Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509220127
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
According to traditional Jewish calculations, this marks the year 5756 since God created the heavens and the earth.
But around the world this year, many Jews won't be thinking quite that far back as they begin the observance of their religion's High Holy Days.
They will be thinking back to two years ago when they witnessed the first tentative handshake between leaders of the state of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They will think back 50 years to the end of a Holocaust that almost wiped out the Jews of Europe. They will contemplate the upcoming celebration of the 3,000th anniversary of David's conquest of the city now called Jerusalem.
New Year - Rosh Hashanah - marks the beginning of a 10-day penitential period that ends with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is a time of reflection on both the sweet promise of a new year - symbolized in the traditional food of apples and honey - and the somber truth of the often sour relationships between human beings.
This year many Jews will be thinking about the "miracles and wonders" of the modern age, said Rabbi Frank Muller of Roanoke's Temple Emanuel.
"The peace question" remains a dominant theme for Jews around the world, Muller said.
In the two years since that famous handshake between Yasser Arafat and Yitzak Rabin, the world has seen how difficult it is to maintain the euphoria over the prospect of peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors, said Rabbi Jerome Fox of Beth Israel Synagogue.
Only now are the truly difficult questions even beginning to be addressed, he said, including the question of how to deal with the continuing terrorism against Israeli civilians and what will become of Jerusalem.
As Jews and Palestinians wrangle with their disagreements over who should control the future of Jerusalem, Israel will go ahead with a huge celebration of the city's 3,000th year as a Jewish holy site.
According to ancient calculations, the biblical hero David conquered Jerusalem in the year 1004 B.C. and united the Jewish kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The symbolism of the unified capital continues to remain strong for Jews who remember that Jerusalem was divided between Jordan and Israel before Israel captured it in 1967.
This will be a season of reaffirming the centrality of Jerusalem in the liturgical life of all Jews and in the political life of all Israelis, Fox said.
The very existence of the state of Israel is one of the modern "miracles and wonders" to be recollected this season, Muller said.
There continues to be a massive exodus of Jews from the former Soviet states to Israel. To date, more than 600,000 have been absorbed in the Jewish nation, with a total of 1 million expected by the end of the decade.
What they have found, Muller said, is a safe haven from the potential resurgence of the anti-Semitism that once instigated a Holocaust against European Jews.
The 50th anniversary of the end of World War II is a logical time also to reflect on the "miracle and wonder" that any Jews survived Hitler's determined effort to extinguish even the shadow of their existence, Muller said.
As the death camps were liberated, Jewish survivors began their walk on the road to recovery and rebirth, a road that soon led to a new nation called Israel.
This season of personal and collective introspection also prompts contemplation of the future.
In the United States, Muller said, many continue to worry about the high rate of intermarriage of Jews with non-Jews. Few of the non-Jewish marriage partners convert to Judaism, and less than 25 percent of the children of such marriages are reared as Jews.
But some worries about the future even transcend concerns about the continued existence of a distinctive Jewish ethnic culture.
Popular futuristic books and movies often create bleak fictional landscapes, Fox said. For him, this is a season to consider that harboring such negative visions "may become a self-fulfilling prophecy."
The reality, he said, is captured in the traditions of this season. "It's in our hands. We can make a good future."
by CNB