The Fun Also Rises

This is not an easy place for me to be, not an easy time. In Jerusalem, at a time of war. Where people like the very people I love, like my very own family, are just as convinced as they are of God, that this war is necessary, justified, just.

Just like in Gaza. Just like in America.

It is an especially hard time and place for me to be talking to people, even the people who love me, who are blood-deep connected to me, about fun. Such a weak, silly thing to believe in, to teach about, compared to the dead seriousness of things like war. Bill Moyers has a very clear and moving essay about all this, about being here, Arab, American, Israeli, Iraqi, so very far beyond fun.

Yet, I'm finding people here who want to know about making things fun again, some of them, even desperately. I'll be meeting with the one of the principals of one of the schools called "Hand in Hand," where Arab parents and Israeli parents, together with Arab teachers and Israeli teachers are not letting the fun stop. I've had meetings with visionaries and entrepreneurs at PresenTense, with business leaders and soon with fund raisers and laughter therapists - Israelis, all of whom somehow believe that it can be, has to be, more fun than this.

It's funny, in a way. Here, at the borders of sanity, just where the fun stops, it leaks through. Here, hidden from the press of fear, from the din and clamor of hate, just like life does from death, the fun also rises.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith