On a more positive note, here is and excerpt from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s speech he gave in 2013 to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference, in which he reminded the audience that “Israel is the greatest collective affirmation of life in the whole of Jewish history.”
“How probable is it that the universe should exist? How probable is it that life should exist? How probable is it that out of all the 3 million life-forms on planet Earth, only one—us—is capable of asking the question: Why? Nothing interesting is remotely probable.
“Think about the Jewish people. How probable is it that one man—Abraham, who commanded no empire and ordered no army, performed no miracle, delivered no prophecy—should today without doubt be the most influential man who ever lived, who’s claimed as the spiritual ancestor by 2.4 billion Christians, 1.6 billion Muslims, and most of you in the room today?
“How probable is it that this tiny people—the Jewish people—numbering less than one-fifth of 1 percent of the population of the world, should have outlived the world’s greatest empires. . . How likely is it that, after 2,000 years of exile, our people should have come back to our land and there—having stood eyeball to eyeball with the angel of death in Auschwitz a mere three years earlier in 1948—said, despite the worst crime of man against man, lo amut kiechyeh. I will not die but I will live.
“Israel is the greatest collective affirmation of life in the whole of Jewish history.
“Friends, Judaism is the defeat of probability by the power of possibility. And nowhere will you see the power of possibility more than in the State of Israel today.”
Amen, and RIP Rabbi Sacks.
Brad out.
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