The Hero Within

Today I had an epiphany, a revelation, a rebirth so to speak. So often we reach a point in our lives where we say there's nothing more, no hope and we accept the defeat of both time and relationships, waiting until that moment when we take that long, deep step descending into the cold, damp ground. We watch zombie movies knowing full well that we have become no different, unfeeling, unloved, carrying on daily through routine motions without any hope of redemption. We never fully understand how or why we let it happen, and we can't even recall exactly when it did happen, but somewhere in the past, life silently slipped away leaving us with nothing but the shadows of its depression. We are drained, physically and emotionally unable to move either forward or backward, frozen in our hopelessness. At this point many of us have succumbed to the medical reflief in little plastic bottles or the excesses of vitners in much larger glass bottles but either way we have merely admitted defeat and have relegated the person we may have once been to an irretrievable past. So many willingly releasing who and what they were into the realm of shades, creating a living death from the chaff of failed dreams. We have become beings without substance, lacking purpose, barren of focus and lost to everything and everyone we once held important.
I freely admit that at times I felt myself slipping away into the abyss of failed nightmares and shattered dreams, praying, hoping that someone would toss a lifeline into the spiralling milieu that had become my life. The spark had been extinguished long ago and the few times the kindling burst into flames it was shortlived and barely enough to fuel the passions that stirred within my soul.
But today as I said was an awakening. A beginning to forgotten memories and times long buried from a life I once had. The complacency and passiveness that had become the rotting deacay of my spiritual essence had overwhelmed me, robbing form me years of my life. And then today I bore witness to a different decay that has affected our society. The loss of connection from our fellow human beings. We are a people that have become obsessed with being humane in order to conceal our flaws but in the process have lost our humanity. We are unable to feel or care for those we consider strangers; afraid to rush to their aid lest we forfeit our anonymity and the shallowness that we have filled our hearts with. As I sat and ate a meal today I stared outside the window to see a young woman in distress. An argument with a boyfriend, or ex, or what may or may not have been turned ugly. He turned to violence intent on hurting her and even though specatators looked on and others passed pretending not see at all, that spark that within me that I had long ago considered lost ignited into a roaring flame. Before I even realized what I had done, I was outside and between the victim and her attacker. My sudden appearance brushed him backwards with enough force and rage in my voice that he knew that had he even attempted to lay another hand upon her, he may have found it separated from her body. A man in his fifties against the youth and arrogance of twenties. The fury and chivalry that I once had, suddenly returned as if the clock had turned back three decades within the blink of an eye. The feeling of being there for a perfect stranger, willing to risk all because it was the right thing to do, a feeling that personally I never dreamed still existed within me. I had kept it trapped, imprisoned beneath chains of responsibilities and political correctness imposed upon me by an insensitive world that will never shed a tear when I pass on. But today I made a difference and as I heard one person whisper the word 'hero', I have the courage to make every day from now on make a difference.

We Were Warriors

Once upon a time there was a people that despite their small numbers would not hesitate to fight for what they believed in; for what they considered right. It doesn't necessarily follow that they won each time because they didn't, but they knew that for every loss there would be a victory some time, some place in the future. For a thousand years that belief was consistent and unfaltering. We fought the Egyptians, though halfheartedly I must admit when Shishank stormed Jerusalem and lost. But Solomon made up with his father-in-law and the Egyptians withdrew. We fought the Assyrians and lost the northern kingdom but more so through the assimilation that followed. We fought the Babylonians and lost but fortunately they in turn lost to the Persians and we were given back our institution to self govern. We fought the Greeks and actually won, but then gave away that freedom immediately afterwards through alliances with Antiochus, the same ruler we fought against so that we could become a self-governing vassal state. No one said it had to make sense. And then we fought the Romans and lost. Sixty years afterwards we fought them again, and lost again. Three hundred years later we tried it again but we didn't fare any better that time. But by the fourth century AD something had drastically changed in our makeup and our mindset. We no longer saw ourselves as warriors, definitely not as victors, and we certainly lost the aptitude to keep challenging the powers that be.
There were singular moments when individuals did rise to the occassion and for the span of a few years there were even hazy reflections of the ancestral warriors and the sweet taste of victory but then that same insidious change that occurred in the fourth century would pervade our thinking and we would sacrifice all that we had gained. The story of Mar Zutra is such an episode where our freedom had been re-established only to have it sold out from under us.

For anyone that knows my belief system and is familiar with my thinking they may already know what I'm alluding to. Where I feel the blame is to be laid and how I see us once again as a people faltering and failing to embrace that warrior heritage that is the core of our existence.
After the wars against Rome, notice I say wars because most are of the beleif that there was only a singular war which is completely incorrect, we abandoned that which was the essential elements of our existence. Not our stalwart belief in God, but the tools that he handed us to ensure our continued survival through the ages. I'm referring to the Rod and the Sceptre. There came amongst us a group of relgious philosphers (hasidim) that felt the two institutions were archaic and irrelevant. They dismissed them as the flotsom of an outlived aristocracy, no longer essential. They presumed that without a Temple, without a base or kingdom to rule, there was no longer a need for either priests or kings. And in their haste to bury both castes they forgot that it was not their decision to make as God had forbade any man to wrest these from between his knees (this is a biblical expression, not mine). Yes, I blame Rabbinical Judaism for our downfall through the ages.

Now before everyone gets in an uproar and starts proclaiming what the Rabbis have always insisted that if not for them we never would have survived as a distinct people amongst all the other nations, let me say this; 'CRAP'. The Talmud, is the work and interpretation of men and if anything, it has caused more confrontational arguments than agreements. Long after it was written you still had the Rashis and Maiomondes, and the hundreds and thousands of Rabbis that followed still trying enforce their interpretation as the correct one. How ridiculous. Because as any knowledgable Karaite can tell you, Anan ben David had summed up everything that had to be known in a singular revision; "If what you read seems good to you, then it is correct." It was a powerful statement. So powerful in fact that by the tenth century, the Rabbinical sage, Saadiah grew very concerned that the rabbinical Judaism he and his colleagues professed would actully become subordiante to the Karaite beliefs that he made it his life's ambition to destroy all that was Karaite. Though you may find it hard to uncover this edict I'm about to reveal, since an effort has been made to erase it from Jewish History, Saadiah, once enshrined as the Gaon, or chief Rabbi, pronounced, "To Kill a Karaite is no Different Than Killing a Dog." What did this actually mean? It meant that you could kill a Karaite without being charged with murder. And they did; literally in the thousands.
It is inconceivable that we who were once warriors would turn upon our own brethren, simply because one group decided that somehow it became their right to rule the hearts and minds of the people. And that same group would preach whenever as a people we would become oppressed by other nations that we should put our trust in God and that he will deliver us. That it is not up to us to deliver ourselves. How many holocausts have we suffered because of such faulty logic? How many more must we endure before it is finally questioned, who are these people that claim the authority to speak for God?

We are at a crossroads now. As Karaite, I'm only one of thirty thousand remaining in the world. Even most of my family following the death of Yakov Kahana (see Shadows of Trinity) abandoned Karism and adopted what was then mainstream rabbinical Judaism. But in case you have not noticed, there is a tide turning in the world. A tide that suddenly looks at today's Israel with its six million people and says, "How dare you exert your beligerance over 500 million Arabs. How dare you declare yourself a Jewish Homeland but WE acknowledge the right for a Palestinian state to exclude any Jews from living within its borders. How dare you pronouce Judaism as your State religion, even though you let millions of Muslims and Christians live freely within your country to practice their religion, while those of non-Muslim faiths are not allowed to publicly practice their religions in a large number of Muslim countries. How dare you claim an entitlement to the land on which you have been a presence on for three thousand years continuously, have fought and died over for an equal length of time as mentioned at the start of this article, and try to use that to refute OUR claim that you are merely the creation of post world war European guilt." You can hear it now. It's whispered in the streets, it's shouted behind closed doors, it's rising in its tenor and rhetoric from the lips of presidents that are willing to deny the truth. As a Karaite I can see the winds of change. We have seen it many times over our existence. We have not abandoned either the Staff nor the Sceptre. And though our numbers are diminished we still recall that once We Were Warriors.

Of Witches, Werewolves, Vampires, Angels and Demons

You have to love the wisdom that emanates from the mouths of your children. Their ability to state what's on their minds without the hesitency that we all gain as adults is sometimes brutal but overwhelmingly honest. It's a trait we all seem to lose as we become part of the adult working force and enter society with all its restrictions and political correctness. And what have we actually created with our acts of hypocrisy and social obligations; A mess to put it quite frankly. A world that is spinning out of control because somewhere along the way it lost what we once called morality. The overriding sense of wrong and right that was engraved in stone. You knew there would be a punishment for every improper deed you did and that was often enough to keep you walking the straight and narrow. Now there is no discipline, no sense of fairplay, and definitely no morality.
So when my daughter asks me why I choose to write of historical events because in her mind real author's know that success lies in writing books devoted to the celebration of the antihero, dipped heavily into the ether of demons and the supernatural, then I better have a good answer since so much of their lives are wrapped up in the hoodoo voodoo of this new age. Whether your child considers themselves Emo or Goth determines whether they just hate society or wish to watch it burn in Hell. We can shake our heads all we want but the truth of the matter is that it's our fault that they're immsersed in those attitudes. Why? Because we took their heroes away. We had to obliterate the masked man in the white suit that always defeated his nemesis in the black hat and Snidely Whiplash styled moustache. Someone said that it gave children the wrong impression that colour determined good or bad and that could result in racism. And just like that they were gone! Then we had to remove God from religion so as not to suggest that the God of one religion was superior to that of another. Perhaps if we had thought about it more thoroughly we would have recognised that the solution was not to toss out God from religion but to remove religion from God. Whether one believes in the physical forces of the universe, the God of the Bible, the Force from Star Wars, it's all God. God didn't have to be removed from schools and public services. What had to be removed was the false sense of superiority that one believer held over another. But that's all a discussion for another day. The fact is the youth of today want to believe in a world created by the likes of a Stephanie Meyer. They want to emulate the world that author's of this alternative reality have fashioned, where the supernatural meshes intricately with that of humanity. Where darkness is inseparable from the light because in their own minds there is no longer a distinction. Death and life have become confused and meaningless with the preservation of life no longer paramount nor sacred.
So to be asked why I don't expend my efforts to write about the witches, werewolves, vampires, angels and demons that now haunt their everyday existence, I took great pleasure in replying that I do. The only difference is that I relate these attributes of horror to real people, that did cause terrible suffering and by which the people had to bear the repurcussions of the evil manifest in these human forms. There were witches in my newly finished novel Zutra. They were women of power that exerted magical forces over the men in their lives, twisting them until they performed like marionettes on chainlink strings. Oh, and there were werewolves too. Men that could change their form on any given day, masking the deceit and visciousness of their own personna until they tore the hearts from the innocent. Zutra's father died on the cross because he failed to see the werewolves that existed amongst those he thought were his friends. And of course their were Vampires, none so much as the Lady Avital that sucked the life blood from both of her husbands, father and son, until they were too weak to resist her alluring charms. But in spite of the evil that flourished, there were still angels that would not succumb to the evil that pervaded their world. Men and women who could rise above the wickednss that men do and would willingly risk their own lives in order to stem the evil tide. Zutra was such a man. Patricius longed to be such a man. And the Princess Ti-Ping was definitely such a woman. As for demons, they are always in disguise. They're the ones not happy until they destroyed everything about them even if they have to sacrifice the world and all they hold dear to do so. You will find many demons existed in the world in which Zutra lived. He had no choice but to become a demon slayer.
So you see, much to my daughter's surprise, I do write about this dark Gothic world they wish to envelop themselves within. But in my stories there still remains that fine line between Good and Evil. I still have my heroes in white hats or shining armour. Because it is not about the colour. It was never about the colour. It was always about doing what was right. And if my words can re-establish the belief that this world did have, does have, and will have heroes, then perhaps we can save it from ourselves!