COMMUNITY VIEWS My Summer In Jerusalem up for a 10-day program. This trip to Israel was different from my prior trips. I went with my good friend Shelly, who had never been to fter visiting Jerusalem in Israel. Our entire trip in Jerusalem December 1998 with my would be for three weeks. family, I had a burning Naturally, we were con- desire to return. cerned with how our hus- With my daughter Sally bands would clean and cook scheduled to attended for themselves in our Camp Ramah for two absence. But the minute our months and my son Ari plane took off, all was for- going to Israel on a desert gotten. survival program, I finally Our first Shabbat in had time for my own sum- was unforgettable. Jerusalem mer experience. During my We were welcomed to the exploration of various sum- home of our friends, the JANICE mer programs, a great idea Cohens, overlooking the SCHARG came to me in the mail. A Jaffa Gate. Together, we Special to the friend sent brochures and walked through the Jaffa Jewish News information about classes in Gate, crossing through the Jerusalem. Bingo, I thought! Arab Shuk, until we came What a great way to go to the most magnificent sight in back. Jerusalem: the Kotel, the Western Wall. My eyes caught a shiny blue pam- Thousands were rejoicing and praying phlet with 'Isralight" displayed as Shabbat began. across the front. Inside it offered After services, our small group "Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul." quickly walked back to the Cohens' Rabbi David Aaron runs the Isra- condominium, where dinner was an light Institute in the Old City of amazing experience. The guests told Jerusalem. After finding the applica- about themselves and about what had tion on the Isralight Web site, I signed brought them to Jerusalem. We also explored the biggest problem facing a nursery school teacher Janice Scharg, Israel: lack of ahavat reim, love and at .Adat Shalom Synagogue, lives in West respect for our fellow Jews. After din- Bloomfield with her husband, Donald, ner, students and visitors to Jerusalem and children, Ari and Sally. "You will find no beauty like the beauty of Jerusalem. A stopped in for an oneg Shabbat. We talked and sang until 1 a.m. Once the Isralight program started, it was fantastic. We delved into the classes, held from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a 90-minute lunch break. The classes were fascinating: Kabbala, the Meaning of Life, Where is God, Toler- ance, Talmud, Torah, and Mystical Insights. Rabbi Aaron, Isralight's director, is originally from Canada and teaches Torah with a kabbalistic view. The other instructors were inspirational. Rav Binny Freedman of Efrat, a dash- ing IDF commander, sparkled as he related the words of the Torah during our day trip to Safat, Tiberias and the Golan Heights and a second-day trip to the West Bank. Rabbi Natan Car- dozo, who is also a philosophy profes- sor, stressed the dire need for tolerance among Jews. Gila Manolson, a Yale grad and baal teshuva (a now obser- vant Jew), explained the role of women in Judaism. Each teacher was fascinating and thought-provoking. We could not get enough of the classes. We refused to miss our favorite instructors. Each night, we stayed up late, though exhausted, reviewing our notes, ana- lyzing and discussing the day's lec- tures. We felt that we were seeing life more clearly. Struggles and problems were all part of the process of growth and self-improvement. Shelly and I were on a Jerusalem high! Each day, during breaks, we found ourselves navigating around the Rova, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. A frequent stop, in addition to the stores in the Cardo (the below- ground, renovated 2,000-year-old Roman marketplace), was the Pomer- anz Book Store. The owner recom- mended books for us in accordance with our interests in the program. I purchased and read books I never expected to read, books by Gila Manolson and Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, a physicist and Kabbalist. We shopped the Rova like it had never been shopped before, becorhing friendly with shopkeepers Rifka and Mira. Our frequent joke was that we were performing a mitzvah by helping the Old City's economy. The 10-day program passed too quickly, but the learning and memo- ries will last forever. It was an extraor- dinary adventure of personal growth, spiritual renewal and intellectual enrichment in the most miraculous place on Earth — Jerusalem. Now I really understand the Psalmist who cried, "If I forget yciu, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill ... if I fail to recall you, if I fail to elevate Jerusalem above my foremost joy." I am already planning my next visit. 111 Tikkun Olam And Gun Control cite historical precedent (mainly the n recent weeks, my office has Warsaw Ghetto uprising) as support received more than a dozen let- for the assertion that only ters lambasting the when Jews have guns have Reform movement's they been able to preserve support for gun control. Jewish honor and dignity. While the number of letters The writers point to Israel as is relatively small, it is more an example of Jews' need for feedback than many other guns, and they use both controversial issues have gar- constitutional and talmudic nered. citations to rebut any These letters assert that attempt to limit access to the shootings at the North firearms. MARK Valley Jewish Community Yet, despite their appeals PELAVIN Center summer camp in sub- to history and judaic tradi- Special to the urban Los Angeles under- tion, these pleas to oppose score the folly of Jews sup- Jewish News gun control are far from porting gun control. They convincing. To argue that as Jews we must respond to gun violence Mark Pelavin is associate director of with a paranoid impulse to grab our the Religious Action Center of Reform guns in self-defense is a provincial and Judaism — the Washington office of the dangerous perspective. Such an argu- Union of American Hebrew Congrega- ment assumes that a vast majority of tions and the Central Conference of the gun violence tearing America apart American Rabbis. 9/24 1999 .1 nptroit 1pwish News is specifically aimed at Jews, or, at a minimum, the Jewish community has no stake in addressing the larger national epidemic of gun violence. Despite a rash of highly publicized anti-Semitic inci- dents, it is simply not the case that Jews are dispropor- tionate victims of gun violence. While we as a community undoubtedly feel under attack at the moment, the bigger picture does not support an ethos of constant persecu- tion in America today. In fact, study after study clearly demonstrate that the use of a firearm to resist a violent attack increases the likelihood of injury to the gun owner. According to the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, "resi- dents of homes where a gun is pre- sent are five times more likely to expe- rience a suicide and three times more likely to experience a homicide than res- idents of homes without guns. Addi- tionally, a gun kept in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household, or friend, than an intruder." Guns certainly endanger the rest of us. Every year, 35,000 Americans die from gun- Jews arming themselves would bring heightened prejudice and vandalism.