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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Tomorrow


Tomorrow I fly to Israel. I become a citizen. I follow my dreams. 

I will never forget sitting in my great-grandfather's living room in Johannesburg, South Africa, days before emigrating to America at the age of nine. I remember him grasping a miniature set of the five books of Moses, with his eyes fixed upon me, weeping. Over the course of the next emotional hour or so, he detailed the story of his exodus from Lithuania. Discovering my ancestors, his immediate family, massacred in their own home in a violent pogrom, he decided to find a life for himself somewhere a bit safer for a Jew, he explained. Clutching the texts in his fist, he begged me never to forget who I was and where I came from.

Stories like those of my family members are common in every Jewish household and come from a time before the Jewish state and its army existed. Every society in history lost its tolerance of the Jewish people at some stage. Although extremes vary, my people have been exiled and slaughtered around the world for who they are and where they come from. After the most tragic example of this, the Holocaust, the Jewish state and its army were born to say, "No more!" Israel was and continues to be a statement to the world that the Jewish people will fight for self-determination. It is the declaration that we will not be forced to give up our customs, have our villages destroyed, our stores boycotted, our blood banned, or our bodies burned.  My decision to make aliyah and enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces is a contribution to the message that Jews can now have a say in their own history. 

On an ideological basis, I find it wrong that I would be able to rely on the safeguard of Israel's existence throughout my life without having given what every other citizen gives. While Israel will absorb any Jew into its borders as a citizen on the basis of the Law of Return, and will even rescue endangered Jews and bring them to safety (see: Operation Solomon/Ethiopia), I could never forgive myself for not doing my part for this privilege to be maintained. If one day, at 85 years-old,  I am no longer safe to live in America as a Jewish man, should I be content to fly to Israel, receive my benefits, become a citizen, and live out my years in safety, without having first done my part? I could never.  In my many conversations with friends and family, it has been pointed out to me that there are many things a Jew can do for his people. While I agree and would never discredit anybody or their own contributions, whatever they may be, nothing else I can do for Israel is mutually exclusive with my army service or my living in the land. This is something that I have always wanted for myself and see as my responsibility. I am taking this step to grow, to understand and appreciate the sacrifices we have made to get to where we are as a people, and to give of myself to our collective struggle. 

Tomorrow I fly to Israel. I become a citizen. I follow my dreams.  It has been an intense process to prepare for and the farewells have been getting increasingly more challenging. More than anything, I am excited to finally realize this ambition I have always had. The road ahead is filled with triumphs, failures. smiles, frowns, opportunities,  obstacles, and everything in-between, but I am expecting the time of my life. 

                   - Darren 


P.S. Thank you to everyone who has sent well wishes and kind messages, the support is overwhelming! I can't tell you how much it means. 

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