I’m a Jew, and thus a member of a proud and enduring people. The people of The Ultimate Book, our Torah, and a belief in a good and forgiving G-D with whom we have entered into a covenant.
But we Jews just don’t get it! Even though we have our covenant and our faith, we don’t “get” that we don’t have the right to do a lot of things. Things that our species of human beings seem to permit virtually everyone else to do with great regularity. And we just don’t “get it”.
When chased from our homes, hunted day and night and gassed by the millions, we just didn’t “get it” that we were supposed to just give up, lay down, and die!
No, we survived, and our bare remnants found our way to the promised land, the postage stamp of sand and dust called Israel. And we fought again for our lives against hostile neighbors. Again, we just didn’t “get it”. We were supposed to be finally defeated and left for dust, but we just can’t learn the lessons others of our species seem to want us to learn. We insist on living; no, more than living. We insist on growing, on nurturing our families, on building a society dedicated to the preservation of life and the improvement of the precious, sacred land of Israel.
But lessons needed to be taught our people. In 1948; in 1956; in 1967; in 1973; in 1991 and 1995, and on and on. Lessons imparted by Egyptians; by Syrians ; by Lebanese; by Iranians; by Iraqis; by Jordan and Libya. So many lessons that we repelled by dint of our single minded stubborn desire to live and love in our own land, with only a desire to live and let live.
No, we just don’t get it. No matter how many rockets rein on Israel , no matter the single minded desire to wipe tiny Israel off the maps, laying waste finally to our people in the Middle East, we aren’t going anywhere. The nerve of Jews to fight back and win!
When other nations conquer, they get the spoils of war. When other nations are attacked, they defend and even become aggressors to defend their people and property. But somehow Jews are to turn the cheek and not believe what our enemies say is their goal - total destruction of the Jewish people.
It is the world that just doesn’t get it. Having suffered the ultimate PTSD of the 1930’s to 1945, having come through the jellied fire, we have been hardened and have learned our lesson.
And that lesson is “never again”.
Never again to trust anyone else with our lives and our protection.
Never again to a naive belief that someone wishing us death can be compromised with.
Never again to an enemies strategy to snooker us into a false sense of nonexistent security.
Never again to being told a shower is just a shower.
Jews know, to the pit of our stomach and the core of our being that reliance starts and ends with each of us looking into a mirror and seeing an abyss.
And having seen that void, by turning away, and looking toward the light. And that life is in our unity and desire to live; to live to see life and know that Am Yisroel Chai; the people of Israel Live.
