Ha'Ger (The Stranger)

[Image: Solomon Ibn Gabirol, the ultimate stranger, lived and cried in my city.]

Guerre (French): WAR
Shalom (Hebrew): Hello, Goodbye, PEACE
Guerre and Shalom
War and Peace

Guerre (Hebrew):
Convert
Foreigner
STRANGER

---

“Ha’ger (The Stranger)” by Daniel Clarke-Serret

Life in Spain is good,
but I am a stranger.
Of course I am.
To be a stranger in a strange land is to be expected.

But worse than being a stranger in a strange land
is to be a stranger in your own land.
Be that a stranger in your “own land” of citizenship
or a stranger in your “own land” of peoplehood.

To be a stranger in a strange land feels natural;
how it’s meant to be.
An immigrant feeling like an immigrant.

But to be a stranger in your own land
is sadness
after sadness 
magnified.
It is having no say in the land which is your birthright. 

Why is it that I connect so deeply to the Jewish story,
if I live not in its land
or within its communities;
when I am estranged from its rituals
and am distant from its festivals;
and its leadership uninspires me?

Why is it that the Hebrew Bible speaks to my heart; 
And reaches out its hand to touch mine
through the sands of time?
Why do the struggles of the prophets 
with their stiff-necked people
and heartless rulers
and unlistening “friends”
resonate so 
as if they happened but yesterday?

Why does Solomon Ibn Gabirol,
with his majestic voice so ignored by “his” community 
in these self same streets of Zaragoza,
shoot an arrow through my time-divided soul?

It is because I am a stranger.
Those who were inflicted by the Egyptian whip in Mitzrayim knew what that meant.
And so do I.
Others - a majority in their country or in their enclosed community - may feel
pride
religion
peoplehood 
culture
and more.
But strangerhood?
That requires living as a stranger.
That requires seeing through unrepresented eyes.

And to know what it means to live as a stranger
is to understand the Jewish story,
the Jewish mission;
which is that no person,
wherever they may dwell,
should feel “the other”,
“the excluded”.

So when people speak of a Jewish state,
one cannot but sense a great oxymoronic tinge between those words.
For whilst the Jewish people has a right to self-determination
a flag
and an anthem.
Whilst it must feel wonderful to live one’s own  festivals
calendar
and geography.
To be a Jew, 
for a country to have a “Jewish character”,
it must understand the anguish of an Egyptian slave’s cry;
and the pain  of a Moses who returned “home” to Egypt to the screaming criticism of his “own people”.

And the Somalian and Eritrean,
rejected from home,
must - on the streets of a Jewish Tel Aviv - smile the smile of contentment
that only a fig tree provides.

To those who sit alone,
I sit with you.
And together we are home.

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