Soccer Dad

The Jewish Homeland

The New York Times has run a couple of interesting articles on how Israel serves as the Jewish homeland. In "Apart for Decades, Found in Their Own Backyard" the Times tells of the reunion of a brother and sister who had been separated by the Holocaust 66 years ago.

Somebody — it was Mr. Shilom's great-nephew, though he did not know he had a great-nephew — asked Mr. Shilom if his name was Shlomowicz.

"No," Mr. Shilom replied, a bit hastily, since Shlomowicz had been his name until he changed it years ago when he came to Israel.

"Do you have a sister named Rozia?" the caller persisted.

"Yes," said Mr. Shilom, and felt a little shiver of anticipation, though his first thought was a dark one. He feared that this unexpected caller was going to tell him what he had long ago assumed — that his little sister, Rozia, whom he had last seen in 1937 when she was 6 or 7 and he was 10 or 11 (their memories are a little hazy), had been murdered in the Holocaust.

"Would you like to talk to her?" Mr. Shilom's great-nephew, Nir Silberberg, asked.

That was Friday. The next day, for the first time in almost 67 years, Mr. Shilom, 77, was reunited with Rozia November, née Shlomowicz, 73.

Survivors of the Nazi destruction found each other in Israel.

A slightly different article appeared a few days ago telling of the Bnai Menashe in Israel who came from the country, India, "'Lost Tribe' Finds Itself on Front Lines of Mideast Conflict."

The tone of this article is slightly more ambiguous and introduces plenty of doubts into the claims of the Bnai Menashe. Still it shows, even inadvertantly, that Jews who have no other home, have Israel. As much as the Times doesn't want to admit it, the idea of Israel having historical ties to the Jewish people is an anathema to the Arab/Muslim world. These people by their ties to Israel show that the history is real despite the denials of Palestinians. Unfortunately, Peace Now helps in that denial.

But Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements, says the recruitment of far-flung groups with questionable Jewish ancestry is part of an effort to raise the number of settlers and to increase the Jewish population relative to the Arabs.

"This definitely contradicts the spirit, if not the letter" of the peace plan, "because these people will live in the settlements," said Dror Etkes, a Peace Now spokesman.

Actually it is a realization of the Zionist dream.
Crossposted on Bsurot and Soccer Dad

Posted by SoccerDad at December 23, 2003 1:56 PM