We recenly returned from a short trip to the US to visit my parents who live in an assisted living community in Pennsylvania and especially to be with Risa's mother who is housebound and lives alone in her home in the neighborhood of Hilcrest in Queens NY.
As always when I visit the US i am frustrated by seeing the affluent self satisfied .Jewish community which is completely indifferent to the idea of Aliyah to Israel This community is exemplified by the Young Israel Synagogue of Hillcrest located not far from my Mother-inLaw's home. It is a big Modern Orthodox "shule" that has four active minyanim, three daf yomi shiurim, a young charismatic Rabbi (who gave a nice Pro Israel drasha on Shabbat.In short they seem to have everything. And yet I felt like getting up and shouting Jews WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?? Can it really be that these religious comitted Jews are content to sit on the sidelines and watch as the divine march of Redemption continues in Eretz Yisrael? (see my post in Hebrew from two years ago "The golden Galut")
Speaking of sidelines, I happened to be in America during "Super Bowl Week" and Super Bowl Sunday, a festival where the entire country is caught up in the ultimate violent sport-American Football. Ironically before the game a choir made up of children from the school in Conneticut that was the place of the massacre of over twenty children a few weeks ago. They sung GD Bless America. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. An interesting phenomena was that instead of the bawdy halftime show, Yeshiva University put up a special program on You Tube telling us about Yiddishkeit and football. Team play, Rambam praising physical fitness yadda yadda yadda. Really strange.
So GD bless America, far far away from us.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment