So, what did you learn today?

I am now in the habit of asking the student this question when he comes home. I'm not sure if I do it because I want to know, or if I am just unsure what to ask him. Hmmm.

The confusion is - I have come to realize - that I am not quite sure what I have learnt that day, and that perhaps if I hear someone else's, I'll find my own? (I dunno, it made sense when I started typing).

Tomorrow I stand on the outer edge of a decade. I will begin the cusp year, and prepare to take on a new shell, of sorts. Not unlike some crunchy, ecto-skeletoned creature, I will begin the sub-surface reformation, hoping that I will shed this skin and emerge a somehow beautiful and colourful new existence. Or something like that.

I am having a bit of a crisis of faith. I used to be so sure of my part in the wider picture, and was able to see everything as beautiful and meaningful, beyond what my frail human eyes could view. Now I am just not so sure.

Everything seems to be going to crap around me. Peace is at the best tenuous, but seems to be slipping into a quagmire of Hamas-Fatah, Likud-Kadima, Iraq-Iran, Republican and Democrat shit. I feel very uneasy.

It feels as if the coming years will call upon us Jews to make some very difficult decisions. How much will we do for the homeland? How prepared to fight are we? Fight physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

I fear for the prophet's vision of vines and fig trees. I now see only shadows of rockets and demolitions. I despair for leaders who will act for the future and not the past. I feel we are very small pawns in a very big game.

The planet is being eroded by capitalist motivations that trample people beneath their green-backed boots. We are intolerant, rude, insolent, and unlistening. I feel myself so often being pulled into the spiral of negative energy and despondency that seems to rule the day.

Where is our hope for the future?

Maybe some Moshiach wouldn't be a bad idea?

Okay, so I saw it

I wasn't sure if I should or not, and really, I am not convinced, but this afternoon I saw "Paradise Now". It is an incredibly difficult film to talk about, because it is so completely wrapped in a tight wad of emotions that encase the Palestinians. Particularly this week, with the huge success of Hamas in the Palestinian elections.

The actors are quite spectacular, but somewhat understated. The scenes of Nablus (which I have never been to) and Tel Aviv (which I have) are familiar, and yet foreign. The rubble and dust is tangible, it sticks to the inside of your nose. I think that they did a very good job at giving a glimpse of what the experience is like for those who choose this path. But I can only guess as to this.

I felt like crying at the end, but only because of the ordeal of the "Will he, or won't he?" of the whole thing. He does. The final scene; he (Said) sits in the middle of a bus filled with young soldiers and Tel Aviv'niks. The camera pulls closer and closer into his eyes, the sounds fades away to silence, we wait for what we know will happen, and wonder just how the Director will show the inevitable. It is all from Said's point of view. There are no sirens, no bloodied and blown out roofs of the red Eged bus. No charred remains. Only a fade to white, in a Hiroshima-like manner.

Then credits roll. We staggered from the theatre in the darkness as the credits crawl their way to the sky. A walk back to the car in wonderment of how this can happen.

So tell me this...

When did we wake up such a sullen and narrow minded people? What transpired in the night that we are so poisoned and bitter? It's all over the place. How we talk to each other, how we relate to the outside world, how we politic, how we play.

I look at the world that I am inheriting, filled with sadness, anger, bitterness and bile, and wonder if I want it. How could the generation that brought a national war machine to it's knees in the 60's and 70's have made such a huge 180? Did all those drugs turn their hearts to mush?

And it's not just "the world around us" - it's us Jews too. I just don't get it. We stand in our synagogues and weekly recite verses that speak of justice and mercy, hope and compassion as the virtues we so aspire to emulate, and yet we walk out of the ka'hal and climb into our capitalist gas-guzzling status symbols and speed away into the world - and forget.

Where is the light we are each supposed to shine for the world?

I don't think the American dream is the Jewish dream. Not anymore. When we marched in Selma, and Montgomery, it was there. Now we are lucky if we can even acknowledge our brother on the street. We have lost touch with who we are just because we can pass. We have taken on the capitalist consumer dream where I can, and will have it all, because it is there.

Shame on us.

At dinner last night, with a friend of Dean's who is an assistant rabbi back east, she told me about her HHD drash. She told the congregation that unless they have made an actual accounting of how much tz'dakah they had given they had essentially failed their HHD commitment. They'd made t'shuvah between their fellows; they were there in schule - so they were making t'fillah; but that they also had a responsibility to make an honest accounting of their tz'dakah.

She is right...better get out the calculator this year...

Wait, were we somewhere else?

Wow - vacations are like dreams. Especially vacations to destinations far afield, and so completely different from the "norm", I guess.

It has been just over a week and it is like we were never there. I keep trying to recall the emotions and feelings that flowed thru me while we were in both Fiji and New Zealand, and I am more-or-less coming up empty. It is as if I had one of those stupendous dreams that you tell yourself - while you are dreaming it - that you simply must, must, must, remember every detail. Then you wake up and for a split second you do, then you take your first waking breath and as you breathe it out, the dream escapes you.

I feel robbed.

I find myself saying all the things that everyone wants you to say when you come back - "Yes, it was amazing", "The snorkeling in Fiji was incredible", "It was so great to see my Mum" - all that cliche stuff. But it was so, so, much more than that. Images flit thru my mind of small fishes skipping across the water in front of the catamaran that took us from Denaru to Matamanoa, or the sweet way Kane looks just like Ruth did when she was his age when he laughs, or the way it feels just being in the same room with my Mum, after missing her so very much in the time I was away.

I hate that my accent isn't as thick and lyric as theirs. I hate that I can't just say "Hey, let's go for a walk" and then stroll out into the breezy, wind-blown cliff tops standing on the black sand of the Tasman coast.

It was more than I can possibly remember, so precious and beautiful to me. I miss it.