O Jerusalem!
If inconsolable loss could be captured in letters and words, it would be written in Hebrew as elchah. The heart rending cry -- Elchah! -- opens the book of Lamentations, read as we mark the somber day of mourning, Tisha B’Av, this week. The holiday laments the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, using achingly poetic language to convey overwhelming sadness and despair. No comments yet. You can be the first!
Lamentations evokes the city of gold, now in flames, ravaged by the marauding Babylonians, and again, the city of David, in ruins, destroyed by the Romans. Yet the book also reminds of the Jerusalem that rose from the ashes, the Jerusalem of today, the city that remains the spiritual center of Jewish life, and holds the promise of Jewish life to come.
Rabbi Ian Pear, in his compelling book, “The Accidental Zionist,” reviewed in Jewish News makes a passionate case for the role of Jerusalem, and the Jewish state, in developing strong Jewish identity. Pear, who grew up in Phoenix, is the founder of Shir Hadash, a congregation in Jerusalem, where he resides with his wife, Rachel, and their three daughters.
In an email to Jewish News last fall, just as his book came out, Pear explained that he wrote the book after speaking to hundreds of young adults in the Birthright Israel program, many sincerely seeking to connect with their Jewish roots but dismayed by the negative news reports about Israel, disturbed by the guilt or fear evoked in the institutional Jewish world to combat that negativity.
He wrote the book, he said, to offer an alternative vision, ripe with promise and rife with the universal values that animate today’s young people.
“I want to emphasize not our scarred past but our glorious future,” emailed the dynamic young rabbi.
A remembrance of Jerusalem past -- and the Jerusalem yet to be.
28 Jul, 2009 >