Broadcasting Joy

How joy and grief can dwell together. How to insist on the reality of joy even when the world denies it.

Every morning I wake up and think, “I am still alive.”

This has been the strangest time. This Iranian threat.

I blink and breathe in the morning sun, the morning song of blackbirds, cawing crows, cooing laughing doves. When you’re not sure when rockets will drop life takes on new colors. The color of spent ochre oak leaves beginning to fall, a promise of cooler days to come. The color of a baby’s big brown eyes wide with surprise as he is scooped onto the barista’s hip. The color of red roses reblooming.

The color of being here is so bright, but then something in me rebels - why is my existence even a question? Why am I living every day like it may be my last?

All I want to dwell on are the shoots of green on the charred path I walk every week with Ace, my dog, at the Valley of the Cross. All I want to tell you is how one week we arrived and our path was burned; the trees bent to the ground, black to the bone, unrecognizable. Olive tree leaves scorched a dead drab beige, the smell of cooling ash. I felt all my griefs mingling; for my nephew, for the war. It felt apt that my forest path was also fire stormed, singed and sad. How do you bind such a grief? I stumbled through the burned path that usually gave me so much joy, a dark, silent walk through the soul.

I returned to the path, each week, to touch the charred bark leaving black marks on my fingers. To bear witness to the silent tree corses. To memorize their mourning shapes. And then, on one walk I spied green. Buds shooting from the parched ground, from the trees, verdant, rising up, growing. And they grew every week, increased, a joyous rebellion of shoots with leaves. My path of joy returned. I skipped the path with wonder, how much can grow without water. How much grows from the ashes. The skeleton trees became beautiful surrounded by such birth. What we can grow from grief.

Sometimes I feel the natural world is speaking to me. Counseling me with hope, when there is so much in the external world that wants to steal hope and joy.

Airplanes crisscross the skies of Jerusalem. Sometimes when my washing machine is on I think it’s more airplanes. My head is in the sky with my prayers. Protect us. Protect the sky above us.

The Hindus are dying in Bangladesh at the hands of Islamic Jihad. The Iranian regime is hanging dissidents. The sound barrier in Lebanon was broken by the Israeli army this week several times. A Gazan who spoke on social media against Hamas was murdered/silenced by Hamas.

I learned all this without reading the news. It’s stressful enough waiting for rockets. I have stopped reading the news as much as possible.

Terror steals joy. I’m not sure who the newspapers are working for because they also steal my joy.

I hear the voices - cynical, disparaging, insisting I look at reality. To them I reply with this quote I recently read,

“Ignorance is not knowing anything and being attracted to the good. Innocence is knowing everything, and still being attracted to the good.”

I read it in Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, who further writes,

“This state of wise innocence is entered by shedding cynicism and protectionism, and by reentering the state of wonder one sees in most humans who are very young and many who are very old. It is a practice of looking through the eyes of a knowing and loving spirit, instead of those through a whipped dog, the hounded creature, the mouth atop a stomach, the angry wounded human…

The word innocent is often used to mean a person of no knowing, or a simpleton. But the roots of the word mean to be free of injury or hurt. In Spanish, the word inocente is understood to mean a person who tries not to harm another, but who also is able to heal any injury or harm to herself.

La inocente is the name often given to a curandera healer, one who heals others of injury or harm. To be an innocent means to be able to see clearly what is the matter and to mend it.”

Joy is innocent. Joy mends and heals terror. It opens the heart. Exactly what terror regimes don’t want.

The other day I bumped into a friend on the street and she asked me, “Are you scared?”

I looked at her warily, because I refuse to admit fear. I won’t give the Iranian regime of terror what they want. I won’t give up my joy. Instead I ask her, “Why, are you scared?”

She says, “No.”

She then relates that a media friend interviewed her about how she was feeling in Jerusalem with the looming Iranian threat. My friend answered with an absolute, “I am not scared.” Her interview wasn’t used. Why? Because the news was looking to feature  people who were scared of the Iranian Regime’s threats. They publish fears.

I want to tell you that you need to visit Jerusalem. You need to visit Israel to experience the courage and joy the media will not share with you. I was filled with wonder at the innocent joy of Arab and Jewish children playing together at The First Station last week on an August evening as their parents hovered above their young heads. Blowing bubbles, absorbed in games, relieved to have this moment in the cool breeze. A moment where you can forget about the war.

The delightful bubbles blown do not differentiate as they pop over the sweet, small heads of Arab and Jewish children. The rockets won’t either.

We are fighting for so much I feel as I observe with a very sore heart this very innocent, everyday, summer scene in Jerusalem.

Here is another story of joy. Told to me by a young Palestinian man, with the most open face, and lit up eyes, who grew up in a village of terrorists. He told us (we were a group of creatives and activists) that as a youth he had been trained to go to India to convert people to radical Islam because he spoke good English. He told us his best friend went to Syria to join ISIS. He told us that as he grew older he began to question his village’s extremism. A hate of Jews and Israel that didn’t sit comfortably in his heart. He told us he met a rabbi, and the rabbi accepted him for who he was. He then turned away from the Islamic extremism he was brought up to. He told us, “The secret weapon of Israel is acceptance.” He joined the IDF, and afterwards the police force in Jerusalem. His journey is now to share his story. Share how there are diamonds in Gaza. Diamonds like him, who just need another education, another experience with Israel that shows them acceptance. Shows them another way. A way of joy and innocence.

This man was brave to question. To dare wonder. To follow his soul’s questions. To seek light, another way. Life, coexistence and joy.

Tonight is Tisha B’Av, the 9th of Av, where the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem is commemorated. I find a kitchri recipe in Daisy Iny’s cookbook The best of Baghdad cooking, with treats from Teheran. Lentils and rice cooked in butter that is traditionally made every Thursday night in Iraq by every Jewish family. (Ask any Iraqi Jew about this set menu.) My aunt says that it’s to commemorate the destruction of the Temple. They also make kitchri to eat before the fast of Tisha B’Av with boiled eggs. Lentils and boiled eggs are both Jewish mourning foods.

We are mourning so much destruction post 7th of October. But I can’t help but feel a gurgle of joy as I add blobs of butter to the stew of rice and lentils. I love making the food of my ancestors and feeling connected. I know this is the gift of living here. The possibility and permission, living in Israel gives me to return as closely as I can to my Babylonian Jewish roots. I make sense here.

I come from an exiled people who have returned. The prophet Zechariah, who inspired and pushed for the Second Temple to be rebuilt in 516 BCE, says one day our mourning fasts will become, “occasions for joy and gladness, happy festivals for the House of Judah; but you must love honesty and integrity.” (Zechariah 8:19).

Joy comes with responsibility, with wise action. My son is still in the army. We still have hostages in Gaza. My heart still breaks a little more every day. And the Iranian threats are real. But still….I insist…on the other reality - joy.

Celebrating my return here in Jerusalem. Celebrating that I can feed my family traditional foods like kitchri. Celebrating with deep joy that after so many years of surviving as Jews we are still here learning how to thrive as Jews in a country of acceptance, of dreams, of prophecy.

I’ll take such innocent joy, day by day. I will share it with the world, word by word.

You can too.

Blessings,

Sarah

Notes:

This is Not a Cholent Book Review - I absolutely love this wonderful, insightful article by award winning journalist Tabby Refael in the Jewish Journal - here.

Kitchri Recipe - I can’t not give you the Kitchri Recipe - here it is from Daisy Iny’s The best of Baghdad cooking, with treats from Teheran

KETCHRI (Easy Rice with Lentils)

2 cups uncooked long-grain rice

1 cup dried red lentils

2 cups water

I teaspoon tomato paste

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 tablespoon salt

1 teaspoon cuminseed, freshly ground

½ pound butter

¼ teaspoon white pepper

Wash rice and soak for at least 2 hours or overnight. Wash lentils and soak for about 30 minutes. Place water, tomato paste, pepper, urmeric, salt, cuminseed and ¼ pound butter in a heavy-bottomed pot, and bring to a boil. Drain the soaked rice, add to the boiling water, and allow to cook for about 5 minutes, or until practically all liquid is absorbed. Drain the lentils and add to the rice. Mix thoroughly but gently in order not to break the grains of the rice. Cover and reduce heat to medium-low for about 10 minutes. Add remaining butter on top of the rice. Cover and let steam over very low heat for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Mix gently so the butter will blend evenly into the rice. Arrange on a platter.

Scrape bottom of the pot with a spatula to lift off the delicious crust formed there; place the crust around the rice, and serve.

This ketchri is usually served with yogurt.

Makes 6 servings.

Ketchri is usually served during Tisha B'Ab, when Jewish people are forbidden to eat meat during a 9-day period.

VARIATION: If you use garlic, crush 1 garlic clove and a pinch of ground cuminseed together. Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a small pan, when the oil is very hot, add the crushed garlic, which will brown very fast; pour the golden garlic on the rice, mix gently, and serve.

For more about me and my writing visit my website www.sarahsassoon.com

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