Defining terror, terrorizing definitions: who‘s an authentic Jew?
The “strangers in our midst“: yes, invisibility and blind spots are linked but isn’t it about the boundaries for what we construct as “our world, our community“ - from confronting our egos to going out on a limb towards the unknown?
Some claim to own the place; France‘s famous singer Georges Brassens refers to them as “the happy imbeciles who were born somewhere“1.
In waving the flag of membership we leave out those who might have fallen, as Ibn Ezra says, like “the berry severed from the branch“2. The tree of life though has such a large trunk that we can only struggle to grasp its circumference.
The strangers are here to stay: Mir zaynen do! 3 (We are here!) They are here! Past/present and future, in one location, that of ha Makom4, the (holy) Place, with no escape possible.
The stranger, the “other“ as Lévinas would recognize her/him to be, our unique chance to become human.
Fly! We know the treasure of the ephemeral; we are the Ivrim5, the Hebrews, those who pass through to the other side to reveal the sparks.
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1 Complete text available here.
2 “The meaning of the Hebrew nominal ger (variously translated at ‘stranger‘, ‘sojourner‘, ‘proselyte‘) is derived by Radak from the idea of ‘temporary stay‘ 'sojourn‘ ‘implied by the verb form gar. Ibn Ezra states: 'ger from the berry (gargir) severed from the branch‘“. From Nehama Leibowitz‘s Studies in Shemot/Exodus.
3 From “Zog Nit Keyn Mol“, a poem by Hirsh Glik, composed after the Warsaw ghetto uprising, sung by the Jewish resistance thereafter. The complete text with more information is available here.
4 Ha Makom, The Place: one of the many names of G-d.
5 Arthur Waskow: The Ivrim or Hebrews - the scornful word, like ‘wetbacks,‘ means ‘cross-over‘ folks, "trans-gressors,‘ the free-ranging people who like wetbacks swam every sea and river, danced across each boundary -- were just newly free when they started gathering colors and textures and shapes for their Mishkan (cf. Shalom Center article)
David P. Stern: Abram and his tribe were called Hebrews, “Ivrim“, because they came from “Ever ha-nahar“, the other side of the river, that is, Euphrates; “Ever“ and “Ivri“ in Hebrew are built on the same foundation, the three letters ayin--bet--reysh. Abram came from “Aram of the two rivers“ Aram Naharayim, the country we know now as Iraq, on the other side of the Euphrates, the nearer of the two (from his web site)
