David’s Harp: Anybody awake out there?
“Air traffic control, this is El Al flight 001, requesting a descent pattern, we are ready to land here in Washington.” There is silence. “Washington, this is El Al 001, are we cleared to land our Boeing 747-400?”
Again there is no response from the air traffic control tower. “This is the pilot in command, Captain Yishai, we are requesting permission to land? Hello? Shalom?” A feint sound can be heard from the cockpit speaker. The pilot responds, “Is that you Washington? I can barely hear you?” The sound becomes louder. “Ch…shhh…Ch… shhh…Ch…shhh.” Captain Yishai asks, “Washington, we can hear you now. Are you trying to say something with the letter chet?” The pilot listens carefully. Again, there is snoring heard. “Ch…shhh…Ch…shhh.”
Pilot Yishai explains. “We have come a long way. This was not just an 11-hour journey. We have travelled for a very long time all the way from the land of the Fogels, Shalit, Begin, Golda and Dayan. We have flown from Uganda with rescued hostages and from Munich with murdered athletes. We’ve air lifted our Russian and Ethiopian brothers and sisters. We had stopovers in Haiti and in Japan to heal and rescue those in need.
“Air traffic control? Anyone? Anyone in the entire world? Anybody awake out there?
My passengers and crew have indeed come a long way. We have journeyed from Kiryat Shmona and Maalot, and the Sinai and Yamit, and Yom Kippur and Sderot and Itamar. We were in Dizengoff’s bomb shelter with Ben Gurion. We waited for the Moshiach in Auschwitz and we waded in the marshes of the 1800s in our homeland to rid the swamps of malaria and mire. We witnessed the immigration of Arabs into our once uninhabitable no man’s land, which we transformed into an oasis. We were massacred in Hebron in 1929, and the British gave us 25% of our own land and then the U.N. gave us 50% of our 25%. It is our home where we once sacrificed with holiness and lit our candelabra with oil; our home where we were later slaughtered with desecration and where we were sacrificed for oil.
“We lived through the eras of the Roman comedy and roamed through our own comedy of errors. We have survived the cartels and the Carters and outlasted the bombers and the Osamas and we will endure the J Streets and the Obamas. We have invented and healed while they were under-handing and beheading. We have negotiated and shaken the hands of fists and knives while our lands have been sliced and carved. Into the history of all people we are written with the right and then wronged, while our enemies are ridden with re-writes and wrongs. We are just moral, and more than just, defensively good and good friends with fences. We are decently supportive and we support the decent. We are weary and tired and we are tired from our wary.
“We have come along way. Our home is where our forefathers forsook for sons; and where our mothers and brothers are buried. Our home is where we pray over their graves and where we wail at the remnants of Solomon’s Temple in his father’s city, while being smothered by the sights and sounds of minarets and mosques vandalizing the holiest of holies. To the wall, we have scrawled and crawled into with our messages answered by G-d. But to the world we have called out without a callback. We know the world is sleeping. We are so surprised although we should not be. We are the Jewish people. We are the children of Israel. We have travelled and journeyed; we have walked and now we fly. We move in a world that closes its eyes and sighs and snores and sneers.
“Does anyone hear me? Anybody awake out there? “Koomi, ori” “Arise! Awake and shine! For your light is come, and the glory of Hashem is risen upon you.” So said Isaiah in our land in the 8th Century BCE. “Arise! Awake and shine!” He said it in the land that has been the homeland of the Jewish people for thousands upon thousands of years.”
Happy Birthday State of Israel. Shine your light, make a wish and see if the world even notices from its deep slumber. They are fated to always sleep while we are destined to forever dream.
