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By Reuven Koret October 1, 2006
When I grew up in Brighton, New York, a suburb of Rochester, you knew it was Young Kipper (how I remember calling the holiday) because there were policemen directing traffic into the Temple.
Nowadays, I usually observe Yom Kippur in Israel's secular capital, Tel Aviv, where traffic and business-as-usually dwindles in the hours approaching the fast day and stops altogether after sundown. Families walk together in the middle of the street and children ride their bikes on the main thoroughfares.
There is a quiet in the air, a human hum, a pause in incessant intensity of the city and the nation, as our thoughts turn inward, and the Jewish people tries to return to itself.
I have been critical about my country's leadership, this year and the year before that, as they led the nation, with corruption, deception and weakness, to defeat after defeat. The Augean stables have yet to be cleaned, and there is no certainty that it will ever be.
But despite my displeasure with our politicians, there is something strong and wonderful and resilient about our nation, to which I returned last night after a few days in the carefree, friendly and altogether pleasant city of Amsterdam.
Israel has its faults, but it also has its brilliance, and nowhere does that brilliance shine then on this white and quiet day, The Day of Atonement and also Lottery Day, where the fate of each Jew is, according to tradition, decided. Who will succeed, and who will fail; who will live, and who will die.
Believe it or not, that is the Jewish tradition. In Europe, The Graveyard of the Jewish People, where synagogues are defended by machine-toting gendarmes and swastika adorn the Jewish Monuments, where most Jews have disappeared and synagogues are empty or converted, that tradition is dying. I visited the Anne Frank house: what a bitter contrast to the delightful city that greets us today.
Europe is on the verge of being Islamified. Admirers of the Nazis are again rising to power. Jews are again on the run.
Little Israel is vulnerable. Little Israel is poorly led.
But on this day, I have love and hope for the Land of Israel and its People. May the coming year be a good one of our nation, and may the hand of the Almighty strength our weak leaders -- or replace them! -- so we may do what must be done. May we live, and thrive, and show the world that the promise of two thousand years -- the rebirth of the Jewish nation in its homeland -- was not for naught.
In our darkest days, whether during the destruction of our Temple in Jerusalem or during the darkness of the European Shoah, we never lost hope or the will to carry on our tradition. This year cops will still direct traffic in Brighton, and protect the remaining synagogues of Europe.
But in Tel Aviv our children will play safely in the middle of the street, and we will walk to our synagogues without need for direction or protection, except for that offered by the Author of our History, and our Future. May we merit that shelter in the year and years to come.
If I have done anything to offend you, dear readers, please forgive me. I will try to do better next year, b'li neder!
Gmar hatima tova. May we be inscribed and sealed for good in the Book of Life.
Reuven Koret
Publisher
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