I
\nam drawn again and again to A Tale of Love and Darkness<\/u>, Amos
\nOz’s memoir of his early life in a young and bewildered Israel, a
\ncountry which does not even formerly exist as such until a couple
\nhundred pages into the book. <\/p>\n
Every Yom Ha’atzmaut<\/i>, Israel’s independence day, I think back to the
\npassage in which Oz describes crawling into bed at three or four in the
\nmorning, still fully dressed, after celebrating the U.N.’s vote to
\ncreate the state of Israel.<\/p>\n
As a child, Oz understands the solemnity of the event, its historical
\n dimensions, from observing the actions of his father, who lies down
\nnext to him and does something so out of character: he cries – tears of
\njoy. And, in amazement, Oz takes note of his father’s reaction:<\/p>\n
“I reached out sleepily to touch his face, just below his high
\nforehead, and all of a sudden instead of his glasses my fingers met
\ntears. Never in my life, before or after that night, not even when my
\nmother died, did I see my father cry. And in fact I didn’t see him cry
\nthat night either: it was too dark. Only my left hand saw.”<\/p>\n
Only his left hand saw. We remain in this moment with him – still
\nour hand searches in the dark, tries to reach back in time to touch the
\nmoment of Israel’s creation, to grasp even a bit of what it must have
\nbeen like to live through that time. <\/p>\n
Oz does not choose the more reliable senses of sight or sound to
\ntranslate the emotional incredulity of one night years ago. He uses
\ntouch; and while we might imagine the sensation of hot tears on skin,
\nsomething remains always out of our reach. <\/p>\n
Oz, one of our greatest writers, comes close to but cannot pin down
\nthe ineffability of that moment. Emotionally we get it, but putting it
\n into words is like assembling a puzzle in a dream. But Oz invites us
\nto try – with all our senses. <\/p>\n
So I challenge you to do the same. Celebrate the event that made even
\n Amos Oz’s father cry with joy. Tonight, as we move from Yom
\nHaZikaron<\/i>,
\nIsrael’s memorial day, to Yom Ha’atzmaut<\/i>, let’s celebrate with
\nall our
\nsenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am drawn again and again to A Tale of Love and Darkness, Amos Oz’s memoir of his early life in a young and bewildered Israel, a country which does not even formerly exist as such until a couple hundred pages into the book. Every Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s independence day, I think back to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4316,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}