Certainly It Falls

But only if we let it.

Photo by Evgeny Lazarenko

Dear The Jewish Table Readers,

In this season of Passover, this season of remembering, this season of journeying from bondage to liberation, this season of rebirth: I am thinking about how countries fall into darkness and how they find their way back towards light.

I am thinking about a country that instructs rogue agents to murder its own citizens, then slanders them as domestic terrorists.

I am thinking about a country where an attempt to harm children at their synagogue preschool is written off by far too many as a “false flag” or “justified” by guilt of association.

I’m thinking about a country where innocent babies and children get kidnapped and locked in dangerous detention centers.

I’m thinking about a country that looks on—and even encourages—its most violent, radical factions while they attack innocent civilians every day. While they murder families, and then try to slander them as domestic terrorists.

I’m thinking about countries that start wars in the name of “bringing freedom” to people who absolutely deserve it—but who have zero interest in actually delivering that freedom. Only interest in their own self interests.

I am thinking about children in Tel Aviv and Tehran and Gaza and Beirut who shudder under the wail of sirens and the blast of missiles fired by countries who hate them—and who are abandoned by the leaders who should be protecting them from harm.

I am thinking about how nearly every country we know and love was forged through idealism and violence, both. How no country’s origin story is innocent, but how what comes after matters too. And how honest attempts at and movement towards progress and justice and peace have been hijacked by corruption and nationalism and greed.

I am thinking it often feels like too much to hold. But here’s what I know about how a country falls into darkness:

Certainly it falls if we look away.

Certainly it falls if we shut our eyes.

Certainly it falls if we refuse to believe it is happening.

Certainly it falls if we get overly distracted.

Certainly it falls if we let our hearts go numb.

Certainly it falls if we don’t speak up.

Certainly it falls if we wait for others to come to the rescue.

Certainly it falls if we let go of what we know to be true.

It is utterly heartbreaking to watch a country (or countries) you love and admire descend into darkness. To fail to live up to the ideals they claim to hold. To hold their own people in contempt. To recklessly break everything that has been, painstakingly and collectively, built.

But we have the power to keep our eyes open. We have the power to keep speaking, to keep thinking critically, to hold those we love most to a higher standard. We have the power to reject the attempts to divide us, to keep us imprisoned as weak enemies rather than mighty allies. We have the power to insist—day after day—for a better, brighter path forward. And we must. Because otherwise the darkness is certain.

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Passover is coming, and there will be joy. Joy that sustains us. Joy that reminds us who we are and what we are fighting for. I’ll have a brand new seder-ready recipe for you this Friday, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I want to share two things I’ve found thought provoking and inspiring this week: a poem by Ilya Kaminsky and a recent sermon by Ikar’s Rabbi Sharon Brous.

We Lived Happily During the War

By Ilya Kaminsky (poem published 2013)

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month

of a disastrous reign in the house of money

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

our great country of money, we (forgive us)

lived happily during the war.

@weareikar

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