New Light, Old Fear in a New Year
After a busy day of meetings in and around New York City during my recent travels, I met two friends for a late night drink prior to another early morning wake-up call the next day. Maybe it was the second Allagash talking, but I found myself quoting my favorite poem of all time, T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” I’ve known this poem since high school. It appeared in a 2,000 page telephone book of greatest hits of literature we read in English class. The line, “That is not it at all/That is not what I meant at all,” stopped me cold at the age of 16 and has haunted me ever since.
In Seattle a few days later, I had five minutes to spare between meetings and ducked into The Eliot Bay Book Company. Obviously, a pocket size collection of T.S. Eliot’s poems appeared not 10 feet from the door. I reread the poem, dabbed a tear from the corner of my eye, dropped 20 bucks, and away we went.
Wrong place, wrong time – who doesn’t feel this way sometimes, low-down and disgusted, especially during a war? Right place, right time – when you stand up for your people, your country, your loved ones, how could there be a place more fecund with desire to do what is absolutely necessary and true even if war is hell? There is no way ever to know where fate has led us until the moment it has offered has passed. We respond to such moments based on loyalty and history and instinct and feeling and fear, and then away we and the moment go, sometimes forever.
I often fear that I’ve not done what I was meant to do in this life, that I could have been more “of use,” to quote the author John Irving – that I could have fulfilled my mission better if I had made wiser choices along the way.
“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each/I do not think they will sing to me.” This is the other line that haunts me from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” What if I could have saved that other life unlived? What if I could have met fate face-to-face without hesitation, without flinching, and done more good for all that matters to me? Have I done enough, acted kindly and honestly and bravely enough, for holy voices to include me in their song?
The High Holidays are upon us, a time of reflection, repentance, and seeking voices singing holy songs of purpose, regret, hope, and praise. I enter this season of teshuva upside down and broken. I’m sure you know what I mean. If you care about humanity, let alone Israel or the Jewish people, you are weeping and enraged for all that’s been lost since this time last year. Will there be new light and new voices in the new year? Have we done enough good in the horrible year just now passing? Is this it, or is this not it at all?
So comes a timely new song from the singers of Zamru – “Or Chadash,” or “New Light.” I pray with you and with these holy voices – the human voices [that] wake us” in the words of the that great poet in the captain’s tower of twentieth century literature who was no friend of the Jews – that we dare for more good, more life, more love songs, and less sorrow and less regret in the year to come. I pray for our brave soldiers and the hostages and families and friends and loved ones who are suffering. May the Holy One’s light shine upon all of them, every single one.