August 2009

Dear Friends:

As I begin this month’s column, I am seated comfortably beneath a clear nighttime sky, rich with shining stars, at a table outside my room at Kibbutz Ein Gedi's Guest House, just north of Masada.  Tomorrow, I will be blessed to awaken to the sun's glistening rise over the mountains known biblically as those of Ammon and Moab and today as the eastern border of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The enormous sense of privilege that I feel, being here in our Homeland together with a wonderful representation of our own Ner Tamid family, has grown evermore profound with every passing day of this journey, the first of two Ner Tamid trips to Israel this summer.

To those of you asleep in your rooms merely a few yards away, I thank you for joining me on our 2009 Adult Trip to Israel. I am grateful beyond measure for our time together and I will cherish always the extraordinary memories and the deepened friendships that we will now share forever. To those who will join me in just a few days for our 2009 Israel Family Adventure, the wonder of our People and our Homeland awaits you with open arms, as do I. To those of you who will not have enjoyed the opportunity to participate in person in either of our trips this summer, please know that all of us here are evermore, everyday of our journey, committed to sharing with our Ner Tamid family the miracle of this land and its people - our people - upon our return.

  The hour is late and I've received emails to which I must reply before I get to bed, and I still have my nightly email to Jacob to write, so I'll sign off for the night and continue at sunrise ...

... Boker Tov!  As I awakened this morning, I hurried outside to catch the sunrise that I witnessed for the first time, just miles from here, nearly thirty years ago.  I  was atop Masada - I had just run up the snake-path on a thirty minute jog.  I was seventeen years old. I wondered then as I wonder now, who stood here before me?  Who witnessed this sunrise two-thousand years ago?  What was her name?  Where was he headed?  What brought them here?  What led them to leave?   The stones beneath my feet and the velvet peaks and valleys behind me ... they will forever bear the imprint of the stories of Jews past who walked this land, and of my journeys here, and of yours. Our stories, as Abraham's and Sarah's, will be theirs to tell us in ways that we can only come to know as we walk this land, each of us and all of us together.

Today, our itinerary will take us on this final day of our Adult Trip to an Air Force base in the center of Israel where we will visit with some of the young men and women serving to defend Israel and keep it as safe as one could possibly ever imagine any place to be.  We will learn about their lives and their responsibilities, where they come from and where they are headed.  The young soldiers and their (also remarkably young) commanders who will host us are a true source of pride for all of us as Jews and they earn our deep respect with every moment of their noble service.

My friends, the miracle of modern Israel is unique; no other People has ever in the history of humanity returned to a land from which it had been exiled as autonomous residents 2,000 years earlier, to restore and rebirth itself. No other People has ever revived a spoken language that had remained dormant for nearly the same length of time.   And, as if these challenges weren't enough, the founders of this country proclaimed Jewish Statehood and developed marvels from drip-irrigation to the Intel microprocessor, first under the dark shadow of the then very recent memory of Holocaust's horrors and today while surrounded still by enemies who threaten Israel's existence daily.  It seems that God might well bless with every chance of success the good work that honest people with virtuous causes undertake, for nothing else can fully account for the miracle that is modern Israel!  And, indeed, this brings me to you, to my community and my family -- to the blessings that I bring here with me this morning to the foothills of Masada -- every bit as much as Masada urges me to bring its story back to you.  For our own community is inspired by the same resilient spirit and commitment to virtuous cause. It's so wonderful to bring you here with me this day ...

Good things do occur when good people strive together. The year we're about to conclude on the Jewish calendar, a calendar organized to begin and end upon the anniversary of God's creation of the world, is a year whose conclusion cannot come quickly enough for so many of us.  It's been a difficult year.  It's been a worrisome year. But, this is only the beginning of our story.

For it's also been a year in which we've responded to one another with decency and compassion despite our own anxieties.   It's been a year in which we've blessed one another with loving care and concern - and material assistance - as so many of us know, having been on both the giving and receiving ends of this sacred bond that is at the heart of every Jewish community. We’ve marked personal milestones together and we’ve inspired one another in the very same dignified manner with which so many of us have met one of the more difficult periods we’ve known. Just as the State of Israel has always done so, this year we have lived in real-time the Talmudic value-concept of Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh Ba'Zeh - each Jewish individual is every other Jew's responsibility. And, we’ve expanded this value meaningfully, within our community and beyond it, to include those of all faiths who might be in need.

None of us can be certain what the coming year will bring. However, here's what we do know.  We know that we have one another.  We know that there exists a community of Jews around the world that cares about us.  We know that none of us - not one of us - is alone.  Truly, we hold and sustain one another.

For this knowledge alone, we are blessed.  Whatever the challenges that lie ahead of us, they have been met before. Some of us have lived such triumphs.  And, as our brothers and sisters in Israel seem most often to find a way to do so, we will find our way to a better day, with God's blessings, as the New Year awaits its creation, by each of us and all of us -- together.

May God bless us all to always retain the love, care, and concern for one another that we lived in the year 5769, even as God blesses us with a year of health and plenty in 5770.

B'Shalom - With Blessings from Israel,

Rabbi Isaac Jeret
Spiritual Leader