Cyberthought by Rabbi Zelizer -- May 6, 2008

"The Price of Joy,"
by Rabbi Paul Friedman."

Dear Fellow Jew:

Walking through Hezekiah's Tunnel in the City of David, water sloshing beneath one's sneakers, a group of Israeli children behind, singing songs from the Pesach Haggada. In the mind, the soft breath of so brave, so scared Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, creeping through the sewers to bring food from Christian Warsaw.

In the skies of today's Jerusalem, Israeli planes rehearse for the fly-over on Thursday , Israel's sixtieth anniversary. In memory, 1968, Israel's twentieth anniversary; Israeli planes fly in a Magen David(Star of David ) formation over our liberated Old City: there is surely not a dry eye in the crowd .In the mind, a small English girl lies in a field, watching planes take off from an airfield in Eastern England in the 1940's to drop bombs on Nazi Germany.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, Yom HaZikaron,, Israel's Memorial Day, Thousands of Israeli families stand at the graves of their loved ones on Jerusalem's Har Herzl and around the country. Our family stands in Raanana where Major Benji Hillman ,killed in Lebanon in July2006 at the age of 26 ,newly married ,lies with so many of his school-mates and those from all of Israel's wars.

A difficult transition from this to celebrations around the country as smoke from thousands of mangals, barbecues, drift over our country, celebrating our sixtieth anniversary. For is a cruel reality: the price, it seems, to be paid .Unlike other lands, our freedom must be constantly re-purchased, reaffirmed, in Jerusalem, in Raanana, in Sderot, with our blood, with our tears, with our very lives.

The Haggada says it all: "in every generation, they rise up against us." And in every generation we grow stronger with the help of the Almighty, who, for all our weaknesses, has brought us back, a strong people in our own land.

The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Crusaders, the pogroms of Europe, the Spanish Inquisition. And so it goes on. And so do we!

And in the skies over our capital, Jerusalem, the flags wave .The planes fly over in proud formation. The Songs of the Hallel rise joyously in the synagogues. Come cry with us, come rejoice with us and give thanks with us.

The more they push us down, the stronger we grow.

At a terrible price, Benji Hillman, Dani Gomez, Michael Levine,. We go on and we do not forget.

In the skies over Ben Gurion Airport, planes land with olim from North America, from Europe ,from Ethiopia ,from South America and from the F.S.U..

And you? Hag Sameah from Jerusalem, from Raanana, from Sderot

Hag Sameah

Rabbi Paul and Nina Freedman,BR> 59 King George Street,BR> Jerusalem, Israel,BR> freedman@uscj.org,BR>