Beauty and division

It’s hard but necessary to keep many different kinds of thoughts in your mind at the same time.

First, overwhelmingly this week, there is beauty. It’s been warm but not hot, breezy but not gusty. The flowering trees have lost their pink and white blossoms, but they are all so very deeply, overwhelmingly green, all the rain has made the world so lush, that it’s like Dorothy stepping out of Kansas into Oz every time we go outside. The early morning and late afternoon light has been so gold, the shadows so sharp, that they seem almost unreal. But they’re not. That beauty is outside, all over, fleeting but free and entirely real.

That’s the kind of day that the people at the Israel parade — what to call it? It’s Israel Day on Fifth this year, but it wasn’t last year and it probably won’t be next year; sometimes the subtleties of marketing are way beyond me — reveled in on Sunday.

To look at the pictures of the marchers, mostly children, teens, and school faculty this year, is to feel joy through them.

The idea that the barbarism of October 7 made many people hate Israel is hard to understand. It’s easy to understand disliking Benjamin Netanyahu — many Israelis, according to a great deal of polling a majority of Israelis — don’t like him either. It’s easy to understand feeling great discomfort about the war in Gaza, and what it’s doing to the children who live there. That’s an issue that divides friends; there’s nothing good to say about it, no matter what side you’re on.

But to come away from October 7 hating Israel rather than Hamas? What? How? Why? No! But yes.

But the parade on Sunday had none of that. Of course the adults there represent a range of views about Israeli politics and policy. How could they not? But they’re all joined in a love for Israel that transcends those divisions, without ignoring, whitewashing, or burying them.

To look at the children walking up Fifth Avenue, confident, smiling, joyous, and beautiful, is to forget the rest of it, the hatred, the vitriol, the divisiveness, and at least for a few minutes simply to glory in the beauty.

Reality will hit soon enough. There should always be some time for beauty.

—JP

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