Messages of Hope from Eden, Hopi and Jews

From Shlomo, our Spiritual Leader.

Barack Obama who thinks there are 60 United States, not 50, calls himself the great Healer. Wherever he goes he says he carries a MESSAGE OF HOPE. Instead of talking honestly, he prefers to be more spiritual. He’s into the touchy-feely New Age message loved by many Liberals and inept and disenfranchised intellectuals.

What if like Obama, and Obama’s spiritual leader, Rev. Wright, and like Rev. Wright’s spiritual leader, Louis Farrakhan, what if I did as they do? Only this time, I won’t lie. Incorporating healing and hope in my message, I will tell a story around the one word. The word is HOPE.

Only, I will do as Louis Farrakhan often does and play with the real meaning of a word. Instead of HOPE, to tell this story properly, I must make HOPE into HOPI. For God had a message when he named the HOPI.

Whether it was God, or just human nature, the fact remains that the Hopi are surrounded by and despised by the Navajo — the Navajo, who stole the Hopi culture and called it their own. The Navajo stole the Hopi’s holidays, their land and their food. To this very day the Navajo and Hopi don’t get along.

After the Navajo took the Hopi religion and changed it, and took the land and changed it, and took the Hopi’s livelihoods and way of life, what if I told you much of the world followed suit. And that’s how it was to be forever and ever. Until, all these years later, everything we’ve come to know and think is ours, was originally the Hopi’s.

To this day, the Navajo hate the Hopi. But why? For no good reason. It’s just in the Navajo’s nature, which after all is human nature. For it’s true, the Hopi have always been a quiet, peace-loving, wise people. Lucky for the Hopi, the rest of the world didn’t follow the Navajo’s suit. The world has no reason to hate Hopis. Perhaps because like the Navajos, everyone else already has their Hopis.

The other tribe consistes of The Children of Israel. Jacob’s name used to be Israel. Perhaps he changed his name to be accepted in another land. Jacob was Abraham’s grandson. From Jacob’s 12 sons came the 12 Tribes of Israel. From those 12 tribes we now have the world’s religions, culture, law, medicine, physics, writings and ideas.

The Children of Israel, unlike the Hopi, did more than quietly live their lives on top of a few mesas. The Children of Israel lived up in Jerusalem, it is true, but then the White Men came, or whatever you prefer to call them.

After leaving the long arm of the Egyptians the Children of Israel were attacked by terrorists called the Amalekites. When the Children of Israel returned to the Land of Milk and Honey, they had to contend with Phoenicians, Assyrians, Hittites, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Roman Catholics and Mamelukes.

In exile and at home, wherever they went, although it wasn’t the Navajo, it was always someone, and for no reason that had anything to do with the Children of Israel. The Spaniards and Portuguese stole everything the remnants of the 12 Tribes owned in exile, and then the Spaniards and Portuguese went on to steal everything owned by tribes in North and South America.

Meanwhile the Dutch, British and French grabbed as much as they could get their hands on too. Meanwhile, the Ottomans stole everything they could get their hands on. Autocratic families of Caesars, Kaisars and Czars, the Hapsburgs and Romanovs, the Hashemites, Saudis and Pahlevis, all took what they could. Much as the Nazis did, and today it’s the IslamoNazis.

The Arabs and Persians, all Muslims, use the strength built on money they didn’t earn, on teachings and technology taken from the Children of Israel, and they to the Jews they do as the Navajo have done to the Hopi. They build all their HOPE on HATE.

How can there be Hope when the Navajos can’t learn to love the Hopis? Why can’t the Navajos get their acts together? Why must Arabs, Muslims and Persians keep their mouths affixed to the teats of hate?

Can’t they wean themselves from this maddening elixir?

Can’t they rise above what their crazy imams taught them?

Apparently not. Not yet anyway. And so, the Children of Israel scramble, make the best of yet another far from perfect situation.

That story we all know and love about the Garden of Eden, that too comes from the Jews. No matter which permutation you hear, you can’t forget that it comes from the Jews. Can you live with that? Or does something stick in your craw, something primal that you can’t seem to overcome. Something you don’t want to overcome? This reminds me of a story I’d like to share:

Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden. And they lived together east of Eden, tilling the earth, raising children, struggling to stay alive. After the years of struggle, when their children were grown, they decided to see the world.

They journeyed from one corner of the world to the other. Wandering from place to place. In the course of their journeys, they discovered the entrance to the Garden of Eden, now guarded by an angel with a flaming sword. Frightened, they began to flee when suddenly God spoke to them:

“Adam and Eve, you have lived in exile these many many years. The punishment is complete. You may return now to the Garden.”

As the words were spoken, the angel with his flaming sword disappeared and the gate to the Garden opened. “Come in, Adam. Come in Eve.”

“Wait,” Adam replied. “You know, it has been so many years. Remind me, what is it like in the Garden?”

“The Garden is paradise!” God responded. “In the Garden there is no work. Neither of you need ever struggle or toil again. There is no pain, no suffering. No death. Life goes on forever, day after day. Come, return to the Garden!”

Adam and Eve listened to God’s words — no work, no struggle, no pain, no death. An endless life of perpetual ease. And then Adam turned and looked at Eve. He looked at the woman with whom he had struggled to make a life, to take bread from the earth, to raise children, to build a home. He thought of the tragedies they had overcome and the joys they cherished.

And Adam shook his head, “no thank you, that’s not for me… Come on Eve, let’s go.”

Adam and Eve turned their backs on Paradise, and hand in hand, they walked home.

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From– Ed Feinstein, as edited by Miriyam Glazer, and printed in “Dancing on the Edge of the World: Jeiwsh Stories of Faith, Inspiration, and Love”