Every success brings out critics

Every great success brings out critics. Our thank-you letter to Sean Hannity for standing with Israel– which went viral– was no different. On his show, Sean Hannity said that he was never more humbled and honored by a letter in his entire career. Syndicated radio host Mark Levin spoke about it on his show too congratulating Hannity on receiving such a glowing tribute.

So what didn’t the critics like? Firstly, some resented that the 1200+ signatories on the letter, symbolic of Schindler’s list of 1200, referred to Hannity as a modern day Schindler. Secondly, some disparaged the whole idea of a gratitude campaign: “What’s the big deal,” they asked? Here is my rebuttal to those who seek to clip the wings and mar the soaring and graceful flight of our thank-you campaign. 

With all of Europe calling for Jews to return to the ovens and gas chambers and polls showing anti-Semitism at pre-WWII levels, with defenders of Israel being threatened in various and serious ways, I have zero problem thanking our “Schindlers” before Jews are forced to run around courtyards naked at gun point and forced to coalesce as ashes in a crematorium. The Holocaust is my legacy, my people, my family. The flesh and blood arms that hugged me in my life were imprinted with the “numbers” bequeathed to them by Nazis and their campaign of serialization, dehumanization and extermination. In the name of the six million who never lived to sing Hatikvah, by their blood, me and every other Jew is sanctioned and compelled to thank our modern day Schindlers before it is too late. We, the signees, do not need permission to use what belongs to us.

What a double travesty the Holocaust would be if we chose to bronze it and archive it instead of learn from it. “Never again” is a slogan that is growing evermore dim and being drowned out by the feverish shouts across the globe that “Hitler was right.” Oh, but how dare we thank Hannity for acting as a modern-day Schindler when he had to push his own network to let him cover Israel regardless of the inbound threat of rockets and Fox’s tendency to shy away from in-depth international news coverage? How dare we thank Hannity who put himself in the line of fire of some very dangerous, mean, spiteful and wholly capable murderous people out there? Oh, how dare we thank Hannity for standing with a nation which the whole world readily, reflexively and often cluelessly, vilifies? Make no mistake about it–standing with Israel has its price! The problem is we live in a gutless world where most people won’t risk it even if they know the truth. As such, Hannity stands out as veritable mensch among men, and a valiant man among shiftless approval-seeking mice.

The value of thank-you is immeasurable. In fact, the entire Torah is a book of thank-you, teaching us how to show gratitude and appreciation to the One who created us and to all that He created: time, animals, land, crops, etc. The first thing a Jewish person is supposed to do in the morning upon waking before even taking a single step is to say the one line Modah Ani prayer thanking G-d for restoring our soul back into our body. The Hebrew words Torah and todah (thank-you) are so closely related phonetically, structurally and spelling wise as to be deeply meaningful to those who study Hebrew etymology and gematrias. “Thank you” is the very foundation of the world. For without the gratitude of what is, humanity would stop safeguarding the vitals of its own preservation and unravel into chaos—(oh wait, it just may be).

Someone once asked: “What it you woke up tomorrow with only the things you said “thank you” for yesterday?” Too many of us would realize that there were too many things for which we didn’t say thanks. And though the letter in discussion here is graced with names of those of different faiths, I’m certain of this: We came together as one united voice and heart, and with the common understanding and pain of being victims of calumny and oppression. We came together with the heart’s wisdom to know right from wrong and good from evil; our thank you came from the universal heart that has no divides and that is why it packed a mighty punch. And so again, “thank you” Sean Hannity and all defenders of Zion. You do God’s work–it says it right there in His Book. For the sake of Zion, I will not be silent, and for the sake of Jerusalem I will not rest.                                                                                           ********* Join us on Twitter or

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One Nation Under God

Oh, I wish I could write a love story about my people, the Jewish people. After all, I do love them and apparently, according to the Bible, so does God. So, who am I to argue? They have contributed so much to humanity on all fronts in such unfathomable abundance that even the most defiant may have to concede that God has sanctified them for a greater purpose.  But, sadly, my love story with the Jewish people is one that breaks my heart. As a journalist who finds herself at the epicenter of Jewish events, as an Orthodox Jew who has sat in pews in many states and many countries, as a Zionist who advocates aggressively for Israel on a daily basis, and as a mere human being who bumps elbows with my people in everyday life from kosher markets to nail salons, I can say, that my people, just don’t behave nicely toward each other.1

Unfortunately, I can’t summon the Queen’s English to query more fancifully. So I’ll ask you plainly: What’s your problem? In the political blogosphere Jews tear each other apart; in the different religious sects they deride those not holding their views, and in the social realm, some noses are so turned up that I’m not quite sure what they do when it rains. There is jealousy, gossip, glory hunting, and egomania like I have never seen before, and I’ve been watching my people and loving them for a long time, both as a Journalist and as a Jew. Yes, they are a generous people. Almost every night I can find myself at a fundraiser for one Jewish cause or another. Yippie! We eat salmon, a roasted chicken, raise a toast, raise some money, and everyone goes home. But I see no amity, no graciousness, no brotherhood, no warmth—and the shoulders are as chilly as the cold cuts and much less palatable. And then comes Operation Brother’s Keeper.

Last week three Israeli teens were kidnapped and quite magically Jews of every stratum came out from under their defining “hats” and joined together in compelling and touching unity and prayer. Once again, there’s some semblance, that we are one nation under God. The hashtag campaign #BringBackOurBoys went viral. Every Jew has become a soldier in one realm or another to help get these boys home. They weren’t someone else’s boy in trouble, they became our boys, our sons, our family--our Jews. My soul is stirred by our unity, but wary as to how long it will last. And my soul cries too. I want to know why Jews can’t unite in each other’s joys, despite our differences, and why it is we come together only in grief and tragedy. Can we only come together in crematoriums, in ash form?

I painfully question why we can’t find common ground in life—and in living—and why we have to wait for atrocities to have common graves. The Jewish people share one faith and one fate. Unity has always been vital for God’s chosen people. It is an essential precondition to every miracle and every great thing that has happened to the Jewish people throughout history--from the giving of the Torah at Sinai, where the Jews stood as one person with one heart, or the miracle of Purim, or the rescue of Ethiopian, Russian, or Syrian Jews. When we stood together, we could overcome every challenge.  When we were divided, we paid a heavy price.  We can even see in this week’s Torah reading how Korach and his men tried to divide the Jewish people for their own prestige and self-aggrandizement, and what was the result?: “The earth beneath them opened its mouth and swallowed them and their houses, and all the men who were with Korach and all the property.”  And once again Jews were united in burial. So impactful is the divisiveness of

the Jewish people, that it effectuated a new phenomenon in Korach’s time which mirrored it: the dividing of the earth. 

Historically, although Jews were dispersed throughout the world, they could rely on each other because history had shown that they had only each other. They were a scattered nation but also one extended family whose cohesiveness was concretized by our common history, suffering, religion, and destiny.  Today, I feel, we need to work very hard at restoring that cohesiveness.  Each group and sect needs to stop vying for the spotlight and start acting like the refined lights that are supposed to radiate from Zion and the chosen people. A call to action: Let my people glow!  In this selfie generation, perhaps it’s instinctual to want to cut everyone else out of the picture, but that’s not the Jewish way. And from God’s purview, He’d much rather we take a group shot. The rabbis teach that each Jew is a letter in the Torah. Are we such great “editors” that we can erase any letter in the Torah because we don’t like it? Destroy one letter and the entire Torah is not valid. Are we so Godly to decide which Jew needs erasing? Which Jew isn’t good enough for me? Even Moses left that to God.  It takes every letter from aleph to tav to write a Torah. And it takes a full gamut of Jews to comprise a people.  Imagine what chaos would ensue if the letters held grudges toward each other and refused to share the same line on any page. Our national narrative echoes that imagery. In fact, that very writing is on the wall, well the one remaining wall. For how symbolic it is that rabbis teach that the Temple was destroyed because Jews did not behave respectfully and like mensches toward each other; for what building can stand when its bricks don’t cooperate and coalesce? As the words in the famous rock song go, “All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall.” And those little prayerful-notes that today people stuff into the cracks of the Western Wall are the last traces of miraculous grout that holds up a people.  There is one God, one Torah, one Israel, and we need to start acting like one people. 

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” the Torah instructs.  And yes it’s hard to do and that’s why it had to be commanded.

Yes these kidnapped students have united God’s people and proved again that “there is nothing so whole as a broken heart.” But if we really want to be our brother’s keeper then we must show friendship and compassion to our fellow Jews even when they are not abducted by Hamas. For goodness sake, say hello, say thank you, say welcome aboard, help them get a job, offer someone a coffee, offer them humanity and dignity by merely being kind, don’t begrudge them joy and success, fix them up,  be nice, be a mensch.  Be one nation under God. Don’t just be a Jew, be Jewish.

 

 

For editorial purposes I interchangeably use: they, them, you-- but not as does the wicked son on Passover who asks "What does this drudgery mean to YOU?" -- thus excluding himself from

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