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September 24, 1999/14 Tishri 5760, Vol. 52, No.4
Times call for out-front Judaism
AARON COHEN
JUF News
Saying afternoon prayers with a group of fellow travelers in the Salt Lake City airport several weeks ago was a first for me.
Not the first time I've been called to join a minyan (prayer group of at least 10), but the first time in an airport. Prayer on the fly, you might call it, although truth to tell, when I fly I exceed my daily quota of Shema Yisraels by a factor of two, once when walking down the gangway to the plane, and again on take-off.
But praying by the departure gate with a bunch of fellow Jews was another experience altogether. It reminded us what geniuses were the rabbis of old. How else could we have brought the Temple to Salt Lake City, had they not condensed the essence of Judaism into a little siddur (prayer book)? How else could Judaism have survived, had not they proudly affirmed it, even in the face of persecution?
Anecdotal mention of one of the gedolim (loosely translated as rabbinic granddaddies) was made at the conference we had recently attended in a class taught by Rabbi Michael Paley, now with New York's UJA-Federation. As Columbia University's chaplain, he had met with the Dalai Lama, preparing questions for the visit.
The Dalai Lama beat him to the punch.
"Who are you?" he asked the rabbi.
Paley answered the question and decided to turn the tables around.
"Who are you?" he asked the Dalai Lama.
"I am Yohanan Ben Zakkai," the Dalai Lama answered.
Rav Yohanan is the first-century Jewish sage who, during the Roman siege of Jerusalem, sees the handwriting on the wall, smuggles himself out of the city (and out of the clutches of the Zealots), and presents himself to Vespasian, procurator of Judea. He wows his incredulous host with the prediction that the guv soon will be crowned emperor.
Vespasian's first impulse is to have the Rav executed. But enter a runner from Rome with hot news: Titus is dead, and you-know-who is the new chief honcho. Vespasian, awe-struck, decides not to kill Rav Yohanan and offers him anything.
Nineteen hundred and some years later, Judaism is still breathing a sigh of relief over what Rav Yohanan asked of Vespasian: permission to establish a Torah academy in Yavneh, near Israel's Mediterranean coast. Simply put, his request saved Judaism by substituting Torah study for Temple service.
"We believe in reincarnation," the Dalai Lama had said to Michael Paley. And it was Rav Yohanan's neshama (soul) that had spread over the Dalai Lama so that he, too, could save his people at their time of national and religious distress.
Back in Salt Lake City, I stood facing east (in the direction of both sets of Moab mountains, the range in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and their namesake in Utah), and recited the words from the Shmoneh Esrei (the Eighteen Benedictions): Sound the great shofar (ram's horn) for our freedom, raise the banner to gather our exiles from the four corners of the Earth.
During these Jewish holidays, let's sound the shofar for freedom, from Sacramento and Los Angeles to the streets of Skokie and West Rogers Park; from Littleton, Colo., to Laramie, Wyo.
As the prayer continues, "As for all those who design evil against me, speedily nullify their counsel and disrupt their design."
At a time when domestic hate crimes are too common, when access to deadly weapons is too easy, and when freedom and human dignity are on the line, this is not the time, as the Dalai Lama knows, to run scared or to hide.
This is the time for teshuvah (repentance), for a return to out-front Judaism. This is the time to daven mincha in the airport, and to recall the courage of Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakkai.
Aaron Cohen is executive editor of the JUF News in Chicago.
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