Page 26 - Issue 15

you thrive in discomfort – that you as a people, through
dialogue, justice, humanisation and ת ֶקוֹלֲח ַמ machloket,
has the power to contain all of this as a necessary
element to achieve a brighter future.

Perhaps Kahlil Gibran puts it best: “verily the lust for
comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks
grinning in the funeral.”

As a Jewish people, we need to understand that we can
never be a perfectly pruned garden bed of comfort, as
we would immediately become a field of weeds, as each
gardener would always seek each other’s crop to be
undesirable to their vision of the perfect terrace.

Rather, we must accept that we are a jungle. A Jewish
jungle. An uncomfortable Jewish jungle. An
uncomfortable Jewish jungle that, despite the organisms
who seek to exploit our ecosystem and poison its
wellsprings from within, or strive to burn it down or pave
it over in the name of purity and perfection, continues to
exist as the bold green wilderness that it is. That we are.
We exist in a humid swamp filled with imposing natural
monuments continuing to grow out of the banks of
mud, but at the same time we are filled with trees who
nurture each other with our roots and together comprise
a dynasty and filled with branches yearning to create
sweeter fruits.