“Am Yisrael Chai...The People of Israel Lives! Lessons from Our Past, Our Present, our Future”

   You can imagine that Kristallnacht means a lot to me, both professionally and personally. My father was arrested on the night of November 9 and 10 and taken to Dachau. Thankfully it was what might call a “perfect storm” that not only allowed him to leave Dachau vertically but also to survive his next odyssey when he fought the sworn enemy of our people in Europe as a US soldier. Once it was all over, we thought it was, well, all over. Today we are learning that it is not.

  We didn’t fool ourselves in thinking the world would be safe for Jews ad olam, forever and ever, but for seventy-five years we saw relative peace allowing us to grow not only in number, but also in influence. Our presence is felt in the halls of Congress; in the non-political arena we have numerous gifted members-of-the-tribe who have made us proud, with a few rotten potatoes along the way (to be expected); and a Jewish State that promises refuge if, God-forbid, we need a safe haven, in addition to her unparalleled advances in so many spheres of science, medicine and technology.

  When we hear about the terrible shooting in the Vienna synagogue added to the acts of violence against our People these past number of years, we realize that things aren’t going as well as we would like, perhaps an understatement. Even in Philadelphia, the BLM protests took on an anti-Semitic twist when some Jews who wanted to join them were physically confronted by those who said in a nutshell, “Get out of here; this isn’t your holocaust, it’s ours!” 

  What kind of garbage is that?

  It’s just one more indication that lots of work has to be done on all fronts to clean up the divisiveness not just emerging in the past four years, but present for years and years, just seething under the surface. Ironically all those achievements I mentioned above can bite us as they have in left-wing and right-wing vitriol. But if I’ve learned anything across the years…from my father’s survival to the general standing we have, from the achievements of the State of Israel to the strength of our secular and religious organizations…it’s been that ours is a proud people who cannot cower in the face of ignorant prejudice as we have not cowered in the past. 

Am Yisrael chai! The People of Israel lives!