TJS: S3E16 Israel at age ten

Generated automatically from the audio and lightly corrected. It may contain errors; the recording is the authority.

Where should I go? asked Alice. That depends on where you want to end up, replied the Chester Cat. Well, I'm never really quite sure where I'm going, and therefore, sometimes I end up in the strangest of places. Because I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 16, Israel at age 10. Now, maybe you have children who've recently turned 10 or are looking to, like me, or perhaps you still remember what it was like to hit double digits yourself. But either way, you know that it's a moment not to be missed. And we've made a lot of progress in our story since 1948. And in my eyes, really, some of the biggest moments are yet to come. So before we just plunge forward into the second half of our season, I really feel that this is an opportune moment to catch our breath and to check in.

And what better way to do that than with the first question? Or at least the first question that the Torah offers us. Do you know what it is? You can hit pause right now and wonder. But if you just want me to tell you, I'll tell you that that question is ayeka. It's the question that God asks Adam after he eats from the tree of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. And he's hiding in the garden. Ayeka. Adam, where are you at? It's not a geographic locator, because obviously that would be a silly thing for God to ask. He's asking Adam to own where he's at. And that's what I want to talk about right now. I want to talk about where we're at as a story and as a nation in 1958, more or less. And in order to do it, I want to return to the structure that I introduced way back in the prologue of this season.

And there, I said that during the course of this season, I wanted to look at three different frames, three dimensions, if you will, of the Jewish story. First, Israel among the nations. That's how we get along with the other peoples out there in the world. The second is the Jewish people as a whole, meaning not just what's happening in the land of Israel. I know that I tend to have the camera somewhat focused there in the last few episodes. But the Jewish people as a whole, Israel and the so-called diaspora. And finally, Amba Artzo, what's actually happened on the ground here in the land of Israel. And since we just finished a series of episodes on the Sinai campaign, I think it's worth it to start with Israel among the nations.

So way back when in the prologue, I made the assertion that the central question that lies between the state of Israel and the nations of the world is, did Zionism succeed in solving the Jewish problem? By recreating the Jews as Israelis, have we finally found a way to reconcile this, let's just call it complicated long-term relationship. Now, obviously, 10 years down the road is a little bit unfair to feel that we might have solved it. It's still an open question, but let's consider it nevertheless right now through the lens of the post-Sinai campaign glow. So what were the outcomes of this campaign? We just spent three episodes talking about it, and specifically, what kind of relationship emerged between Israel and the nations as a result?

So on one level, things are looking good. The military might that Israel displayed in the Sinai campaign clearly established the state as a reality that could not be erased in the minds of most world governments. The types of peace proposals that have been floating around since 1948, ones that involved, I don't know, dividing the Negev between Egypt and Jordan or internationalizing Jerusalem, in short, the proposals that were based on a sense that Israel's sovereignty was somehow contingent on international recognition, and that therefore the clock could be rolled back to a pre-independent state, that sort of no-consequence war that the Arab world has been pushing ever since, all those proposals disappeared once Israeli forces occupied Sharm el-Sheikh down at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula.

And yes, even though they were forced to withdraw immediately, nonetheless, the impact was already made. Israel as a state was a force to be reckoned with now not only in the region but in the Cold War as well and as we move out into the 60s we're going to see that that will give her a new model of international standing so one level it would appear at least at first glance that by bringing Israel a newfound international respect and establishing her as an incontrovertible fact on the world stage with her own platform that indeed the Sinai campaign, or not just the campaign, but that the whole Zionist project may indeed have solved the Jewish problem. We are here to stay in our own home, deal with us as we are.

And by the way, with all these benefits of the campaign, that's not to mention buying nearly a decade of peace with her Arab neighbors. But here's the trick. All this didn't come without a cause. Because in addition to being the first decade of Israel's existence, The 50s were the heyday of post-colonialism. The pre-World War II and even, frankly, immediately post-World War II world is falling apart. Countries are popping up throughout Asia and Africa claiming their independence. And at the same time, back in Europe, cultural leaders, really those of the former colonial powers, are beating their breasts with guilt. They're desperately looking for ways to wash the blood of hundreds of years of oppression from their hands.

And as we all know, there's nothing so useful for expiation as a scapegoat. Go look up Yom Kippur. Now, on one hand, Israel was well positioned to be an active participant in this wave of independence sweeping the globe. In 1958, the foreign ministry announced a new initiative. It was called Mashav, the Center for International Cooperation. And as Foreign Minister Golda Meir said to some of her new employees, It's the drive toward universal self-determination and international justice which lies at the heart of my socialist values. Indeed, my newly initiated African policy is a logical extension of the socialist principles in which I have always believed. And the second thing is, we Jews share with the African peoples a memory of centuries-long suffering.

For both Jews and Africans alike, such expressions as discrimination, oppression, slavery, these are not mere catchwords. They don't refer to experiences of hundreds of years ago. They refer to the torment and degradation we suffered yesterday and today. In a world divided by the haves and have-nots, Israel's nation-building experience is uniquely placed to lend a helping hand to the new African states. You know, it's very moving. And in fact, as she goes on to point out, it's reflective of even Herzl's vision of what the Jewish state could be. But this was more than Zionist idealism gone international. It's actually part of what was known as the alliance of the periphery, the brainchild of Reuben Shiloh, former head of the Mossad.

Because Shiloh believed in that old adage, my enemy's enemy is my friend. The basic idea was that Israel was surrounded. And if they were going to build political, military, and economic alliances, it would have to be by leapfrogging over the immediate circle of hostile Arab states surrounding her, and forming alliances with Iran, Turkey, Ethiopia, and other countries of that nature. I said those three because at the time they were his focus, because all those states feared both Soviet encroachment and Nasser's brand of Arab radicalism. Bottom line, despite its effort to be helpful, the Zionist leadership had never really seen the countries of the Middle East and Africa as its natural allies. Back in October of 1952, Ben-Gurion actually led a comprehensive review of Israeli-Arab relations in the Prime Minister's office.

In the course of the discussions, he repeated three times that although they were sitting in the Middle East, that was a result of a geographical accident. They were a European people. Quote, we have no connection with the Arabs, he said. Our regime, our culture, our relations are not the fruit of this region. There is no political affinity between us or international solidarity. Well, those are harsh words, but now, by allying itself with Britain and France in their attempt to maintain control of the Suez Canal, just as the world was starting to turn away from European dominance, we have to ask if Israel hadn't positioned itself on the wrong side of history, a position that no amount of international cooperation would really change.

You know, my good friend Yehudah Cohen likes to point out that the Sinai War began a process of placing the state of Israel in a role which is frighteningly similar to that which the Jew played in medieval Europe, positioned right between the powerful and the weak, the oppressor and the oppressed. Back in Poland, you can go back to season two if you want to listen up on the history, the wealthy landowners of Poland used the Jews as the managers of their estates to collect taxes and regulate the local economies of the peasants. And thus, they were seen as powerful oppressors by the poor and thus, of course, hated. But at the same time, lest you think the Jews were natural allies of the landowners, no, no, no.

The Polish landowners looked down on them for that middleman role. and they were more than willing to throw the Jew to the dogs by blaming them for the suffering of the peasants Blood Jewish managers is a great distraction from the actual power behind them And now here in the late 50s lo and behold the state of Israel is at risk of playing the same role in the Middle East As the former colonial powers are withdrawing their direct rule, don't think they're about to give up the power and wealth which the Middle East once brought them. Recall the words that we heard from the Soviet premier in his letter to Ben-Gurion, sent in the wake of the Sinai campaign. It's from last week's episode, or rather the last linear episode.

He said, carrying out the will of other people, acting according to instructions from abroad, the government of Israel is playing with the fate of peace, with the fate of its own people, in a criminal and irresponsible manner. It is sowing hatred for the state of Israel among the peoples of the East, which cannot but affect the future of Israel and which will place a question mark upon the very existence of Israel as a state. Unless you think that these are just empty words which will be overwhelmed by the goodwill generated from Israel's attempts at international cooperation, in 1975, less than 20 years after this episode takes place, the United Nations will vote to declare Zionism a racist endeavor.

So, Israel had won another round of conflict with its neighbors. But it's important to recognize that that conflict was somewhat short-lived. 1958 was a year of reorganization in the Middle East as a whole. In February, Egypt and Syria joined in a political military union known as the United Arab Republic. It was a big victory for Nasser, and a move hailed by Arab nationalists as the beginning of the unification of the Arabs from ocean to the Gulf. And you know what? It almost happened. Because in July of the same year, a group of Iraqi officers took power in Baghdad in a brutal military coup. They murdered King Faisal II and his Prime Minister Nuri al-Sayed and began talk about turning Iraq into a people's republic.

The sudden loss of a key British client in Baghdad threatened to change the strategic map of the entire Middle East. Remember, Iraq was a major oil producer and the linchpin of the anti-Soviet Baghdad pack. And when Lebanese Muslims began to push their government to join the UAR, it looked as if the whole system of Western control over the Middle East and its oil resources might just unravel overnight. And that's why 1958 was actually the first time America sent the Marines into the Middle East in order to shore up the Lebanese and Jordanian governments. I'm not going to detail right now what's called the crisis of 1958. If you're curious, you can look it up. My point is that for all its utility and supposed military might and reality on the international stage, stage, Israel was very pointedly left out of all the Western solutions to this crisis.

Not only left out, Britain and America actually violated her airspace without permission to ferry troops to Amman. And they weren't even apologetic about it, kind of like the noblemen didn't really care if the Jew got offended. So I think that we've said most of what we need to know about Israel amongst the nations at age 10. On one hand, a growing regional power with aspirations to share in the rising tide of world freedom and not just benefit on her own. Also, with a strategic dependence on the old colonial powers. And thus, in real danger of being caught in the middle of the old power dynamic, just like the Jew of old. So I'll leave it you to decide. Has Zionism solved the Jewish question? Next up, diaspora Jewry.

And the question that I posed in the prologue was, what does it mean to be a Jew once you can also be an Israeli? Meaning, what's life for the Jewish people outside of the state of Israel after 1948? How's it been for the last 10 years? You know, I've actually been called out by a number of you on my biases lately. Lovingly, mind you, and I appreciate it. in particular on the masculine tilt of my take on the his story of the Jewish story. And that being said, if you have stories of the women of Israel that you think would enrich and inform the Jewish story, please let me know. And another bias that I'm well aware of is toward American Jewry, not just because that's where I'm from, but also because at this point today, they're the vast majority of non-Israeli Jewry.

And I'm going to check in with American Jewry in a moment. But for now, I actually want to at least put a finger on another important element of diaspora Jewry, which has been there for quite some time and is beginning, if not to make its presence known, but to become a matter of concern in the first decade of Israel's existence. I'm speaking about the Jews of the USSR. The Soviet census of 1959 found 2,268,000 people who declared themselves to be of Jewish nationality. That's how the question was phrased, because it reflects the Russian and Soviet approach to treating other peoples as national minorities. And despite how high it sounds, the numbers actually assumed to be low. It wasn't so good to be a Jew at that point in the USSR, and many people likely lied.

Nonetheless, it still well surpasses the approximately 2 million Jews that lived in Israel at the time. It's not the time or place to go deep into the details of their lives. I'm probably going to wait until post-67 episodes to speak about the awakening of this downtrodden segment of world Jewry. And the struggle to liberate them is going to have to wait for another season altogether. I do, however, want to note two things which are really quite related. The first is their suffering. You know, Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist from the mid-20s all the way through 1953. He dies in early 54. And, though there's actually some academic debate on whether he was personally, technically an anti-Semite, everybody agrees he was not good news for the Jews.

The last gasp of his hatred came out in what's known as the Doctor's Plot. In 1953, a group of predominantly Jewish doctors from Moscow were accused of conspiring to assassinate a large portion of the Soviet leadership through poisoning. It was, according to the Communist Party publication Pravda, a vast plot conducted by Western imperialists and Zionists to kill the top Soviet political and military leadership. Once the plot was made known, even though it had been under investigation or construction for years, the Soviet media began to thump the drums. a vehement campaign against the supposed fifth column within the USSR, constant references to Jews, Jews being arrested, Jews being dismissed from their jobs, and even Jews being executed.

It seems from a lot of historical evidence that a large-scale purge was in the work, and there may have even been plans for mass deportations of Jews from major Russian cities. Certainly, the doctors' arrests themselves would have met an evil fate, But fortunately for them, Stalin died before they could ever come to trial. Not only that, a month after his death, the Soviet authorities actually declared the plot had been a fiction all along and released them. Now this is just one example, dramatic though it may be, of what life was like for Soviet junery. But their story is more than one of simple oppression. That leads us to the second point. Note the characterization that Pravda gave the plot. a vast plot conducted by Western imperialists and Zionists.

Zionists, not Jews. Now we saw in the lead-up to the Sinai War that as the 1950s progressed, what had begun as actually quite warm relations, and at least even though it had cooled, had remained decent political relationship between Israel and the Soviet Union, had become one of conflict. Basically, as Ben-Gurion chose the West in the Cold War, the USSR backed the Arabs, and especially Nasser. And the official position of the Soviet Union now became Zionism was a tool used by the Jews and Americans for racist imperialism. And that matters down to this very day because it was the Soviet Union that pioneered this blurring of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, which is such a plague to our world right now.

They systematically avoided the word Jew when they would criticize what they called the fascist acts of the racist Zionist state. I'll say it again, because that's a quote from the 1950s, but it could have been said on the streets of Berkeley today, the fascist acts of the racist Zionist state. But though they were condemning the Zionists, nevertheless, at the same time, it was the Soviet Jews who were being accused of being traitors and Western sympathizers. And it was the synagogues and Jewish organizations which the communist leadership closed down under the accusation that they were a source of Zionism as an ideological enemy. They even would place shuls under police surveillance. What does that have to do with Zionism?

I don't know really, but it may sound quite familiar. This blurring of the Jew and the Zionists has its origin in Soviet propaganda and it's still alive and well with us today. So how do you think that Soviet Jewry would answer our opening question What does it mean to be a Jew once you can already be an Israeli Well the only thing I can say is they probably say halavai Oh that it were that I could be an Israeli. It's very hard to be a Jew still in the Soviet Union. And the dream of escape to Zion is still quite far away. So what about American Jewry? And we have to ask the same question, What does it mean to be an American Jew once you can also be an Israeli? Well, on one level, it's the exact opposite of their brothers in Russia.

It's not hard to be a Jew in the United States in 1958. Not at all. Well, I shouldn't say not at all, but certainly not compared to the Soviet Union. Go back to episodes 9, 10, 11 of this season, and you can get a full picture of what's called the golden decade. But for right now, just hear some numbers. In 1957, the United States Census found that 96% of all Jews lived in cities or city suburbs. And of them, 87% in cities of 250,000 or more, which was quite large in the 50s. And for the population at large, just to give you a comparison, meaning the non-Jewish, it was only 33% living in the cities. Now, urbanization is the driving momentum of American culture at this point, which means the Jews are at the forefront of not just the flight to the suburbs, but of the cultural momentum.

Of those Jews, 69% are living in the Northeast, 40% to 45% in New York City alone. And it's not just about urbanization. It's also about being on the cutting edge of the shift in the American economy. This is the period at which the majority of Americans go from working in agriculture to industry. But the Jews are already post-industrial. They're deep in the white-collar, suburban, professional and service life. And the future's looking bright. Two-thirds of college-aged children, of Jews, that is, are actually receiving a college education by 1959. And as we discussed elsewhere, though American Jews are steadily less religious in their practice, religious identity has almost entirely replaced ethnic and the national cultural models.

Two-thirds of American Jews are associated with the congregation at this point. And it's a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but that quintessentially American brand of Judaism, non-practicing orthodoxy, is actually flourishing. At some point, we're going to have to tell the story of American orthodoxy sooner or later. Okay, so perhaps most importantly, this is the point at which three-quarters of American Jews are now native-born. The immigrant's story may be a source of pride, it may be nostalgic longing, but it's no longer a defining experience. And I hate to be overly dramatic, but there's a danger that all these numbers add up to. And I think the best way to express it is to get biblical for a moment.

Here's a quote from Davarim chapter 8. When you've eaten your fill and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware, lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God. Now, it's a little bit outside of our 10-year review, but in 1966, journalist Alan C. Brownfield published an article entitled The Vanishing Jew. It's worthwhile to read it on your own, but for now, I just want to touch on one of its central points, and that is, it might just be that the freedom and democracy of America is good for people in general, but it's bad for the Jews. Because despite the prosperity that I just detailed, The dirty secret of American Jewry in the 1950s was the almost complete failure of Jewish education.

And if you don't educate your children, no matter how prosperous you're present, your future is going to be one of poverty. If not material, then at least cultural. In 1959, only 8% of Jewish children were enrolled in a Jewish secondary school. And you might think, hey, but primary education is really the base of identity. Even in the primary schools, only 11 out of 100 kids were in classes above grade 4. That means the vast majority of American Jews were only getting a kindergarten through third grade education. Now, according to the 1957 census, the first, by the way, in six decades that actually included a question on religion, Jews made up about 3.2% of Americans ages 14 or older. That was about 3.9 million people.

That's twice as many Jews as there are in the state of Israel. But only 300,000 of them are getting even a high school level Jewish education. The Vanishing Jew is part of a small chorus of voices that existed in the late 50s and early 60s that were sounding the alarm that American Jewry is actually doomed by prosperity to complete assimilation. But those secular voices of doom were far from the whole story when people looked at American Jewry. on the horizon was the rising central role that Israel education was going to play in maintaining the connection between young Jews and their cultures. In the 50s, Zionism was the given in American Jewish life, no longer the source of controversy it had once been, certainly after the Sinai War.

And much of the institutional fundraising, which was the backbone and even sometimes the lifeblood of American organized Jewish life, was centered around the issue of Israel. Israel-American cooperation was already a center point of education in the 50s, and just you wait until the explosion of pride and wonder that sweeps American Jewry in 1967. In many ways, one could say that the Jew doesn't vanish because Israel actually becomes his anchor. Not to move there, but to feel a sense of pride and identity associated with the reality gained by the very hard labors of the people in the country. Now, there's another side to this story, because Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known universally as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, was chosen as leader of the Chabad Lubavitch movement in 1950 after the death of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson.

And this is what the Rebbe had to say about the situation of American Jews in 1958. American youth is like unsewn land waiting to be work. The youth can be compared to a blank piece of paper. In short, the Rebbe did not look at America as a bunch of vanishing Jews. He saw 20th century American Jewish soul as ripe and open to Judaism in an unprecedented way. And while the Rebbe recognized the great miracle of Israel's rebirth, he also said the following, the Jews in America need to recognize the historical divine mission that God placed in their hands at a time when the Jewish nation is fighting for its survival. The greatest concentration of the best of Jewry is in America. Thus, we need to lead the smaller Jewish communities in other countries and continents, even in the land of Israel, which needs to lean on America for economic and spiritual help.

So these were the Rebbe's words in 1958, 10 years after the Declaration of Independence. He saw the American Jewish soul as a blank page on which could be written, while the cultural critics saw it as a blank page on which nothing was written. And I'll leave it to you now. Look at your own education, those of your children and those around you, 60 years later, to decide which educational path is right. And because of that, what does it mean to be a Jew when you could also be an Israeli? Last, but certainly not least, I want to revisit the question of Amba Artzo, the people in its land. And the way I phrased the question in the prologue was, what does it mean to be an Israeli if you're not a Jew? Now, there's obviously quite a bit more to the question of what it means to be a people in its land than how it treats its minorities.

Nevertheless, the state of the vulnerable elements in society is always an important indicator of where we're at as a whole. And since, in general, we've been very focused in-country for most of this season, and will continue to be going forward, trust me, I'm not going to give you a comprehensive picture of what's happening in Israel at the age of 10. I will say that there is a tremendous amount to give thanks for. Like I said, the Sinai campaign brought Israel 10 years of relative quiet that allowed for vital development. In 58, Israel's population crossed the 2 million mark. That's nearly three and a half times what it was 10 years ago at independence. And there's an economy that can support these people, employ them.

There's a military which can defend them. There are politicians and a thriving political system which can lead them. Healthcare, education, transportation are all growing at an astounding rate. And specifically because things are so good, I want to share a difficult story. A difficult one, but with a critical moral. And the truth is, the 50s were a rough time in the state of Israel. I could choose from a number of painful stories to tell at this point. In specific, the relationship between the Jews and the Arabs of the state of Israel is at a low point in the late 50s. I might do an episode on the Kfar Kassem massacre. Maybe not. I'm not sure that it deserves it a whole... I shouldn't say it deserves, that it's going to find its place with a whole episode within the Jewish story But I encourage you to look it up the Far Qasem Massacre the stain on the history of Israel from 1956 But for now because this is the Jewish story and because of an experience that I had quite recently I want to share a tale about the state of the Middle Eastern Jews, and what was happening for them when Israel reached age 10.

You will recall, I hope, from some of the earlier episodes, that the mass immigration of the Jews of North Africa, the Middle East, into the land of Israel, the state of Israel, was fraught with many challenges. Economic, military, social, racial, cultural. Not a simple process. Well, over Holmway and on the intermediate days of the Sukkot Festival, I had the great merit to sit for many hours in the Sukkah of a friend. His name is Yosef. We'll leave it at that. Yosef and his wife were kicked out of Gush Katif when our government, in its wisdom, decided that Jews didn't belong there any longer. And you wouldn't believe it, but Yosef has one of the most incredible outlooks on life. Very difficult. They live in extreme poverty and basically always have.

I'll give you this back story in a minute, but when I asked him, Yosef, how's life? He said, how's life? Good. And I said, really? What's good about it? And he looked me in the eye and he said, if you look at life as good, that's how it is. So this is Yosef's story. Yosef was actually born in 1951 in the Mabarot, in the transit camps that we spoke about, these sort of camps that were built to absorb the immigrants, many of which became cities in their own right. And from the day of his birth, he was bound up with the difficult controversies of the 1950s in Israel because he was the youngest of a number of children. The brother immediately before him had died in birth. And when his mother gave birth to him in the hospital, she was told that Yosef had died as well.

But the family refused to accept it. They demanded to see the infant. And lo and behold, he was brought back alive. But not soon enough. His mother had already broken her heart from grief. And she was unable to serve as a mother for him. So therefore, from birth through age three, Yosef was taken to an orphanage in the city of Tel Aviv by the all-powerful Israeli government, which felt at that time that human fodder should be placed where it would serve the state best. So in age three, he was taken from the orphanage and sent to a foster home, a couple that he characterized as saddikim, truly righteous, for two years, who reconnected him to his religion. And then at age five, he was sent to a kfar noah, to a youth village, at a kibbutz right outside of Jerusalem.

And this is where the story really begins. Because there, on the kfar noah, in the kibbutz, he worked in the rapid. He worked in the cattle yard, I guess you would call it. And his supervisor was a German survivor of the Holocaust. Now, this man took out his wrath on Yosef every single day. Yosef told me from age five until he was released at the army at age 21, that he was subject to terrible beatings at this man's hands. He basically said that he took out the Holocaust on me. and he remembered that the last four numbers on his arms were 0, 7, 4, 8 and he said whatever the first numbers were belonged to him, the last four I got. Now, that would be grim enough as it was and at a certain point, Yosef demanded that he be given an education.

He wasn't interested in working with cattle his whole life and after pushing and pulling and fighting with the social worker, he indeed was placed in a group home in Tel Aviv where he'd go to school but it turned out that the group home was such a violent, dangerous environment that he told me he moved to the place where the bus drivers were parked their buses at night, where he lived for four years, supporting himself, living between the buses at night, winter, spring, summer, and fall, until he paid his way through high school and got a high school education, after which he was promptly drafted, went into the army and served in the Yom Kippur War as a military driver on the Golan, and eventually went on with his life.

Now, on one level, that's the story of Israel at 1958. there is a split society developing and it's got a number of levels there is an economic elite established and thriving ruling in the politics there is a Jewish economic underclass, I hate to be too Marxist about it, I don't want to generalize but it's a reality, culturally and economically the Jews of the Middle East at this point are missing out they are the have nots of Israeli society and if that's the case, then you can only imagine where the Arab population are I mentioned that Kfar Kassam massacre, more than 40 people were killed for violating a military curfew of which they had no information. But Yosef's story is not over. I told you there's an important moral.

So he told me much later when he was a truck driver in 1995. He's an older man. He's a truck driver. He's making a delivery. And lo and behold, he has to make a delivery to the kibbutz where he was raised. And I said to him, was it difficult to drive? And he said, no, come on. I was much older. and, you know, the memory works funny and you remember the good times. You say he pulled in and he's just looking around. It was like nostalgic where he grew up and you see this and you see that. So he goes and he parks his truck and he starts to unload and it's a happening in a quiet couple. That's when a truck pulls up and starts to unload. And there was a woman in her 50s wheeling a very elderly man in a wheelchair who stopped to watch.

So as Yost is working, he just glances. He doesn't think much and then he looks again and he thinks he recognizes this old man in the chair. and because his sleeves are rolled up he sees he has a number on his arm and lo and behold the last four numbers are 0, 7, 4, 8 it was his cruel taskmaster from the Rephet and Yosef looked at this woman who turned out to be his daughter looked her in the eye and said I want you to know is this your father? she said yes he said your father is an evil man you can imagine that this didn't go well she said my father was a survivor of the Holocaust Plus, he said your father was a survivor of the Holocaust. So was I. He had his Holocaust, and he gave it to me. Now, those words may not land so well with you.

But I want you to understand that when unfolded, was that Yosef progressively proved, he asked, who's the oldest person here? 75-year-old man stepped forward, and he started to say, this man here in the wheelchair, he worked in the refit, right? Yeah, he did. And he was also on the committee of the kibbutz. Oh, he was. And you, he started to remember, you, you 75-year-old person, you used to deliver the mail. At this point, everyone realized that this wasn't just some angry, farty truck driver trying to make trouble with the Ashkenazim, but it was rather a deep memory of a shared culture coming to the surface. In the end, I'd love to tell you that they fell into each other's arms and wept and apologized, but that's not what this story is about.

He told me that the old man actually was beyond communication and probably didn't know what was going on. But this story about is two things. Because here we are, I know, we started off with checking into Israel at age 10, But every check-in is an opportunity not just to look backwards, but to look forwards as well. What are the lessons that we can take by looking at our life up until now? And this is the lesson I took from Yosef. There's two things. First of all, the truth must be told. If there's going to be any healing in our world, whether it's between Jew and Jew, Jew and Arab, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, between husband and wife and parent and child, there are certain things that simply must be put on the table.

at the same time, and this is what was so profound to me, Yosef's whole point was, everything comes from God. And it is good. But not in some fairytale sense. I'm telling you, I'm sitting there talking to this man who's lived in poverty his whole life, who suffered through his youth, as I just described, and then, when he finally had made it, was kicked out of his house by his very own government. And yet, he refused to be bitter, because the reality is when one knows that it all comes from one source, it doesn't mean everything is good, it's all easy, it's all happy, it's cheery, but things are as they ought to be so long as we receive them in that fashion. And then we can find within ourselves the power not just to say what needs to be said, but to do what needs to be done.

So here we are. That's kind of my closing moral. I'm curious to hear what you have to say about it. Feel free to shoot me some feedback. but that's what I would like to say at the end of this 10 year review here are a few of the things that have been said and done now the question is from 1958 moving forward what are we going to do with it I'd just like to thank a few people I want to thank all the folks who give their hard-earned money to help make this show possible to keep it free and widely distributed and I want to ask you to join them you can go right now to my website jewishstory.co and in the upper right hand corner you'll see a button that says be a patron you can click on through for a little bit of her podcast support.

If that's more than you're looking for, you can also sponsor a show in honor of someone with you today or someone in memory of someone who's already left. And if you want to do that, send me an email at robmikefoyer at gmail.com or you can send me a personal message on Facebook, Rav Mike Foyer on Facebook, and I'm happy to send you back the details. I also want to thank the Land of Israel Network. That's thelandofisrael.com for creating a platform that allows me to reach so many amazing people. I want to thank the Pardes Institute, p-a-r-d-e-s dot org dot i-l for building an educational institution that gives me the privilege of teaching so many wonderful Jews. I want to thank you for listening. I'm Rav Mike Boyer, and this is The Jewish Story.