EXILE PART 2. EXILE AS HUMAN SITUATION AND HOW DO WE START TO COME HOME.
Exile, contrary to our tradition and other traditions, is not a condition to solve. The exile from the Garden is what makes us human; we are designed to earn our living from the sweat of our brow, to till and tend land, to give birth in pain and love. There is no such thing as a messianic age in which the lamb will lie down with the lion, or in which we won’t feel exiled. The dream of the messiah or the messianic age is too often a dream that distracts us from what we can do, right now and right here, to make life better for all beings. Returning to political sovereignty in 1948 with the reestablishment of the state of Israel is a great blessing for us as Jews, but it certainly does not mean that we are redeemed or even necessarily on the path to redemption.
Yet if exile is not a condition to be solved, still it is our human birthright to be at home (most of the time) in our communities, with the more than human world, with ourselves and with the divine. How do we get there? Let’s talk about starting points.
I think different people start their journeys at different places. For me, the coming home process starts with being at home with the land or the more than human world. If I am not at home in the more than human world, I am going to feel in exile across the map. But just because I begin with feeling at home or not in the more than human world does not mean that someone else does not begin with the divine, or the community or themselves. I do tend to think that starting with the self is difficult or impossible because being at home is greater than just ourselves, but I could certainly be wrong here.
I also think that being at home wherever you start may well not be enough to guarantee being at home with the other three dimensions. In philosophical speak, we’d say it is a necessary but not sufficient condition. For myself, I have felt at home in the land for two different periods in my life. In both cases I also felt mostly in exile from myself, the community and the divine.
Since this is an earth based Jewish blog, I want to note that the ecosystem in which we feel at home radically varies from person to person, tribe to tribe. The ten years I lived on the west coast were miserable to me because I felt completely alienated from my sense of being at home in the “Continental” ecosystem—think the mid-Atlantic, though it extends to just west of the Mississippi river. Other people feel just as miserable on the east coast because they feel at home in the desert or in a Mediterranean climate. I think where you might feel at home is some complex combination of personal experience, ancestral heritage and personal preference. I have spent untold hours asking myself about how to reconcile my at home ness in the Continental Eco-system with my Judaism that is rooted in a Mediterranean ecosystem.
