A rest, and a realization.

I turned on the TV to the Southside Irish Parade here in Chicago -- a prideful, celebratory day of drunkenness and revelry to honor St. Patrick's Day (still a week or so off). I flipped a few channels away and I'm now watching the Jewish Americans on PBS. The portion celebrates the Jewish integration into American society in the 1950s. And then ...

I'm trying to figure out how I missed it. The massacre. The small scale destruction of my people, that surely represents the desires, the need for the complete destruction of my people. It happened on Thursday night, in Jerusalem. On the other side of the world, away from where I was. They were boys, mere children, studying in the library of the Mercaz Harav yeshiva when hundreds of rounds of ammo were sprayed, killing eight. The oldest was 26, the age of my older brother, the rest were 15 or 16, the age of my younger brother.

[The killer's] family said that although he had been intensely religious, he was not a member of any militant group, and he had planned on marrying this summer. But he had been transfixed by the bloodshed in Gaza, where 126 Palestinians died from Wednesday through Monday, his sister, Iman Abu Dhaim, told The Associated Press.

It is with this that I wonder, I rack my brain and clench my fists wondering -- WHY then? Why must you kill these youths to avenge the completely unrelated deaths of 126 Palestinians? Why, why would you target students!? Studying, over Torah, studying the historic texts of our people, and then there you are spraying bullets, murdering them. Murdering the learning. It boggles my mind, it shatters my spirit, it makes me scared. It reminds me that as a Jew, I am not safe, for there are those who wish to remove my mark from the map. It's the response to history, and it's the response to extremism. I'm still reading Constantine's Sword, watching as the Catholic Church permitted the destruction of Jews throughout the ages, and here in the present there are Islamic extremists who condone the destruction of the Jews. Will there be rest?

Sigh. I'm supposed to go Israel this summer. And still, I will go.

It devastates me to see this, and to not have seen it before Shabbat, and now I feel guilty that I did not know. That I could not reflect, think on, pray for the families of this situation. But I turned off and shut down on Shabbat and it was amazing. It was inspiring and reflecting and it makes you conscious of those other aspects of Shabbat that should be kept.

I did not use my phone, my computer, my iPod, and I did not write. I did not kindle a flame (despite wanting to light candles to create an aroma in the apartment). I read quite a bit, took a nap, went to a movie, and enjoyed silence and stillness. I turned on my television for 15 minutes, because briefly I was feeling a little pent up in the apartment. I realized how wasteful and pointless it was, so I shut it off. I became more conscious of aspects of Shabbat, like carrying money, carrying at all, turning the lights on and off, cooking. My mind was more at ease. And I have to say taking the day to turn off was outstanding, and I intend on continuing the trend (sans when my little brother is here, since, well, that's a complicated situation). I think that it will ease my mind, and it will allow me to calm myself a bit. I look forward to this ... and taking on more mitzvot in the process.

And now, the mourner's prayer, the Kaddish.

Astounding story.

I really want to go to bed, but I just saw this story on the PBS Jewish Americans series, and I had to share this story.

On Radio WBAI in New York City during the 1968 teachers' strike when ethnic tensions soared between Jews and Blacks, Julius Lester was interviewing activist teacher Leslie Campbell and asked the teacher to read a certain poem by a 14-year-old black student. It read "Hey, Jew-boy with that yarmulke on your head/ you pale face Jew-boy, I wish you were dead./ I see you Jew boy/ now you can't hide/ I got a scope on you/ yeah, Jew-boy, you gonna die."Lester became famous and was noted as the most anti-Semitic man in the U.S. But then, Lester converted to Judaism years later. He taught Judaic studies. He's a lay leader in a local synagogue. He speaks of what is truly in my heart. It's fascinating how someone can go from one end to the other so swiftly, in almost one heartbeat.

How fascinating, nu?

I wish I had written down the entire portion of the poem they read. It was horribly vile, saying something along the lines of expressing that blacks had struggled for 400 years in the U.S., and the Jews had not. It was a fascinating time, the 1960s, for the Jewish and black communities. I wish I knew more. I'll always love the movie the "Hebrew Hammer" for its satirizing of the relationship, of course. But how fascinating for two peoples to come together, fall apart, and come together again, if only in spirit.

EDIT (01/24/2008): Since so many people were ending up on my page for the full text, I decided to search again. So I just found the (almost??) full text of the poem. I will paste it below. It's absolutely vile, in my opinion. Also, for video clips from the PBS series, please click here.

Hey Jew boy, with that yarmulka on your head
You palefaced Jew boy -- I wish you were dead.
I can see you Jew boy -- no, you can't hide,
I got a scoop on you -- yeh, you gonna die. ...
I'm sick of seeing in everything I do
About the murder of six million Jews;
Hitler's reign lasted only fifteen years. ...
My suffering lasted for over 400 years, Jew Boy. ...
When the UN made Israel a free independent state
Little 4- and 5-year-old boys threw hand grenades.
They hated the black Arabs with all their might,
And you, Jew boy, said itw as all right.
Then you came to America, land of the free,
And took over the school system to perpetuate white supremacy,
Guess you know, Jew boy, there's only one reason you made it --
You had a clean white face, colorless and faded.
I hated you, Jew boy, because your hang-up was the Torah,
And my only hang-up was my color.

Another buck on something I already knew.

I don't know that "experts" or "reports" need to say it: Israel, Diaspora Growing Apart.

"We must massively inject Diaspora studies into the education system," said Prof. Yehezkel Dror Wednesday in a speech delivered to the Herzliya Conference.

But then: "At the heart of the rift between Israel and Jewish communities abroad lies the notion that the Diaspora youth have negative views of Israel politically, nationally and socially," Dror said.

Dror makes an interesting point. Is Israel isolating itself? Is the Diaspora not interested enough? Are the two lacking enough information about each other? Diaspora Jews are often viewed as not religious enough, not Jewish enough, even by secular Israelis. Likewise, Israeli Jews -- secular and observant -- are viewed as militant, obsessive, living in the dark ages of Judaism. But the rift. The rift is upsetting. I don't know what to say about it, and I feel pretty unequipped considering I haven't been to Israel just yet. I read the books, know the stories, hear about the people, watch the movies. But I don't think I'm truly equipped to assess the situation. I've read "Jew vs. Jew" and I'm pretty, completely -- without a doubt -- aware of the distress and divide between Jews and Jews and Jews. But I'm more aware of how it appears in America.

Israel seems so far away.

Anyhow. My point is that there's a rift, yes, but we don't need experts to tell us this. Do we?

////Watching the last installment of the PBS Jewish Americans series. I caught last week's, missed the first week's, and this week's is okay so far. I swoon for Liev Schreiber (the narrator). We're well into the 1950s, which is a great period for Jews on TV (a subject I've well-researched). Good times, folks. This is America, and we are the Jews.////