Crossing The Street

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict/War had me doing a slow immobilizing churn in deep gut territory.
It was Marty Kaplan's excellent but hard hitting post "Eyeless in Gaza" on http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ that moved me to get off my tuchas and ask myself the question; where is my honesty in all this when I can see both sides? Which led, to the realization that honesty has absolutely nothing to do with the truth, just truthfulness, and it's time to travel a road whose signposts where sunk in the Bronx.

Growing up as a East Bronx Jew in the 50's meant being touched by a generation who realized and remembered the strength and beauty of the ghetto/neighborhood. As a result, a couple of perks included kids hearing English peppered with colorful Yiddish phrases and commands and that you could ask any adult or responsible teenager to "cross" you at any time. " Cross me" was Bronx speak for take me across the big street to the other side. In my neighborhood the big street was Bronx Park East and on the other side did in fact lay the massive Bronx Park. It was acknowledged as an exceptional rite of passage, more meaningful to a kid than a bar mitzvah when you were able to to "cross yourself" (remember, it is Bronx speak). Before however, you could enter the delightful freedom of the park, you always had to pass, like a one sided gauntlet, The Benches.

The Benches that surrounded the park was where the women sat. The women, mostly mothers and grandmothers sat to gossip, discuss, argue, support each other and watch--absolutely everything. As the guardians of custom and culture in a post Holocaust community, the fledgling Israel was a big deal even if you did not identify as a Zionist. It's unqualified support was enmeshed with the teachings of survival of a people and never to be questioned. To speak otherwise was clearly a betrayal and threatened the safety of this and every other existing Jewish community. Somehow it became part of the first law of survival and to be understood, like all laws of survival, in the bone.

Survival lesson one. The truth? No. Is there truthfulness in my knowing this? Yes. Do I understand survival in my bone differently? Definitely. Does my view and expectation for the the people of Isreal and Gaza to exist in safety feel more embodied now? Yup. Signing petitions along with others to stop the fighting somehow did not offer the sought after freedom from narrow views, dogmatic assumptions, circular reasoning, as well as a stomach churning guilty conscience. The blogosphere is many things for many people. For me it allowed me to "cross by myself".