First Thursday of Advent 2024

Take heed:

You will never know how it feels to be loved and supported by those who have nothing to gain from you, and in fact, everything to lose. You will never know the feeling of masses all over the world pouring into the streets and stadiums to chant and sing for your freedom; and it is not because you are Jewish, as you try to make the world believe, but because you are depraved violent colonizers who think your Jewishness entitles you to the home my grandfather and his brothers built with their own hands on lands that had been in our family for centuries. It is because Zionism is a blight onto Judaism and indeed onto humanity. 

You can change your names to sound more relevant to the region and you can pretend falafel and hummus and zaatar are your ancient cuisines, but in the recesses of your being, you will always feel the sting of this epic forgery and theft, that’s why even the drawings of our children pasted hung on walls at the UN or in a hospital ward send your leaders and lawyers into hysteric meltdowns. 

You will not erase us, no matter how many of us you kill and kill and kill, all day every day. We are not the rocks Chaim Weizmann thought you could clear from the land. We are its very soil. We are her rivers and her trees and her stories, because all of that was nurtured by our bodies and our lives over millennia of continuous, uninterrupted habitation of that patch of earth between the Jordan and Mediterranean waters, from our Canaanite, our Hebrew, our Philistine, and our Phoenician ancestors, to every conqueror or pilgrim who came and went, who married or raped, loved, enslaved, converted between religions, settled or prayed in our land, leaving pieces of themselves in our bodies and our heritage. 

The fabled, tumultuous stories of that land are quite literally in our DNA. You cannot kill or propagandize that away, no matter what death technology you use or what Hollywood and corporate media arsenals you deploy. 

Someday, your impunity and arrogance will end. Palestine will be free; she will be restoredk to her multi-religious, multi-ethnic pluralistic glory; we will restore and expand the trains that run from Cairo to Gaza to Jerusalem, Haifa, Tripoli, Beirut, Damascus, Amman, Kuwait, Sanaa, and so on; we will put an end to the zionist American war machine of domination, expansion, extraction, pollution, and looting. 

..and you will either leave, or you will finally learn to live with others as equals.

Take heed, watch; for you do not know when the time will come.  It is like someone going on a journey, who leaving home and putting the servants in charge of their work, commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.  Watch therefore--for you do not know when the lrd of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning--lest th suddenly and find you asleep.  And what I say to you I say to all:  Watch.

 --Mark 13:33-37

You, O Lord, are father to us,
our Redeemer from of old is your name.
O Lord, why do you make us err from your ways
and harden our heart, so that we fear you not?
Return for the sake of your servants,
for the tribes of your heritage.
O that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains might quake at your presence--
as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil--
to make your name known to your adversaries,
and that the nations might tremble at your presence!
When you did terrible things which we looked not for,
you came down, the mountain quaked
at your presence.
From of old no one has heard
or perceived by the ear,
no eye has seen a God besides you,
who works for those who await you.
You meet those who joyfully work righeousness,
those who remember you in your ways.
Behold, you were angry and we sinned;
in our sins we have been a long time,
and shall we be saved?
We have all become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
We all fade like a leaf,
and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one that calls upon your name,
who arises to take hold of you;
for you have hid your face from us,
and have delivered us into the hands of our inquities.
Yet, O Lord, you are father to us;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Be not exceedingly angry, O Lord,
and remember not inquity for ever.

--Isaiah 63:16-17, 19-64:7

"Take heed!  Watch!"  For what? For the revelation?  For the truth to be blindingly revealed? For God to rend the heavens and come down, and make the mountains quake at God's presence? And even if that happens, will you deny it?  Or accept it?  If you see it, hear it, read it, will you understand it? Will the truth come, whole and indivisible?  Or in parts and in personal recollections and particular historical arguments?

You'll have to read all of it, the remarks from which that quote comes.  This selection is just enough to make you want to.  You don't have to agree; you don't have to acqueisce; you don't have to convert.  You just have to take heed, and watch.  It's what Jesus meant.  It's what Advent means. 

We all fade like a leaf,

and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one that calls upon your name,
who arises to take hold of you;
for you have hid your face from us,
and have delivered us into the hands of our inquities

Consider how that can be true today, right now, in the world, in the lives of nations and the lives of people.  Consider that Isaiah was talking to Israel.  Consider how little has changed in 2000 years; how no one is blessed and pure and without fault and without sin and without responsibility.

Yet, O Lord, you are father to us;
we are the clay, and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.

And what have we done, as the work of those hands?

Be not exceedingly angry, O Lord,

and remember not inquity for ever.

As Paul told the Thessalonians, "Pray without ceasing."

To that I say: "Amen."