The Life Of A Princess

Like a fresh stream of clear rainwater, humanity flows down the stony hills and into the earthy valley. The setting, yet unsettling, sun reflects off these streams of consciousness, faces glaring back like diamonds at an angle. Ancient olive trees and mumbling stones flash by the stream as it rolls along, downhill, ever picking up speed. Now the stream bends ever so sharply and pools ever so gently, as if a destination is sensed. And then, when vision is no longer detoured by leaf or branch, the waves of flesh and blood lap at the gate of heaven, as if to water the Garden of Eden.

It has been a while since this gate has been formed, but it gathers no rust; it has been a while since this stream has begun flowing, but it shows no signs of drying up. On the contrary: with every generation, the stream grows stronger and stronger.

It was a woman who started it all. Some four thousand years ago she gave birth to a people, to a stream of knowledge that would flow down the mountains of confusion, through the valleys of despair, over the stones of materialism, spreading a message of spirituality and peace throughout the world.

There is nothing like it: not Jerusalem with its burning vibrancy; not Tzfat with its mystical spirit; not Tiberius with its lucid water. It is a city of earth, a city of caves. Here it is about lows and highs – the lowest matter, earth, rooted in the highest place, heaven. A city – as its name can attest – of connections – connecting both matter and spirit.

Now, four millennia since Abraham signed the first real estate deal in history and secured this portal between earth and heaven for all eternity, his and Sarah’s children, their “life”, converge on this spot of paradox: on the one hand, here is where it all ends; on the other, here is where it all begins – here Sarah is buried, here Sarah becomes alive.

Nowhere is earth more heavenly than here; nowhere is heaven more earthy than here. Yet, in a world where contradiction is more of a crutch than a limp, it is the contrast, and not their fusion, which looms large: the contrast of a calming peace on a bloody battlefield; the contrast of a wailing mosque trying to drown out the wail of an orphaned child; the contrast of a heavy body weighing-down a lofty soul.

Nevertheless, with the thousands thronging to the “Double Cave”, the contrasts seem to fade into fusion. The life of the princess seems to be pulsating through her children’s very being. Is this not proof enough that the princess is still alive? Is her children’s following in her footsteps not sufficient to say, “She’s alive”? Is our existence, our mission in life, not adequate testimony to the stream’s endless flowing?

Have all the earths been covered with this stream of G-dly knowledge? The presence of green camouflage and red blood seems to be saying no. But does that mean we, and our mother, are not alive? Or, maybe it means that we haven’t yet reached our true “life”, our true potential?

Still, as the stream fades back and out of the valley, the earth and stone – here trodden by the “Heel” generation, the last link in a chain wrought for thousands of years – will never be the same – after all stone and earth have been touched by a Princess alive.

May Chevron (chibur) connect that which is seemingly disconnected, and may we see how the end – earth – was always wedged in the beginning – heaven.