HOW TO FORGET ABOUT RUSSIA

 

 

Traveling today by foot, taking long strides, in which direction, one does not know. Seeing the sunrise in the east and following its warmth and its newness as each day the sun rises it creates a new day, a day that is different from all past days, a day of renewed energy, a day of seeing and sniffing new blossoms on your garden's flowers, a day when the rainclouds of yesterday are somewhere far in the distance not to whet you again with the same water.

Diving deeply into water in a lake, water that is "moving" not still water. Fish that come and go, not to see the same fish ever again that you once saw today, a today being transformed into a yesterday.

A mikvah in this lake being the cure for you to forget the woes of yesterday, new water, new cleanness, but chanting the same prayers we chanted thousands of years ago, prayers of our Grandmother and her Grandmother. A prayer that is over 5,000 years old, to be chanted today in the present, that erases a past of grief and hardships. A name like Manasseh, the name of the son of the Prophet Joseph, which has the meaning "Having forgotten hardships."

"Grandma, why did you leave Russia? Can you tell me about Russia?" And Grandma says: "We left Russia because of its hardships, and we do not recollect or remember those hardships. We left there and have forgotten it all, and now have new lives in a new place."

In Russia was a place they called "SIBERIA: The Place Of No Return". A frigid frozen place with high fences of barbed wire searing the skies, to cause a rip in your pants. Siberia, a place of lookout towers with hungry guards who saw human flesh as desserts to meals, pacing, manning every entrance and exit armed with hot-tipped smoking guns. Russia, being a place of the coldness of this Siberia, a place where we were sent to lift large blocks of ice into trucks, a place like Egypt thousands of years before, where we lifted large bricks made of hay and clay, we built the Pyramids being dying slaves who were buried in between those bricks.

How to forget about Russia? How to start your life anew without the memories of these hardships, to acquire this name of Manasseh, to drink your morning coffee, to see a new face in a new place, to eat that apple a day that keeps the doctor away.

Russia being transformed, forgotten as the last piercing sound of the Shofar was blown yesterday, yesterday being Yom Kippur, forgetting the pains of Russia, the sounds of the Shofar now somewhere far into the distance, many sound waves away.

The sound of new music, music of "simcha" which means joy! The Holiday of Simchat Torah is on its way! As we today no longer remember Russia, Russia being many light years away, Siberia is forgotten, and the simcha or joy of the newness of a daily dip in the moving not stale waters of a Lake takes its place. A daily swim, a mikvah chanting the oldness of a meditative mantra thousands of years old, this peace never forgotten, like the milk of your Mother's on your lips as when you were a babe.

A brain that swarms with new thoughts, freshness, refreshingly, the soft springiness of the skin of a newborn. A new baby's gurgle to hear, a new experience in a new place, a place that has no past, but instead being a place that has a future.