The Collective Jew

I keep trying to make this point to show what I believe is the unique Israel. In the last few weeks, three incidents have happened that once again reinforce what I have known all my life. Am I wrong to believe there is no other country in the world that would do these things? 

Here’s the first amazing story:

A young cancer patient on the way to the US with a bunch of other sick kids can’t find her passport. 

With no other choice, the young girl was removed from the plane and the plane prepared to depart after a fruitless search on the plane, in the airport, everywhere. Minutes before takeoff, while the plane was taxiing to the runway, they found the passport in another child’s backpack.

Too late, no? The stewardess told the pilot – the pilot radioed the tower and was given permission to turn back. The story appears here.

As the child cried, so too did people on the plane – and the stewardesses, and people on the ground. Amazing.

And the second story…

David Finti is 19 years old. He is a Romanian Jew. While boarding a train, David was electrocuted and severely burned. The local Jewish community contacted the Jewish Agency. They recognize the collectivism of our people just as on the Israeli side it was recognized as well. And so, Israel flew the young man to Israel, making him an Israeli citizen so that he could get critical care free of charge. David and his parents were flown to Israel and are now at Hadassah’s Ein Kerem hospital. The story appears here.  

Yet another story in the last few days has come to light. Israel recently managed to bring in another 17 Yemenite Jews – leaving 90 left.What amazes me is that we were able to bring another group here to Israel and more, that we know how many remain. We are watching, waiting, hoping to bring the last remnants of what was once a great community here to Israel.

It is what we do. Three stories of how Israel watches, Israel waits, Israel acts.

2 Comments

  1. One may be rightly furious at the Stupid Jews who run Israel’s government and despair.

    But then you see the other side of the picture about Israel related here in these kinds of stories and you begin to smile and have uplifting thoughts – at what Israel will do to save Jews! And the Jews who do these kind of meritorious deeds ARE the country’s true future.

    Who will be around along after the people who head Israel’s government are history. Israel is an island of humanity and compassion in a vast expanse of savagery, cruelty and mass murder called the Middle East.

    While we condemn the sin (in the unjustified of killers of Jews from prison) we also see that its balanced out by good deeds – all of Israel needs more of to regain its moral compass and find its way forward again! G-d bless Israel and its beautiful people!

  2. There are several words for man in Torah/Tanach, Enosh, Ish, Gever, Briah too, and Adam. The last one usually refers to, and connotes, Jews. It’s the only one of them that cannot be put into the plural form. The reason you here allude to. We are all one people. When a Jew, such as Pollard, sits incarcerated in America, every Jew the world over feels the pain. Put a Gentile in prison and no Gentile except his closest relatives will care. This was, by the way, one of the arguments that won the case for the French Jew on trial – Dreyfus, I think, made by one of his counselors.

    Someone once asked the Rebbe why we should be concerned to reach out to other Jews who are of the Torah-path. The Rebbe answered, “When the left hand suffers an itch, the right hand wants very much to relieve it.”

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