Beauty and the Need for Equailty

We owe our being to our Creator, G-d our Father. His existence can be seen in the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing seasons that define the face of our world.

The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightening and the fragrances of nature have been as pleasant to me as the sight of the wild blooms.

The dramatic shapes of the mountains, the different colored waters of the Oceans and the sands of the deserts, are all panels of the set on a natural stage created by G-d to remind us just how great and mighty He is.

At times, and in fear, I have sat in awe of His presence just watching His beauty all around me; just watching a leopard or a lion, the elephant, the hyena, the birds in the sky and the whales in the surf have taught me so much about our Father and His love for us.

A human presence among all these, a feature on the face of our world thus defined, I know that none dare challenge me when I say - I am a child of G-d.!

I owe my being, to my grandfather, a survivor of the holocaust, who left Germany to find a new home on the beautiful continent of Africa. Whatever their own actions, they remain still, part of me. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The tattoo’s they bore on their bodies from the concentration camps are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done; of what G-d would not have wanted to be done.

I often keep an audible silence about these ancestors of the generations that live, fearful to admit the horror of former deeds, seeking to obliterate from my memories a cruel occurrence which, in its remembering, should teach us not and never to allow such inhumaneness again.

I was taught never to dishonor the cause of freedom; that G-d gave the world to all people and that there is not one man that is better than another.

My father taught me that we could both be at home and be foreign; he also taught me that human existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for human existence; because the world was given to us all by G-d and thus belongs to everyone.

Being part of all of this, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that assertion, I shall again claim that - I am a child of G-d and so are all people.

I have and am seeing what happens when one person has superiority of force over another, when the stronger appropriate to themselves the prerogative even to annul the injunction that G-d created all men and women in His image. There are so many who believe they are more powerful than G-d.

I know what it signifies when race and colour are used to determine who is human and who is sub-human. It has been happening in Africa since before I was born and still continues.

I have seen the destruction of all sense of self-esteem, the consequent striving to be what one is not, simply to acquire some of the benefits which those who had improved themselves as masters had ensured that they enjoy.

I know of the situation in which race and colour is used to enrich some and impoverish the rest.

I see the corruption of minds and souls as part of the pursuit of an ignoble effort to perpetrate a veritable crime against humanity.

I have seen concrete expression of the denial of the dignity of a human being emanating from the conscious, systemic and systematic oppressive and repressive activities of other human beings.

There the victims parade with no mask to hide the brutish reality - the beggars, the prostitutes, the street children, those who seek solace in substance abuse, those who have to steal to alleviate hunger, those who have to lose their sanity because to be sane is to invite pain. Perhaps the worst among these are the children who have learnt to kill for a wage. To these the extent of death is directly proportional to their personal welfare.

We ask G-d to create a movement in this world in which all people can be free from fear, including the fear of the oppression of one group by another, the fear of the disempowerment of one social echelon by another, the fear of the use of state power to deny anybody their fundamental human rights and the fear of tyranny.

The aim being that all people can assume their place in the world as equals with their fellow human beings without regard to colour, race, gender, age or geographic dispersal. One G-d, one people.

We need to find resolution for conflicts by peaceful means rather than resort to force.

We need to rejoice in the diversity of all people thus creating the space for all of us to define ourselves as one people.

We need to be proud of our achievements, proud without reservation and proud without any feeling of conceit; but we need to be humble too. All people are prone to pettiness, petulance, selfishness and short-sightedness; but we can strive to be better, strive to be as He would want us to be. Glory must be sort after. Glory for G-d and His beautiful world.

We need to draw on the accumulated experience and wisdom of all humankind, of our forefathers, to define for ourselves, what we want to be and how G-d would want us to be.

G-d Bless,

J