56 Friday, November 28, 1980 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Gary R Miller & Associates Photography with a Persolial Touch 398-6894 Specializing in Candids and Video NAT Formerly MARGOLIS FURNITURE of Detroit, Mich. Serving you in Florida with QI1ALITY, BRAND NAME FURNITURE at DISCOUNT PRICES • Dixie • Broyhill • Stanley • Serta • Spring Aire • A Complete Line of Convertibles & Dinettes Special , Orders Accepted NAT MARGOLIS FURNITURE phone orders accepted 2930 N. Federal Hwy., Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. 33306 (305) 561-0600 Intense Dedication o Torah By DVORA WAYSMAN World Zionist Press "How odd of God to choose the Jews!", ran an epigram composed when I was a youngster. I was inclined to agree with it. I didn't think we were so special. In fact, when I thought about it at all, which was--rarely, to me it seemed a most burdensome religion, full of negatives and prohibitions. Now I do think about it. I have also been thinking how different my life would have been had my well-. meaning teachers in Au- stralia, where I was born, attempted to explain to me what it really means to be Jewish. Even today, talking to young people who visit Is- rael from abroad, things seem not to have changed at all. Many Jewish day schools are just euphemisms for schools for Jews; and "Sunday Schools" valiantly try to teach some . "‘ ANNIVERSARY SALE ' SAM & SONS FRUIT 0MKT. 6718 Orchard Lake Rd. 851-8020 or 13905 W. 9 Mile Rd., Oak Park- 399-9699 . For Top Quality and Lowest Prices All Year Round Best Kosher or Sinai SALAMI AND , _BOLOGNA-- - $2 29 .. Imported JARLSBURG CHEESE $259 U.S. No. 1 Red or Golden DELICIOUS APPLES DELICIOUS, GOLDEN .BLINTZES • - 29 C. c pkg. Jumbo c . WALNUTS IN SHELL ORCHARD LAKE STORE ONLY VERNOR'S G INGER ALE 1 litre bottle 35c ea. 3 for lb. lb. . $119 Specials good through December 4, 1980 BOTH STORES ritual which is meaningless to the vast body of children who come from non- observant homes. But even in the limited once-a-week classes, I cannot believe thati was not taught anything about what it means to be Jewish. I am not an educator, but if I could talk to Jewish children abroad, I would tell them the things I learned pain- fully slowly on my own, since coming to Israel . . . things I believe would have changed my life had someone told them to me all those years ago. First, I would tell them that Judaism is not merely •a religion of pots and pans, where salvation depends on not mixing the meat dishes with the dairy. Nor is it a crutch for the weak . . "the opiate of the masses" as religion has been derisively defined; any more than atheism or agnosticism is a crutch for the immoral and ill-read. My family sent me duti- fully every week to Sunday school (we didn't even call it "Talmud Torah") where, in four years, all I learned was to recite, parrot-fashion, the names of the Hebrew months; one verse of the Sh'ma; the blessing over wine and a few Bible stories. About being Jewish, I learned nothing. The belief in one God, the basis of Judaism, is a for- midable intellectual posi.- tion with which most of the first-class minds of the human race have agreed. The Jewish people have survived for thousands of years — a fact which no longer needs to- be taken on faith, because archeology verifies it with new dis- coveries every day. How did a people, a religion and a culture survive through three millennia of almost impossible historical con- ditions? What was the secret? The mystic occurrence which changed the his- tory of the world oc- curred at Mt. Sinai, in the desert, when Moses was leading his people to the Promised Land. When the Israelites left Horeb to continue their journey, they were no longer a tribe held together by faith, but a nation living under a law, the Torah — the word of God, given at the hand of Moses. This Torah also contained prophecy, that after a bril- liant period of rule in the Holy Land, the Jews would succumb to materialism, would slide into idolatry like their neighbors,' with resulting military defeat and national destruction. Only a remnant of the people would survive in a long agony of exile — wan- dering and persecuted. But they would survive, eventually to return to Is- rael to live by the Mosaic law and to be a light unto the nations. Most of this vast drama has already passed from prophecy into • history, and today Jews have returned to live in and rebuild their historic home- land. We are the only nation that came into existence be- fore it had a land. Jews are peculiarly a nation in time, descending from Abraham, a wanderer. This is the key to our survival — Israel is our historic fulfillment, not our origin. What does "the chosen people" mean? It means we were given the task of bearing witness to God's moral law on earth — and these laws have been Judaism's greatest gift to the human race. Our his- tory is full of our own failures and the resultant catastrophes that befell us, but the mission ra- mains, and we live on be- cause of it. Right 111 Your own Driveway! 1.4 6 .4 TUNE -UP MAN Certified by the National Automotive Institute of Excellence Comes to your home or office with the -garage-on-wheels." 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