Closing our Eyes to
See More Clearly

So it is when we want to look at the
ultimate goal of Creation, which is all good, all unity. One has to close one's
eyes and focus on one's vision -- i.e. the inner vision of the soul -- on the
goal. For the light of this ultimate goal is very far away. The only way to see
it is by closing one's eyes. One has to close them completely and keep them
firmly shut. One may even have to press on them with one's finger to keep them
shut tight. Then one can gaze on this ultimate goal... (Likkutei Moharan 65:3).
During
the past week and weeks, as in hard times always, it can be very tempting to
close our eyes, as though to block out the images and the hate. There are
times, indeed, when we need to do that, when we know we can’t take in any more.
It is the nature of Shabbos, to step back and renew, to look beyond. On this
Shabbos, whether one is praying on the streets or in the synagogue, may we all
take note of a different sense of time and being, pausing in some way in order
to renew. If on the streets, pause if even for a moment along the way and offer
a prayer, saying to another, singing out, Shabbat
shalom, not simply a greeting, but a prayer for peace expressed in the
essence of a day. And if in synagogue, hold the same kavannah in saying these two simple words, and be aware in the same
way of the depth of our prayerful words and song, closing eyes and imaging
walking feet, legs that are praying as well as words, all moved by an inner
vision of wholeness, joined together as one. When we have had enough, though,
and we close our eyes in pain, may it not be to block out, but to bring in, to
see ever more deeply, to envision from within.

It was
the way in Charlottesville, so much fear and so much terror, the flags and
chants that sickened, love and hate in fateful dance. In the coming together of
so many people across so many lines, joined in love and horror, seeking good
and goodness, daring to hope. Speaking truth to power, people unimagined,
governors and mayors, we are challenged to imagine new coalitions and partners,
young and old leading the march together, weeping and praying in synagogues,
and churches and mosques, a great call and cry throughout the land. The fear is
real, even as we try to look beyond. I felt panic, nausea, in seeing the images
of Nazi flags, and the Confederate too, realizing the same sickness felt by
African Americans, trying to see what they see, to imagine the psychic memories
called forth for them. The hate makes us all as one, and so too shall love.
I
pause and pick up a small piece of glass sitting on my desk, turning it in my
fingers, feeling tears rise. I picked it up out of the grass alongside the New
England Holocaust Memorial, a small fragment of shattered glass, glass that
remembered shattered lives, glass etched with the numbers that were etched in
the skin of so many dead. It was the second time the Memorial had been
desecrated this summer, a glass panel smashed with a rock. People gathered in
beautiful diversity across all lines, there to support, to stand with the
Jewish community. I cried when Izzy Arbeiter spoke, telling of the horrors, a
ninety-two year old survivor, instrumental in bringing the Memorial to be. I
felt fear, imagining Jews in Germany, in that time and place. I closed my eyes
and then opened them. I looked out across the crowd and saw the difference from
then to now. We were not alone.
There
among the gathered people, I saw Ralf Horlemann, the German Consul General who
led our group of twelve Boston area rabbis to Germany last summer on a Journey
of Remembrance and Hope. His face reflected pain, pain that he shared later after
the ceremony, the pain of his own psychic memories. How can it be to see that
flag? I remembered something he said to me when we visited a refugee center
near Berlin. I asked him of the meaning of a postcard with the words, “Wir sind
viele. Berlin gegen Nazis/We are many. Berlin against Nazis.” I wanted to know
if it meant “neo-Nazis.” He looked at me and quietly asked, “does it matter?” I
have since preferred not to speak of neo-Nazis, but simply of Nazis.


Victor Reinstein
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