Witnessing History

50 years ago today I was in Miss Brown’s 1st grade class at Wilshire Crest Elementary School when the Principal stuck his head in and motioned her to come outside.  A few moments later, she returned, and with tears in her eyes, said the President had been shot and we were all being sent home.

My Mother was waiting outside.  It was the first time I’d seen her cry.   

We were glued to our black and white television.  The funeral cortege went on for hours.  I don’t remember what my parents told my sister and me about President Kennedy, just that they were incredibly sad and shaken.

Soon after, on a visit to my Grandparents apartment, I saw their commemorative LOOK Magazine on the coffee table. It was devoted to the coverage of President Kennedy’’s assassination.  Around fifty images in black and white of November 22, 1963 in Dallas and the aftermath:  the State funeral in Arlington National Cemetery: Jackie, Robert and Teddy dignified in their grief and anguish, hundreds of thousands of Americans lining the procession of the horse drawn casket, Lee Harvey Oswald’s arrest and murder by Jack Ruby, and finally the last image on the back of the magazine, of John-Jonh’s salute of his father’s casket. 

Pouring over those images became my reason to go to Grandma’s.  I hunkered down in the corner chair with my historical treasure, oblivious to other family members.  Each photograph is seared into my mind’s eye: black and white,  light, angles and shadows on grieving faces. 

I willed myself to enter each picture, to be THERE.  A  I wanted to be an eyewitness to such a momentous event, to  understand and experience how history feels.  I knew then what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I am eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to live my dream.

A really great friend and mentor once remarked that photographs are seemingly meaningless moments made immortal.   That may be true, but even more so, photography is at its core, as Sontag wrote, “Darkness illuminated by little points of light.”  

So it’s my hope and prayer that on this 50th anniversary of one of the most horrific events in American history,  that the light with which JFK is immortalized in thousands of images pierces the darkness in which we find ourselves as a nation now.

It's Loki hot in LA and it's Rosh Hashanah and I am not connecting to the most sacred of High Holy Days.  It's not the synagogue's fault. I was happy to find IKAR, a wonderful progressive social action oriented synagogue that, if I were to join a temple in LA, would be the one:  the services were excellent, the Rabbi's sermon brilliant and the people welcoming, with old and new friends.

My reality is no matter where I've wandered, Chabad or Modern Orthodox or Reformed or LBGT specific or Conservative, worshiping in a synagogue consistently fails to transport me to that place deep within my soul on the day when you are supposed to connect the most.

No synagogue, no Rabbi, no congregation compares to the most poignant Rosh Hashanah I have ever experienced in Camp Lokichokio.

Almost twenty years ago, in the summer of 1994, I was living my greatest dream as a photojournalist: on assignment for International Medical Corps, one month flying around Kenya, Somalia, Southern Sudan and finally to Rwanda, just after the genocide, landing the day after Yom Kippur.  Talk about the meaning of saying Kaddish.

But this night, on Rosh Hashanah,  I was almost asleep in my tent when I heard the blast of the Shofar.   Someone in the tent next door to mine was listening to the BBC on their shortwave, broadcasting news from the Middle East, from Jerusalem.  I sat straight up in my cot, overcome with homesickness. Imagining my parents at our family dinner.  At that moment I questioned where I was, thousands of miles away in the most northwest corner of Kenya, the only Jew in the base camp of Operation Lifeline Sudan, on the border with war torn Southern Sudan.  I spent a hot, sleepless, emotional night.

The next morning, I took my video camera and wandered the camp, creating a video diary of the day.  My accompanying audio commentary was that it was Rosh Hashanah, and that even though I was desperately homesick, I finally felt connected to what it means to really be a Jew: Tikkun Olam. I was finally living my life's purpose, documenting through my photographs that the world needs for ALL of us to help repair it.  After all, the Jewish people are charged with the responsibility of being the Light unto the Nations. Photography is, at its essence, darkness illuminated by little points of light, and if ever there was a need for that Light, the wars, famines and genocides of the past few years in this region was it.

Staying at the camp were leaders of the  Dinka tribe from Southern Sudan, on their way to a World Food Programme conference in Nairobi.   Their leader, a beautiful elegant man named Aquiele, called out to me from their chairs asking what I was filming.  I explained it was Rosh Hashanah, and that I was on my way back from the mess tent with apples and honey to celebrate the New Year.  He wished me a happy new year, and asked how they could make my new year special for me.  Instantly in tears, so moved by his genuine interest to know why this skinny geeky looking short haired white women was wandering around with a video camera talking to herself, I joined them, explained the Jewish New Year, the significance of apples and honey, who I was and why I was there, and that I was homesick.

Aquiele gave me a huge smile, asked me again, how they could make my New Year happy for me, and so together, we said the Shechecheyanu prayer, thanking God for bringing us to this moment.

Time to Start again

Some times Life appears to be one bizarre non-sequitur after another....but when you see the grace in every single event, suddenly your winding Path becomes vibrantly, beautifully evident, then your heart opens with gratitude for the Journey and floods your being, giving you the courage and the faith to follow your inner Light and fly. ‎#NeshamaSafari#TheoryoftheKosmikSlingshot