Over the last month, I spent almost the entire four weeks away from home. First, I was privileged to bring a group of our Federation Allocations Committee members - for the first time in over ten years - to meet with nine vital organizations in Israel to help us determine how the Federation can best deploy the Israel portion of campaign dollars over the next several years. Following that, as you will have seen in this newsletter in November, we gathered twenty two participants for our long-anticipated and highly successful Rockland Unity Mission in Israel. For almost that entire time, I was based in Jerusalem, the eternal, undivided capital of Israel and the Jewish people.
Immediately upon my return - indeed within hours of landing back at Newark - I was headed to our capital Washington DC to participate with thousands of Jewish professional and lay leaders - including a number from Rockland - at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA). Accessing critical resources for our community, helping our national leadership in facilitating our collective goals of rebuilding Israel and safeguarding the Jewish people while fostering a revitalization of Jewish identity right here in the US, and sharing best practices with peers and colleagues filled a very busy three days.
After a couple of days back in the office (in truth, these days your office can follow you wherever you go, Jerusalem and Washington being no exceptions) I took off with my wife for a long anticipated and much needed vacation in Rome. Though I have had a fascination with history since I was old enough to read, I had surprisingly not yet been to such a vitally important center of world history.
Each of these experiences made a deep and lasting impression on me.
Rome
It is impossible to overstate the magnificence that is Rome. The architectural perfection of St Peter’s Square, or the massive ancient dome of the Parthenon; The Berninis, Caravaggios, Michelangelos and Raphaels adorning its chiesas and basilicas; the Egyptian obelisks scattered throughout piazzas across the city like Cleopatra's party favors; the monuments, temples, mausoleums, baths, gates, walls and gardens; the villas and palazzos filled with priceless art; the Colosseum, and the nearby, wholly evil, Arch of Titus. Though I was already thoroughly familiar with what it represented, I felt myself uttering a feral growl at the sight of its carvings showing the Menorah being pillaged from the Temple in Jerusalem.
Indeed Rome is magnificent, whether the remains of a globe-straddling empire, built upon conquest, pillage, rape, enslavement, murder and destruction such as we Jews are all too familiar with, or the material trappings of the globe-spanning church that placed the gold it despoiled from the Incas, Aztecs and other indigenous peoples on the adornments of its holiest shrines in Rome. It is simply impossible to hold back amazement or deny beauty, but it is only truly honest to bear witness to where all of that magnificence came from, and what the cost was, measured in treasure and blood, even if, as in the case of the post-Vatican-II church, it has taken some steps to redress.
I found, however, that the people of Rome whom I encountered and spoke with, for the most part acknowledge all of this - albeit without much sense of responsibility to repair, like one finds in modern day Germany - and there is even a ‘proud’ possessiveness about the small, ancient Jewish community. The anti-Zionist graffiti, demonstrations, and rhetoric I expected to see were fewer, rarer, even muted. Like its art, or its fascinating but hard to navigate street grid, Rome is frustratingly complex.
I left the city glad that I had come but more aware than ever of the source and the cost of the trappings of dominion and empire.
Washington DC
The few days I spent in Washington this time were focused on people. Our people, in America, in the DIaspora, and in Israel. And Washington people, speakers like Senators John Fetterman and Ted Cruz. Washington has been the hub within which work, compromise and constructive dialogue have made the changes which radiate from the center outward. As JFNA transitioned from an emergency campaign which raised $908 million for Israel, and tens of millions more to fund a new security infrastructure, into a clearing-house for rebuilding lives and homes in Israel, sustaining a surge in Jewish life here in the US, and maintaining a strong secure, influential place in American life, no other place seemed as appropriate for these discussions and decisions.
Forged in revolution, born of a new republic, burned down and besieged in the past, geometric and as precisely planned as its Masonic architects could make it, Washington, to me, seems the antithesis of empire, even as it is the seat of the most powerful government on earth.
Jerusalem
The last time I was in Jerusalem was late October, 2023. The city was empty, almost silent. The country was still reeling, not yet over the immediate shock of 10/7, but coming to grips with the horrible cost. A walk one night in Machne Yehuda market had me observe that one could have fired a cannonball down the center of the main alley and not hit a single person or thing.
This time, as I walked through the crowded market one night, I turned a corner to see and hear hundreds of young people - many of them recently released from battle - singing and celebrating life. The words? “Hashem Yitbarach tamid ohev oti, vetamid yihyeh li rak tov!” ‘The blessed Almighty loves me always, and will always give us an abundance of good!’
The contrast couldn't have been more clear. “Me’evel l’yom tov” ‘From mourning to festival’. And where, where were these joyful people, so recently mourning, fighting, saving, sacrificing? In our eternal city. The one whose tumbled stones - tumbled by the very same Romans - I saw on our mission’s first night at the Temple Mount. And who was I privileged to share these experiences with? With the wonderful women and men from Rockland who joined me in Israel on this mission.
Jerusalem’s captive sons by their tens of thousands may have built the Colosseum in Rome, but Vespasian’s ‘legionaries’ are trinkets you buy in a souvenir shop, while Judea’s heroes save their people right now, today. Titus’ arch is a memory of a victory so thoroughly reversed that Judea’s daughters (like my own) come to wave our blue and white flag in front of its silent facade. Hadrian's huge tomb once dominated the banks of the Tiber, but now it’s buried beneath an ill-placed castle, defending nothing, with a cappuccino bar above the empty place his earthly remains once resided.
And in our eternal city, part of the largest construction boom in Israel’s history, Jerusalem is growing every day. Jerusalem, our Jerusalem, like our people, rises like a lion.