Gel or rubber or silicone bracelets have been popular since the 1980s. Lance Armstrong was probably the most powerful force for the "charity bracelet" movement, when he used the medium to promote cancer awareness with his "Livestrong" campaign. Since then, enterprising companies and individuals have used a variety of colors with or without molded slogans as interesting personal billboards.
It seems to be working. People of various ages and religious affiliations ask me about my bracelets. For the most part, the discussions have been interesting and civil -- even when certain aspects of "the bracelets' story" bring up controversial opinions.
Here's the story. I was part of the "orange camp" in the year leading up to the expulsion from Gush Katif. From my safe little perch on my kitchen stool in Baltimore, I used to watch the internet news daily, following the unbelievable and heart-rending story of my people in our Land. This is not the forum to rehash the history of those dark days -- and I don't want to depress myself. Suffice it to say that Kleenex made a lot of money off of me that year, and the color orange became more than a fashion statement. Meanwhile, the color blue -- which had always stood for Israel -- was
History lesson: we lost. We lost Gush Katif. We lost another piece of Jewish and Israeli self-esteem. Our humiliating sacrifice brought us not one step closer to peace in the Middle East. And we took a big hit in the achdut department.
Immediately after Gush Katif, very loving people would no longer give rides to soldiers. The "orange camp" and the "blue camp" were at each others' throats, even more than before. There was a lot of pain, and a lot of blame. However correct those in pain were about their stand, the rage and hurt didn't fix anything. I was of the somewhat unpopular opinion that G-d said no. Not because Gush Katif wasn't part of our yerusha (inheritance). But for reasons of His own, that would take pages and pages to guess at -- and like questions about the Holocaust and dinosaurs, the guesses won't have any satisfactory answers till the End of Days.
After a family trauma, one has several behavioral options. Blaming each other is a perennial favorite. "If you had worked harder/prayed harder/fought harder..." "If they or he or she would have done the right thing, this wouldn't have happened." Diving to the bottom of the abyss, and refusing to rejoin humanity, is a good hiding place in the short term. ("We will never forget -- and we will never forgive.") But it has its obvious limitations in the long term.
Another choice is to pull more closely together.
I'm of the opinion (and I didn't invent it) that the single most important job of our generation of holy Yidden is to somehow give up our devotion to our differences, and instead to focus on the fact that we are family. Hashem will not give us our Holy Temple -- no matter how many mitzvot we do, no matter how many marches or rallies we attend, perhaps no matter how many prayers we pray -- until we make nice with each other.
So I wear my orange bracelet, to remind myself "Eretz Yisrael l'Am Yisrael," that the Land of Israel belongs to the Nation of Israel. I do not want to waver in that commitment. The color orange also reminds me of the "Gush Katif refugees," who five years later are still suffering. I have added a blue bracelet, to remind myself that my heart should remain firmly in the East (Israel), no matter how much pressure there is from the West -- and to love my fellow Jews who disagree with me or are uninformed about our heritage. I wear a green bracelet as well, in support of all of our children who fight to defend this people in this land -- and as a reminder to myself that those young soldiers were given an unfair and untenable burden. I don't blame them. And I pray that they will never be so ill-used again.
I tie this trio together with a red bindle. As it comes from a red thread that was wound seven times around Kever Rachel, it ties my heart to all things holy and Chasidic. It reminds me to love the Chareidim, who are also my brothers. Attached to the red thread is a bead of Sephardic derivation, for these holy Yidden are also my brothers. I look forward to finding something to add from the Ethiopian and Bnei Menashe branches of my dear family...
Rav Mordechai Eliyahu, zt"l, said that to bring Moshiach, everyone should do teshuva (repentance) in the area of "veahavta l'reicha kamocha (and love your fellow as you love yourself)."
"The exalted peace we long for, the peace of strength and valor, is the peace where the seemingly opposing powers within our nation are united, where all forces and ideologies are recognized as being the words of the Living G-d." -- Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook
To make a contribution toward ending the lingering pain of Gush Katif, please visit Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Rimon's worthy JobKatif project, which is working to assist the many remaining refugees to get back up on their feet.
Baltimore mishpacha: Here is a very good article to refresh your memories and to update you by our own Kenneth Lasson: Five Years Later: Gaza's Former Jewish Settlers.
4 comments:
sometimes there might be a thing you feel you really HAVE to do. But to do it right you may have to put it off for a while, so as to ensure you have all the pieces in place to really get it done right. Sometimes we feel that that hilltop just has to be settled, that border just has to come down, those houses just have to be built on another piece of land, so we can fulfill our destiny and our heritage in our land, as one nation, one people. However, if concentration on this, if our everyday practicalities keeps us away from the other things that also need to be done, we will be never be able to settle "right" The anger that can be felt across a crosswalk, the small, but brave attempt at saying the right thing to appease this anger is NOT ENOUGH. Without the lady in the beautiful scarf, the house in the hilltop can never become home. We need her! Maybe we can put the stones, and rocks down for a bit, they're stones after all, they'll wait for our return. The lady in the beautiful scarf however, is crossing that walk, turning the corner and walking away.
Hashem is using science to give us the message that we're all family. Case in point--an article about a recent genetic study of Jews. Here is an excerpt:
(Here's the link for the full article
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/03/the-dna-of-abraham-s-children.html)
"...As the scientists will report in the next issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, the analysis shows that “each of the Jewish populations formed its own distinctive cluster, indicating the shared ancestry and relative genetic isolation of the members of each of those groups.”
Jewish populations, that is, have retained their genetic coherence just as they have retained their cultural and religious traditions, despite migrations from the Middle East into Europe, North Africa, and beyond over the centuries, says geneticist Harry Ostrer of NYU Langone Medical Center, who led the study. Each Diaspora group has distinctive genetic features “representative of each group’s genetic history,” he says, but each also “shares a set of common genetic threads” dating back to their common origin in the Middle East. “Each of the Jewish populations formed its own distinctive cluster, indicating the shared ancestry and relative genetic isolation of the members of each of those groups.”
The various Jewish groups were more related to each other than to non-Jews, as well. Within every Jewish group, individuals shared as much of their genome as two fourth or fifth cousins..."
So, you see...we really are all cousins!
Your bracelets remind me of my family, some on the left, some on the right, both pro- and anti-disengageent, but ALWAY pro our boys and girls serving this country.
Stephen Covey writes about using an Indian talking stick in disagreements - so that everyone is heard and FEELS heard. Then, third solutions emerge.
I think everyone's wrong and everyone's right.
But there is a third solution out there that may shock the heck out of us - and I, for one, don't know what it looks like :)
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