Concerto di Sogni
Main sponsor: Ideal Gomma Sport Sas
Think and Make It!

Remember Nassiriya : Appendete una bandiera ai vostri monitor Concert of the World: English Version



 Home   Elenco Autori   Forum:Elenco Argomenti   Eventi attuali e storici    Le prime pagine   Link  
Utente:
 
Password:
 
Salva password Dimenticata la password?
 
 tutti i Forum
 12 Concert of the World
 Coming Back (by Roberto Mahlab)
 Versione per la stampa  
Autore Tema Precedente Tema Tema Successivo  
Admin
Forum Admin


Italy
2444 Inseriti
627 Gold
3290 Punti Rep.
Inserito - 09/08/2004 :  22:14:40  Mostra Profilo  Visita la Homepage di Admin  Replica con Citazione Invia un Messaggio Privato a Admin
Tel Aviv - October 1999

The balance between religion and secularism in the Land of Israel carries often exciting mediations between the two souls of the jewish people. Everything began the last friday evening, eve of Shabbat, the public transportation would come to a stop until the exit of the holiday, when three stars would appear in the sky of Jerusalem the next evening, however the taxis were regular and it was not difficult to find one of them to bring me from the airport of Tel Aviv to the hotel on the emerald coast of the Mediterranean. A trip of half an hour in which my mind was smoking with jealousy, due to the fact that unfortunatelly I had not the habit to smoke indeed. Israel is famous for the beauty of the women, representing the evolution of the cohabitation among one hundred of different origins, not even calling an agency of private detectives it could be possible to discover one woman less than pretty and my taxi driver was using the trick of the estinguished cigarette to stop at every crossroad of every quarter of the town to ask every girl who was crossing the street if she had fire and then with in the hand the lit cigarette, which he immediately estinguished to start the following hunt, he turned toward me with his eyes eloquently widely opened. Going on with hiccups, we arrived in front of the hotel after the coming of the darkness and the taxi driver requested me one hundred shequels for the trip. I replied that he looked to me greedy, due to the fact that never I paid the same trip more than sixty shequels. "In normal hours is just as you are saying " he kindly answered "but, you see, you have to add the tarif for the holiday because we are now already fully in Shabbat".

Milano - September 1999

Every friday evening at the beginning of Shabbat, in the homes of the traditional families, the candles are enlightened and it is recited the blessing preceeding the exquisit meal around which, whenever possible, the great part of the family meets. Happy teologic discussions between one titbit and the other oppose the two souls, the traditional laical and secular, to be jewish above all as identification of a people, and the traditional ortodox, not only people but also observance of the precepts.
And one of these precept is the observance to stay away from every work, direct or indirect, to concentrate in the rest, in the prayers and in the disciplines of mind, avoiding even that the circulation of cars and money may shatter that peace.

Tel Aviv - October 1999

My soul is always receptive, even if I have to recognize her a certain logic and suddendly the teachings of my sister opened a passage inside me not observant and I listened to my voice answering to my taxi driver :"I thank you for having advised me that we are already inside the holy day of Shabbat, I am therefore sorry, but as you may imagine and understand, I can not pay you, not to infringe the holiday with the circulation of money".
Notwithstanding two among the most clamorous beauties of the creation passing in front of the car, the driver crumpled the cigarette in the ashtray and asked me gruff :"Ok, what a discount do you want to become laic again?". "My secular soul accepted to agree to a fifty percent, with moreover, if I took in the future the same taxi, a satisfactory percentage of presentations at every request of lighting of his cigarettes to the beautiful girls of Israel.

...to be continued...


Admin
Forum Admin


Italy
2444 Inseriti
627 Gold
3290 Punti Rep.
Inserito - 09/08/2004 :  22:15:30  Mostra Profilo  Visita la Homepage di Admin  Replica con Citazione Invia un Messaggio Privato a Admin
Eilat - May 1997

Eti was a wonderful girl with long dark hair and brown eyes, she reflected in herself the beauty of the Eastern Mediterranean, she was not alone at that time, and as great friends we crossed the desert of the Negev with the shining sands to the copper mines of King Solomon at Timna, seeking the ancient inscriptions covered by dust in the rock of an indefinite age, till the topaz coloured sea which preserved the corals of the gulf, in the southern point of Israel. The last day she gave me a small sheet of paper full of hebrew characters :" Cahasher tishma' et hapaamon...when you will hear the little bell, think to this Land and you will know that you have to go back to find what you are looking for".

Tel Aviv - October 1999

I finished my business and swam across that sound of the sea which divided the dizzling sand from the reef in the open waters, it was noon and I slided through emerald waters, the low tide, while from the other side of the reef deep blue coloured waters were approaching, wave after wave the high tide would cover the pastel coloured rocks and when the whole sea became blue, I felt to be swallowed and the memory entered into me as the sea.
Back to the seashore, I phoned...

Tel Aviv - June 1998

The world outside wounded her, but in that Land and within that people there were refuges to go back everytime, we were accompanied by a girlfriend of hers, she accepted my invitation with the excuse to introduce her to me, but her words were for me in that night of light of moon which enlightened the colours of our beach and our sea :"Come and talk to my rabbi, he wants to introduce to you someone and you will have only to promise to respect for her the Shabbat and the lighting of the candles every friday evening". But it was too early and I still hoped to put reason in the one who had lost her :"I will not come to your rabbi, I will respect Shabbat not to have in exchange someone, but just to respect her". And our words flied close, but without touching each other.

Milano - September 1999 - eve of many Shabbat

"Done! Are you happy?" my sister ironically told me :"our tradition requires only that on the table do not appear together milk and meat, not to mix mother and son, but for you I divided my kitchen in three ...milk, meat and onions, in the food for you never the vegetable you adverse will be mixed!". I thanked her, but it never apperead to me a particular concession, I felt sure that somewhere in the Holy Books there was a verse explaining my adversion to the hated vegetable, after all, the day I became aware that their taste was not good, I just fell it is true, but not on the head as everyone thought, I fell only on my elbow, but none belived to me when I espressed my truth and they caressed me with that condescending smile..."There is always an explaination in our Torah and after all every human being came to life with the task to discover which is his own precept to follow..." I could never understand if they scoffed at me or if it was an invitation to discover from where my way started and where it was really directed, the known precepts are 613 and in none of them it is written about onions.

Tel Aviv - October 1999

...our words where the usual ones, as we never parted..."Ciao Eti, Roberto is speaking, I miss that arc in white stone, do you accompany me to see it another time?" "Yes, come, you know, I am more and more deep in the study of our religion and I will introduce you to a girlfriend of mine"...and her reply was the usual as ever.

...to be continued...

Vai a Inizio Pagina

Admin
Forum Admin


Italy
2444 Inseriti
627 Gold
3290 Punti Rep.
Inserito - 09/08/2004 :  22:16:12  Mostra Profilo  Visita la Homepage di Admin  Replica con Citazione Invia un Messaggio Privato a Admin
Jerusalem - October 1999

The quarter of Romema is the first to be encountered entering Jerusalem coming from Tel Aviv through the highway clambering up around the hills from the rocks from which the buildings in white stone of the town sprung, scattered quarters raising as spots of flowers between the green and the brown of the hills, under the always clear sky, as transparent air allowing to watch from any place the valleys around, from the river Jordan to the desert of Judaea and to the Mediterranean.

The houses, the temples of the faiths, the museums, are buildings in postmodern style, in small bricks of white stone which remain in the heart, rebuilt from the past, but they give the impression to be agile monuments crossing the future, the atmosphere itself appears without time, like a crystal shell wrapping all the worlds, the faiths, the traditions, the religions, the rites, the peoples which live together in that city, everyone in his own time as if every one else and their time did not exist.

My taxi moved slowly across the clean avenues of the religious jewish quarter, sliding among the pious men in white shirt and covered by black wears and hats, the women with long and respectful dresses, the dozens and dozens of baby prams, gift of the present to the future. We stopped at the beginning of Rav Sorotskin Road, every road had the name of a scholar of the Bible, I can not explain the sensation pushing me, but I asked the taxi driver, who appeared to have forgotten the rough manners of the big city and who addressed the passers-by asking information with calm and respect and in the same tone they replied to him.

"Are you sure that none will say to me anything?" I hesitated before getting out from the car "it is as I had the impression to violate their world, with the wears and the manners of mine..." His answer reassured me and he asked me a strangely reasonable fare, in those places I had no need to ask the help of my various souls in order to save money.
I approached cautious the small bench on which sat three scholars of the Bible who stared at me with curiousity and smiling and I stopped, until a young girl addressed me without any fear, asking me which civic number I was looking for and she openened my heart, that furrow between religious and secular people which often divides the jewish communities outside Israel, there I did not feel it and when the scholars stood to take a bus, I sat in their bench and it appeared to me an extraordinary repetition of moments to watch from the bench, curious and smiling, three ortodoxes passing nearby on the side walk.

Eti

Eti appeared at the agreed time, without a second in advance or late, beautiful as two years before, the long sky dress, I greeted her without grazing her, I knew that the rules of the rite did not allow her to touch the hand of a man. She drove the car skillfully into the small roads which took to the walls of the ancient city, towards that arc of clear stone standing in the middle and which was in my heart and I did not realized how it was in hers too. It was strange, but for the first time scouring the roads of Jerusalem, I was hearing none talking about the times, the war, the terror attempts, the alternate path of peace, maybe it is enough to have a hope of change and the human being forgets soon the banality of evil, beacuse evil is not human and becomes only remembrance, but not memory of every moment.

...to be continued...


Vai a Inizio Pagina

Admin
Forum Admin


Italy
2444 Inseriti
627 Gold
3290 Punti Rep.
Inserito - 09/08/2004 :  22:16:54  Mostra Profilo  Visita la Homepage di Admin  Replica con Citazione Invia un Messaggio Privato a Admin
Osem

I began to talk to Eti, about me, my business, my life, travels, people I met and in which I recognized traditions similar to ours and she began to talk about her new job which did not satisfy her and mostly about the study of the Torah, beyond the world, which brightened her, we approached to the ancient city and we had not to approach more one to the other, the tradition did not allow our coming closer.

She stopped at a crossroad to pick up the friend she had invited, a smiling and nice girl with the name Osem who told us with sleepy but happy eyes about her full day and about the lesson she should teach the next day at the university and about the time she could not find to prepare the papers, but neither Eti nor I asked her why then she was there together with us, she would have accompanied us without complaining and often Eti would talk to her about her job, her life, her hopes, her encounters, her pursuit of answers in religion and her voids while swimming in that sea so full to which she wished to come back and which she wished to maintan as a shield to open for her again the window on the world she felt to be alien to, but she could not talk directly to me and I listened to her while she repeated for the second time to her friend the words she had already said to her.

Three times we crossed walking the Armenian quarter to look for the road to the Wailing Wall, ten times an exhausted Osem smiled toward us and encouraged us to go on while she picked our words in the small roads of bricks of coloured stone, among people of every colour and she addressed them exactly toward the one where they had to arrive. Through her we spoke about perfumes and worlds and I looked for the wake of Eti, every time she appeared to depart away, until I understood and stopped to speak to her and I told to Osem, the silence which approached us, words darting as luminous goblins in the night in the small roads of the ancient city of Jerusalem, at first they ran in front of us, then they stopped to wait for us mockingly to escape, when it appeared that we were almost on the way to catch them with our senses.

Under the arc which we both came to see, so wide, in clear stone, among buildings so narrow in clear stone too, which gave not the way to escape to our gaze, a awry opened toward the valley and the illuminated hills, the quarters in light, flashes, as flowers in the dark contour of the desert of Judaea and she said :"Under this arc one day I will marry" and I told her that the same arc I came to see again and that her also I came to see again, her and mine words as raised from the stones of the pavement bending in two halfarcs which united as emotions in search of a common language in the light of that night in the center of the city on the hill of Jerusalem. But it was not the time of that yellow sheet of paper, time in a place without time is playful, different and shy.

The space of the Kotel opened, the Wailing Wall, what remained of the Temple, on the holiest esplanade of those places, where there was often who prayed that Heaven gave peace and sometimes who prayed that Heaven swallowed the Heaven of the others. We parted, it was time for Mincha', the prayer of the evening, tradition drove me to the part reserved to the man, Eti and Osem entered the part dedicated to woman. The Wall was high and large, the colour of his bricks of stone was clear as the light of the lamps and I wrote two words in a sheet of paper and I put it near thousands of others in a whisper of the stone, two words only, the deepest of my wishes, a miraculous mistery known by me only and by whom would read.

The man had a long white beard and approached limping from a leg, the dark wear and hat with the ritual plaits descending from the hair and he put a hand on my head and said sentences as he were the father covering the head of the son in blessing on Shabbat after the prayer, I gave him what was enough and after he disappeared I ran behind him, among the bricks of the pavement and those of the buildings, again toward the Wall from which I parted and to whom I came back but I found him again in a young man, he had the long black beard and he approached limping from a leg, the dark wear and hat with the ritual plaits descending from the hair and I put in his hands the yellow sheet of paper, beacuse I suddendly forgot the meaning of the words and panic seized me, I wanted to give it back to Eti and I was afraid to lose what I wanted to remember.

He translated for me and I wrote on another sheet of paper those words, in another language and finally I breathed relieved, the two girls and I met again to climb the stairs of the explanade toward the center of the city, a huge castle, with walls and towers of coloured stone, and Osem apeared to have climbed a mountain and Eti and I noticed for the first time her hand wounded and bandaged, but her smile did not fade, lost and absorbed in her sweet role.

...to be continued...


Vai a Inizio Pagina

Admin
Forum Admin


Italy
2444 Inseriti
627 Gold
3290 Punti Rep.
Inserito - 09/08/2004 :  22:17:36  Mostra Profilo  Visita la Homepage di Admin  Replica con Citazione Invia un Messaggio Privato a Admin
Mysticism

The medical literature refers to the "Jerusalem syndrome", the visitors of the holy city appear suddenly pervaded by ecstatic spirit and the euphory pushes them to feel part of the center of the universe and to pursuit an explaination solidly mystical which justifies spiritually some of their...ehm...characteristics...

"In the Torah everything is written, isn't it? and then why I do not like onions?" I asked her suddenly on the stairs climbing from the Kotel, challenging her certitudes. But she did not laugh on me and on my certitudes and concentrated on what she read, she replied to me seriously :"In one verse of the Torah it is said explicitly about onions and our people...when we left Egypt escaping from the Pharaoh who took us as slaves, leaded by Moses to the Land where we would live free, five kind of foods it is said we would miss and one of them was the good onion of the Land of the Nile, the onion is a sign of the nostalgia toward a state of the soul which fills the stomach, but not the spirit".

And suddenly I understood the meaning of years of mockeries, ironic stares, diabolic subterfuges I regularly discovered, when relatives tried to make me believe that those in my plate were not onions but cream puffs, years in which my friends obbliged me in exchange of lost bets to swallow those vegetables with the awful taste, everything dissolved in the serene awareness that when searching our own truth with obstinacy and pure soul, when you less wait for it, you discover that your truth has solid foundations and roots inside the History of the world.

Penang - Malaysia, August 1999

I had four snakes around my neck and someone was taking a picture, they were the guardians of the buddist temple of Penang, in which all the faiths have reserved a corner and the snake is considered carrier of the good luck, even if the malaysian manufacturers who accompanied me there did not agree so much on the friendship which those reptiles extended to me, before signing the business contracts. They explained me that the snake, according to eastern traditions, bites only if you crush his tail and one of them looked like Kah, the friend of Mowgli in the Book of the Jungle, while he was staring with curious eyes the human being belonging to the tribe of the ones who, time and time ago, an ancestor of his tribe convinced to eat the forbidden fruit, causing the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Jerusalem - October 1999

Far appeared to be those times in which men did not recognize in women the skill to study the Holy Books in the Yeshivot, the religious schools which created the rabbis, in the ghettos of Eastern Europe. In the modern Israel it was Eti who questioned that a man could follow her reasonings based on the daily studies and it appeared to me that she even never listenened to me when I answered correctly to the teologic questions which every place of that city recalled to the mind and she was passionately describing to Osem the characteristics of the Temple, taking them from a book she brought with her for the occasion.

"Really do you know what is this?" Every now and then unbelieving she turned toward me when I nodded looking the design of the wooden and golden Ark which at the times of the Temple contained the Book. At our table in the small restaurant surrounded by the stones of the path of the ancient city, the question exciting for us had the origin from that photo of mine depicting me among the snakes and which I showed so proudly to the two girls, Eti was almost angry with me, while the amazement of Osem, caused by the continuous surprises appearing from the two souls she was accompaning, did not allow her to give herself up to the exhaustion, even if every now and then her smile was veined by the shiver of the thought that never she would be able to convince her students the next day about the reason she did not prepare the lesson of psychology.

"This photo is dreadful...don't you know that according to our tradition the snake represents the absolute evil?" she said to me with twinkling eyes deflating my pride as a balloon. But we were in Jerusalem and I had to show her that even the mind of men developed since women took their place. "Apart from the fact that it were you who made us to eat the forbidden fruit..." I recovered..."then the meaning of the snake is purely representative, the human being has the faculty to accept or reject the evil, the snake is not guilty, it was enough to tell him : no, thank you". She stared at me as one stares someone that for the first time appears really to have the skill to think to something slightly more noble than the onion soup and for the rest of the evening I had the honour to discuss about life and world with a woman scholar of the Torah.

...to be continued...

Vai a Inizio Pagina

Admin
Forum Admin


Italy
2444 Inseriti
627 Gold
3290 Punti Rep.
Inserito - 09/08/2004 :  22:18:11  Mostra Profilo  Visita la Homepage di Admin  Replica con Citazione Invia un Messaggio Privato a Admin
The Tower

At that time in the night the mausoleum of Elihau Hanavi, the prophet Elias, was barred, the army had the possession, every sensible place, to whatsoever faith it belongs, should be carefully preserved. "Open, I have a guest with me" said Eti addressing the young soldier on guard. But we were at Jerusalem and the answer could not be a simple no. "Open to you, you are saying? Ok, let's do like this, if your guest is coming from Australia I will not open, if he comes from Italy, I will".

Thus the decision to open the doors of the citadel of the mausoleum was taken by the chance and the kind Osem almost lost her smile while she ran after two overexcited friends through a dark cave, to force open a door that since milleniums has never been opened, which burst open toward the infinite, fifty dark steps clambering up till the Tower, the highest place of the city, while temperature went down to the lowest value in that day and we looked enraptured to the deepest nightly panorama of that Land, three hundred and sixty degrees under the sky. "Do you know Roberto, I found all the answers in the Torah..." went on Eti while we started to go down again through those steps, just in the moment in which the sweet Osem reached the top in the vain hope to get a rest for one second, before facing them another time on the opposite way.

"In the Torah it is written that they hated us and that they will hate us, what's inside our soul?""...maybe it is because in History our brothers and sisters in every place found themselves leading revolutions against the normalization of power?" "It is written that the Messiah will come and he will bring to us the peace..." "...and if it were instead inside us, if that light among the nations, as it has been said by the chief rabbi of the yeshivot in Israel, is nothing else than the hard task to study and share with the other people, until the sword changes in plough without anymore war? maybe in that day it will begin the Messianic era, brought by the human beings?" "Are you tired sweet Osem?" "No..." "I cannot, I want to see the mountains and the seas..." "the answer is written in the Torah...""...or maybe it is inside us? maybe there is the time to study the Torah and there is the time to see the sea...maybe the Torah shows us the path to discover the answer inside us?".

We spoke to each other, Osem had not anymore to direct our words and she got in the car of Eti, it was no more necessary that she shared the chill of the night while we were waiting for the taxi which would take me back to Tel Aviv and then to the airport. "How much did you pay for the coming trip?" "Two hundred shequel" " I dealt for one hundred and fifty for your trip back!" Her face brightened "not only we study the Torah, we are better than you men also in dealing business!".
"Tomorrow morning I will have the time for one hour on the beach..." "I will not come, I can not attend mixed beaches..." "The yellow sheet of paper, do you remember what did you write on it?" I gave it to her, she recognized it and said to me that she remembered every word and left it to me, while the taxi took me far away.
During the trip back I asked myself where did the time go that day, how was it possible that those three hours were as long as three lives?

Tel Aviv - October 1999

The next morning I phoned to her from the beach :"Boker tov...good morning Eti"...I left the message in the tape of her phone.

Teshuva'...in hebrew it means coming back, coming back to the Torah or coming back to the sea...teshuva' means also answer, answer in the Torah, answer in the sea...will they blend?

Milano - October 1999

It was again Shabbat and my sister opened fuming the book of Rav Rambam, Maimonides, his treatise on vegetables..."ok Roberto, your syndrome has to be healed once for ever, coming back from Jerusalem you even put on the table the Bible, here there is all our knowledge on vegetables and I will read for you that your belief on onions..." her face became white, Maimonides wrote :"in the Torah it is said that onions, vegetables with so numerous qualities, were one of the food of which the jewish people had nostalgia in the crossing from the slavery in Egypt to the freedom..."

"You see, we should not have nostalgia of what slavery gave to us, finally I know that mine was not a fixed idea, someway...at Pesah eating the bitter herb we remember our condition of subjects of the Pharaoh and what is wrong if I celebrate freedom not eating onions?" "It is said that every human being has been created with the goal to seek and discover his mitzva', his own precept, and yours, as funny as it may appear, is the one not to eat onions and now you found in our tradition what you were looking for, did you see? There is everything in the Torah". And in that day of the first month of the lunar year five thousand seven hundred and sixty from the creation of the world the known precepts became 614 and I would never again have to remind anyone that when I was a child I did not fall on the head, but only on the elbow.

My sister closed the book and invited me to talk with the sages among our people, the second woman in this memorable days who thinks that a man is able to understand the Torah.

The end

Roberto

Vai a Inizio Pagina

   
Clicca qui per la scheda generale dell'autore
Altri testi dello stesso autore
Tema I super Autori
Tema L'ultimo "guasto".
Tema C'è una spiegazione?
Tema Hai chiuso bene la tua mailbox?
Tema Mi presento
Tema ciao a tutti
Tema Concorso: Dal tramonto all'alba
Tema Concorso CultureExpress
Tema Bol.com Regala "il razzismo spiegato a mia figlia"
Tema quesito...
Tema Giusto per rompere il ghiaccio
Tema Con Corso d'Agosto
Tema Tanti auguri in rima a....
Tema Invito speciale per persone speciali :)
Tema che succede alla chat?
Tema Miss Italia CONCERTISTA
Tema spyware??
Tema Con Corso Settembre
Tema CRITTOGRAMMI MARA CANTONI
Tema Imperdonabilmente..
-----------------------------------------
Vai a:

Pagina Caricata in :3,78
Imposta come tua pagina di avvio aggiungi ai favoriti Privacy Segnala Errori © 2001-2021 Concerto di Sogni - B.A. & R.M MaxWebPortal Snitz Forums Go To Top Of Page