A moment of truth
Naomi Ragen

(July 28) - When I was a very small girl growing up in 
New York City, I remember hearing a program about the 
Holocaust. My mother, rightly, wouldn't let me watch. 
But unknown to her, the television was perfectly audible in 
my bedroom. I learned about how the St. Louis had wandered 
the seas with Hitler's prey, Jews looking for refuge, and 
how every country in the world had seen it fit to close 
its doors. And how Hitler had learned from this that he 
could do as he wished with the Jews of Europe. I learned 
about the camps: the Zyklon B gas, the way the doors were 
locked? And so, as I lay in my bed in the dark and listened 
to everything that was said, a horrible realization and a 
wonderful revelation took place in my soul. 

The horror was the terrible vulnerability of the Jews, and 
the unthinkable things that had been done to them because of it. 
The wonder was that I was a Jew and I was still alive and well 
with my whole future ahead of me; that whatever had happened 
to my people in the past, I could now help to ensure it never 
happened again. 

In the morning, I asked my mother what she and other American 
Jews, safe in their comfortable homes, had done to help the 
isolated Jews of Europe. 

"There was a protest," she said vaguely. "In Madison Square 
Garden." I was ashamed. When I grew up, I would make sure that 
my life and the lives of my people were inextricable. I would 
care. I would fight. I would risk. I would be strong and brave. 

And so, in my early twenties I moved to Israel. I was always a 
little surprised that more of my American Jewish friends didn't 
join me. After all, the history of the Jewish people was being 
written in the Jewish State, not in New York or Maryland. I was 
glad, at least, they came to visit and sent their kids to summer 
programs, which they left inspired, informed and connected to 
the richness of their Jewish heritage. 

Yet now, when the moment of truth has come and the entire world 
is once again smelling Jewish blood, and another six million 
Jews have become increasingly isolated and attacked and unfairly 
maligned; now when the solidarity of American Jewry actually 
means the world to us, the planes and hotels are empty. The 
Reform Movement's summer camps have been cancelled. 

I know what some of you are thinking: What? Do you expect me to 
risk my own and my children's lives by going into a war zone? 
Get real, lady! 

I see the same pictures you do on BBC and CNN - the death and 
mayhem. But it's a lie. The truth is, aside from exercising more 
caution, life goes on as usual: I walk the calm, beautiful streets 
of Jerusalem. I send my son to school on the buses. I travel to 
Tel Aviv and Haifa and Netanya. If I were to travel on the subways 
of New York, or walk into certain neighborhoods in Baltimore, 
or Los Angeles or Miami, I think I'd be courting far more danger. 

Millions of us in Israel turn to our brothers and sisters abroad 
and say: the hour is at hand to see if we are truly an indivisible 
family. Because if Israel is the insurance policy for world Jewry 
- if her losses and sacrifices have been made to ensure every 
Jew a homeland, a place where, when a Jew has to go there, the 
country has to take them in - then the time has come for you to 
do your part. Come to Israel and see what a beautiful country 
we Jews have built. Come and show the world there is such a 
thing as the Jewish people and that they have strength and 
faith and courage. Show the affluent, influential Arab nations 
and their European allies that the Jews have come home to stay 
and that, under attack, we don't cower. Our numbers swell. 

Do this not only for Israel and her economy, and her people's 
morale. Do it so that when your son or daughter asks you in 
years to come: "Mommy, Daddy, what did you do when the Jews of 
Israel were under attack?" you can give them an answer which 
will make you, and them, feel proud.