Posted on 05/07/2003 5:39:35 AM PDT by Alouette
As Israel celebrates its 55th birthday, a powerful essay on the faith and spiritual courage needed to live in the Holy Land in these times of turmoil.
By Sarah Shapiro
http://www.jewishworldreview.com | It has always struck me as bizarre, mysterious and absurd that Israel's essential right to exist is ever a question in the eyes of the world. That which for other nations is a given, is for us something we must try to prove, in each successive generation. No matter that the one spot we claim as our own takes up less space then New Jersey. No matter that our presence here goes back three millennia. For Israel, it always becomes, again and again — as it has for Jews throughout history — a matter of "to be or not to be." We find ourselves repeatedly in the position of justifying our existence.
Yet everything in Jewish history which seems senseless, meaningless or unfair is eventually revealed to us as meaningful, and purposeful. Absurdities are not absurdities. Bizarre and mysterious, yes, but not accidental, or random.
It's no accident that we should be repeatedly compelled to explain our presence, to have to figure out what we're doing here. It might not be such a bad thing, to know we're in constant peril of losing what we love. It might not be to our detriment that our right to live is ever in doubt, that we're thrown back constantly onto the basic fact of our being present, and Jewish. Being a Jew is an issue, whether or not you want it to be. Our simple existence does pose a question.
Small events in our own small lives are as significant in the grand scheme of things as that occur on a larger scale. So, in a universe created according to a single blueprint, surely our personal histories are similarly designed — that the less we can take our existence for granted, the more we come alive. The more we lose of ourselves as years go by, the more we're compelled to find our real identities.
My friend Esther told me that after her mother got two knee transplants, she said, "Look at this. I don't have my own knees anymore. My heart's run by a pacemaker. My hearing's gone — I hear with my hearing aids. My sight's going. My teeth are false. Who am I, anyway?"
From the Gulf War in 1990 to the collapse of Oslo in 2001, Israel was catapulted from one crisis to another. The "peace process" staggered forth through seven years like a bloodied beast leaving grief in its wake. Yet amidst the deep and widespread suffering of individuals, threats to our survival as a nation were repeatedly diverted. We witnessed with our own eyes how we were repeatedly and unexpectedly plucked from the precipice. To the extent that each catastrophe had seemed impossible to escape, to that extent was each unforeseen rescue beyond anyone's ability to predict.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Me too. I remember how shocked I was, as a youngster, when I realized that this was what Israel's enemies were saying. At first I didn't believe it. I had thought that Israel and her neighbors were scwabbling over territory. Then I couldn't believe that any reasonable person would support a plan to actually annihilate a nation.
Didn't the United Nations establish the nation of Israel? Didn't the nations of the United Nations recognize Israel?
Whether so or not, Israel exists as fact. Do her enemies expect her people to just disappear?
Participate.
Thy will be done.
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