Best shoulder replacement surgeon in Noida contact number 9654832287

Best shoulder replacement surgeon in Noida contact number 9654832287

Shoulder replacement surgeon, or shoulder arthroplasty, is a procedure where damaged parts of the shoulder joint are replaced with artificial components. It is performed to relieve pain and restore mobility in patients with severe shoulder joint conditions.

 

Indications

• Osteoarthritis
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Post-traumatic arthritis
• Rotator cuff tear arthropathy
• Avascular necrosis
• Severe fractures of the shoulder

 

Types of Shoulder Replacement

1. Total Shoulder Replacement

Replaces both the ball (humeral head) and socket (glenoid)

Most common type

2. Partial Shoulder Replacement (Hemiarthroplasty)

Only the ball is replaced

Suitable for specific fractures

3. Reverse Shoulder Replacement

Ball and socket positions are switched

Used in severe rotator cuff damage or failed previous surgeries

 

Surgical Procedure

Performed under general or regional anaesthesia

Incision made in the front or top of shoulder

Damaged bone and cartilage are removed

Prosthetic components implanted and secured

Soft tissues and muscles are repositioned

Duration: 1 – 3 hours

 

 

 

Recovery and Rehabilitation

• Hospital stay: 1–3 days
• Arm immobilized in a sling
• Pain managed with medications
• Physical therapy begins within a few days
• Gradual return to daily activities over weeks

Recovery Timeline

• Light activities: 4–6 weeks
• Full recovery: 3–6 months
• Strength and range of motion improve with physiotherapy

 

Cost Of Treatment

The cost of Shoulder Replacement or Reverse Shoulder Replacement would be in the range of Rs. 1,50,000 - 250,000 depending on the type of hospital chosen and the type of implant. There are several types of implants available in the market. The FDA approved imported implants are costlier but have better functioning and better reliability. The hospital stay would be around 5 days and the patient will have to keep the arm in a sling for 4 weeks. The physiotherapy to strengthen the shoulder muscles would start 4 weeks after the surgery and would continue for a period of 3-4 months. Full mobility would be achieved within 6 months of the surgery. However the patient will be relieved of the consistent pain immediately after the surgery. Long term use of painkillers is bad for the kidneys and therefore getting the surgery done in order to get pain relief is a better option in the long run.

 

Dr Manoj  is  Orthopaedics, Joint Replacement and Arthroscopic Surgery at

Best shoulder replacement surgeon in Noida contact number You can book appointment with Vikas Gupta by calling on the number 9654832287 or by filling the form . The consultation can be done by visiting Best shoulder replacement surgeon in Noida contact number

or on phone by sending your reports through whatsapp on the number 9654832298.

www.plusify.in

info@plusify.in

https://maps.app.goo.gl/BUob1f1avDgAiA99A

 

 

Best orthopedic surgeon for shoulder replacement surgery in Noida 9654832287

Best orthopedic surgeon for shoulder replacement surgery in Noida 9654832287

Shoulder replacement surgery, or shoulder arthroplasty, is a procedure where damaged parts of the shoulder joint are replaced with artificial components. It is performed to relieve pain and restore mobility in patients with severe shoulder joint conditions.

 

Indications

• Osteoarthritis
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Post-traumatic arthritis
• Rotator cuff tear arthropathy
• Avascular necrosis
• Severe fractures of the shoulder

 

Types of Shoulder Replacement

1. Total Shoulder Replacement

Replaces both the ball (humeral head) and socket (glenoid)

Most common type

2. Partial Shoulder Replacement (Hemiarthroplasty)

Only the ball is replaced

Suitable for specific fractures

3. Reverse Shoulder Replacement

Ball and socket positions are switched

Used in severe rotator cuff damage or failed previous surgeries

 

Surgical Procedure

Performed under general or regional anaesthesia

Incision made in the front or top of shoulder

Damaged bone and cartilage are removed

Prosthetic components implanted and secured

Soft tissues and muscles are repositioned

Duration: 1 – 3 hours

 

 

 

Recovery and Rehabilitation

• Hospital stay: 1–3 days
• Arm immobilized in a sling
• Pain managed with medications
• Physical therapy begins within a few days
• Gradual return to daily activities over weeks

Recovery Timeline

• Light activities: 4–6 weeks
• Full recovery: 3–6 months
• Strength and range of motion improve with physiotherapy

 

Cost Of Treatment

The cost of Shoulder Replacement or Reverse Shoulder Replacement would be in the range of Rs. 1,50,000 - 250,000 depending on the type of hospital chosen and the type of implant. There are several types of implants available in the market. The FDA approved imported implants are costlier but have better functioning and better reliability. The hospital stay would be around 5 days and the patient will have to keep the arm in a sling for 4 weeks. The physiotherapy to strengthen the shoulder muscles would start 4 weeks after the surgery and would continue for a period of 3-4 months. Full mobility would be achieved within 6 months of the surgery. However the patient will be relieved of the consistent pain immediately after the surgery. Long term use of painkillers is bad for the kidneys and therefore getting the surgery done in order to get pain relief is a better option in the long run.

 

Dr Manoj  is  Orthopaedics, Joint Replacement and Arthroscopic Surgery at

best orthopaedic surgeon for shoulder replacement surgery in Noida You can book appointment with Vikas Gupta by calling on the number 9654832287 or by filling the form . The consultation can be done by visiting best orthopedic surgeon for shoulder replacement surgery in noida

or on phone by sending your reports through whatsapp on the number 9654832298.

www.plusify.in

info@plusify.in

https://maps.app.goo.gl/BUob1f1avDgAiA99A

 

 

You Are the Maccabees! (December 20, 2025)

You Are the Maccabees!

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

December 20, 2025

 

I want to tell you a Hanukkah story.

I came to Israel for the first time in 1968 for my third out of five years of undergraduate study. I lived in a Seminary building connected to our studies with Dr. Shamma Friedman. The person who ran the building and our program was Yaakov Panini, may his memory be for a blessing. He was a multigenerational Jerusalemite who fought in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, the Sinai Campaign of 1956—which most people forget—and the Six-Day War in 1967. And I arrived in Israel one year and three months after that war. I know that for many young people this may feel like ancient history, but it is history that must be remembered.

On the first night of Hanukkah, Yaakov organized a caravan of several cars. I did not know at the time that there were guns in the cars. We traveled straight north out of Jerusalem on unlit roads to an army base north of Jerusalem. It was a dark, cold, drizzly night.

We, the seminary students, arrived with Yaakov at the military base called Beit El. We went to the dining room and had a light repast—I have no recollection of what we ate. Then we came out to the main square, where the entire base was assembled.

I was looking at members of the IDF my age. I was 20 years old, looking at young men my age who had fought just 15 months earlier in the Six-Day War to save Israel—perhaps alongside their fathers and grandfathers. They were standing at attention on this cold, dark night.

In front of them was a giant menorah—not with lightbulbs, not with candles, not with oil, but with torches, large torches. The army choir was there, and they chanted all three blessings for the first night of Hanukkah. Then the choir sang songs—not the Hanukkah tunes that you and I grew up with, but songs of a different register and power.

Then the Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, stepped forward. He was about my height, with a salt-and-pepper bushy beard. By that point, my oral understanding of Hebrew had improved enough that I could fully understand him.

He spoke not to us - we were off to the side - but directly to the troops. He said to them, “Atem HaMakabim! You are the Maccabees!” These young soldiers understood exactly what he meant.

Without needing to say it explicitly, he invoked a bloodline that ran directly from Mattathias and Judah, Yohanan, Yonatan, and Shimon - those who fought to preserve the existence of the Jewish people so that we would not be swallowed up and disappear from the pages of history.

They were few, but they stood their ground.

And now, standing there 15 months after the Six-Day War, at another moment when the Jewish people had been threatened with extinction, these soldiers did not flinch. Ramrod straight, they understood. They understood that they were part of that unbroken line, people who stood as Maccabees in their own time and place.

That line continued through those who fought the Romans, twice; through the creation of Jewish life in the Diaspora; through survival after the expulsion from Spain and the destruction of a glorious civilization; through the Warsaw Ghetto and other uprisings; through the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, when a tiny Jewish community struggled to survive; through 1948, against all odds.

They understood that this line had now stretched to them.

And standing there with them, we felt it too.

That line of being Maccabees, fighting for the existence of Israel, has never stopped: from 1973, through all the episodes that followed, through last Sunday on Bondi Beach in Sydney as well.

For us, this places both an opportunity and an obligation before us: to be Maccabees in our own ways, whenever we can. To make sure that the Hanukkah menorah we light is in the window, so that our neighbors know that when they pass our corner, there is a menorah in that window.

When I walk into a room wearing the whitest, most noticeable yarmulke I can find, people know who we are. It is not just me who is there. We are there. Not me, we. This too is a way of being Maccabees.

Each of us can be Maccabees in our own way, but we are indelibly stitched into those who came before us so that we could be here today. We must never take that for granted, and we must never let our hands slack from the reins of our destiny.

When you look at the menorah, I want you to hear Rabbi Shlomo Goren’s voice from Beit El—just a stone’s throw from Modi’in, where all of this began—and hear him say to the troops:

“Atem HaMakabim! You are the Maccabees!”

And we are too.

Layl Shimurim - When Your Children Ask

Layl Shimurim - When Your Children Ask

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Beth-El

Richmond, Virginia

On February 1, 2025 we read the Torah portion of Bo. Besides its place in our account of the Exodus, this is special to me because this was the Shabbat of my senior sermon in Rabbinical School. Yet it words reverberate in me now even stronger than it did then. In February, 1976, with our son Menachem only a few months old, I wove my sermon around how I would answer his questions as he grew up: how to be a Jew; why to be a Jew; how to observe mitzvot; why to observe mitzvot? Reading this Torah portion now is totally different. It is like a thunder clap upon my ears, heart, and mind. I truly don’t know which was worse, which was scarier, that night in Egypt when they were told that redemption was upon them, or now, when every piece of our lives and world is shaking from pillar to post? In the Rabbinic construction of the Seder ritual, three of the four children are found in this sedra. One asks about the ritual; one is silent and does not ask a question but the answer is given. In the Hebrew, the third only uses two words: Mah Zot? What is all this? And while in the text it is in an even tone, and in the Haggadah it just fits in neatly, not now.

Of all the questions, this is the one that scares me the most.
Of all the questions, this is the most disturbing.
Of all the questions, this one isn’t asked. It is screamed!

What is going on here?
What is happening?
What is happening to us?
What is happening to our neighbors, our friends?

Mah Zot? What is all this?

Mah Zot? What is happening to us?

Mah Zot? What should be do?

Mah Zot? What can we do?

While we need to articulate answers for ourselves, even more so we need to articulate them for our children and grandchildren, for the world we will bequeath them. They will look back and ask: Mah zot?

While in Egypt there was only one night of shimurim, of watching and waiting, but for us every single day and night is one of shimurim. Our commentators discuss who is doing the watching? Is it God? Is it Moses and Aaron? Is it the children of Israel? Except for the detail of the silence of that night, the Torah text does not tell us how the people felt, did the children ask them any questions, did anybody go to sleep, what were they thinking when they saw the last sunset and the last sunrise in Egypt? No details. Midrash can fill in the blanks. We just stare at a blank wall.

What about us? What about our Layl Shimurim? What do we do? I will tell you what I do: I wait to cringe to read the next headline. While l need any other news, I want – though I shouldn’t – to avoid the headlines, I want to avoid CNN, BBC, CBSNews and any other outlet. The horrors being afflicted upon our society today, upon children in schools, upon those of various sexual dispositions, upon people who are various hues of brown, people who speak Spanish or other languages than English, the elderly, the poor of any segment of society, the disabled, their horrors are just as bad if not worse than our ancestors experienced in Egypt! Not one iota less! Their Layl Shimurim is laced with fear and anxiety. They are facing a Pharoah with no Moses and Aaron to throw down the rod to become a snake, to change the waters of the Nile to blood. Perhaps, perhaps except for us. Except for us. This is a layl shimurim for all of us, bar none.

It is not easy to explain it to ourselves, never mind to our children or grandchildren how the government of this country has twisted one hundred and eighty degrees. But I have not changed! We have not changed! And our values have not changed! Our Judaism has not changed! It is from the experience of Egypt that we stand up and proclaim about the holiness and humanity of every human being. Bar none. That people united, that means the government, exists to protect the innocent, help keep us healthy, to protect us in consort with likeminded countries, and uplift the weakest among us. Echoing the voice of the prophets Abraham Lincoln said it beautifully in his second inaugural address: “With malice towards none, with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” This is our true soul. Love thy neighbor as thyself. That is our neshama. Give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. That is who we are. We must tell ourselves every morning, noon and night, we must tell our children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters, this is who I am, this is who we are! We will not give up! We will not change!

In the Torah, the question of the first child is asked by the generation who wasn’t in Egypt and didn’t experience the redemption but sees the Passover ritual. The child asks: Mah ha-avodah ha-zot la-chem? The Midrash of the Haggadah focuses on the use of la-chem, for you, and makes him into the evil child. But the Torah doesn’t. It answers the child and says that we do these rituals to remember and ingrain in ourselves the understanding that redemption finally does come and we remember it; Pharoah fell and Egypt was destroyed because the arc of history turned to God’s demand for justice, for righteousness, for integrity, for fairness, and His seal is Emet, is truth. That is why we have a seder. That is why we have rituals. This is what we do because this is what we are.

What service can we do? I forward and share on Facebook every single piece that expresses my/our values and beliefs. I forward and share every piece of opposition to the wrongs. I forward and share every piece that supports justice. I give donations to many organizations that fight on a higher level for humanity. And if and when it comes to a march, come rain or shine, as I have done so in the past, I will do so again. As Dr. Heschel wrote about being in the march in Selma, Alabama, “my feet were praying.” Mine will, too. Our ancestors walked out of Egypt and Daniel was fearless in the lion’s den. I/we can be no different. We can do no less.

So I close these words by citing a song writer who could never know how timeless some of his compositions would be. Garth Brooks, The Change.

0ne hand reaches out
And pulls a lost soul from harm
While a thousand more go unspoken for
And they say,
“What good have you done by saving just this one”
It’s like whispering a prayer
In the fury of a storm

And I hear them saying,
“You’ll never change things
And no matter what you do
It’s still the same thing”
But it’s not the world that I am changing
I do this so, this world will know
That it will not change me.

This heart still believes
That love and mercy exist
While all the hatreds rage
And so many say
“That love is all but pointless,
In madness such as this
“It’s like trying to stop a fire
With the moisture of a kiss”

And I hear them saying,
“You’ll never change things
And no matter what you do
It’s still the same thing”
But it’s not the world that I am changing
I do this so, the world will know
That it will not change me.

As long as one heart still holds on
Then hope is never really gone

And I hear them saying,
“You’ll never change things
And no matter what you do
It’s still the same thing”
But it’s not the world that I am changing
I do this so, this world we know
Never changes me

What I do is so, this world will know
That it will not change me.

A Time For Action

A Time For Action

July 27^th, 2024

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Beth-El, Richmond, Virginia

 

Both we and this Torah portion of Pinchas live in tumultuous, difficult and dangerous times. Eerily, there are parallels between the time of Moses in the wilderness of Sinai and 2024. Maybe there is a divine hand orchestrating the timing, that this sedra comes after two such weeks. We need to look carefully at the end of last week's sedra of Balak coupled with the beginning of today’s sedra of Pinchas and the threat posed to existence of the Children of Israel. And in that moment we must reflect on the threat to our democracy.

            Will both threats be averted?

            Will they and we be saved?

            By whom?

            How?

 In this sedra Moses stands alone. Aaron and Miriam have previously died. He is being tested time after time after time. He even has to debate Korach. He is one hundred and twenty years old.

Will God change His mind and allow Moses to finish the job, bring the Israelites to their ancestral home?

Or will God adhere to what He had previously decreed, that Moses would die in the wilderness like his siblings?

If so, who will succeed Moses? Will it be Pinchas from our sedras who acted with zeal to thwart the threat? If not Pinchas, then whom?

 

Reading these Torah portions shake us; demands our attention; commands us to use its text as a mirror to understand what is at stake now! To think about these two episodes and that in neither could anyone just sit back and let events unfold.

            This Torah portion demanded engagement. It demanded action.

            And it does of us too!

As in the past, now, too, WE DARE NOT FAIL!

 

As I mentioned last week, the Egyptians tried to destroy us through slavery and Amalekites tried to do it militarily. Balak then uses Bilaam to curse us and with magic destroy us. That too fails. Yet with no external compulsion, the Israelite men start having sex with the Moabite women which leads them to idolatry, named after the place and its god “Ba’al Peor.” This behavior will abrogate the covenant and spell the end of Israelites! God commands the death of the ring leaders. But then, flaunting all convention, displaying utter vulgarity, Zimri the son of Salu, a chief in the tribe of Simeon, brings a Midianite woman, Cozbi daughter of Tzur, a Midianite chief, and flagrantly acts towards her in front of Moses and the people at the Tent of Meeting. The plague of God’s anger had already broken out. Everyone was paralyzed. Moses, the chieftains were frozen in place. The end was nigh!

 

Only one person had the courage, had the bravery, had the audacity to extinguish the threat to the existence of the Children of Israel. Pinchas picks up a spear and rams it through both of them. This is not a story for children. Maybe the sedra specifically ends here with us anxiously waiting what comes next. What will happen to Pinchas? The Rabbis are clearly unhappy with this scenario and its violence and make all kinds of excuses. They are not happy with God’s rewarding him with a special covenant and have to make allowances. He took the law into his own hand. He didn’t bring them to court. All kinds of excuses. But after 24,000 Israelites died – let us not get wrapped up in the exact number – no commentator suggests an alternative to save them! And if we would not condone violence, and I don’t suggest that we do, especially after the past Shabbat afternoon, and I suppose that most of us here remember JFK, RFK, MLK and Yitzchak Rabin,

then at least let us be stirred,

let us be inspired,

let us be motivated that someone stood up,

someone had the courage,

someone had the guts,

 someone cared enough to put it on the line,

to do something to save us!

 

Eschewing violence against others, abjuring hatred of those who hold alternate ideas, it is clear to me, that these are perilous times with the threat to our democracy being promoted and sponsored in every corner of social media and by political parties and on tv stations. The Southern Poverty Law Center publishes a yearly compendium of such groups and people. I read it cover to cover. The more I think of January 6^th, 2021 the more I am scared and concerned for January, 2025.

 

Will we be encouraged by Pinchas to use our civil rights, to protest, to vote, to donate, will we at least do something, or will we sit as Moses and all the leaders and the rest of the people, paralyzed and do nothing?

 

We as Jews are the proverbial “canary in the mine.”

We cannot forget Charlottesville.

We cannot forget the torches.

We cannot forget the chanting “You won’t replace us.”

There was nothing good there!!!

I have often wondered what it was like to be a Jew in Germany at the end of the 1920’s and the 1930’s. I know what is to be a Jew in the United States in 2024.

It is time to be like Pinchas.

 

We all know that God affirmed his judgement to Moses, that he would not lead the Children of Israel into Canaan. There is a most touching piece of our sedra, that after God reminds Moses and gives him a sneak preview, that Moses asks God for God to appoint a worthy successor. “Let the Lord, source of the breath of all flesh, appoint someone over the community who will go out before them and come in before them, and who shall take them out and bring them in, so that the Lord’s community may not be like sheep without a shepherd.” And the Lord answered Moses: “Single out Joshua son of Nun, an inspired man…Invest him with some of your authority…” We met Joshua previously at Mt. Sinai. He led the battle to defeat Amalek. He was Moses’ faithful and loyal servant. In these few verses in our sedra the peaceful and lawful transition of leadership was effected.

 

In Joshua there was no confusion, there was no hesitation, there was no question. It was a time for action! It was a time to accept the staff that Moses had carried since he stood before Pharaoh and go forth, as God had commanded.

            The past demanded it.

            The future commanded it.

            Our destiny was not to be and need not be denied.

Is our time any different?

 

The parallels from our past to our present are so eerily the same.

I see no other way but for us to act as the descendants of Pinchas.

I see no other way but for us to act as the descendants of Joshua.

The future of this democracy demands it.

The welfare of our people and all peoples commands it.

            No sitting on the sidelines.

            No after the fact “should’ve, could’ve would’ve.”

These days are A Time For Action, by us and by all.

The future of this democracy demands it.

The welfare of our people and all peoples commands it.

 

May God who stirred those leaders of our past inspire us now.

May God protect us, the United States, Medinat Yisrael, and the Jewish people throughout the world, now and “forever and ever.”

 

Shabbat Shalom

Why Do They Hate Us?

Why Do They Hate Us?

July 20th, 2024

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Beth-El, Richmond, Virginia

 

Several weeks ago our son-in-law, Arsen, took his seven year old daughter, our granddaughter Yaara to the place in Tel Aviv called “Hostage Square.” The pictures of all the hostages appear there. Every Saturday night after Shabbat a demonstration is held there for their release and return. Our granddaughter is a very sensitive and insightful girl. She turned to her father and asked: “Why do they hate us?” It broke Ruby and my hearts to see that picture and to read his caption. It took all my strength not to break forth in a torrent of tears. Yaara could not know that she had asked the question of the millennium:

         Why Pharaoh?

         Why Amalek?

         Why Assyria?

         Why Babylon?

         Why Haman?

         Why Rome?

         Why the Crusades?

         Why the Pogroms?

         Why the Church?

         Why Hitler?

         Why the Arabs?

         Why anti-semitism?

         And in today’s Torah portion, why Balak?

A question worthy of a symposium, a year-long course, I will attempt to frame responses to my granddaughter. I am not sure that I can write it simply enough for her to understand now. Yet with her unique intelligence, she will soon enough. Maybe even too soon.

 

My first answer: In total honesty, I don’t know. We have just wanted to be left alone, just like Bilaam said. We didn’t seek to conquer the world. We didn’t seek to convert the world. We haven’t tried to make everyone be like us. And nothing that we did provided an acceptable answer. We were conquered and they deported us. We were conquered and they destroyed our Temple and homeland. We became second class citizens and they further subjected us. We converted to both Islam and Christianity and they didn’t believe it. We became patriotic citizens of France and they declared “Death to the Jews.” We became loyal citizens of Poland and they handed us over to the Nazis. We became devoted citizens of Germany and they killed us. We created our homeland so we could live in one place and get out of their way, and they put the remnant of the Holocaust in DP camps and they threw us out of every Arab country. Raise our heads. Lower our heads. Contribute to society. Live in a ghetto. They still hated us. And I earnestly ask you to read the Forward article by Jay Michaelson, “Project 2025 would be the end of the American Jewish dream.” To my dearest granddaughter my first answer is: I just don’t know.  And as the author of Lamentations wrote: My inwards burn, my heart is turned within me (1:20)” They hate us in places where we don’t even exist.

 

My second answer: We have a unique message that goes against the grain of the rest of humanity. This is our manifesto:

Every person, man, woman, child, old, young, of any faith, of every ethnic origin, of every color is inherently holy.

Every person deserves to be respected.

Every person should be treated with lovingkindness.

Every one. Every one.

Bar none.

Us, too.

That is not the way the world has operated. Conquest, murder, rape, subjugation, sublimation has been rule. Empires created by megalomaniacs rise and fall, but the price is paid by the common woman and man and child. If everyone who was ever killed and murdered was properly buried this entire planet would be one big cemetery.

 

And along comes the Children of Israel, the Jews, and we proclaim loudly and consistently “No. A thousand times, a million, a billion times NO! This is not the answer they want to hear. They want to believe that Might makes Right. And we say “That’s wrong. Everyone is equally created in God’s image. Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not covet.´ And then the Jewish people create a country, Medinat Yisrael which, while not perfect, mixes Ashkenazim and Sefardim and Edot HaMizrach, and Teamanim (Yemenites) and Ethiopians, lily white and dark brown, ultra-religious and ultra secular, in one microscopic corner of the earth that controls little natural resources in the only imperfect but democratic country for thousands of miles. This grandest experiment in humanity, in love of person and love of the earth, they have tried to destroy because it does not fit their version of control, of domination, of authoritarianism.

Yet this time, this time,

We - lo amut ke echyeh - we will not die but live.

We will not concede but be resilient.

We will not yield, but will remain strong.

We will stay faithful, elevate our flag, raise our voice and forever proclaim the message of the Jewish people, the State of Israel, loudly and forcefully to the world.

Lo Amut ke echyeh – we will not perish, but live.

 

My third answer: We must believe, I have no other way to understand our history and that of the world, that we are here because God wants us to be here, because God needs us here, because He told Abraham “this is your mission,” because the prophets said “you are a light to the nations.” If ever there was a people that should have rolled over and died, it is us. If ever there was a religion that should have yielded to larger religions, it is Judaism. If ever there was a faith and its adherents who were threatened with extinction time after time it is us. No matter how I think about our personal human strength I can’t imagine that we would be capable of surviving three thousand and five hundred years without God. It just can’t be. From Abraham He called us, and today He still calls us to be the bearers of His message. And despite our loses at any time and in any place, the body of the Jewish people lives. And with God’s assistance and ultimate protection, will continue to do so to the end of time, or until humanity embraces our message. That would be the Messianic times, with or without a Messiah.

 

I don’t know how to explain this simply to a seven year old and I don’t know what Arsen said to Yaara. I will give them this sermon in hard copy so that one day she will know that her question provoked my tears and directed my hands to pound the keyboard and write this sermon.

I believe that we must stay the course. Despite everything.

I believe in the ultimate victory of the mission of the Jewish people.

I believe that our young boys and girls in the Diaspora must learn and embody these Jewish values that are propagated by the rituals of our faith and not just slogans to mouth. We are the living representation of these eternal truths.

I believe that our collegiate youth can and will be courageous. They need to embody the pride of being a Jew. Despite everything. Despite anything said or done.

I believe in the generations of Israeli youth, who like our granddaughters will someday wear the uniform, madim, of the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, to protect our people, our homeland, our heritage, our State. Despite everything.

 

Af Al Pe Chen – Even Though, Even though they have hated us, and for those who still do,  I believe in ourselves, our God, our purpose as Jews on earth,

Af Al Pe Chen – Despite it all, Am Yisrael, The People of Israel, Torat Yisrael, The Torah of Israel, Elhay Yisrael, The God of Israel, Chay Vikayam. We have lived. We will live. We will exist. We will grow. We will be proud. Our heads will be lifted high, May atah v’ad olam, from now and to all eternity.

As Helen Zimm, may her memory be for a blessing, used to end her Aliyah:

For ever and ever!

 

Shabbat Shalom.