Nadene Goldfoot
Me when I was Queen Esther for a yearEvery day that I wake up alive I realize more and more that there is a grand scheme or plan for all our lives. I hate the enemies of Israel with a passion but have to agree with one thing with Arafat; he was a fatalist. I guess I am, too. Things happen for a reason, and I don't have to know that reason. Sometimes it's just too deep to me to understand, but there is a reason behind it.
I'm reading, actually re-reading after many years of owning this book, it's an oldie, "The Vanishing American Jew" by Alan M. Dershowitz. It's all I can do to read the first part, Alan. You've missed the boat on us Jews. Yes, you sat in a popular restaurant-non-kosher, complaining about your son not becoming the Jew you are-and look at you. Do you see yet what you should have done, what so many of us have done? Don't you get it? You, more than 99.9% of the 2% of the American population who are Jewish are becoming hellenized or are already, and you might be the only one left who really cares as to why. Your son learns like we all learn, by example. You didn't set a very perfect example, did you?
I had the same problem. We were so involved with just existing with work, studies, etc, we didn't think of our responsibility in all ways. Hellenizing has continued since the days of the Greek conquerors. We were to be the examples for people with the way we lived; not people to run the show alone and control it all.
My dad and me-we saw him on one day a week, maybe it was Sunday, and we didn't complain; that was life. Mom was our parent to go to. We who learn this way are bound to have our own rules we want to throw by the wayside, so your son followed your example and then did one or more of his own rules to break. And so it goes. You have a great example in the book:
1st generation: Our parents, : Won't eat anything not kosher.
2nd generation Jew in America: Won't eat anything that isn't kosher except Chinese food.
3rd generation: won't eat anything with cholesterol.
4th generation: won't eat anything with meat in it, and anything that wasn't organically grown.
My bubba ate only kosher food. My zaida was unknown to me, dying at 41(my father was only 4) in an accident, so my father had no role model. My father became a kosher butcher but then went into business for himself and ate the meat he created-the wholesale meat co, which was kosher at first but then not-another story. He married a shiksha who converted, expecting a good Jewish life but then my father never attended synagogue-too busy working. So my mother and I spent every Saturday shopping downtown for the day. Mom and I attended Yom Kippur service together. I was sent to Sunday school. And that was enough for me in that I loved Sunday school and became a Sunday school teacher at the same synagogue.
Dad's cattle truck-he bought cattle and sold meat to butchers from his own: Silver Falls Meat Packing Co. He made a good living. And that's how a nice Jewish boy became disengaged with his Jewishness, but I see elements of it as he helped so many people he came in contact with, not Jews, but people he became involved with in business, and he helped them to rise and do better. He did mitzvot.
Friday nights ritual keeps the family together Keeping kosher has a great purpose in conditioning us to stay together and remain Jewish. We're not a people to be examples for only one generation. It is forever. I love that it teaches us sensitivity for animals and has driven many into becoming vegans. That doesn't mean that I am, but I do not eat the nonkosher foods such as any pig, etc. Our kosher laws have my highest respect. My religion has my highest respect. To me, following it the best you can shows respect for your parents, your family, your religion and what it has taught you.
My painting of Danny who took his religion far more seriously in Israel than as a Conservative Jew in the USA. Jews didn't come into this world by accident but on purpose for a job to do. G-d, and I might write an essay later on that topic as I view it, G-d needed an example to work for him to teach the people, so he selected our family line of Abram and Sarai. We were to be the chosen ones for the job because our DNA would present itself to keep us on the job longer than any other people, that they would take all the insults and injuries to do the job, seeing its importance to G-d. We weren't his favorite, the perfect model he made. In fact, Judah made quite a few errors in life, being human. G-d probably thought, "Gotcha!"
At the time, all the people on earth were polytheistic, and G-d found that Abram was the easiest to talk to and explain that there was but one G-d in the universe and he was it. He also taught Abram that human sacrifice was not to be done anymore, another thing Abram was to be the example of and let people realize this.
Moses, born later to this same family line, was also given the task of leading out 600,000 of the family line from Egypt after living there as shepherds and then as slaves of the Egyptians. It would take 40 years to get from point A to point B but necessary time to see another generation be born who was stronger and all ready to learn and become conditioned in new ways and new thoughts, to develop a new mind set by the time they reached a homeland that Abram had lived in and Jacob had left. They needed this conditioning. It was to be in their body and their soul or people, being human, would weaken. They were a captured audience for this very reason.
We had become Jews, though weren't called that as yet. We were not orthodox or reform, just Jews following the laws of Moses. We were a new breed of people. We were kept apart but were in the spotlight as the example, and people as they are, gossiped enough and spread the word about us and then read about us all in the new-fangled man-made form of communication, the Bible.
The fact is, we were to continue. We accepted a pact of following such a life, and as it turned out, life would not let us forget to be who we were anyway. Till today, that is.
Life has taken us to the USA, something in the whole world plan. Here we had freedom that we had prayed for, that we finally deserved, and were happy to see the USA win WWI, not realizing that this was set up to bring on WW II and the Holocaust.
One thing I don't think you mentioned in your book is that many Jewish families may have become slack in synagogue attendance because of the cost of attendance and then are on the road to hellenization, It's probably necessary to charge as much but its gone out of sight. Then being Jewish and being a member has become a status symbol, not a sign of reverence. They've driven Jews away.
All the world had been expecting a Messiah, so the 3 main religions had 3 visions of the one they expected to come, which is very timely after such a wholesale slaughter of most the the Jewish people. It was just about the end, and lo and behold, after 2,000 years of waiting and praying, Jews got their Israel back again, just about, a sliver of it, anyway. And what is it that is last to come, the Messiah when practically all the Jews who remain do not know why they are Jews or why they should remain as Jews anymore, except a small handful. Our messiah isn't here yet but we expect him within the coming 100 years. Times as they are, he might be too late. As I dimly remember, this was actually prophesized to happen.
Thank G-d that these Jews who question being Jewish become defensive when Jews are attacked by anti-Semites! I'll tell you why it's important to carry on with our religion. We're not a people like other religions. We're from a family. We have a physical relationship with each other carried on through our genes. It's genetic as well as religious. Very few people have actually chosen to be Jewish except people like Sammy Davis Jr., my mother and a few others.
Men in particular carry their Y haplogroup a tag showing exactly that they are from a Jewish line. When you get down to it, we're at the least about 10th cousins to each other, but you'll find a lot are listed by the DNA companies as 4th to 5th cousins or more. For most of history, there was no intermarriage going on, and the Nazis saw to it that anyone even with one Jewish grandparent was doomed for the gas chambers or firing squad was murdered, it's a miracle that we are among the survived for we are only 0.02% of the world population.
I've had my ups and downs through life about Judaism myself, being in your shoes. I was meant to be proud of who I am and the fact that I am Jewish, and even am an Israeli as well. Yes, I made aliyah, but then was not meant to remain more than the 5 plus years I was there, so here I am, defending Israel every day from the states not only in my blogs but with being Jewish in the first place. I'm what is called a Yored, an Israeli living outside of Israel, and that I'm not proud of, but that's part of the grand scheme.
Thank G-d I've lived long enough to know who I am and I'm one very proud to be Jewish. One thing that happened in my life that kept me retaining my religion was the fact that I was chosen to be Queen Esther in my city at the Purim Ball. That gave me my self-pride of who I was and it's lasted all these years. Come to think of it, but Esther would have had a hard time hiding her Jewishness at mealtime. She wouldn't have eaten pork or anything of a pig. However, she saved her people from extinction by Haman. She had the power to act and she did; wasn't shy about it.
Here we are today, with no Haman or Hitler threatening and executing us, just us, without any external threat, doing away with ourselves as Jews. Please, put on your pride hats and explore your own religion, and see why we are needed. See if you can realize how we have been shaped by our religion.
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