SHLOMO RISKIN

SHLOMO RISKIN What does a rabbi do on a plane? As I pulled out my Talmud, I noticed that the man beside me was reading a pornographic magazine. It was going to be a rough five hours. As I was...

...After I get off this plane, I'm going to speak to both of them...
...Today our dream is alive and well in the State of Israel...
...What bothered him about growing up was that as far as his father was concerned, the congregation always came first...
...Each couple has children (and some even grandchildren) but none had the opportunity to participate in a religious ceremony when they lived in the "Communist Paradise...
...Bro," he called me, "order your (expletive) lunch...
...That way I'll have a double hamburger and you'll have a double salad...
...Well, there's always a text to study...
...I told him what I went through for years, often interrupted while reading bedtime stories to my children...
...the parenthood of God which ensures the fraternity of all...
...I said order your (expletive) lunch," he repeated...
...When we humbly recognize that we are all creatures subject to the Higher Will of the one who created us, what unites us becomes much more significant than what divides us—and we dare neither to harm nor enslave anyone else...
...The first rabbi of the now famous Lincoln Square Synagogue in New York, Riskin made aliyah in 1983 and founded the city of Efrat eight miles south of Jerusalem, where today live 750 religious and non-religious families...
...If I rushed to the airport now, I was told, I could make another flight leaving for Los Angeles in just 45 minutes...
...Toss me a football and I wouldn't know what to do with it...
...Indeed, the jAo/arsound serves to both crown God as Sovereign and declare freedom for every human being—two concepts inextricably bound together as the true message of ethical monotheism...
...I danced together with the mukhlar (mayor) in honor of the couple and blessed them in Hebrew and Arabic...
...Rabbi Shlomo Riskin revitalized modem Orthodoxy on New York City's West Side and went on to bring his leadership and inspiration to Israel...
...Only when I strapped myself in my seat was I able to relax for the first time since the call...
...The traffic was not as bad as usual and I ran up to the terminal—out of breath, tie askew, glasses slipping off my nose—with two minutes to spare...
...The relations between the communities are exemplary, with no fence to divide us and much mutual goodwill to unite us...
...I haven't spoken to God in 10 years...
...On the surface, this man and I had nothing in common...
...In a large and well-manicured outdoor amphitheater we recently celebrated the wedding of 10 Russian couples who have settled in our city...
...Look, you're kosher, so why don't you order your hamburger and salad, give me your hamburger and I'll give you my salad...
...But what we did share was our essential humanity, our joint image of the Divine that guarantees everyone's right to life and fundamental freedom...
...It turned out he knew his Bible quite well...
...But it didn't bother me as much as it bothered my seatmate...
...In the midst of the clatter of broken wineglasses, the joyous shouts of mazel tov and the hundreds of Efratim who brought cakes, children and dancing feet to add to the festivities, one of the Russian Jews shouted: "They told us there was no God and that we were all equal...
...When the hostess came around with lunch, I declined, of course, since it had been impossible to secure a kosher meal on such short notice...
...He never had time for me...
...And so I don't have much time for him now," he said...
...Hence the Sabbath day is defined in the Biblical decalogue: "Observe the Sabbath to keep it holy...in order that your (gentile) manservant and maidservant may rest like you" (Deuteronomy 5:12-15), and the central prayer of the Amidah of Rosh Hashanah asks "that every creature knows that you created it...so that we may perfect the world under the Kingship of the Almighty" (Mal-chuyot...
...It seemed to make sense...
...I looked up in shock...
...My home now is in the Judean city of Efrat (erroneously referred to as the West Bank...
...and those who dream the impossible may well achieve the incredible...
...When I told him I didn't understand the meaning of all this, he interrupted...
...They meant equal to vermin...
...Perhaps the real message of our prayers is that those who believe in a God who is invisible must dare to dream the impossible...
...To be the daughter of a rabbi or the son of a minister is no easy thing...
...After several hours of tale after tale, there was a smile on his face...
...I'm a college football star, and I was bumped from first class...
...As I was packing, I got a telephone call telling me that my flight was canceled...
...In Efrat he oversees a labyrinth of Jewish educational and religious institutions, including Ohr Torah residential high schools and a women's law school for the rabbinical courts—the first of its kind in Israel...
...And from what you told me, you weren't supposed to be sitting here either," he said...
...at least that's what I was convinced of when I first saw him...
...The son of a prominent Baptist minister, he hac| learned his religion, even though he no longer practiced it...
...The prayerbook depicts the Jewish dream of a world of peace united under God...
...The very next day I was invited to help celebrate the wedding of Feisal, a Palestinian Arab from our neighboring town of Wadi Mis who works in one of our local stores...
...We lifted coffee cups (since the religious Moslems do not drink wine) to the mutual development of our communities in peace...
...As I pulled out my Talmud, I noticed that the man beside me —a tall black man in jeans—was reading a pornographic magazine...
...For almost two millenia, we dared not dream such an audacious dream and concentrated on personal requests for individual life and health...
...We put away our respective studies and settled back to talk...
...Even if the telephone call meant an emergency visit to the hospital, how does a child understand...
...Here there is a God, who brought us home to true freedom...

Vol. 17 • December 1992 • No. 6


 
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