I find the news increasingly distressing. A recent headline in the Jerusalem Post’s “In Jerusalem” weekend supplement caught both my eye and my mood: “In the Doldrums.” The article was part of a two-page spread on the deterioration of Jerusalem’s downtown area. One of the Jerusalemites interviewed was a restaurateur who’s been in business since 1932. His final statement ruffled me. “There is a certain lack of pride in the city among its residents,” he concluded.
Yes, lack of pride. That’s our problem. I often wonder why we no longer feel that pride. Are we to blame for having lost our sense of achievement, our joy in our accomplishments? When we look around us, what do we see? We see leaders who have failed us on every front. Our
enemies are blowing us to bits on street corners and our former two-term mayor has joined the camp of those who advocate dividing our city and country, shouting his new position from every rooftop. How should Jerusalemites feel when they hear him?
Proud? Of whom should we feel proud? Our elected officials, whom we trusted before they turned against the public that voted them into office? Should we feel proud of the famous minister of defense during the Six Day War, who, after hearing the spellbinding announcement “The Temple Mount is in our hands” promptly went up to the Mount and handed the keys to the Wakf?
Proud? Should we feel proud of a former prime minister who decided to adopt the Oslo plan because he saw Tel Avivians fleeing their homes every evening to the safety of either Scud-free Jerusalem or the southern part of the country?
Is it pride that we take in our current prime minister, the father of the settlement movement, who is testing our resolve and strength by strategically planning to remove all Jews living in Gaza?
Our leaders should set the standards for us. However, when they fail to fulfill their promises and obligations to their citizens, disappointment and dissent set in. Our national leadership has allowed a terrorized home front to flourish. We are terrorized physically by our external enemies and we feel terrorized emotionally by capitulation and threats of relocation by our internal leadership.
We haven’t learned the lessons of the past.
Take the Holocaust as an example. The chassidic dynasties and the world of the great yeshivot of Eastern Europe were destroyed. The Jews who survived were remnants of once great Jewish communities. After World War II, Orthodox Judaism seemed not to stand a chance of ever returning to its previous glory. But look around today. All over the United States and especially in Israel, chassidic dynasties, yeshivot and Orthodox communities proliferate in every city and town.
Ben Gurion understood that he could never have the coveted Jewish state without joint participation of all streams of Judaism. He agreed to compromise in order to receive the consent of the old Yishuv (referred to today as the haredi community). Ben Gurion was certain that within one generation – two generations at most – the strict religious observance of the “old-fashioned” ultra-Orthodox would no longer exist. Once exposed to modern society, high-level education, and a better lifestyle, the offspring of the ultra-Orthodox would choose the latter and a new Jew would emerge, one without faith in G-d, without religious observance.
It’s clear that Ben Gurion miscalculated. Despite the uprooted Jewish communities, despite the individual Jews who were tortured physically, taunted for their religious convictions, and imprisoned on trumped-up charges, despite everything, the greater congregation of G-d-
fearing Jews has never been destroyed. With a spirit of faith and trust, displaced Jews return to rebuild their glorious past.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was an accomplished general. Generals are great as long as they defeat the enemy. However, a general who confuses his own people with the enemy will ultimately be defeated.
My grandson Uri stopped in on a recent Friday to say Shabbat Shalom. He saw my face and then spotted the “In the Doldrums” headline mentioned above.
“Cheer up,” he said. “It’s never going to happen. We will never be evicted from the settlements.”
“What makes you so certain?” I asked him.
“Jews in Gaza remember Yamit. They are G-d-fearing people who love the land, will stick together, will refuse compensation. Together we will stare the lion straight in the eye until, nose quivering, he blinks first and retreats. We know he’s testing our steadfastness.
“What happens if your scenario fails?” I asked despondently.
“I had a good history teacher. For Jews who remember the past, there’s always a future. If, G-d forbid, we’re driven out, we will return. And when the Temple Mount falls into our hands, you can be sure we’ll never give the keys to the Wakf!”
The Uris and Yitzies and Avis and Zevis live and learn the lessons of the past (decades and centuries) on a daily basis. They have seen the white in the eyes of the enemy, and they have buried too many friends who were murdered because they were Jews. These youngsters are our hope. They are part of the future that will redeem our pride in the Jewish people, in our holy cities, and in all of Eretz Yisrael.
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