Jewish time is not measured in years. It is measured in space; the transitions from one age to another continually merge with each other. Rabbi Hanina ben Teradyon casting a merciful last rite on his Roman executioner who chose to die with his victim juxtaposed against teacher Janusz Korczak who went with his orphan charges to the extermination camp. All escaped the misery of this world. Is it Jewish fate to leave the world rather than to live in it? How many times does the energy of Satan need to be destroyed? Is this the unrelenting rhythm of Jewish life? Yet there is “Next Year in Jerusalem” under the safety of the Iron Dome!
Fire, the source of life, is fire, the beacon of death, for nameless children whose only crime is that their parents wish to believe in an ineffable unseen force. The pagans worship images as if from a void but cannot accept the essence of a spiritual sustenance of a different order — a force of thirteen attributes.