This morning I finished listening to Darryl Cooper’s penetrating podcast series Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem.
It is a recounting of a history I am familiar with, having grown up and been educated in Israel. But, as has been obvious to me for many years, the picture I was given was incomplete. I recall learning it as burdensome. Emphasis (as I experienced it) was placed on two things. The first was a boring and pointless attempt to capture stats and facts (how many Jews arrived in Israel during each immigration, where they came from, what drove them away, etc.) that I was expected to precisely regurgitate in exams. The second was an attempt to portray a narrative that led to the creation of the state of Israel that the Jews deserved. The thing is that the attempt to twist the story into one that historically favors the Jews undermined the story itself … it was incomplete and therefore not cohesive and uninteresting.
I knew of most of the pieces on the story-board (people, places, events, etc.) but I had never heard them woven together as cohesively as in Daryl’s presentation. Though the story is one of much misery and pain (truly “on many sides”) listening to it brought me a sense of peace.
Listening to it reinforced my belief that there is something special about Israel. But that to see it one almost has to look beyond Israel itself. If there was a magnifying glass that collected, across space & time, rays of human faults, weaknesses and misperceptions & skills, potentials and gifts and brought them into intense focus, the burning point of concentrated heat would land on Israel. Fire can burn and consume, but if tempered can be used to cleanse and reshape. The potential for both is continuously present in Israel and just as violence currently spreads out from it to the world, so can, potentially, healing and peace.
I have so much to say … but I do not currently have the emotional capacity nor motivation to bring out what is inside me.So, I leave you with the first of 6 parts of Daryl’s podcast: