This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
On the beach this New Year morning, the sky is like an artist’s palette. The colors are pastel, various shades of pink and blue. A New Year omen I hope.
The world isn’t as beautiful as the morning sky. Libya and Egypt lead the foreboding news cycle. Syria’s war stalemate remains. Heading for America, Netanyahu draws his red lines in Israel’s Iranian sand. Instead of meeting Netanyahu, Obama is received by David Letterman.
On the rote and trite Rosh Hashanah front, Obama and Romney issue Jewish New Year messages. I can’t tell one from the other.
Politics makes for strange and meaningless High Holiday messages. Nothing to mull over. No pointers for self-correction. Trivialized challenges for the coming year. More of the same.
More or less, like the Rosh Hashanah sermons preached today. You can’t tell one from the other.
Religion makes for strange and meaningless holyday messages. Like Pope Benedict on his Lebanon pilgrimage. Won’t you please wish us well?
On the local front, the Cross on the beach lists in the sand. The weather is taking its toll. I’ve thought about taking it to my apartment for safekeeping. Then I realized it’s become a mandala of sorts for me. Changing its physical location might change its spiritual meaning.
Mandalas are a series of concentric diagrams with ritual and sacred significance in Buddhism. When mandalas are constructed out of sand, they are destroyed by those who constructed them.The destruction of the creation represents the impermanence of life and the sacred.
Should we look at Rosh Hashanah as a Jewish mandala? The Jewish calendar,with its rites and rituals, and Jewish history, which we mark today of more than five thousand years, is heavy stuff. As a mandala constructed out of sand, “Jewish” is here and then not here. Jewish is omnipresent. Jewish disappears.
Auschwitz as a Jewish mandala. I remember when I traveled to Auschwitz, a Rabbi suggested letting the death camp decay. Let nature take its course. Today, climate control experts preserve Auschwitz for eternity.
Though Auschwitz has become a Jewish mandala of sorts, for the most part, it functions in a perverted way. We gaze on Auschwitz, the site, or invoke its name, as a gateway to the sacred. The last thing on our Auschwitz mind is impermanence.
Auschwitz as a gateway for the spiritual has no depth. In the Jewish imagination, Auschwitz is our fixed eternity. Auschwitz keeps returning in the same form.
Israel as a gateway for the spiritual has no depth. In the Jewish imagination, Israel is our fixed eternity. Israel keeps returning in the same form.
Auschwitz and Israel are real. Auschwitz and Israel are unreal.
As a gateway for the spiritual, Rosh Hashanah has no depth. In the Jewish imagination, Rosh Hashanah is fixed in eternity. Rosh Hashanah keeps returning in the same form.
Yom Kippur as a gateway for the spiritual has no depth. In the Jewish imagination, Yom Kippur is fixed in eternity. Yom Kippur keeps returning in the same form.
This doesn’t mean that what is has to be. It’s not about destroying/erasing our real/imagined place/calendar or our distinct/imagined identity.Jewish identity embraces our past and present as if they matter. As we embrace our identity, we need to release ourselves from identity’s hold on us.
As we hold onto Jewish, it becomes violent and unethical. It drifts away.
Let go of Jewish. If Jewish returns, it will return in a different form.
If you let go of Jewish and it returns, you know it matters.
During these days of reflection, give the prophetic back to God. If you give the prophetic back to God and the prophetic returns, then you know the prophetic is the deepest part of you.
On Rosh Hashanah do something (un)Jewish. Give it all up.
Think Rosh Hashanah doesn’t matter.
Marc,
Thanks for writing this. I was feeling a bit lost on Rosh Hashanah myself, not wanting to go to synagogue, but wanting to be mindful of the day in some way. Thanks for the reminder to let go and to see what returns more deeply. And what you said about Auschwitz – yowza – so true and so sad.
Thanks for this.
Israel keeps returning to me but not in the same form. It’s more like it has a progressive degenerative condition that is attacking its morality and will eventually lead to madness .