Dr. Ruth Westheimer AJC Ad "What Being Jewish Means to Me"


All grandparents feel an exceptional gleam when they see their grandkids. In any case, when I investigate the essences of my grandkids Ari and Leora, there is an additional justification behind my heart to cheer. I'm initially from Germany and lost my family in the Nazi dread, so I realize that Hitler made every effort to guarantee that these youngsters could never be conceived. But they are right here. They address for me little triumphs in the proceeding with battle against evil, particularly the evil of hostile to Semitism. Last week, while again watching Schindler's Rundown, I was struck by one reality in Steven Spielberg's postscript: The 1200 Jews saved by Oscar Schindler presently have in excess of 6000 youngsters and grandkids. Imagine a scenario where millions had been saved.


Each youngster naturally introduced to a Jewish family addresses a favored connection in the long chain of Jewish life extending back to Abraham and Sarah. The spirit is singed by the prospect of the ages that, on account of the Nazi Holocaust, won't be conceived.


The world can gain something important from the Jewish experience. We have been the objects of the most unreasonable type of human scorn — the endeavor to obliterate a whole group. However, we never allowed that scorn to figure out what our identity is or a big motivator for we. As Jews, we always remembered that we are called upon by our custom to fix the world by changing scorn into affection and by educating and working for equity and harmony.


At the point when I take a gander at my Ari and Leora, I realize that the Nazis couldn't achieve their preeminent objective. Indeed, they annihilated my family, including my darling guardians and grandparents, however they couldn't kill my will to live and give to my kids and grandkids my adoration for Judaism, Israel, and the Jewish public. As far as I might be concerned, the expression "Am Yisrael chai" — "The Jewish public lives" — holds unique significance.


What's more, for a Jewish group whose numbers were so destroyed, let people in the future satisfy the Scriptural edict — one Dr. Ruth particularly supports — "be productive and duplicate."