"Open My Eyes and I Will Speak"

"Seeing Jerusalem," Collage by Varda Branfman

                                                      

Well-known verse from Tehillim (Psalms): “If I forget you Jerusalem, my right hand will forget its skill. My tongue will cleave to my palate.” (137:5-6)

Logical corollary to that, in my own words: “If I remember you Jerusalem, my tongue will uncleave and I will speak. My words will be my right hand, forging the way to more of you, Jerusalem.”

Jerusalem is a holy city. It’s a place where you come for the cure.

Jerusalem (Yerushalyim) is where you remember things you’ve forgotten. Now you are meeting them and it feels very comfortable and natural. You realize that your tongue has indeed been cleaving to your mouth; but as you are beginning to remember Yerushalyim in the ways you weren’t able to until now, you begin to speak those deep thoughts and memories without any impediment.

You realize that, simultaneously with your thoughts being clearer, your right hand regains its skill and you are beginning to remember how to implement what you are now becoming aware of.  

Once I tried remembering Jerusalem for a day. With everything I did and every place I went, I kept repeating, quietly on my lips, “Jerusalem.” That day had its good moments, but the word was only on my lips like a mantra, and not yet in my heart. Remembering is meant to be much more.

Just remembering that you want to remember is a sign that your cure has begun.

What is this remembering of Jerusalem? It’s a vision. It may begin by remembering that Jerusalem is the inheritance of every Jew. It’s known and remembered by every Jew, even if they’ve never physically been here. We all have a vision of it, which is one of the reasons we have yearned for it throughout history. Jerusalem can only be remembered when standing within it, within its vision, much as remembering the Shabbos day means observing it while standing within it. You can enter it when you look out your window in Jerusalem, or look at a picture of Jerusalem from wherever in the world you may be standing, or bring to your mind’s eye a view of the city, or a part of it that you once saw, or would like to see.  

We are given, at birth, a vision of Jerusalem, deep within our souls, our subconscious awareness. We want to awaken it because we want to be whole.

For that, we have our holy days and our holy places, both within us and outside of us. And we have Jerusalem. We just have to learn how to envision it and move into that vision, living within it. Jerusalem stands in front of us wherever we are, waiting for us to see it from wherever we are. That is a very powerful kind of remembering. When the eyes are open to that, the mouth follows. When the vision is on the eyes, it’s not hard to bring it in the eyes, and further in.

Along with that come some gifts which are inseparable from it: “Nine-tenths of the world’s beauty was given to Jerusalem.” Beauty like that is not the norm, and it has its own unique language. “The stones of Eretz Israel -–the Land of Israel-- shine like gold.” And they are shining here, visibly, also with their own language. When you enter Jerusalem, you learn these languages effortlessly, and you learn things you never knew before, things that need to be heard. Your tongue is uncleaved and you are ready to speak.

Plug: For more about Varda's collages, please contact her at vardab23@gmail.com (until we put up a blog of her pictures).