Nobody's God

May 29, 2011

It isn’t even Memorial Day until tomorrow. But I’m there now. I just finished watching the Memorial Day Concert on the Washington Mall which is an annual event. I never miss it. This year, the music and performers were several notches better than some other years, but whereas I usually care a great deal about how well music is played or sung, the truth is, when it comes to the Memorial Day concert, that's incidental to me. What matters is that the grand songs--the hymns reflecting love of this country--are included and that the audience on the mall knows the words, or at least the melody, and the music inhabits them as they sing along. Most important to me, there’s always “The Star-Spangled Banner” to start things off; and no matter how well or poorly that’s sung, my heart fills. I stand. Right in front of my TV, alone in this apartment.

I feel passionate about this country. In a part of me I seldom open and never leave ajar, a place where words do not abide.

Just in case you’re wondering, I am not always proud of what we do as a nation, and certainly not always proud of what I see or hear my fellow Americans do, but–always–I love this country.

I can tell you why in a sentence. My parents, both of whom were born in Russia and met here, thought of America as the Promised Land. That’s why.

That’s why, at the end of every Seder, I keep still when others cry out “Next year in Jerusalem!” I care a lot about Israel. I support Israel, prepared in any company to defend her place in her immediate world and the wider one. I do not sit silent when it is suggested that she shrink her borders beyond protecting, in hopes of persuading her "neighbors" that she has the right to exist. Recently, I got excited about TALI, an organization devoted to teaching Israeli schoolchildren that they are Jewish--that they have choices beyond Orthodoxy and secularism. When, many years ago, during my first visit to Israel, I saw a border of Israeli flags surrounding the prime minister's offices, I was thrilled. I took a snapshot I still look at occasionally, remembering when that flag was only the symbol of a dream. But--but!--next year, like last, like this one, I want to be here in America. Because I am my parents’ daughter, and among the things that means, is that I am already in my Promised Land.