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Bloomfield Hills, MI 48302 Farmington Hills, MI 48335 (338.9255 / 442.7100) (3384666) Birmingham .... 642.7150 JEWELRY APPRAISALS At Very Reasonable Prices. Call For An Appointment 011it"tee established 1919 FINE JEWELERS Lawrence M. Allan, Pres. GEM/DIAMOND SPECIALIST AWARDED CERTIFICATE BY GIA IN GRADING AND EVALUATION 64 High Efficiency Gas Furnace • Over 90% Efficiency • A/C Prepped • No Chimney Required • Installed From FRIDAY, JUNE 14, 1991 30400 Telegraph Road Suite 134 Birmingham, MI 48010 (313) 642-5575 DAILY 10-5:30 THURS. 10-7 SAT. 10-3 mmediately after the Shabbat meal on Friday, May 24th, I was driven to a military base near Ben- Gurion. Airport. Soon after, for the second time in my life, I found myself virtually the only passenger on a huge airplane. Now, as then, there were only four people sitting around me. This time, they were colleagues — Israeli journalists — and we were bound for Ethiopia. Five years ago, the four had been KGB men, my honor escort on the journey from a Soviet prison to freedom. In that moment of release, when suddenly after nine years of struggle and prayers I was lifted from the darkness of the Gulag, I wasn't told where they were taking me. But the sun, like the finger of God, pointed the way: It was a flight to freedom. They had taken away all my belongings — including my prison uniform, which had grown so familiar and comfortable — giving me in- stead ungainly and clammy civilian clothes. But one item, a little book of Psalms given to me by my wife, Avital, which was my corn- panion in all the years of the Gulag, I had at the last mo- ment saved from the hands of the KGB guards. It kept me warm. Through the triumphant "Psalms of King David," God was bringing me the joyous news: You are free, you have won, you are going to the land of Israel. In the coming hours, I would land in Berlin, be reunited with my wife in Frankfurt, arrive in Israel and pray at the Western Wall. Throughout, I was surprisingly calm, confident: as is a person who has listened for the voice of God and relied on Him, and wat- ches with rapture and without fear as events un- fold and are fulfilled accor- ding to His great, un- fathomable design. Now, five years later, as I flew in the dark toward Natan Sharansky is an editor of the Jerusalem Report, from which this is reprinted with permission. Addis Ababa on an El Al plane whose markings had been painted over, I was suddenly seized by questions and doubts: Why was it so important to me to be on this particular flight to Ethiopia? So much so that I had in- sisted my editor send me, even on the Sabbath? It is difficult to imagine two Jewish communities more disparate than those of the Soviet Union and Ethio- pia: white and black; the We all began to applaud and never stopped during the whole descent. most isolated spiritually from world Jewry and the most isolated geographical- ly; one group almost totally assimilated, the other preserving its Judaism even after centuries of being cut off. Why, then, was I flying toward Ethiopia? Was it be- cause I was intrigued by these Jews so different from me? Or was it in order to understand better the Israelis who were ready to put aside their differences, drop everything and rush to the rescue of these people at once so remote and so close? Was it perhaps to recover a sense of the purity of the Zionist dream which in the harsh light of the realities of daily life in Israel can seem more like illusion than dream? Let there be no mistake: My five years in Israel have been full and happy. But they have also been years of descending from heaven to earth. The simple, clear lines of the struggle between good and evil have grown ever more blurred, and the cacophony of arguments and doubts has made it more difficult to hear the voice of God. Below, Addis Ababa greeted us with scattered, frozen lights: a city under curfew. As I stepped off the plane, I was met by an aston- ishing sight: A human river in white flowed toward the aircraft. I stood paralyzed as the vast crowd streamed through the darkness. They moved calmly, unhurriedly.