Two worlds

"After nearly 50 years in the press briefing room, Helen Thomas' tenure as a White House press correspondent has come to an ignominious end: The 89-year-old resigned on Monday in the wake of her controversial comments about Israel, in which she said Israelis should "go home" to Poland, Germany, and the United States."

Is this how an aging mind interprets complex issues in our ever increasing  complex world? Can Ms Thomas even remember her history? Israel's history is not to be discussed or judged lightly. Too much is at stake and too many times, pepole can be seen to sublimate their anti-semitism for anti-zionism.

We saw a Yiddish play yesterday, written by An-Ski in the 1920s about unfulfilled love and broken promises, a powerful philosophical look at love, life and death. In its Cabbalistic way, Der Dybbuk takes you on a journey of the Real World, the Beyond, the Divine and the Holy. It explains the importance of living life in its purest, holiest form, and shows how the perpetration of harm and transgressions can manifest itself through dead souls and reincarnation. "A worm only enters the apple when it is already rotten" says the Rabbi. Is punishment really only meted out to the deserving and is there a divine judge out there?

A dybbuk is an evil spirit which possesses a living person, a phenomenon that exists in many religions. In this play it is a young man who possesses his beloved before she marries someone else. Their destiny was supposed to be joined together in life but, instead they are eventually joined in death. I saw in this tale of conflict, of these souls torn between two worlds, how their deep psychological unrest could have been solved by intelligent mediation, dialogue and agreement.

In Israel today there are people for whom the exorcism of dybbuks is something very real and a divine and intelligent mediator is needed more than ever to solve this global conflict.