The Charlotte Jewish News - November 2001 ■ Page 6
Opinion/Editorial
God Bless America
By Joseph Aaron, Chicago Jewish
News
Chicago — I have never been
prouder of the United States of
America.
I have never been prouder of
the state of Israel.
I have never been prouder to be
a Jew.
I have never been prouder to be
an American.
I was, of course, horrified and
angered and saddened looking at
the pictures of the World Trade
Center, the Pentagon, pictures of
such incredible devastation, of
such incredible human suffering,
of such incredible inhuman sav
agery.
But what 1 found myself feeling
most was pride. Pride in this coun
try and in the Jewish country, in
the Jewish people and the
American people.
For the terrorism in America,
like the terrorism Israel has
endured for more than 50 years, is
the result of the fact that dark, evil
forces in this world cannot abide
what the United States and Israel
stand for. And that they stand
together.
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Of those to whom much is
given, much is expected, Jewish
tradition teaches. And no two
countries have been more blessed,
are closer to God’s ideal of what
nations on earth should be than
America and Israel.
But that didn’t happen by acci
dent. It happened because the
American and the Jewish people
made it happen. By what they
believe in, by how they act, what
they do and what they don’t do.
Watching Palestinians in the
West Bank dance and rejoice
when they heard the news of the
World Trade Center attacks,
angered me, disgusted me, but
mostly saddened me.
The Palestinians say they have
gripes about the way Israel treats
them. Say they have suffered, say
they want their land back, say they
want their own country.
Not unreasonable. But how
they have chosen to accomplish
the goals is a very different matter.
It was only about 50 years ago,
please remember, that the Jewish
people were attacked like no other
people ever have been at anytime
at anyplace anywhere on the face
of the earth.
The Jewish people are the only
people to have every single one of
its men, women and children tar
geted for extermination.
Six million of them were. With
several nations eagerly helping
out, with all other nations turning
away, not caring, doing nothing.
When it comes to gripes, we
have more for better reasons than
anyone else. When it comes to
having your property and your
possessions taken from you, we
have lost more, suffered more than
anyone else. When it comes to
being persecuted at the hands of
another, no one has gone through
what we have gone through.
And yet, look at us, see what
we have done.
Unlike the suicide bombers in
Israel, unlike the animals who
crashed into the. World Trade
Center, the Jewish people, despite
all, has never lost sight of how
civilized people are to act, how the
Chosen People are to be.
Deprived of everything, includ
ing six million of our men, women
and children, we went about the
business of establishing a state for
the Jewish people. By appealing to
the United Nations, by winning
world approval, by making our
case to foreign ministries.
And when the partition plan
was adopted, we eagerly agreed,
were happy to accept the notion of
two states, side by side, Jewish
and Arab, Israeli and Palestinian,
even with our holy Western Wall
part of the Palestinian state.
But they said no and went to
war trying to destroy us, while we
said yes and went to work build
ing our country. We took in Jews
from around the world and wel
comed them home. As former
Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak
recently said, “we didn’t call them
refugees. We called them brothers
and sisters.”
For more than 50 years, lots of
Palestinians have lived in horrific
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conditions in refugee camps. Been
purposely kept refugees by their
own people, just to score political
points.
The Arabs have tremendous
resources, could have absorbed
their refugees, gotten them on
their feet, given them homes and
jobs, improved their lot, improved
their lives.
But they have not. By their
peculiar way of doing, they have
allowed their own people to live in
misery. Israel, from its very begin
ning to this very day, has taken in
every single Jew who needed a
home.
And last year, when the prime
minister of Israel and the president
of the United States worked
together to offer the Palestinians
their own state, almost all of the
West Bank and half of Jerusalem,
they turned away, opted instead to
continue to live in misery and to
bring misery to Israelis, opted to
blow up pregnant women and
babies having lunch at a pizzeria,
opted to train their own young
people to blow themselves up.
Jews have always opted for
choosing life, not destroying it,
creating, not attacking, decreasing
suffering, not increasing it.
To watch what happened on
September 11 is to see a world
view, a way of life that is so sick,
so twisted, so coarsened, so evil.
To watch as ’ Palestinians
rejoiced at what was done is to see
a people choosing to deal with
their gripes and their suffering in a
way that is nothing but destruc
tive, not only to those they hate,
but to themselves.
Jews, Americans do not, cannot
act as those who attacked the
World Trade Center. That is sim
ply not who we are, what we are
about, how we deal with things,
how we see things.
That is what makes us so spe
cial, that is what makes us so
threatening to those whose lives
are so dark.
When Pope John Paul visited
Syria earlier this year, most of the
news coverage focused on the fact
that Syrian president Assad made
a speech full of anti-Semitism
right in front of the pope.
But what I found most telling is
when the pope visited the Syrian
city of Kuneitra on the Golan
Heights. What he found there was
a bombed out shell, a city
destroyed during the Six Day and
Yom Kippur wars.
Almost thirty years after that
last war, the city remains in rub
ble. Why? Because the Syrians
say it is a monument to Israeli
“crimes” and they intend to keep it
that way until they get back all of
the Golan.
We don’t think like that. We
being Jews, being Americans.
Oklahoma City was cleaned up,
the USS Cole is being repaired,
the World Trade Center will be
rebuilt. The Sbarro pizzeria has
been remodeled and is open for
business. Every site of similar ter
rorism against Israel and Israelis,
has been restored.
We act like menschen, we live
like menschen. The Syrians would
rather let a city of theirs lie in ruin
just so they can make some politi
cal point, damn the effect on peo
ples’ lives.
There are people who wish to
act in a way that builds, that heals,
and those who surround them
selves with rubble and wish to
inflict the same on others.
Israel has fought four major
wars with the Arabs, had thou
sands of its citizens killed in those
wars and in thousands of terrorist
attacks. And yet, when peace
seemed a real possibility, the vast
majority of Israelis enthusiastical
ly jumped at the chance. We put
aside all the hurt and pain and
anger and blood and tears, showed
we wanted to make life better not
only for ourselves, but for others.
That is the Jewish way; that is
the American way.
Jews could be mad at the world
forever, could wish to see it suffer
like it has made us suffer. But we
aren’t and we don’t. We recognize
that anger is as destructive to the
one who aims it as it is to the one
it is aimed at. And that inflicting
suffering on others, ultimately
most devastates the one doing the
inflicting.
There are ways for people to
behave, even when they have
grievances, even when they want
change. Jews, Israel, Americans,
the United States understand that
and live by that.
The people who planned and
aided and executed the World
Trade Center attacks, and the peo
ple who rejoiced over them, do not
understand that, do not live by
that.
The World Trade Center attacks
made me feel pride in Israel, in the
path it has chosen, in all it has
accomplished, in its not letting go
of its high ideals, even in the face
of the kind of challenges
Americans have now gotten a very
vivid and personal s.ense of.
The World Trade Center attacks
made me feel pride in being a Jew,
for the values we hold dear and
live by, for not acting like so many
have acted toward us, for knowing
that not every means justifies any
goal.
The Word Trade Center attacks
made me feel pride in being an
American, in this country, which
will not allow what happened this
week to change our core beliefs,
will not cause us sink to the level
of those who harm us, will,
indeed, make us cling ever tighter
to the freedom and justice we hold
so dear and so uphold.
We will, I am confident, get
those who did this, but we will get
them in the right way, will do the
right thing. We will not allow what
they did to us to change how and
what we are.
The United States and the State
of Israel, Jews and Americans are
the world’s shining lights, with
inspiring principles that, most
inspiring of all, we are guided by
and live by.
What a blessing it is to be part
of both countries, to be part of
both peoples.
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Rabbi Woznica
(Continued from page 5)
concepts such as the “Chosen
People” and what Jews were “cho
sen” to do; why “You Shall Not
Steal” includes not stealing time
or reputations. He challenged us to
try to not gossip for a 24-hour
period. Also, when shopping in a
store if you ask the sales person a
question and do not buy the mer
chandise, you are technically
stealing the sales person’s time.
His interpretation of the mean
ing of the Sabbath reminds us of
our children’s responsibilities to
their parents and parental respon
sibilities toward children. He said
that every Shabbat he places his
hands of the heads of his children
and he recites a prayer. He
believes this to be a ritual that will
always be remembered. He told us
a story about his dear friend
Joseph Telushkin. Rabbi
Telushkin was traveling for a
speaking engagement and was out
of town over a Shabbat weekend.
On Friday evening, he called his
family and asked to speak with his
daughter. He said, daughter, did
you hear my prayer? She said, no
daddy, I had placed the phone on
top of my head.
Rabbi Woznica will be return
ing to the 92nd Street Y to lead a
three-evening series titled God,
Torah and Israel, where he will
appear with Governor Mario
Cuomo, Malcolm Hoenlein, Dr.
Alice Shalvi and Prof. Elie Wiesel
in the spring of 2002. 0