TORAH PORTION

hammi

24061 Coolidge Highway
Oak Park, MI

wishes to engage
a

DAL KORAY•TORAH

It is prepared to pay
up to 5 2500" for a
Year Round Arrangement.

Ca:

Synagogue Office 398-1177 or
President's Office 548.9046

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CO\G. BETH SHALOV
CULTURAL COVVISSIO

Sunday, June 9, 1991, 8:00 p.m.
featuring

MARGIE ROSENTHAL

AND

We Buy and Sell
Good Used Books

LIBRARY BOOKSTORE

presents the Annual

FRANK FRIEDMAN
MEMORIAL CONCERT

BOOKS

I

I'

5454300

Open 7 Days

Books Bought

In Your Home

M. sempliner

Pre-Summer

ILENE SAFYAN

SALE
20% OFF

Songs in English,
Hebrew & Yiddish

ANY SHORT
OUTFIT

With a special pre-concert
Judaica Art Show at 7 p.m.

Good Through 6/14/91
with this ad

855-4464

Hunters Square • Farmington Hills

Artist: DANNY KATSIR
ORLY LAUFFER
TIFERET ARTS
TRADITION! TRADITION!

Community Invited — No Charge
Reserved seating available for concert supporters

For information contact:
Synagogue Office 547-7970

GEORGE OHRENSTEIN
JEWELERS LTD.

Certified Gemulogist - American Gem Societ3
Ilar , ard Row Mall - Latiser & I I Mile Road

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Advertising in The Jewish News Gets Results
Place Your Ad Today, Call 354-6060

44

FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 1991

Giants And Pygmies:
Jewish Self-Image

RABBI IRWIN GRONER

Special to The Jewish. News

p

sychologists have ad-
vised us that how we
view ourselves, our
self-image, is the most impor-
tant fact of our emotional be-
ing. Thus, people who see
themselves as capable of
achievement generally act in
such a way as to fulfill that
self-expectation. Those who
consider themselves unwor-
thy of love or inadequate to
meet life's challenges, even if
they are truly talented,
brilliant and creative, will ex-
perience life with a sense of
failure and rejection.
A vivid passage in this
week's Torah portion dra-
matically states the conse-
quence of the abased self-
image of the Hebrew people.
The children of Israel had
sent a reconnaissance team of
12 men to spy out the Land of
Canaan. When they set forth
on their mission, and they
saw the great stature of the
native Canaanites, the
Israelites were dismayed.
Filled with dread, they said:
"We were, in our own sight,
the size of grasshoppers, and
so were we in their sight. We
shall never be able to over-
come these giants and inherit
this land."
In the Midrash, a rabbinic
commentary, the Almighty
responds: "How do you know
what you looked like to those
`giants'? Maybe you seemed
to them as angels bearing
Divine blessings, elevated by
Divine power."
The commentary is a
rebuke upon the spies and
their report, for they projected
their own fears on their
perceptions, the facts were
distorted by their anxieties.
Indeed, 40 years later, the
people of Israel went back to
that same border and con-
quered the land under
Joshua. The Hebrew people
had not grown any taller in
40 years, nor had the giants
become smaller, but during
the course of the decades the
people had achieved a greater
measure of faith in God and
faith in themselves.
This text offers a profound
insight into the mystery of
Jewish survival. The secret of
the endurance of the Jewish
people is not found in
geography, economics or
sociology. The key is how the

Irwin Groner is senior rabbi
of Congregation Shaarey
Zedek and president of the
Rabbinical Assembly.

Jew perceived himself in rela-
tionship to God and to the
world.
Other people were larger,
other nations mightier. But
the Jew had an image of
himself that bestowed upon
him moral stature. He believ-
ed in his own unique and un-
changing mission, a mission
that would not be thwarted by
any fate however adverse, or
any hardship however
grievous.
The Jew lived in the midst
of great empires — Greece,
Rome, Medieval Europe,
Czarist Russia — but he never
saw himself as small, ineffec-
tive or disadvantaged. In his
existence and in the continui-
ty of his people, he bore
witness to the God who had

Shabbat Shelach:
Numbers
13:1-15:41,
Joshua 2:1-24.

spoken to the prophet of his
past, and who would once
more speak to mankind at the
end of days.
For centuries, the world's
image of the Jew was at great
variance with what the Jew
thought of himself. Repug-
nant Jewish figures abound
in Western culture: Shylock
and his pound of flesh; Fagin,
the corruptor of youth; or
Judas of the passion play,
whose villainy was recalled
every spring.
But there was one place
where those malevolent im-
ages did not lodge, and that
was in the spirit of the Jew
himself. From his earliest
youth, he was taught that he
was a descendant of a people
responsible for teaching
truth, compassion and moral
purity to the world.

I believe that the greatest
problem we face as Jews in
the modern world is not
discrimination, persecution,
or even the occasional erup-
tions of anti-Semitism that
shake us out of our com-
placency. The greatest con-
cern confronting us is the
quality of the image that
every Jew carries of himself,
for that is the test of the
authenticity and strength of
our Jewish existence.
In the Torah, we are called
mamlechet kohanim, a king-
dom of priests, and a goy
kadosh, a sacred people. To-
day, we are called an "ethnic
group" which is an entirely
different term. An ethnic

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