The people in peoplehood

On my journey to Jerusalem to study the meaning of peoplehood, I found profound blessing among my people. 

We were a group of 100, from disparate places in North America; 43 from our shul. Many were acquaintances. I had not yet met others.  We were like minded adults looking forward to engaging deeply and with honesty in challenging, difficult and often personal discussions.  I had expected a week of intellectual stimulation. What I encountered was a group of remarkably thoughtful caring and giving individuals each on his own Jewish journey and almost without exception, willing and even desirous of embracing all who boarded our particular multiple-terrain vehicle.

The Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem served as the hub of our GPS.  It was literally awesome to listen to and engage with the brilliant, articulate and creative thinkers who were our teachers at Hartman.  Our task was to explore our individual and collective relationships to the people Israel and to each other and ourselves as Jews.  How do we negotiate, let alone feel comfortable and grow with and within, the profound fractures among our people and even each of us within our own souls?  Can we learn to hold simultaneous "pekuach nefesh" issues, as Donniel Hartman called them? That is, the multitude of issues that threaten to tear both the state and the people Israel apart both internally and externally.  What are the boundaries of tolerance? Of criticism? We came to understand deeply the sometimes excruciating challenge not to say something that we know an other will not be able to hear.  In the process I began to clarify some of my own thoughts.  More important even than that, at this point in my journey of life I was embraced by many new friends. In a world that often feels divided by "us" and "them", by "self " and "other", I witnessed and was embraced by " us".

My own personal journey with breast cancer took a back seat for the last two weeks.  My mind and heart were occupied with other things.  By far the most significant are the new friendships and the deepening of ones that already existed.  Everything that is happening to me is new.  I have no control but I do not feel like a victim.  I know the possibilities of this insidious disease.  I feel scared and am grateful for that degree of reality having sunk in.  I’m sore, but not in pain; another way to keep in touch with the reality of my life forever changed but more than managing from one day to the next.  I feel deeply, the immense value of true friendship.  I am grateful for everything I have including what appears to be a strong physical and emotional constitution.