Manny Kagan

Like the previous Easter Sunday, I was expecting to find a lot of people at the top. After all, it was an orthodox church Easter and the Armenian community, which belongs to this religious group, actually owns the land surrounding the cross. When the public land (Mount Davidson) was sold to a private organization, the cross was saved. However, apparently the celebration of Easter at sunrise happens only once a year.

The plaque at the bottom of the cross commemorates the site of the Armenian Genocide or Holocaust perpetuated by the Ottoman Turks, which started on April 24^th, 1915, with an estimated 1.5 million Armenians killed. Pope Francis described the mass killings of Armenians by Turkey as “the first Genocide of the 20^th century”

It was not the first mass killing in history, and not the last one. An estimated 6 million Jews were killed by Germans, Latvians, and Polish during World War II. It was commemorated yesterday, April 16^th, as Yom Hashoah—Remembrance Day. Recently, there were genocides in Rwanda, Tanzania, and the former Yugoslavia. Photo images of the survivors were recorded by the great photographer Sebastião Salgado. There is a must-see documentary showing his life and work called “The Salt of the Earth”. His other monumental project, called “Genesis: Photographs by Sebastião Salgado”, is his collection of photographs of nature. This project restored his belief that despite human atrocities, life goes on.

The surprises kept on coming. There were cars and a TV KRON 4 News station van at the top of the hill. How did they get there? There was a table with some food, water, and of course—Starbucks coffee.

It turned out that it has been a long standing tradition to greet Easter by the tallest Cross (103 ft) in California, at the site which belongs to the Armenian Church. People gather there to express their adherence to a tradition, followed by their faith that Jesus Christ came resurrected on the third day after his crucifixion, almost 2000 years ago. What has changed from that time long ago, on Sunday, the crowd used their cell phones to photograph the Cross, or to take selfies with the incredible city view behind them. Additionally, the correspondent from the TV station used his cell phone to read his script.

According to Christian tradition, he was crucified and three days later resurrected. Some years later, his story was retold by different authors. His name was translated into a Greek name and be became known as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ—and a new religion was born. The irony is that after the Romans crucified him, many years later, Rome became the center of the Catholic Church.

The name Easter, according to Wikipedia, is connected to the word “Pash” in Latin, which leads to the Hebrew “Pesah”. This brings us back to the original story. In the Torah description of the events, which led to the Exodus where God inflicted 10 plagues onto Egypt, to force the Pharaoh to let the Hebrew slaves go to the desert and to serve their mysterious and all-powerful God. The last (tenth) plague was the death of all of the first born children. To protect the homes of the Hebrews, God instructed them to mark the thresholds of all of the doors belonging to the Hebrew people with the blood of a slaughtered lamb (which became known as the Paschal lamb).

Thus, the angel of death “pasah”, which means passed over the homes of the Hebrews and inflicted death only on the Egyptians.  As you might know, after spending 40 years in the desert, the study of the laws and rules of God (the oldest and longest educational system), former slaves became the Jewish Nation and after crossing the Jordan river, they captured and settled in the territory where many, many years later, was born a man who became known as Jesus Christ, and whose life and teachings are very much connected to what his ancestors learned in the desert and years after that.

Now two-thousand years later, we are back to where we started. We celebrate the belief that there is power beyond our comprehension, that which we call God. But also realize that despite the difference in the story, we all come from the same spiritual source and instead of focusing on our differences, we can choose to focus on what unites us. I call it love.

In my view, there are three types of drivers: aggressive (I am one of them), docile, and those who never learned how to drive. Since most of us are either “A” or “B” types, our driving style reflects our personalities. “A” types want to do more in a limited amount of time. Some believe that fast cars like BMWs can get them to their destination faster. On the way, they might violate a few traffic rules, like not stopping for pedestrians, or running a red light. When caught, like I was on the traffic camera (read my story here), there was no choice but to pay the hefty penalty and to take an 8-hour class to learn how to behave on the road. Of course, there is another category of people/drivers; those who do not care about others. We can call them irresponsible, egoists, crazy, or even jerks. Just be sure you are not getting in their way.

Driving on the road is sharing it with others. Like other social activities, we need to learn how to be social regarding our personality type. As I’ve written before, taking time for driving classes can help calm and pacify any driver. As far as the type of car, we all have our budgets. We all will get to our destinations, though sometimes we need to shop even when we are in a rush.

The world was just waking up (after all, it was Sunday). Most of the city down below was still lit with lights. The sky had a beautiful blue color with darker clouds and pink light peeking through. Behind my back on the scantily lit hill, a flock of robins were busily pecking at something on the ground, chirping constantly (possibly greeting each other with ‘Good Morning’.) I was the only one there. The silver moon was high in the sky, as a reminder that the night was not yet over. Down the hill, Downtown San Francisco was grey with some lights and the lit streets were waking up, slowly. The Golden Gate Bridge was crossing the dark water of the bay onto the other side. As the minutes passed by and the steady voice of the wind filled the air, the pink color of the sky was converting into magenta with yellow lines above Mount Diablo on the other side of the Bay. With every minute the dominating magenta was expanding, bringing the excitement in anticipation of what would happen next. The city lights on the surrounding hills were fading out and more light from the sky was slipping in.

But suddenly, the brightness of the sky was gone—everything became grey with light pink streaks. It seemed that the show was over, though I knew otherwise—it was just a prelude. His majesty was not out yet. I had to be patient. And then at 7:06am, right in front of me, the sliver of orange was announcing its’ inevitable return! The street lights below went out, and the city became dark grey. The sky became lighter, with every changing second.

And then it showed up; the white crown surrounded by strong colors of red and magenta, which slowly changed into blue and yellow, layering each other.