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Jul 14 2012 [Originally I spoke this piece at a meeting of the board of directors of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis in 1970 when I was 30 years old. I had just returned from a week in Israel with other young leaders from all across the country and then a national conference of Jewish communities in Kansas City, MO. I reproduce it here verbatim not only for its place in my personal history of writings, but also for some of its current relevance.]

St. Louis Jewish Light, December 2, 1970

This report is a little bit different from most reports you hear about trips. Whereas it would be interesting to tell you the details day-by-day of my week in Israel, this can be done in private or at a different time. Again, whereas a detailed presentation of what I learned in Kansas City a weekend ago would be useful, this also can be accomplished in private. What I would propose would be to give you not what I did, but what I experienced as the results of my experiences.

If this report had a title, it would be “Wasn’t that a time?” There is an American folk song that, using the words of Tom Paine, states Our Fathers bled at Valley Forge,/the snow was red with blood,/their faith was warm at Valley Forge,/their faith was brotherhood./Wasn’t that a time/ Wasn’t that a time./A time to try the soul of man./Wasn’t that a terrible time.

Too often in our history have we looked back and we have said: “Wasn’t that a time?” Wasn’t that a time when Masada fell? Wasn’t that a time when Jews were mercilessly killed all throughout the Middle Ages? Wasn’t that a time [during] the Spanish Inquisition? Wasn’t that a time when the world stood by as Germany murdered six million? Wasn’t that a time when Jews were imprisoned and executed in great purges in Soviet Russia? Wasn’t that a time when the world virtually turned its back on Israel before and after the Six Day War?

So, as you can see, our history is filled with a retrospective reviews of the tragedies in our past.

There are three other retrospective views that must never occur. The first would be: “Wasn’t that a time when the Jewish community of America vanished?” An impossible statement, you say? Not really. The Jewish community for too long a time has tended to underplay being a Jew in the true religious and cultural sense and tended to overplay fitting into the American scene and organizations as such. Time is moving on.

Our youth are judging us. They want to know whether or not a Jewish life is one that they should follow. They want to know what our priorities are. Are we interested in the proliferation of organizations and agencies or are we interested in the quality of Jewish life? Are we interested in protecting our vested interests, or are we interested in the maximum use of our resources?

No, I don’t mean to suggest that it is easy to be completely introspective, but the times and the finiteness of our resources now dictate in unflinching terms that we must look to our priorities. We must no longer play lip service to Judaism as a religious and cultural way of life. Education and culture must be placed at the top of our priority lists for our local communities. We must investigate the recipients of our allocations to make sure they fall in line with the genuine priorities of the Jews of St. Louis.

If one agency would suffice where three are in the business, then we must implement this decision. In this particular age – what in my opinion is the eleventh hour – we must boldly step forward as a leading community, willing to stand up for the things we deem important. Unless we do, 10, 20, 30, or 50 years from now somebody will ask the question: “Wasn’t that a time when the Jewish Community in America vanished?”

The second “question in retrospect” that must never be asked is: “Wasn’t that a time when Russia doomed 3,000,000 Jews?” Again, here is a question of priorities. How many times have we heard people in our organizations tell us about Simchas Torah demonstrations regarding the Jews in the Soviet Union? How many of us have ever gone? How many of us really understand what’s going on in the Soviet Union? Until a week ago, I didn’t know that 34 Jews were scheduled to be tried starting in December on charges ranging from attempted hijacking of airplanes to treason against the state. All of these are “show trials” based purely on circumstantial evidence in the worst tradition of the USSR. What does this bode for the Jews to come? Is this a very loud warning to them that they better be quiet, they had better not try to immigrate to Israel? That they’ve better not sing in the streets of Moscow on Simchas Torah? Many of us strongly believe this to be so.

We may be in the middle of a time what we could equate to the late thirties. This could be the time where actions on our part will either go a long way towards insuring that Russia can never persecute and destroy its Jewish community, or this could be the beginning of a holocaust for 3,000,000 Jews. After the 6,000,000 and after the countless numbers before them, can we let the question be asked: “Wasn’t that a time when Russia doomed 3,000,000 Jews?”

And then, perhaps most importantly, there is one last question. To this question, again, we must give a resounding NO to its possibility of being asked: “Wasn’t that a time when Israel was destroyed?”

What can one really say about Israel? I could talk about the immense thrill of the fantastic changes between my first visit in 1962 and 1970. I could talk about the electricity that flowed through my body as I stood with my head bowed and my hand on the Western Wall, joined, as it were, with every Jew in history. And what can one say about the magic of Jerusalem? I guess the only thing to talk about is the fantastic split between a people living in peace, yet living in war.

Tel Aviv is a nice metropolitan city. The people bustle around the same way they do in any other city. Shops are open. Buses run and people take taxi cabs. On Saturday night, the whole populace empties into the street to meet and discuss.

Then there is the Bet Shean Valley where a kibbutz like Kafar Ruppin sits on the Jordanian border. It’s a normal kibbutz – a peaceful one. However, this façade of pastoral life is quickly broken when you go about a hundred yards closer to the river than the outskirts of the farm and see fantastically heavy fortified concrete bunkers, machine gun nests, artillery pieces. Your heart sort of jerks when you drive out through an orange grove and see three tanks standing manned in position. Again, a matter of priorities.

We are at the point in history with our people where it can either succeed or it can, once and for all, fade into oblivion as have so many peoples before it. Anyone who visits Israel and doesn’t come back thoroughly convinced that the survival of Israel is the core of our survival here in America must have been sleeping during the trip. You will hear during the [Annual] Campaign the sheer weight of numbers involved in the survival of Israel.

I personally am convinced that this is not the time to merely say: “What is a fair gift – an honest gift?” We have now come to a point in history where one must say …: “I must invest my substance and my being in the future of my people. I must sacrifice of my substance. I must do without in order that my people not only survives, but flourishes.”

So, my strange report on my trips to continues. In Kansas City, I didn’t just see techniques to raise funds. I saw Jewish culture and life in America at stake. I learned again the joy of Shabbat and I saw 3,000,000 Jews being led to a sacrificial block. In Israel, I didn’t just experience the thrill of walking [through the country], the wonderment at meeting a 20-year-old major – a real modest kid – with 8 MIG kills to his credit, and the awe of being on an Air Force base during a virtual Red Alert. I didn’t just see barren hillsides of but a few years about now flourishing with tall, straight trees. I didn’t just see children who sleep in bunkers at night or the joy of immigrants arriving from India and Iran. I saw a people that I was proud to be part of. I felt a regeneration in a new and even stronger manner my immersion in the building and sustaining of this people. A week was a cheap investment for what I gained.

In experiencing all of this, I somehow wanted to carry back my feelings to all of you. Many of these feelings are very tough to verbalize and this report has been merely an attempt to scratch the surface of what’s going on inside of me.

There was a song written in the concentration camps by a child who lived in fear with memories of parents and loved ones slain before this eyes. It goes like this:

People call me Ziamele/
live all alone.
Once I had a mother dear,
but she is dead and gone.
I am beaten like a dog,
because I am a Jew.
Yet once I had the best of care,
a dear kind father, too.


I had a little sister once.
I don’t know where she’s gone.
Oh Esther, where are you now?
I’m scared to be alone.
Somewhere near a wooden fence,
on the ground so bare,
lies by brother Shloymele,
a German shot him there.


Once I had a cozy home,
now on the ground I lie.
We are slaughtered just like sheep,
no one hears our cry.
Oh, dear God, look down on us,
and see our people slain.
The Germans butcher little ones,
there’s no end to our pain.


The only thing that we can dedicate ourselves to is the positive certainty that an era can never again come about where a song like this can possibly be written – be it in America, Russia, or Israel.

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