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Jewish World Review March 5, 2009 / 9 Adar 5769 Oh, oh, good news ahead By Joseph Aaron
For the truth is that Judaism is about living a happy, contented, satisfied life. Our true DNA, our Jewish souls, are meant to feel joy, to trust in G-d and to choose life, to live life with gusto, secure and happy.
That is who we are. And while there have been times in our history when it has been a challenge to feel that and be that, what makes this generation of Jews particularly sick is that we have so much reason to be happy, to feel secure, have so little cause to be worried, to feel scared.
Jewish life is so good for us today. And yet most of us most of the time feel bad, are scared, think the end is just around the corner.
Since I know how much you prefer bad news, I need to apologize for what I am about to do. It's something I like to do now and again to remind you just how we good we have it, in the perhaps futile hope that you might actually start to believe it, feel it and so make the most of being a Jew in these times instead of, like so many Jews today, waiting for the next Hitler you are sure is just around the corner, the next disaster you are sure will soon be here.
Well, I hate to be a pity party pooper, but consider just some of the good Jewish news that has taken place just recently.
As I've said many times before, Jews are everywhere, more visible than any other minority group and portrayed and seen far more favorably than any other minority group.
The latest example of that was the recent edition of the highly rated "60 Minutes" which was even more highly rated than usual because it had the first interview with Capt. Sully, the hero pilot who saved the lives of 155 people by landing his plane in the Hudson River.
The show was very moving and Sully did not disappoint. His modesty, decency and humanity were evident, were everything we expect and hope for in a hero. Toward the end of the show, we see Sully with his wife and two kids in their home, going through some of the thousands of letters he has received from all around the world.
His wife read aloud one that was from someone whose father lives in a high rise near where the plane landed. He noted that had Sully not been so skilled, the plane might have crashed into that apartment building. He noted that his father is a Holocaust survivor who told him that saving a life is like saving a whole world, one of the tenets of Judaism, and so by saving so many lives, on the plane and off, Sully had done something amazing.
After Mrs. Sully finished reading this letter from the son of a Holocaust survivor, after reading this letter that shared Jewish teaching, she said it was by far her favorite letter of all they had received. Sully said it was his favorite too.
Next time you whine about how some headline in the paper is anti-Israel and so bad for the Jews, remember the awesomely positive image of us that that letter to Sully read on national TV conveyed. Good Jewish news indeed.
And there has been so much more. For the first time in a long time, the Russian Orthodox Church has elected a new leader. And what was one of the first things Patriarch Kirill, spiritual leader of hundreds of millions, do? He reached out to the Jews.
Indeed, Kirill, who used to be the church's interfaith liaison, has had connections for decades to Jewish leaders. But in one of his first acts as the top guy, he invited a New York rabbi to his residence where the two discussed the importance of positive relations between the two religions. Good for him. Good for us.
Speaking of world leaders, did any of you happen to notice who came to Israel during the Gaza War. You know, the war where you so felt everyone was out to get us, the media was unfair to us, the world picked on us and Hamas was this close to destroying us?
Yes, despite Israel's overwhelming military superiority, we always assume a bunch of animals like the Hamas terrorists are going to beat us. And we always feel like we are in it alone.
Well, just how not alone we are was shown in a truly stunning way when six, count 'em six, key European leaders came to Jerusalem during the war in what a Jewish news service correctly labeled a "remarkable" show of support. Yes, the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic, came together to show us they were with us.
Those are some pretty important countries, some big leaders who flew to Israel in a public display of support for the Jewish state. Wow.
And here's another wow. The United Nations and other international organizations have not yet caught up with the fact that one of today's most important countries is Brazil. It's very big, very strong, has a vibrant economy, is looked up to by all of Latin America. It is but a matter of time before it joins the Security Council and the G7 and other things like that.
Well, just recently Brazil's president, Luis Inacio da Silva, attended not one but two ceremonies to memorialize the Holocaust. This emerging world leader wore a yarmulke at events marking the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust held in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
"I feel personally involved with this date. We must keep the remembrance alive in order to prevent a mass murder to repeat ever again," he said at a Sao Paolo synagogue, after lighting a menorah.
Showing yet again how many very important friends we have, how many countries honor what is important to us, how many leaders have committed to standing with us. Good Jewish news.
I could cite a hundred more examples, but space grows short so just one more.
The following are some verbatim quotes from a recent opinion column in the New York Times. "The basis for the modern state of Israel is the persecution of the Jewish people, which is undeniable. The Jews have been held captive, massacred, disadvantaged in every possible fashion by the Egyptians, the Romans, the English, the Russians, the Babylonians, the Canaanites and most recently the Germans under Hitler. The Jewish people want and deserve their homeland...
"The Jews believe that the West Bank is Samaria and Judea, part of their homeland, even if a Palestinian state were established there ... A two-state solution will create an unacceptable security threat to Israel. An armed Arab state, presumably in the West Bank, would give Israel less than 10 miles of strategic depth at its narrowest point ... It is important to note that the Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians. They were never un-welcomed."
So who wrote those words that seem to not only understand us but sympathize with us. Could have been written by a right winger, certainly must have been written by a Jew or by a good friend of the Jewish people, right?
Well, the author of those words published in the New York Times was none other than Muammar Qaddafi. Yes, the leader of Libya and not someone we think of as a Zionist.
Yet he wrote all that. Now granted, he also wrote in support of the rights of the Palestinians and his one state solution, a country called Isratine, would make no one happy. But instead of, in typical paranoid negative Jewish fashion, ripping what he said to pieces, let us take a moment and marvel at the world we live in, one where Muammar Qaddafi is opining in a pro-Israel way.
We are living in an amazing time, we are living in an amazing world. Jews have it not good, but great, good news all over, friends all over, our ways lauded, our history honored.
It is beyond sad that most Jews don't feel any of that, fail to absorb the reality that things are very different for us, that things are amazingly, eye poppingly, blessedly wonderful for us.
Now hear this, my fellow Jews: Jewish times are good, so so good. One can only hope you will one day learn to enjoy them. To kvell, not kvetch. To recognize that truly the only thing Jews have to fear is Jewish fear itself.
JWR contributor Joseph Aaron is Editor of
The Chicago Jewish News. Send your comments to him by clicking here.
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