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`Home' For Shabbat
Continued from Page 3
Now that we've got that
state, have the communica-
tion and transportation,
you'd think Jews would be
flocking there, right? Wrong.
The fact is that fewer than
20 percent of American Jews
have ever visited Israel. Only
a tiny number move there.
And yet it's so easy, so
close.
Take Soviet Jews. Two
million Soviet Jews, 400,000
of whom have officially asked
to leave, many more of whom,
no doubt, want to leave. Jews
not allowed to practice their
religion, learn Hebrew, be
Jews.
And yet, thanks to modern
wonders, these are not face-
less Jews but Jews whose
names we know, whose pic-
tures we see, who we can talk
to on the phone, visit in their
homes. And so you'd think
we'd be doing all we could for
them, right? Wrong.
The fact is that for the
most part it's been very hard
to interest American Jews in
the cause of Soviet Jewry,
hard to get American Jews
excited, outraged, get them to
act.
And yet it's so easy, so
close.
Take Ethiopian Jews. When
they came out and went in to
Israel, their story captured
the imagination of the Jewish
world, intrigued us, delighted
us, moved us. You might have
thought that it would be the
opposite considering that we
had been cut off, had no links,
couldn't go there, couldn't
communicate, right? Wrong.
Maybe because it wasn't so
close, so easy.
The fact is that the essence
of all religions is mystery.
And that is especially true of
Judaism, whose mystery is
full of beauty and full of in-
credible power.
Technology, however, by
making things easier and
closer has made it a lot harder
to grasp that mystery, has
deprived us of the pull that
mystery has. And in so doing
has given us a greater
challenge as Jews.
In a world where you can
fly in to spend every Shabbat
in Jerusalem, the Jewish
yearning for and the tug of
Israel can get obscured by the
pedestrian simplicity of it all.
In a world where you can
punch up on your computer a
detailed biography of a
Refusenik sitting in a. Siber-
ian gulag, the feeling for
Jewish suffering can get lost.
Or it can be the opposite.
The rabbis tell us that as
the world gets closer to the
coming of the Messiah, the
number of inventions and
discoveries will increase at a
faster and faster rate. That's
because God has decreed that
there are a set number of
things to be revealed in this
world.
Thus, while microwave
ovens and VCRs, satellites
and supersonic jets, seem to
strip the world of mystery, in
fact they are symbolic of an
even greater mystery, of the
increase of God's presence in
the world, of the carrying out
of God's plan for the world.
Kind of like better Jewish
living through technology.
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President Ronald Reagan accepts a menorah from Yeshiva
University president Dr. Norman Lamm, front row, left, at a
White House ceremony honoring the university's centennial.
President Reagan was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws
degree.