B"H
Occidental Galuth (exile). The stone that initiated this ripple
effect was my maternal grandfather coaching my revolutionary
tendencies into a reconsideration of my Jewish identity. M y
mother suggested I would find my place in nascent modern Israel,
it being a place in need of those to strengthen its foundations. I
had to come to grips with myself so I gave myself over to
identification with Israel having something to do with Judais m that
was supposed to be the botto m line of my personal existence and
humanitarian heritage. It was quite a sojourn from 1973 until 2017 ,
not entirely different fro m the prostrations and progression o f
Buddhist adherents who m make their religious pilgrimage.
Back then, Israel had achieved international fa me for the
establishment of the Kibbutz movement. I was young and eager to
do my thing, and took up residence on a kibbutz wherein
inculcated to the value of hard work (no ticket - no laundered
clothes). Early to rise and before even partaking of breakfast out
to the orchard to harvest grapefruit. Returning to the communal
dining roo m to take a place at the breakfast table, among the many
people just starting out to their daily dispositions. Everybod y
conducting their affairs according to an eternity clock connected
to the land few seldom feel beneath their feet. I still wake early to
a semi-compulsion of productivity. My front room is an art
museum of my encounters in the realm of painting. The modern
patriarch of national re ligious Jewish values, Rav Kook, refer to
the creative impulse as a form of prophecy, heavenly inspired.
I went fro m pillar to post trying to find my niche in Israel, alas;
a half year had gone by when I already had flunked out of a Baa l
Teshuva yeshiva. I had come to Israel on an open ticket and there
I was, boarding flight in the opposite direction to work as a
devoted employee, for a meager stipend, as office manager in my
father's wholesale schmata (apparel) business. I awaken my
slumbering me mory cells as I compare and contrast the traumatic
departure from the Israeli airport in '73 to my near escape fro m
Safrascity in 2011. My mind is traveling in parallel universes
connecting the space of some three to four decades between the
departures and the arrivals. This seems like journey into a dark
tunnel while riding o n a clickety train rattling in the direction o f
the northern illuminations of my very own renaissance. I a m
indulging these thought by writing this notebook while sitting in
downtown Paris, and flying over the Atlantic Ocean, concluding
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