105 Days to Go
Have We Totally Lost Our Positive Vision?

By Sherwin Pomerantz

Today, Jerusalem Day (i.e. Yom Yerushalayim) is 105 days from the opening of the United Nations General Assembly’s 2011 session in New York and the proposed vote to grant the Palestinians recognition for statehood.

Although not a legal holiday in Israel, there are many observances taking place on this, the 44th anniversary of the reunification of the city. But the first thing I saw when I got up this morning, firmly on the front page of the Ha’aretz newspaper, was an op-ed by former Minister and Knesset Member Yossi Sarid about the City of Jerusalem. Now while I generally disagree with his politics, I have tremendous respect for his intellect and his writing ability in both Hebrew and English as well. But this morning he went “over the top” as it were by writing an op-ed that was 100% negative about the city, its treatment of minorities, the loss of the non-observant Jewish population, the poverty, and on and on. There was not a single sentence of praise or goodness.

Now I know that this city is far from a perfect place. For the capitol of the country it does, indeed, leave something to be desired. But with all its faults, there certainly are some good points as well. But he chose to ignore all of those and it got me wondering if we have totally lost our ability to vision anything positive?

Among the mammals of the universe, while many are reputed to have high levels of intelligence, only humans can actually vision the future. For example, dolphins are reputed to have very high levels of intelligence. But I can’t imagine a male dolphin talking to a female dolphin about planning for the future, where the kids will go to school, what community they should live in, etc. The same with giraffes. Can any of us conceive of two giraffes speaking about their future lives together? Not at all. In fact, except for humans, all mammals are concerned only with day-to-day existence, finding their next meals, satisfying their sexual desires and keeping their brood alive and safe.

But we humans are given an extra portion of knowledge and reasoning power that permits us to look into the future and plan. More than that, we are even capable of seeing a silver lining in every cloud, of looking at the worst of humanity and seeing the potential good, of sinking to the lowest depths of despair and visioning a productive future. That is a gift reserved for mankind, a gift that must not be squandered.

So it hit me as I was reading Sarid’s column on this 44th Jerusalem Day that he, along with so many others here, has simply stopped using that most unique of gifts, the ability to vision a future, and hopefully a better one than the situation in which we find ourselves today.

In my daily blog counting down to September 14th many of the reactions I am getting, particularly from people who live here in Israel, seem to reflect that loss as well. Regardless of what I say, of what facts I put into these pieces, the reaction remains the same: There is no hope, there is no point in talking, we have nothing to talk about, and no point in sitting down together. How can that be? Have we really lost our capacity to hope, to vision a better future, and replaced that with only negative views of the present? I would hope not.

Martin Luther King Jr once said: “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” This is God’s great gift to humanity and we dare not discard it for the false god of hopelessness lest we sink to the level of the lesser mammals.