Spring, fear, and odd beauty - The Jewish Standard

It’s really early spring now. In the green-and-yellow department, we’ve got forsythias and daffodils; meanwhile, more and more trees have little trembling hints of baby green on their branches. The sun’s out dramatically longer. When you walk outside, you get that involuntary rush of warmth and joy that comes with spring.

In fact, this week’s story about Zalmen Mlotek’s upcoming Tom Lehrer concert brings his ode to springtime unshakably to mind: “All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon When we’re poisoning pigeons in the park…” (Apparently the song was prompted by Boston’s ridding itself of the winged rats by, well, poisoning them. In the park. Tra la. But I digress.)

That also means that Pesach is coming. We’re about halfway through the month that separates it from Purim, and the cleaning and shopping and obsessive planning already have begun.

This is also an extraordinarily difficult time. Hamas still is holding prisoners in Gaza; if they’re alive, they’re in torment. We cannot get them out; the only people who can will not. The ongoing war in Gaza is causing hideous destruction, and Israel’s reputation in most of the world is being shredded. That will have long-term repercussions.

And then there’s this country. We, too, are being torn apart. We stand on either side of a jagged divide and stare at each other with disbelief and loathing. It is far easier to destroy than to rebuild. The damage being wreaked now will linger for decades, like London after the blitz.

We can neither ignore the situation nor be overwhelmed by it. We can get strength and hope from the beauty and unstoppable progression of spring.

One of the things about pigeons is that as inelegant and unappealing as they are on the ground, they’re different when they’re part of a flock in the air. I walk by pigeons in flight every morning. They seem to live somewhere on Broadway, and they regularly take off from a high perch on an apartment building to fly in huge, joyous circles, and then often land on the low roof of a subway stop. They sit there, briefly, hordes of them, and then take off in swooping circles again.

I know they’re pigeons. I know they’re gross. But when they fly, they’re also lovely.

It seems that we can take beauty in whatever unlikely places that we find it, take heart from it, and then try to fight for the good. It’s hard, and it often — usually — doesn’t work, but it’s the best we can do, and we should do it.

—JP

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