Drew T. Noll © 2024, all rights reserved

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

A Missing Star and Missiles in the Air

Palestinians Firing Missiles out of Their Population Centers


It’s in the air. That is the only explanation that I can find for the insanity that keeps knocking at my door. Maybe I’m just getting tired… I don’t know. The missiles just keep on raining, some getting by the Iron Domes, closer and closer to m
y particular claim-stake in the Promised Land, causing stress and unnecessary mayhem. Now a bus in Tel Aviv has been bombed too… The stress level just keeps going up. I'm starting to think more seriously about where my loved ones are. I'm worried about walking back and forth from work. It's even starting to feel a lot like it did when I lived in LA during the Rodney King riots. All we need now is a 6.0 earth quake to send me looking for another reality to inhabit…

Just the other day, after being verbally assaulted by an unhinged American woman, (it seems that Israelis seem better suited to this sort of stress factor) I was forced to blow off some steam by having a couple of watery Maccabee beers and working out the kinks in the wheels of my long-board. Now that the streets have been washed of a year’s worth of oil and goo, I can really push it, flying down the hill, leaning into my turns and carving into a year’s worth of terrain that had been stored within my mind’s eye. It's just about as powerful as Hitbodedut when it comes to getting back in touch with myself—of course, the beers didn’t hurt too much either.

My son tells me that if Goldstar, the other Israeli beer, is like camel urine, then Maccabee is like the urine from a camel that drank Goldstar, if you know what I mean; but, we love Israeli beer… anyways. It isn’t the best, but it’s ours—and that is how we feel about the land that we live on. We don’t have great surf breaks, snow-board runs, or high country backpacking trails; they are just OK, but what we do have is precious to us, like an almost forgotten jewel with a 3,000 year old patina.

When they stepped up the missiles that have been raining down on the south, Tel Aviv, and even Jerusalem, terrorizing civilian populations with repeated sirens of eminent annihilation, we really had no choice but to shut down the mouth that has been drooling hate and violence onto our tiny but precious populace. Conflict is a terrible thing, but when I see the near riots and slanted media spew, the world over, against Israel protecting itself and its citizens, I just have to wonder where all the incorrect information is coming from. Most people, I guess, think that there was a Palestine once, or that there is even one now, and that the Zionists just came in and kicked out the native inhabitants or something.

(Note: Judaism has stood on three legs for over two thousand years: (1) Zionism or the return as a people to the land of Israel, (2) Kashrut, meaning eating only permitted foods prepared in the proper way, and (3) both guarding and remembering the Sabbath, whatever that ‘really’ means.) 

I can understand the uneducated and the indoctrinated people, but the intelligent, educated people? That I just don’t get. Most people don’t even know that the word ‘Palestine’ comes from when the Romans almost completely wiped out the Jews in Israel, about 2,000 years ago, sending a record 10 garrisons of Roman soldiers in to quell the Great Revolt. They wanted to annihilate the Jews and sought to remove any memory of them, not only in the land of Israel, but in the world as well; so, they took a name from, by then, an extinct people called the Philistines. They renamed Jerusalem Capitolina (which didn’t stick) and Shechem became Neopolis (New City), now referred to as just Nablus by the Arabs that live there. It’s all just so frustrating! Why can’t these supposedly intelligent people get their facts straight…?

(HAMAS) Hiding Amongst Mosques And Schools
Maybe it’s time for another beer… Ahhh…. Carving, carving, down the slope, with my sights aimed at the Mediterranean. With the Red Hot Chili Peppers bouncing around my skull, there are mature olive trees gliding past, as I float down the hill on precision bearings… clouds, floating on the freshly washed asphalt, the earth, the land. Amud Anan… Pillar of Cloud… um… Oh yeah! The English translation: the Pillar of Defense, or, essentially, what us Israelis, us Jews, call the latest attempt at self-preservation in the face of evil—just like from the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt: that corrupt place of narrowness that (also) attempted to wipe the Jews from the planet about 3,500 years ago… ‘During the day, leading the Jewish people on their journey was a pillar of cloud, and at night there was a pillar of fire, giving them light.’

Sometimes it seems that the entire world has been trying to annihilate the Jews for centuries, so I was ‘so happy’ to receive so much support from family and friends in the US, Europe, and elsewhere when the news services started to ‘cha-ching’ their cash registers by slinging their propaganda of pompous, self-righteous fear mongering. I think that it must all come down to one thing: God-envy. The world—speaking metaphorically—hates the Jews because they agreed to the terms laid out to them by the Big Guy. The proto-pedophile Greeks, idol-buffet table Egyptians, and child-slaughtering Canaanites couldn't be bothered with it, so the Jews took on the burden... the Chosen People… oy.

The problem is that with responsibility… comes a price. I learned that the Chafetz Chaim was able to predict the exact date of the fall of the Soviet Union. He did so by understanding that for every generation, a star goes out of alignment, causing each individual, and in turn the whole of society, to veer off course in some way. The Communists were essentially Jews, to the extent that jokes flew around the governmental think-tanks about needing one more Jew to form a minyan—and the jokes were in Yiddish… The star that had gone out of alignment for that generation wasn’t a conflict of being Jewish or not, it was whether or not to believe in God.

The Chafetz Chaim knew when the specific star of that generation rose and could, therefore, predict that the fall would come about 70 years later, and it did. When asked what the star for the current generation was, he stated that the Jewish people, by and large, would believe in the One True God, but that they would forget what being a Jew was. Essentially, what he said was that the Jews would forget the difference between a Jew and a non-Jew. This would in turn resonate out, creating a major disturbance in the world and causing mankind to forget the difference between all kinds of really important things, like the different and individual, unique qualities that separate mankind and womankind, or even an inconceivable confusion between mankind and mere animals.

This we have taught to the world in our confusion over a missing star, and now it appears to be returning upon Israel. Even though we have forgotten, by and large, what it means to be a Jew in the world, everyone else seems to have remembered. The most unlikely combination of a Left-wing inteligencia and radical militant Islam have joined forces to remind the Jews that they are Jews… and what better place to do that than to rain that hate down on (in their minds: disputed territory) the only Jewish homeland that has ever been or ever will be.
Missile Trails over Ashdod, Israel

In Psalms 147:8 we read, "God covers the heavens with clouds and prepares rain for the earth…"
 
Peace will come one day, but not from the vain, egocentric attempts of mankind (not even from the missile ducking Ban Ki Moon or the cold, floppy handshake of Hilary Clinton). The ‘only’ way peace in the Middle East will ensue will be for the Jews to remember who they are. The only way to do that is to have faith that the star that is currently out of place is actually there. The only way to do that… is to believe that we are One, the Jewish people, and that the rest of the world is full of our brothers and sisters, the Human race. The only way for peace to ensue is to love each other and respect each individual, man, woman, or child for who they truly are: amazing, unique to the world, human beings… 

Yeah, I know; that is a pretty large leap. But, think about it. In the meantime, you’ll find me on my long-board with a weak bottle of Israeli beer, taking a break once in a while to write one of these weird little blog-posts.

Blog on baby!

And Shabbat Shalom!!