What do you see wherever you are right now?
What do your eyes focus on?
What is on your mind?
What is in your mind’s eye?
When you close your eyes, for a moment during the day, or when you fall asleep at night, what comes into your mind?
I am in the Timbavati area right now in a lovely private Game Reserve called Motswari. I love coming here. The people are lovely, the food is delicious, the accommodation excellent.
But the real reason for coming here is the beauty of nature and the animals we seek out and happily find on our game drives in the early morning as the sun rises and in the early evening as the sun gets ready to set.
I saw amazing things today.
I saw a family of three rhinos.
I saw a herd of some four hundred Cape Buffalo.
I saw a leopard and its kill.
I saw a Dung Beetle slowly, patiently, rolling a perfectly shaped ball of dung across the road as we sat patiently in our vehicle, not moving, to allow him/her (them?) to cross the road safely, dung and all.
I am not here on my own. I am here with a group of eighteen American Jews on a South African Jewish Journey.
Because of them, in spite of them, I saw some other things more clearly than the dung beetles or the rhinos. More clearly than the leopard or the buffalo, I saw the funeral of Sergeant (First Class) Oz Daniel, murdered on October 7th by Hamas terrorists, in Kfar Sabba. I saw his comrade in arms, Nimrod Cohen, recently released from captivity in Gaza, standing at his funeral, paying his respects.
I saw Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Hersh (of blessed memory) writing her poem, ‘Planting a Seed’, still filled with hope, before he was murdered by Hamas, and my voice quivered, and my eyes teared up as I read these lines:
There is a Yiddish lullaby that says, “Your mother will cry a thousand tears before you grow to be a man”
I have cried a million tears in the last 67 days
We all have
And I know
… way over there
There is another woman who looks just like me,
Because we are all so very similar
She has also been crying…
All those tears
Our sea of tears.
They all taste the same.
Can we take them, gather them up, and remove the salt,
And then pour them over our desert of despair…
And plant one tiny seed
A seed wrapped in fear, trauma, pin and hope?
And see what grows…
And I could no longer see the three rhinos, or the four hundred Cape Buffalo, neither the leopard nor his kill, let alone the tiny little dung beetle rolling his dung along a dirt road.
I could only see Nimrod Cohen, his mother and the mother of Oz Daniel in the cemetery in Kfar Sabba, even though I am here in Motswari, in Timbavati, to see animals and sunsets.
May his memory be for a blessing. ●
Julian Resnick, spoke to an audience of readers while on a visit to Cape Town
- For the current edition of the Cape Jewish Chronicle, click here.
- Subscribe to the Cape Jewish Chronicle: R450/year, or R38/month via debit order. Simply email us at subscriptions@ctjc.co.za and click here for payment info.
- The Cape Jewish Chronicle reaches over 6 000 readers monthly across print and digital platforms.
- To book advertising space or discuss a custom package contact Adéle Gradner Mobile: 083 321 5222 | Office: 021 464 6736 | Email advertising@ctjc.co.za
