Sultan Knish
The circle of men whirls around the fire, hand in hand, hand catching
hand, drawing in newcomers into the ring that races around and around in
the growing darkness. A melody thumps through the speakers teetering
unevenly with the bass, the sound is both old and new, a mix of the past
and the present, like the participants in the dance, the traditional
garments mixing with jeans and t-shirts until it is all a blur.
It is Lag BaOmer, an obscure holiday to most, even to those who come to
the fires. The remnants of the Jewish Revolt against the might of the
Roman Empire are remembered as days of deprivation in memory of the
thousands of students dying in the war, until the thirty-third day of
the Biblical Omer, part of the way between Passover and Shavuot, the day
when Jerusalem was liberated.
Deprived of music for weeks, it rolls back in waves through speakers,
from horns blown by children and a makeshift drum echoing an ancient
celebration when men danced around fires and shot arrows into the air.
The fires and bows have remained a part of Lag BaOmer, even when hardly
anyone remembers the true reason for them.
The new Yom Yerushalayim, the day of the liberation of the city, is
coming up soon, but the old Yom Yerushalaim, came thousands of years
ago and ten days
before it on the calendar. Time is a wheel, and, like a circle,
everything comes around
again. Hands pulling on hands, years pulling on years, on and on like
the orbits of planets and stars. The Divine Hand of G-d pulls us along,
and we pull each other in the dance of life.
The circle speeds up, men racing faster and faster, the children left
behind, as the flames sputter and night falls. The rebellion, although
bravely fought, failed, and Jerusalem fell again, and then Betar. The
joy of the celebration turned to ashes, but, even in the shadow of the
empire, their spirit endured. The stories were changed a little, the
rebellion encoded into a story of Rabbi Akiva, the pivotal scholarly
figure in the war, and of his students who perished because they had not
been able to get along with one another. The failure of unity had been
the underlying reason for the Roman conquest and the Jewish defeats. It
is the ancient lesson still unlearned that the circle of the dance
teaches us.
Lag BaOmer is not the first Jewish story of physically and spiritual
heroism to be encoded for fear of the enemy. There is much that we know,
without knowing what it truly means, messages from the past, that exist
only as echoes reminding us of our purpose. Few of those in the circle
passing around the flame know what they are truly commemorating and yet
the act is its own commemoration. Thousands of years later the echo of a
fierce joy, the pride of a people emerging out of a momentary darkness
in a burst of wild energy, is still here. Though the details are
forgotten, the joy endures, the song is sung and the fire still burns.
In the darkness, there is nothing but the fire and the dark shapes
racing around it, leaping with the guttering flames. A teenager pours
oil on the flames and they rise higher and higher. A new song begins but
they are all the same song. Even the new songs are old. The music
changes, but the words remain the same. Arms rise and fall, feet kick
and the participants run around the fire only to end up right back where
they began.
Codemaking is a dangerous business, for the keys to the code can be
forgotten. In Spain and in the American Southwest there are men and
women who keep odd rituals, but who no longer remember that the reason
they keep them is because they are descended from Jewish Conversos. They
have lost the most important part of the code, the part that explains
everything. The men dancing around the fire have not lost that. They may
not remember the liberation of Jerusalem, but their feet remember it,
their arms remember it, their hearts remember it and most of all they
remember who they are. They retain the key to the entire code. They
remember that they are Jews.
It all began with fire. Avraham was cast into the fire and emerged alive
from the flames. Then Chananya, Mishael and Azariah. And then millions
more turning to ash in the ovens only to rise again in a new generation.
"Is not this man a brand plucked out of the fire," G-d asks Satan in
the vision of the Prophet Zechariah. "But who may abide the day of his
coming?" the Prophet Malachi says."And who shall stand when he appears?
For he is like a refiner's fire."
A piece of heavy wood chars, bright sparks rising into the night air. It
is cool outside the ring of fire, but here it is painfully hot, the air
thick with heat. The children gaze wonderingly at the sparks, flying up
like tiny stars, their eyes recording the memory with a purer fidelity
than any of the cameras outside the circle. Their minds will record the
memory of the light, the feel of it on their skin and the awe of seeing
something new for the first time. They will remember the circle and the
fire.
The story of Moloch is the tale of men who worshiped the fire with the
bodies of their children. But the children who race around the margins
of this fire are the survivors of the servants of Moloch who tried to
thrust their grandfathers and great-grandfathers into the flames. They
will grow running around the flames from those who wish to thrust them
into the fire, to burn away all that they are. Some will die, killed by
Muslim terrorists or by other modern day servants of Moloch, but others
will survive, and one day their children will race around the flames,
defying the worshipers of fire, the worshipers of death, to do their
worst to them.
The fire blazes up, tongues of flame darting toward us like the tongues
of lions. This is the race we run around the flames that always burn,
whether we see them or not. Year after year, generation after
generation, and century after century, the fire burns, but we go on and
no matter how many of us burn, we continue running the race with the
flames, outpacing it, outlasting it and outliving it. No matter how many
of us die, we still live.
A Talmudic recollection bemoans the Zoroastrian persecutions of the
Jews. The notion today is as quaint as Assyrian chariots and Roman
legions. The day will come when the Islamic persecutions are as obscure
and laughable. When all the desert sands have covered over Mecca and the
might and power of Islam are one with Assyria and Rome, with ancient
pagan religions that have come and gone, blazing brightly like the
flames, only to go out into the darkness, the dance will continue.
The men slow their steps, an ancient movement that the first wave of
settlers to the Holy Land instinctively recreated. Dancing is a key that
unlocks secret knowledge, that opens up buried memories, that turns the
wheel of time back until it all becomes a circle that comes alive when
it is closed. Despite the tremendous variations in customs and
appearances, they have all unlocked the code of the circle, the hand to
hand connection, the knowledge that whatever else we must go on. That
the Jewish people must live.
The Bar Kochba revolt was not the last time that Jews fought to liberate
their land. It was not the last time that the gates of Jerusalem were
thrown open to a Jewish army. The liberation of Jerusalem in 1967 was
the fulfillment of a struggle that had been going on for nearly two
thousand years, as empires and caliphates had claimed the land, planted
their spears and rifles over its barren hills, and enforced their laws
upon it. And if Jerusalem falls again, if Masada falls again, if we fall
into the fire, then we will rise out of it again, less in number, less
in memory, but still a circle.
Fresh from battle, the soldiers danced around the flames. They had
defeated the legions of Rome, without any special training and with poor
equipment, they had beaten the greatest army in the world. They had
survived the flames and in an explosion of joy, they raced around the
celebratory fires, tasting the momentary immortality of battle. Their
names are forgotten, lost to memory. Lag BaOmer is associated now with
two of Rome's scholarly opponents, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Shimon Bar
Yochai, who passed on the teachings and traditions that kept the circle
intact even in the fire.
Wars are won and lost all the time. No victory, however significant,
endures forever. There is no immortality in the victories of the flesh,
only in the triumphs of the spirit. For all our losses, this circle is a
victory, an ancient celebration of a spiritual triumph kept secret in
the face of the enemy. The circle of clasped hands reminds us that
against the dead hand of history, we have a Living Hand that guides us
even in our darkest hours, in the smoke and flame, in the ash and fire.
"Know that your descendants will be strangers in a land not their own,"
G-d tells Avraham, as the sun goes down, and amid a thick darkness, a
smoking furnace and a flaming torches passes between the parted pieces
of the covenant. There is smoke and fire, a thick darkness, but as each
hand in the circle clasps another, the pieces are joined together into
one. The unity will not last. But it is a reminder of who we can be and
who we should be when we join together. A reminder of the covenant with
G-d and with one another.
The dance is difficult, not because it is hard to learn or do, but
because it is tiring. Some fall out of the circle, but others join in.
It is a mistake to dwell too much on how many come and how many go. To
count the losses, while overlooking the gains. We were never meant to be
a numerous people, to swell to an empire, rotten with corruption,
choking on its own grossness, until it dies. It is easier to win the
race with the flames when you are small and light on your feet. Some
tire of the race and leave, and fall into the flames or the darkness and
are gone. But we go on. We always go on.
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