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FROM THE RABBI: Springtime in modern Judaism brings with it some weighty questions. Traditionally, there’s the counting of the Omer – a period commanded by the Torah which brings with it a period of concern for Rabbi Akiba’s students, who were dropping from a terrible plague. At a recent seminar that I attended, Rabbi Avram Liebowitz mentioned four momentous upheavals for our People, all within 60 years. First, the mass migration of our people out of Eastern Europe, perhaps the largest movement of Jews in history. Second, as a consequence of that movement, the removal of millions of Jews from their totally Jewish environments, resulting in abandonment of the faith in many. Third, the Holocaust, with the destruction of 70% of the remaining Jews in Europe, followed by the attempt of the Communists of the USSR to destroy Judaism in the former Soviet Union. And Fourth, the establishment of the modern State of Israel, providing a safe haven for the remnant of Europe’s Jews and as a place of refuge for the Jews of the World. And we commemorate virtually all of these events in the Springtime! We mourn the horror and we celebrate the victories, but we are compelled to do SOMETHING in this momentous season. Even though the Zionist movement and the creation of Israel were more of a secular nature, one cannot deny the open miracles that precipitated the political and military vic-tories concerning the establishment of Israel and account for its subsistence. As far as the Holocaust is concerned, there isn’t a single Ashkenazic and few Sephardic families in America that was not affected by it. But the continued presence of Jews in the most powerful nation in the World will most certainly help to assure the continuance of the Jewish State and, with it, the Jewish people and Judaism. We could have lost everything! There are stories of immigrants throwing their tefillin and siddurim in the East River upon seeing the Statue of Liberty. The intellectual onslaught that freedom brought encouraged Jews to learn everything except Jewish texts. There were authorities that predicted the disappearance of Judaism. But we were stronger than that! Uniquely American expressions of Judaism, still tied to tradition, but yet contemporary in outlook will keep us alive and well as a People and a Faith for a long time to come. Are we not the People who outlasted the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, Nazis, and the USSR? Am Yisrael Chi – the Jewish People live! And have a beautiful Spring.. Rabbi Foster E. Kawaler
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