Where are the Slogans of Joy?

“Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so.” René Magritte

It seems like we are living in an age of slogans instead of songs. I am searching for songs. I keep the army radio, Galgalatz on in my car and hear a song dedicated by a reservist’s wife. His name is Dor. Her name is Ainat. They had been married for 11 months before the 7th of October, before he was called up to serve in his combat engineering unit. He is now in Gaza, and his young wife dedicated Grover Washington’s Just the Two of Us. As the tune played it crooned the tune of a time when lovers wrote handwritten notes, of waiting by the house phone for a call, where wars were not screened on a device in your hand.

We are impressionable. My sister-in-law (who just lost her son) asks me why they are placing the terrified shocked cruel Hamas hostage pictures from Gaza on the streets and highways. “Aren’t the children traumatized enough?” she asks. I hear her (especially after all she’s been through). The children are not the audience for these posters. No-one can forget this war. It may seem like we are sitting in the coffee shops drinking coffee, but I sit silent, I try and chat, but I prefer writing. I refuge at home, I peel carrots, I stir fry onions and garlic, adding zucchini. It’s whilst I’m driving that the reality wells up. It’s when I’m silent and by myself that the tears come.

We are not okay.

Sign for recently murdered hostage Ori Danino with handwritten notes - Selicha - Sorry. He was engaged meant to be married next year. He saved people from the Nova party driving them away from the Hamas attack. May his memory be a blessing. To read more about him - here.

My friend reads my latest post on Substack, and kindly writes to me,

I do hope you allow yourself enough downtime to go through a range of emotions? we can't be full on all the time...I hope you have a safe place where you can let go of being strong for a moment.

She offers to help me. She doesn’t know already how much she has helped. By reading what I write — my way of processing everything. By making me voice - the opposite of joy - which is despair.

I despair at the steering wheel.

But then I dry my eyes, walk up my front stairs and am so grateful for my ripening red pomegranates gracing my entrance. I am so grateful to have a home. I pull off the tablecloth covered in eucalyptus tree leaves, and sticks and the bits and pieces of my untamed garden. I am grateful for it all as I set the garden table. Joy is maybe acknowledging how much can be taken away.

I only have one son at our table tonight. I am old fashioned. We have dinner almost every night together. I make a salad, I make a veggie tofu stir fry, I heat up leftovers from Shabbat. My husband and I sit and I am tired, and force a smile. I am tired I have just been on a Zoom with Rivon Harevii (“The Fourth Quarter”) - a new grassroots movement in Israel of people who are looking for a ‘third way’ beyond the protests, beyond Left and Right.

Sarit Zussman, the mother of the fallen soldier Ben Zussman, spoke. She began by apologizing that Sundays are hard for her, because Sunday is the weekday Ben died. She spoke of how the people of Israel needs to unite, and how when she speaks about the ideals of unity she is told she is an idealist, it is not possible. She said that she will not listen to them. She follows her son’s example. He was an idealist. He is her inspiration. I’ll never forget reading the letter he penned in his will published after he died, asking his parents not to be sad.

Sarit shared how Ben believed anything is possible. Ceilings are meant to be broken. Ben fought to be his best self and never gave up. He literally fought to the end. In the meeting she held up a paper with a drawing of an arrow breaking through a line. This is his symbol.

Copy of the diagram Sarit Zussman drew - Arrow breaking through the ceiling.

My heart went out to Sarit Zussman. I identified with her struggle to fight for ideals of love, unity, and joy. Why is it more real and intellectual to believe in disunity, hate, anger, and division?

The universe agrees, I was comforted by last weeks’s The Marginalian email in my inbox,

“In this world heavy with robust reasons for despair, joy is a stubborn courage we must not surrender, a fulcrum of personal power we must not yield to cynicism, blame, or any other costume of helplessness. “Experience of conflict and a load of suffering has taught me that what matters above all is to celebrate joy,” René Magritte wrote just after living through the second World War of his lifetime. “Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so.” And when the war within rages, as it does in every life, the practice of joy, the courage of joy, becomes our mightiest frontier of resistance.”

This is the joy I am striving for.

René Magritte knew joy is far deeper than a cliche of clouds. Joy is a secret opening to a better life, personally, communally, nationally, globally. An alternative reality - a third way. Ben Zussman knew this. Sarit Zussman knows this. The question is how many of us have the courage to live this?

Wishing you courage to feel deep joy,

Sarah

(Don’t forget to view notes below.)

The Joy of a Twin Rose

Notes: Rivon Harevii - For your interest here’s the website for Rivon Harevii (it’s in Hebrew), and here’s an informative article in English I came across outlining their goals.

Instagram Story - Meet Geula a wonderful woman I came across in Jerusalem on my way to prayers for Hersh Goldberg-Polin watch how she prays for Katrina, who is still in captivity since October 7. Her fierce faith and fight is inspiring - here is her interview as well.

Zoom Rosh Hashana Food Event - I’m excited to be presenting Iraqi Jewish food customs - simanim for the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah with Harif on Tuesday, 17th of September. I will be sharing my grandmother’s special apple jam recipe along with Sarina Roffe and Fabienne Viner-Luzzato who will share a Syrian Jewish seder and Tunisian seder. Details below, and register here.

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