We Who Paid No Price: Time to Pay |
Like modern Israel, I was born in 1948. She is young and vibrant; I am old and contemplative.
I have always considered myself blessed to have been born in the US of A, a country hospitable to Jews, affording me opportunities and freedom to follow my dreams, to raise a family in my faith, to worship and observe as I desired, and to succeed at my chosen professions, relatively free of the obstacles and persecution imposed upon my people for millennia. It would be churlish of me not to be grateful for these blessings and advantages, and I am, I think, appropriately appreciative. I stand and salute the American flag, I am inordinately pleased when a US athlete stands on the podium to receive her medal, I tear up at the playing of the national anthem and God Bless America, and, unlike some United States Senators, I root for the US in its war with Iran. I voted, I paid my taxes, and, for the most part, observed traffic regulations.
Then, because it was always my wife’s dream, and because my location has never had much impact on me (I can be unsociable pretty much anywhere), we made Aliyah. Ours was “Aliyah lite.” I was retired, we had acquired comfortable housing, and we encountered no struggles with malaria or marauding fedayeen. My comedic struggles with the language were irritating, but not a pioneer-category hardship. She was happy; I was content.
Eventually the occasion arose for me to vote for the first time in an Israeli election. The state kindly conducted two prior inconclusive elections in order to give me time to complete the citizenship process, which was truly a comedy of errors. At one point, to my wife’s horror, I offered to show physical evidence of my brit milah to the lady at misrad hapnim when she questioned my Rabbi-attested Judaism. Nevertheless, I both avoided arrest and eventually became a citizen and was prepared to cast my first ballot in my new (and eternal) homeland.
I have enjoyed the privilege of voting in elections for more than a half century. But this was different.
It is hard to describe my (totally unanticipated) feelings, emotions, pride, sense of fulfillment, satisfaction, appreciation, accomplishment, and awareness of destiny . . . but mostly, the gratitude. I stood there in the voting enclosure, absolutely overcome with a sense of indebtedness. To God, of course, who sustained me and brought me to that day. But that applies anywhere and everywhere. My overwhelming feeling of gratitude at that moment was directed more to those parents and children who struggled, in peace and war, to make this dream a reality, against all odds, against all........