“Mir Zeynen do! – We Are Here!”

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
April 26, 2002

 

In the early 1960's – that sounds so long ago – I was a teenager, just a little older than our Bar Mitzvah. I attended public high school during the day and commuted to the Jewish Theological Seminary's high school, Prozdor, in New York City, on Sunday mornings and Wednesday afternoons. There were twenty-seven members in my USY chapter. I became a member of a long forgotten organization called SSSJ – Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. We were high school and college students, few adults, who conducted demonstrations near the Soviet Embassy in New York City. We walked around in small circles yelling "Let My People Go," and other such slogans, singing "Am Yisrael Chai." I remember it being very lonely, and seemingly hopeless. In those days, a budding new author wrote a book entitled The Jews of Silence. The author was Eli Wiesel. While realizing that the subject was Soviet Jewry, without reading it, many thought the title referred to them. It didn't. It referred to American Jewry who was silent about the fate of the Jews of the Soviet Union. At the same time I was learning about American history in public school and Modern Jewish history at the Seminary. My history book in public school did not mention the Holocaustor the State of Israel. My Jewish history course at Seminary gave me an in depth understanding of the migration of Jews to America - my grandparents, the transition generation - my parents, and the recent generation - me. I read, with some comprehension why, that my parents and grandparents and their generation did not take to the streets to demonstrate as their relatives died in Europe.

I vowed then and there that I would never be a silent Jew.

I would never be among Eli Wiesel's "Jews of Silence."

My children, my grandchildren, and if I should live so long, another

generation would never point their finger at me and say:

"You were silent."

And that is why after coming home at midnight April 14 th from Ariel's baby naming in New York, I was on the bus to Washington, D.C. in the early morning of April 15 th, only to arrive home at 8:30 P.M. It wasn't a Rabbinic thing. It wasa Jewish thing.

In my youth I vowed never to be a Jew of Silence.

I was there in Washington, D.C., because I have traveled in one day from the northern end of Israel to the southern, andwalked the eight-mile neck of the 1967 borders in less than three hours.

I was there because I have been on the bus going to the Mahane Yehudah market and being diverted because of a bomb and on the same bus to the Super Sol market and being diverted for the same reason.

I was there because I said "good-bye" to Israeli's who lived in the Seminary's dormitory in Jerusalem, Neve Schechter, with Ruby and me, when they were called up on Yom Kippur, 1973, and fearing, scared, that we would never see them again.

I was there because I know that but for the decision of my four grandparents who decided to come to America, the family would have died in Europe, or if they had gone to Turkish Palestine, my fate would be the fate of the Jews of Israel.

I was there because the math is simple. Since September 2000, more than 450 Israelis have been killed and wounded over 4000. Transposing this to America would be the equivalent of 21,000 dead and 200,000 injured. In this March, the number of Israelis killed by suicide terrorists was equivalent in US terms, to 6,300 Americans, almost double the victims of September 11 th.

I was there because my family and I sat down to Seder without fear. The Jews of Israel lived the bitter herbs of terror and dread.

Tomorrow morning David will speak about Kiddush HaShem, sanctifying God's name. Everything that he will say about that will be correct and appropriate. Often the term is used to refer to Jews dying at the hands of evil doers, while remaining faithful Jews to the end. Here I would add one more element of Kiddush HaShem. We make God evident and manifest in the world, we sanctify God's name when we publicly stand up for our people, no matter where they are in the world, Argentina, Europe with its re-ignited anti-Semitism, Israel, regardless of differences and distance. When we forsake our coziness and our creature comforts, take off from work and from school, because there is something much greater and much more important than ourselves, and walk over twenty-five city blocks from RFK Stadium to stand in the heat of the U.S. Capitol building, then we perform an act of Kiddush HaShem. Perhaps it is an even greater act of Kiddush HaShem, when you do it without thinking that it is Kiddush HaShem.

We are mekadesh shaym shamayim, we sanctify the Holy Name of God when we observe, proudly, publicly and privately our Judaism, Shabbat, Kashrut, Mikvah,Yom Tov, and personal mitzvot.

We are mekadesh shaym shamayim, we sanctify the covenant made with God which includes Eretz Yisrael, when we buy products made in Israel. There is Web site that enables us here to buy products made there, and it will be included with this sermon when it is sent out on the listserv this Monday. www.shopinIsrael.com

We M'kadesh HaShem when we remember that we are Jews responsible for other Jews.

I look back on our recent past and recognize that it has been relatively quiet. We have had the luxury to sit back and enjoy our successes, put up our feet and relax in the backyard. We have had the comfort to differ with Israel on "Who Is A Jew?" and have to be persuaded to buy Israel Bonds. Perhaps we have "Gayn Shlofen." It's time to wake up.  

On May 15th, at 5:30 P.M. at the JCC this community will rally for Israel and at the same time participate in raising significant funds for this is also a financial crisis for Israel.

I challenge our congregation and our community:

Will you be Jews of silence or of sound?

Will sit back or will you stand up?

Will you bring forth from you pockets or shut your eyes and withhold

your hand?

Will you hide or will you be counted?

Will you be proud or will you be contrite?

These are more than "times that try men's souls."

This is the time that tests the mettle of our people.

Do we have the stuff of eternity in our souls?

Do we have the strength and courage of our earlier generations?

Will our ancestors who died doing Kiddush HaShem

Be proud of us doing Kiddush HaShem as we live?

These are the questions and this is the challenge of this hour.

The opening stanza of the Hymn of the Partisans, which the Cantor sings in the Martyrology on Yom Kippur is the following:

Never say that you now go on your last way, 
Though darkened skies may now conceal the blue of day; 
Because the hour for which we've hungered is so near, 
Beneath our feet the earth shall thunder, "We are here!"

 

May our ancestors look down from heaven and know,

May our descendants look back in later years and know,

Mir zeynen do! We are here.