Thru Other Eyes

This madness has got to stop

Dear cousin,

This madness has got to stop. I can’t take seeing so much suffering and hopelessness eat its way through a whole people. I would say ‘enough’ regardless of which people was in this situation. But in this case they are my neighbors and they are my cousins. And if I can’t take seeing it any more, I can only begin to imagine how awful and terrifying it must be for you to have to live this seemingly endless human catastrophe.

For that reason alone,

40 years of wandering. Time to enter the Promised Land.

Dear cousin,

When I look around me and see what the last 40 years has brought us, since our war in June, 1967, I must confess I am very sad. But why should I feel today anything less or more or different than after 39 or 41 years. What’s in a number? What’s in this number?

Many important, even defining, biblical moments in Judaism involved the number 40. And I have just read that the prophet Mohammad had his first vision and revelations from the angel Gabriel at age 40 after fasting and praying for 40 days. Maybe we should not treat this 40 year anniversary as every one before, or God forbid, every one to come. After all, 40 seems to be a number of some spiritual importances to both of us.

The biblical importance of 40 got me thinking about our shared biblical origins: two narratives with one starting point and constant overlap. What we share now is mostly friction and conflict. Why? How did it all really start between us? What can we learn on this anniversary of when the last 40 years began?