Notes from Cantor Avima

This year I set a goal for myself to read Hebrew literature in an effort to exercise my skills. We have many works of literature in our library to choose from from childrens books to short stories and a few novels. However, this last few days have found that facebook has provided me a lot of material. And it is not the kind of Hebrew  material I had planned to use to exercise my language skills. My feed has been flooded with pictures, obituaries and pleas for help in locating missing persons. The messages are heartbreaking. I am reminded by the postings that appeared after 9/11. I learned that the idiom "in cold blood" is translated quite literally in Hebrew. 

Here are just a couple of posts that I read: 

"My dear beloved (husband), Thank you for the treasure you left with me. I promise you that she will grow and know who her Abba was. She will grow and will be proud of her father. I promise to be both mother and father. Please watch over her from above. We love you and will not stop being proud of our hero who is now also the hero of our entire nation One day we will meet again." 

:"My Savta has always been the light of my life, my central pillar and in the life of my family. My grandmother who was a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz her entire life, was cruelly murdered by a terrorist in her own home at 7:00 am.I saw the living nightmare of a terrorist invading her home, murdered her, took her phone, photographed the atrocity and posted it to his FB. This was how we found out what happened.   

My grandmother was the light of my life, my whole world. This morning I did not get the usual message from her: "Mori, my love, are you up"? The message always came at 7:00, not a minute later. Anyone who knows her knows how important she was to me, the strong bond we had, what kind of a pure person she was, her love for her kibbutz and  her garden that she tended and watered. 

Each morning she rode a bike to launder and fold the clothing of the kibbutz members, returned after noon to tend her garden which she loved more than anything. My grandmother loved life, but how do we continue without her? What am I without her? I cannot speak of you in the past tense.  I love you and you know that with my whole heart and every part of my body. My Savta,  my flower, the light of my life." 

I am sharing here a performance of Sol Zim's Prayer for the State of Israel sung by the Zamir Chorale of Boston. Prayer for the State of Israel, Sol Zim, Zamir Chorale of Boston