A Dream of Peace on a Midsummer Night
Celebrating my nuptials to Carol
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”
So said William Shakespeare.
The Bard added, “love is an ever-fixed mark.”
This is true.
Yet we all adapt in life. It is necessary, for not one of us is perfect, even though love, the deepest spiritual love, lasts forever.
Other things, such as a hideous budget bill, may haunt our lives.
But love rises above all chaos, all evil, and soars with its lovebirds to the infinite.
I am getting married in the next fortnight.
It will be occurring on a midsummer night, and it will be a dream, in which Carol, my angelic bride, and I will enter a celestial realm, where she will shimmer in her wedding gown, while we float in the ether.
There is no denying that we are facing a national nightmare, and it won’t go away anytime soon.
Tragically, millions of people could lose their health care in the coming years if the White House’s budget bill, which just passed the Senate, passes the House.
We must all adapt, even if we are in love, like Carol, my angel, and I.
Yes, we all must face the horrors of the situation, which will afflict some people, particularly those of less income, far more severely than it will afflict the rest of us.
We have already seen family members being separated from one another in immigration raids, people hiding at home or in school rather than taking the risk of being arrested, others being handcuffed in courthouses, and thousands, indeed millions, who may be on the verge of losing their health care, food stamps and other forms of aid.
Still, as I say, we do have the ability to adapt, to protest, to demand that the Congress hold public hearings, as former Rep. Liz Cheney advised in an email, even if those hearings are not formal hearings.
There may be other things that we can do at a political level, but we can start by summoning the free will that we all have to stay positive.
It is not always easy.
I battle depression and the residual effects of PTSD just about every day.
But I have long contended that we can transmute any seeming curse into a blessing.
As Hamlet says, “Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
It is true that Hamlet is a tragic figure.
But this does not detract from his wisdom.
Perhaps, with a little help from angels, we can indeed transmute our national nightmare into a dream, a romantic comedy, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play filled with pageantry, spectacle, magic and fairies who create some mayhem while enchanting the lovers on their way to their nuptials.
I am, as I noted earlier, getting married quite soon, and so I have dreams fluttering through my soul.
Speaking of dreams, I should point out that the word for dream in Hebrew is chalom.
It is not so far removed in sound and spelling from Shalom, which means hello, goodbye and peace in Hebrew, as I mentioned in my 2021 piece for Thrive Global, “Shalom, Salaam and Respect.”
In that piece, I wrote of how Jews and Arabs have much in common, a point I also made in my last post, “Zohran Mamdani Wins Our Hearts.”
In my last post, I also pointed out that there is more that unites us than divides us, as can be seen in the friendship between Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander, a Muslim and a Jew.
I noted that such a friendship is not uncommon at all in New York or anywhere else, when we open our minds to love.
In “Shalom, Salaam and Respect,” I also indicated that the Hebrew words for Hebrew and Arab both contain the letters, ayin, beit and reish, in a different order.
One might perceive, as I wrote at the time, that the words for Hebrew and Arab, Evree and Arav, are essentially anagrams, which suggests that there is a kinship that goes back to the beginning not only between the two peoples, Jews and Arabs, but also between the letters themselves, letters that send off sparks of attraction.
As it turns out, beit and reish are the first two letters in the Bible, a point I also made in that Thrive Global piece.
They are the opening letters in the word, Bereshit, which means, “In the beginning.”
Like any dreamer, or Shakespeare lover, I am enchanted by language, which is befitting for one who also loves the Kabbalah.
Of course, being a Kabbalist, a Jewish mystic, is not so different from being in love.
I would argue that they are in many ways the same thing, and mysticism is open to all of us of every ethnic, religious and racial background.
Carol, my sweet bride, has been teaching me so many things. She is my editor and Muse, and we both fly “into the mystic,” as Van Morrison might say.
Not surprisingly, I deeply believe that one of the best ways for all of us--Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, Israelis and Iranians, and everyone else--to get along, to marry our minds to one another, is to elevate our language and to speak on a plane of kindness and enchantment.
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” says Puck, the little sprite, who fires love darts at characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Yes, we might all be fools when compared to fairies and angels, who act on behalf of the fairy king, who is arguably a stand-in for God.
It is also true that dreaming may be one of the most beautiful and humane things that we can do, something that can enrich our souls and please the Lord.
Perhaps, as a Kabbalist might say, all we need to do is transform or transmute a cheit, the first Hebrew letter in chalom, Hebrew for dream, into a shin, the first letter in Shalom, and we can bring peace to this world.
I believe this is more than possible.
After all, I am a lovebird.
I am a dreamer.
So is Carol.
We will be surging into the firmament quite soon, with sparks as ancient and new as beit and reish, the opening letters in the Bible.
And our love, to quote another pair of bards, George and Ira Gershwin, “is here to stay.”