Thursday, September 11, 2014

9-11 and Raise Your Spirits

9-11.
That's the catchy term the world uses. 9-11 and everyone knows what each person is referring to.
The Arab terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in the United States, plus two other attempted sites.

The towers came down in death and destruction, and smoke and steel, and horror and loved-ones-lost.
In Israel where I live, we had been living our own mini-9-11s every day. A shooting here, a suicide bomber there (the most infamous being the Sbarro bombing).
It was a beyond-frightening time for all - so scary that many folks would have just stayed locked up in their homes, rather than face the outside world.
But we women of Raise Your Spirits were determined to go on with life. And, live life ourselves and with our friends and families despite the hells around us.

So on 9-11, we went on! The show went on! Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
We had debates and even borderline- fights with those who disagreed, but we knew we had to go on. If we stopped living life at every terror attack, we'd still be home under the covers.
In addition to that, the WORLD had now just joined the people of Israel in what had been our private trauma.
We needed to be together with others, and we needed to believe that life would go on, that the earth would keep turning.

So after complex discussions, we sent cast members to synagogues around Gush Etzion, collected prayer books and handed them out to our audience.
We turned our performance into a giant prayer rally - 450 women praying together in complete faith. Our performers prayed behind the curtain and the audience in their theatre seats.
And then the show went on - one our best shows ever. The audience weeped and they laughed, and they were able to put the evil world out of their hearts and minds for one hour, as they traveled with us through the stage version of "a silly-sad-serious-shiny" life of Joseph and his brothers. 

And there we stood on 9-11, Raise Your Spirits and our sisters, united, believing, supportive, loving - getting through the worst day the world has known TOGETHER as a family of Jewish women.
[http://raiseyourspiritstheatre.blogspot.co.il/2014/07/doing-our-job-again-our-rys-emergency.html]

May Hashem bless the world and finally soon destroy evil from our midst.

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