Stories of Self, Occupation, and Refugees

I was sitting on a rooftop soaking in the Kol Nidre service that marks the beginning of the journey into the Yom Kippur fast. When we atone, we do it on behalf of the collective. The rooftop overlooks an all business area of Tel Aviv. As I leaned on the edge of the roof and looked down on the entirely empty streets I began to wonder what this place would look like if Yom Kippur were considered an important family day, but only a small minority were to keep the cultural/religious traditions. It would look something like Christmas in North America. Maybe I am just stuck in my North American perspective? Maybe I have to shed that view in order to see this place? Forward.
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A mini-essay that I wrote for my Radical and Revolutionary forms of Education class.

In Youth Takes the Lead: The Inception of Jewish Youth Movements in Europe, Zvi Lamm describes the educational underpinnings that led to the Kibbutz Movement’s pedagogical approach. Early in the twentieth century a new perspective on what it meant to be youth began to develop. This perspective tore away the previous paradigm which held that youth were in a “tiresome stage of transition.” (Lamm, 15) Instead, young people began to understand this period as a life stage that was equal to, if not more important than, adulthood.
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It is simply impossible for us to move forward from where we are if we continue to misunderstand the past.
If we are unwilling to acknowledge the facts, then we will continue to be lost as a species.
We have in our minds a past that never existed. We know this.
The past of peace, plenty, and unity never existed. Instead, there was violence, hunger, and hate.
When we are ready to understand that reality we will be ready to think creatively about the future.
We will begin to conceive of participation in governance through the internet and through community institutions.
How can we embrace new steps forward if we continue to look toward the impossible past?
Let's admit where we have been and that we have made progress, but we need to push forward.
We should build new structures now, as we work to dismantle the old ones; acclimate.
True, we did not impact our natural environment quite as negatively in the past as we do now.
But we cannot go backward. We need to find new solutions, new systems for waste, food, water, and energy.
Candles and horses may be a part of the solution, but simply going backward will not do.
War, pollution, and hunger are solvable if we feel like it. Racism and supremacism are uprooted through experience and education.
If we want to use the tools we have to make revolutionary change, we can.
​The change has to aim at the unknown. None of us have seen it, because it is based on something as of yet unwritten. Not the past.