Well, I guess I’ve been many Rosies since I joined an embryonic blogging community here in October 2007. I have been the first Rosie of whom I was (and remain) very proud, and then the vanished Rosie, and then some other Rosie I didn’t even recognize in the summer, and a lurker Rosie. And finally of late (to my surprise) an intermittent Rosie the Goldfish. And it isn’t good for Robin’s (Roxane’s) personal growth to be both here and not here, so as 2009 opens its arms for us, I thought I’d say something in honor of the years and then swim away again (granted, holding no crystal ball in my fins).
And so I was thinking of a few things I wanted to say to you and then Gaza exploded and I knew that that must be my point of departure (no pun intended). for this blog, as I often played a pivotal role in the always much-commented threads on the Palestine-Israel predicament–because I was the only non-Zionist Ashkenaz Jew among the regular bloggers. And so I drafted a kind of overview of my ideas on the predicament in general, all of which I’ve explained before, I guess as a kind of a legacy:pacifism, Truth and Reconciliation; One State Solution (I know these seem more and more as dreams but I shall continue to dream);; wiping from the website, the map and the pages ot time the very dangerous, incendiary term Zionazi,;some recollections of my father, a Zionist by upbringing but a great humanitarian and a very humble man. And so forth.
And then I realized there was something far more fundamental underlying all this. It is that in political discussions on this website from the very first day I have always been able to forge very close friendships with people of the most disparate ideologies imaginable and to reach understandings with them–often quite quickly, too. And it is in large part because I always operated under the assumption that anyone who is a regular member of this blogging community is a person of character who comes here in good faith. Because if they weren’t, they would not be toiling into the wee hours of the morning, day after day, night after night, writing to somehow communicate something.
I’ve watched the political conversations on this site evolve from complete and utter anarchy to “civil discourse” and often I have felt (including on Gaza), that it has merely evolved from a hot war to a cold one. And I think that the next step toward getting beyond this war once and for all, toward achieving peace with each other so that we can bring its fruits to the world at large, must be the bloggers’ holding the same basic assumptions about each other as I have them. And I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again because if I have to choose one legacy here, I think that would be it.
* * *
When at my best, this website has fulfilled me very much as a vehicle for peace activism and it has also been for me one great poem. A poem in which all of you were the rhymes and the rhythms and the resonances and my words followed you and at our best, our poem began to sing.
That would be my most fervent wish for the future of this evolving cyber-democracy. That it sing.
* * *
Happy :New Year Sale Noh Mubarak Feliz Navidad Shanah Tovah
L’shanah ha baah b’Yerushalayim
Next year in Jerusalem
Yerushalayim shel Zahav Jerusalem of Gold
The New Jerusalem
(I was advised to pust this post of mine from Q’s blog herre too:) It is a song that was written in celebration of Israeli expansion into occupied territories in the ’70s. It has many Biblical references and really only ONE objectionable verse: from Jericho to the Dead Sea. I don’t see it that way. I see it as everyone living together from Jericho to the Dead Sea. The song and the singer are wonderful. It may be objectionable to some people that the children all wear yarmulkes (skull caps), however these are similar to those worn in many Muslim countries. There are also a few Mogen Davids (Star of David) thrown in the lighting in the background. Some people may find this objectionable. I don’t care. It was the only youtube clip I found of the song. And anyway I am kind of tired of being ashame d of the Mogen David just because it is “Zionist”. It’s not, it’s Jewish. And it’s more than that. It has the same symbolism as the cross, the Yin Yang, the Swastika (an ancient Indo-European (Aryan) symbol as you probably know). It signifies the reconciliation of opposites. It is a universal symbol.
There was a German Jewish poet of the Reich and he wrote these words; I am proud to be a Jew (Ich bin stolz darauf). I may as well be proud because I’ll be one whether I’m proud or not.” I may as well stop being ashamed of the Mogen David.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRijgRZmqvI
http://www.ahbjewishcenter.org/shabbat045.htm
translation
(It will mean what I make it to mean because I make it so).
In loving memory of my father,
Julius Michael (Yehudah Mikhel) Goldsmith
(1908-1997)
and of my brother, Raphael Kenneth
(1940 -1970)
Robin Jayne Goldsmith (Roxane)
New York City, 11:00 p.m..Dec. 31,2008
