future, betterment and being real "mentchen\מענטשען", humans with a tender and good heart.

In the Gospel it is said:"You, brood of vipers, how can you say good things when you are evil? For from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks. I (Jesus) tell you, on the day of judgment, people will render an account of every careless word they speak. By your words you will be acquitted and by your word you will be condemned” (Matthew 13:34-37).

We have to prove that we are not a "brood of vipers"... In the new year 5770, the State of Israel will have to show that it is indeed a State of freedom of conscience and faith according to its law regulations. I always refer to the example of Prof. Nissim Dana who was heading for a time the Minister of Interior - Christian Communities Department. A professor at the Haifa University, he is specialized in the life of the Druse communities. In his book dedicated to this population, he underscored how the Tel Aviv embryo of Parliament and government was very carefully checking that each non-Jewish community should be treated with full justice and according to their rights. This was during the Independence war.

Recent turmoil with in the Armenian Quarter, i.e. on the way to the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter, constant embattlement with other Christian Churches, the absence of real prevention of missionary actions on all sides - both Jewish and Christian - according to the Laws in force are not positive. Interestingly, there are groups in Los Angeles and other West Coast cities who would be ready to "shelter" the imperiled local Jerusalemite Christian communities (sic)! It is the duty of the Churches to recognize Israel for who and what the State of the Jews is. It is not a problem of everlasting Shoah issue that does fit with either party's commitments. It has to deal with much more than that: daily experience of living seeds of theology, Living Word in a real and living society of the Jews that has to accept to be grafted onto the tree and branches of very old Christian communities. We have to overcome and leave our pretence and though it is a Divine commandment, it is a terrible hardship to carry out.

It may sound a bit tough. But we are blessing-beggars… So if, in the end, we get a lot of flooding rain that renews the soil and the land, it means that we also can plant new good ideas, opinions, wit and insights when our mouth speaks heartfully. On air at the present: clean up our Word system and turn over a new leaf… It may lead us, God willing, to some real step forward toward Gan Gan.

av aleksandr [Winogradsky Frenkel]

October 16/3, 2009 - 28 deTishrei 5770 - כ"ח דתשרי תש"ע