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Finding Jewish hope in the most far-flung
places
HEALING HANDS: Uri gives Frank Bruno a massage
MY home was once a holy place of healing. During the Middle
Ages, when Chaucer's characters were making their way to Canterbury,
people would bring sick friends and family to be healed by
the banks of the Thames.
Perhaps a magical spring welled up in the grasslands that
rolled down to the waters edge. Perhaps a vision was seen
here, or some great omen was seen - lights in the sky, perhaps,
like the ones I have sometimes seen hovering over the village.
It may simply be that people were more sensitive to their
own healing gifts than they are today, with the weight of
science and medicine driving out of their heads any thought
that their own bodies might contain strong energy to cure
diseases.
Their psychic senses would certainly resonate strongly, as
mine do, to the invisible vibrations that pulse along the
riverbank. This may even have been a holy, healing place for
many millennia. I have found beautifully shaped flints in
the ploughed fields here, tools crafted long before man discovered
metal.
Stone Age man must have felt the positive power of this place.
The ancient buildings are gone now, though by dowsing I think
I can be sure of where the holiest places were.
On one of these I have built a pyramid of glass and steel,
where I often take people who visit me because they are sick.
They come to me not for healing - I'm not a miracle worker
- but for inspiration, the catalytic contact that enables
them to believe in their own power.
To spend an hour with a teenager who is seriously ill with
cancer or Aids is a draining experience, and also a humbling
one, and I pray that my positive messages will inspire mind
and body to fight back.
My inner conviction is that many people are helped at least
as much by the ancient energy of this piece of land, as by
anything I can do or say. I feel that many only think they
are coming to see me - the unconscious mind is, in fact, leading
the body on a pilgrimage to a place of healing.
It is not only those with physical ailments who are drawn
here. Frank Bruno, who is bravely fighting the toughest battle
of his career with mental illness and depression, came here
a few weeks before he was taken to hospital. At the time,
I was surprised that he wanted so earnestly to meet me -we
had bumped into each other a few times at awards ceremonies,
after all, and our friendship was a light-hearted one.
Now I realise that his intense need to talk with me, and
the relief he seemed to feel while meditating in my pyramid,
may have been focused on the power of the site itself.
He made a pilgrimage to my home. Pilgrimage is not a Jewish
concept. We don't, unlike Muslims and Christians, purify our
souls by visiting particular places. I believe that is because
we instinctively seek out the spiritual wherever we are -
and especially, we seek out what is Jewish.
This week, even on the edge of the world, in the Viking fringe
inside the Arctic Circle, I found a bright little point of
Jewishness, thriving like a tiny flower in the snow. A few
days later, in the heart of the Celtic world, I found another.
In Trondheim, where I had travelled for UKA, Norway's biggest
cultural festival, I discovered the synagogue and the Jewish
museum. The Jews of Norway were almost wiped out by the Nazis,
who desecrated Trondheim's synagogue, the most northerly in
the world.
They set up a barber's salon in the women's gallery and using
the rest of the building as a stable. The stained glass Stars
of David were replaced by swastikas, the candelabra used for
target practice.
Of the 135 Jews who were captured and sent to Auschwitz from
Trondheim, five survived. Yet the synagogue was being repaired
within months of the war's end, and was re-inaugurated in
1947. A major restoration project is in progress, financed
by the Restitution Fund from the Norwegian Government.
All this I learned from the Jewish Museum which opened in
1997. A few days later I was in Dublin for the Iftas, the
Irish Oscars. Here too I found an Irish museum, and the house
of Isaac Herzog, whose son Chaim became the first president
of Israel. I'd gone out looking for the birthplaces of Oscar
Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, or at least I thought I had
- perhaps my subconscious wasn't telling me the whole story.
These would be wonderful places for pilgrimage, if I felt
the need to be a pilgrim, but I believe I gained even more
spiritual succour by the accidental nature of my discoveries.
I didn't set out to see these places - they called me. I
touched down in far-flung cities, and I touched upon something
very close to home. Without asking, I was given a joyful affirmation
of my Jewish identity.
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