Identity & Faith
Monday, April 05, 2010
From the JPost's most recent interview with Natan Sharansky:
I was speaking just a few days ago to a group of Americans, all religious, who made aliya in the last year. They asked me, how is it that you, who made such a difficult aliya and fought to come for so many years, are now shifting from a focus on aliya to Jewish identity.
I told them, “You know what, you know that the Kadosh baruch hu [God] gave the order – ‘lech lecha [Go].’” If there are Jews who don’t want to hear the voice of God, do you think that they will hear a shaliah [emissary] from the Jewish Agency telling them to make aliya?
It’s impossible to force our emissaries to compete with God and try to shout even louder than Him to make the message heard. You can’t be louder than God.
So what we have to do is help the Jews hear the voice of God. And how do we do that? By strengthening their feeling of Jewish connection, of Jewish pride and tradition, and their connection to Israel. That’s our function. Our function is not to impose on them what God doesn’t succeed in imposing, but to make them hear the voice.
Labels: Israel, Jewish, Jewishness, Judaism, Passover, Sharansky
posted by Shoshana @ 5:33 PM
