Yesh Li Blog: Independence Day 2013

Thursday, July 04, 2013

Independence Day 2013

This year's theme:

America is an idea.

This piece of parchment encapsulates that idea/those ideas.

It has become fashionable nowadays to eschew the Founding Fathers and their ideas. I have no such compunction. Their ideas have withstood the test of time. Would that this current generation realized it.

Arising from the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, a rewriting and perfecting of the Articles of Confederation, provides the philosophical and practical basis for the formation of "a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

An image often missing from Independence Day celebrations.
USS Albany (CG-10), a symbol of our military, a guarantor of our freedoms, and my shipboard home for three years.

Parades, one would hope, remind us of our shared heritage and what it means to be an American.

Fireworks bring fond memories and remind us of that Star-Spangled Banner flying over Fort McHenry, in a war to safeguard our independence.

Our flag is a symbol of the ideas that make us who we are. We must never forget.

Our eldest daughter put together this 15-second tribute to our nation. She loves the land of her birth—Spain, her homes for many years—Italy, Canada, and Japan, and her current home—Australia, but she understands that "America is portable, We carry it around in our hearts and minds," and "We don't live in America. America lives in us," or to paraphrase a friend—to be an American is "to believe as an American."

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Why Yesh Li Blog?

Why do I have a blog? Quite simply, I have a blog to share my favorite things with others. The right side of the blog has a long list of links to some of the places on the Internet that I visit often. In addition to sharing those with others, I often come here myself to find a quick link to where I am going.

Bonnie, our eldest, led the way into blogging with her Simple Beauty Blog, and later with her extremely popular Beans Blog. I decided I would give blogging a try and thought "I have a blog" might be a clever name, but in English it sounded rather lame, so I did it in Hebrew, a language I love more and more the more I learn it.

What does Yesh Li Blog mean?

We would translate (i.e. interpret) yesh li blog to mean "I have a blog" in English, but the literal Hebrew means "There is for (or to) me a blog." You cannot literally say "I have" something or other in Hebrew. It is always "there is for me," or "there is for you," or "there is for us," etc. Hebrew, the language of the Bible, is showing us that we are really stewards of what has been provided for us and for our use. Rather than private ownership, perhaps a better term for what we "own" would be private stewardship.

Languages have been my passion since at least the fourth grade, when I studied Spanish from a library book called Fun with Spanish. In high school, I was the rara avis that became enamored of Latin. In later U.S. Navy tours of duty in Spain, Italy, and Japan, we did our best to learn the local languages. Along the way, I studied some Russian and picked up some Greek by studying etymologies and some Chinese by studying Japanese writing systems.

My first introduction to Hebrew was in the early 1980s, when I took a correspondence course, but it was not until the past decade that my primary focus has been on this wondrous language. It has been deeply rewarding, and especially in the past few years since we met Ori, an amazing Israeli woman, who has become not only my primary Hebrew mentor but also our good friend. Moreover, the small group of people who meet weekly to study Torah in Hebrew in Boulder have become dear to us and enriched our lives greatly. Further, reading Jewish commentaries on the Web of the weekly Torah portions has deepened my own faith and opened up new understandings of the scriptures we share and of Christian writings based on those scriptures.

The pursuit of words has been an essential part of my life for many years (since birth?). Many things have changed in my life, but I don't see that part of it changing any time soon (until death?). Lehitraot! Shalom, Chaverim!