The Shofar

 I had lunch today with two men.  They're older than me, and I've been aware of them and their family my whole life.  Listening to their perspective on events of the past was fascinating.  One of the things we talked about was how difficult it is to get people to stay in Mississippi once they become motivated and educated.  

One of them had just this experience.  After leaving Millsaps, Mississippi just wasn't big enough for him, so he moved on, but then, news came that a friend had his house bombed in Jackson.  "I figured I'd better get back to Mississippi," he said.  

In 1967, I was watching a lot of Captain Kangaroo while my mother was trying to figure out why I could say my alphabet but not write it or recognize the letters on flash cards.  My struggles with dyslexia were pretty insignificant compared to what else was going on in Mississippi.  Our own people were turning into monsters to prevent Mississippi from evolving.  In 1967, men in Mississippi, motivated by the anti-Semitic rhetoric of a political campaign, made bombs to destroy a synagog and a home, hoping to intimidate Jackson Jews into staying out of our cultural struggles and moving away if they could.

"I figured I'd better get back to Mississippi,"  my friend said.  He heard the alarm, and he answered it. His homeland needed him.

Without other means of distance communication, ancient Jews developed a musical instrument whose sound could be heard over long distances.  They made it from a ram's horn and called it a Shofar.  Although mostly ceremonial now, the original purpose of the Shofar was to communicate alarm and call for help.  "Wolves are attacking my sheep!  Alarm!  Alarm!"  "The city is under attack, Alarm!  Blow the Shofar!" Help would come because men afield recognized the call.

A bombing, a murder, a flood, economic distress, broken water systems, these things are all alarms.  "Help us!  The community is in great peril!  Alarm!"  We don't use the Shofar anymore, but the intent is the same if the alarm comes over the news or the internet or however you hear it.  The Shofar is a call to your countrymen, "Come now!  We need you!"

It would be so easy for me to stay in Madison once I'm well again and shop and eat and do all sorts of innocent, unchallenging white people things until I die, except that I'd never have any peace because all I can hear is the Shofar calling from my home.  "We need you!  Come now!  Come NOW!"

I am not yet well, and I'll never be as strong as I once was in some ways, but I'm strong in other ways, and I know what I must do.