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Why
Did We Leave LA to Move to Israel?
Why
Did We Leave Los Angeles to Move to Israel?
Rabbi
Joel Zeff
The prophet Isaiah described the in-gathering of
the exiles "as a cloud flies and as doves to their
dovecotes." Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook, the first
Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel under the British
mandate, interpreted this dual metaphor. He suggested
that ultimately all Jews would return to their ancestral
homeland, but that there would be two categories.
Some would return "as a cloud flies" that is, not
of an inner desire, but driven by the storm winds
of war, poverty and persecution. Others would return,
not fleeing from unfortunate circumstances, but
ather driven by an intense internal longing to return
home "as doves to their dovecotes".
The Zeff family has been fortunate to have lived
in Los Angeles for nine years and to have served
as the rabbinic family of the Westwood Kehilla for
seven of those years. It was a period of great personal
meaning and growth and I am very grateful. If not
for the State of Israel and all that it represents
we would have been happy to serve Los Angeles Jewry
indefinitely. We are truly blessed to be counted
among the doves returning to their dovecotes.
Surely one of the things which makes life worth
living is the cultivation of an on-going sense of
awe at the wonders and miracles which surround us.
One does not have to be a religious person to be
amazed at the phenomenon called Israel. By 1945,
European Jewry, the greatest concentration of Jewish
population and cultural vitality in the world, was
completely obliterated. Is it conceivable within
the parameters of the "normal" that just three years
later the Jewish nation would ascend to one of the
most glorious peaks in its long history, the establishment
of a Jewish sovereign state in its ancestral homeland?!
For 2,000 years the Hebrew language was essentially
a language reserved for religious affairs, a Jewish
Latin. Could one imagine that within fifty years
there will be a country in the world where millions
of people will socialize, quarrel, play, learn,
buy and sell, and conduct every human activity in
Latin? Well, it happened to Hebrew!
Our first year in Israel we lived in an Absorption
Center -- government sponsored housing for recent
immigrants near Jerusalem. Our neighbors to one
side were from Ethiopia, to the other side from
Iraqi Kurdistan. There were also Jews in our housing
complex from, among other places, Russia, Yugoslavia,
America, Canada, Germany, Morocco, France and England.
Was there ever a nation that was dispersed to every
conceivable place on the globe and then regrouped
to re-form itself?
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Israel
is a country where, as a famous Israeli politician
once said, not all believe in miracles but everyone
relies on them. Israel is a country where, I might
add, wonders are so numerous that you can just reach
down and scoop them up by the handful.
The opportunity to participate in this multi-faceted
miracle, to live in a society that never fails to
amaze, was simply irresistible.
There are today two great concentrations of Jewish
life in the world. The United States and Israel.
But of this there can be no doubt; when the Jewish
history books of this period are written Israel
will be center stage with American Jewry in the
audience, though perhaps in box seats. During the
Gulf War, I, together with many American Jews, was
totally transfixed to the radio. My obsession with
the fate of Israel reached uncomfortable dimensions.
Fortunately, I was able to join a UJA Solidarity
Mission and reached Israel at the height of the
Scud attacks. But I felt better just being there.
I refuse to be a spectator to Jewish history. I
no longer need to join a UJA Mission to visit center
stage. I live there, in the middle of the most exciting
event of the last two thousand years of Jewish history.
I was, as Bruce Springsteen intones, "born in the
USA". My mother immigrated to America as a baby
and my father was born in the United States to immigrant
parents. I am a Yankee. Yet, as much as I appreciate
the social and political uniqueness of America and
as much as I love its breath-taking natural beauty,
for me there is something missing. It is not mine.
I, of course, do not mean this in a legal sense,
but rather as a description of my psychological-spiritual
reality. I must be quite honest. To my eyes, there
is nothing in Israel as stunningly beautiful as
Yosemite. But when I gaze upon the Judean mountains,
I feel an inner connection, a bondedness, a sense
of owning and belonging that I never felt in any
of the many majestic national parks I visited in
America.
This is not always a pleasant feeling. I am capable
of reading the LA Times, feeling sincere sympathy
for the human victims of the ills of American society,
and going on with my daily routine. But a sure way
to incapacitate me is to get me near a Jerusalem
Post. A recent article about the involvement of
Russian immigrants to Israel in prostitution absolutely
grieved me and infuriated me. These are not just
human tragedies; they are my problems. I own them.
The deep pain and exhilarating joy of belonging
are more valuable to me than the pleasant anesthesia
of the subtle but real alienation I felt as a Jew
in America.
We were genuinely satisfied with our lives in the
Los Angeles Jewish community. We have chosen to
live in a land and a society whose language is not
our mother tongue, where we do not yet know how
to find our way around and whose cultural and social
mores are not always familiar to us. Yet Israel
offers us the opportunity to live a life of wonder,
a life in the center of Jewish history and a life
of belonging and owning. All of this, in addition
to upping our mitzva quotient, how could we say
no to that! |
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