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Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review July 2, 2009 / 10 Tamuz 5769

Up, up, and aliya

By Abe Novick


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While Obama is watching Up this summer with Sasha and Malia, he can brush up on his history


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It's often during summer when we travel with a purpose to find some sense of the past, to capture a moment lost in time that we once cherished, or to seek out some distant place we've never ventured.


However, given the economic reality, many of us, myself included, will just have to find that fulfillment in other ways. And luckily, movies are a way to come as close as possible to that other world. Enter Pixar, which has brought us everything from Toy Story and Finding Nemo to The Incredibles all with their amazing CGI technology that's provided children with highly imaginative stories, while giving adults films that aren't just kid stuff.


Last year's Wall-E took Pixar to a new dimension, touching Upon themes of environmental apocalypse while wrapped in a form of animation that was all too human.


Now with Up, while it's not as down in its dire warnings of an end-of-days disaster, it presents a single man at the end of his own.


If Wall-E was "Chaplinesque" in it's portrayal of Eve and Wall-E gliding through space, then Up stands like Buster Keaton in The General. Up is about the life of Carl Fredricksen, who we see from childhood grow Up to marry his boyhood sweetheart, but throughout their simple lives, never ventured forth on the trip they'd dreamed of taking. There was always some reason to break the bank and spend the money on something other than their wish.


Eventually, life catches Up with Carl and right at the point when he's about to be removed from his home and sent off to the retirement home, he unleashes enough helium balloons to lift his house out of it's foundation and floats down to South America.


I know it sounds silly and far-fetched (how such a plot ever made it past a first pitch to a Hollywood producer, is hard to fathom.) Yet, amazingly, it works.


It works because it taps into a core of our being that tells us, while we may not be able to go home again, we all have a desire to find that sense of place where we think we belong.


While watching the movie and reflecting on Carl, I couldn't help but think of the land of Israel and the lifelong pull that it has had on our people over thousands of years and in the last century, since the time of Theodore Herzl.


With the legitimacy of Israel being questioned by some, a rise of anti-Semitism around the globe and an effort on the part of the Obama administration to push for a peace, it's worth revisiting modern Zionism and Up may actually be a good jumping off point.


In his speech in Cairo, Obama falsely linked the state of Israel to the Holocaust using it as reason for its establishment. However, Herzl, who died on July 3, 1904 revived the movement of modern Zionism after The Dreyfus Affair and long before WWII. It was in the 1890's when he witnessed mass rallies in Paris following the Dreyfus trial and mobs chanted "Death to the Jews!" It was then that he came to believe the Jews must get out of Europe and create their own homeland.


Can Obama, who spoke eloquently of hearing the call to prayer in Muslim countries, place himself in the shoes of Jews from around the world today, who are still rooted somehow to the land of Israel? Can he understand that its dust somehow courses through our veins and is a part of our DNA?


For many, Israel stands like the image Paradise Falls does for Carl and his wife Ellie.


But while many of us won't be traveling to Israel this summer or to places that are lifelong destinations, we will keep dreaming of them.


So perhaps, while Obama is watching Up this summer with Sasha and Malia, he can brush up on his history. He can explain to them the importance of following a dream, and that the word Aliyah literally means to "ascend" or go "Up".

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JWR contributor Abe Novick is a columnist for the Jewish Times and his work can be found at www.abenovick.com

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© 2009, Abe Novick