Why I am a Jew

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Jewish and Proud is a poem that celebrates being proud to be Jewish and about uniting as a community. It is about confronting problems and issues and turn whatever may be getting you down into something positive.

Jewish and Proud poem

by Leslie Bunder

I’m Jewish and proud of it

Proud of my culture, people and heritage

It’s time to promote

A sense of positive

Know who you ought to be

Know where you should be in society

Things in life may get you down

Like anti-semitism all around

But don’t worry, don’t fear

Stand strong and shake the ground

Take a Yiddish trip in life

And rediscover that we are

United together as a people of true

No internal divide, just a force with you

Jewish people sharing a common bond

To bring global harmony with everyone

Now, some may say I’m an idealist

But I’m a realist in what I hope

Jewish people where ever you may be

From Ethiopia to the USA

They are brothers and sisters of history

All sharing the same family

Get together and unite as one

Young Jews express yourselves

Reassert your commitments

Don’t give up on your traditions

Stories told by your grandparents

Pass onto the next generation

Some may try and bring us down

Kick us out of existence

But you know, we have strength

To defend through the system

No more need to be afraid

Speaking your mind ain’t no disgrace

Voicing your opinions, never be silent

Words of wisdom, thoughts of old

Like our forefathers use to hold

Try them now, see reactions

Make a better world

Through positive Jewish action

MIKHAIL EKSHTUT

In the entire United States military there are about 50 Orthodox Jews – and I am one of them.

I was born in Kiev, Ukraine, and in 1976, when I was 5 years old, my parents, sister and I immigrated to Seattle. I grew up mostly non-observant but maintained some connection to Judaism during the summers when I would attend a Chabad day camp. My family and I would also go to Seattle’s Chabad House once in a while during the holidays, mostly for the free food and ample vodka.

As a kid I always wanted to serve my country. By nature I was machmir (religiously strict) and never did anything in a half-hearted way – so I decided that I would join the best fighting force in the world, the United States Marines.

The typical Jewish reaction was: “What’s a nice Jewish boy doing in the Marines?” My parents, who escaped the Soviet Union to keep me from having to serve in the military, thought I was crazy. On Feb. 8, 1989, four days after my 18th birthday, I shipped off to Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego.

On the third day of boot camp, we were sitting in formation when a mean drill instructor (they are all mean) approached the platoon and barked, “All my Jews, stand up.” I thought to myself, “Here we go, the persecution of the Jews is about to begin.” Out of 87 recruits, I was the only one to stand up. He ordered me to report to a major standing off in the distance, which I nervously did.

I saluted and said, “Sir, Pvt. Ekshtut reporting as ordered, sir!” I will never forget the first thing he said to me. “Do you know that you are one tenth of one percent of all of Marines in the Marine Corps?”

He introduced himself as Maj. Goldberg or some similar Jewish name, and explained that only one in a thousand Marines is Jewish. He then invited me to attend Friday night services at the nearby Navy chapel. I accepted.

I went on to serve overseas in exotic locations like Okinawa, Korea, the Philippines and Bangladesh. During the first Gulf War, I was deployed for seven months on a Navy ship in the Middle East. That winter, I lit Hanukkah candles in the middle of the Persian Gulf.

After four years of active duty, I continued to serve one weekend a month and two weeks a year in the Marine Reserves. After graduating college as a civil engineer, I spent a few months in Israel where I decided I needed to learn more about what it means to be a Jew.

After several years of learning, I was going to synagogue every Shabbat, putting on tefillin every morning, and trying to keep kosher. The only time I could not keep the Sabbath was when I was doing my monthly weekend duty in the reserves. It was not that I wasn’t allowed – on the contrary, the more observant I became the more supportive everyone was. I lit candles and made kiddush in the barracks on Friday night, and my friends would even do the “labors” that were prohibited for me on the Sabbath. But in the reserves, Saturday is the main training day.

It was time for me to make a decision: leave my beloved Marine Corps or stay in the Marines and not be so machmir one weekend a month. After nearly 13 years of service, I left the military to keep Shabbat.

However, a lot of what I learned in the Marines made me a better Jew. Jewish observance is similar to military training, except you don’t have to sweat as much or crawl in the mud.

Being a Marine taught me self-discipline and responsibility, how to answer to a “higher authority,” the value of teamwork, family and community, pride and self-esteem. By being charged by the real commander-in-chief, God, to wake up early and go to minyan, put on tefillin, pray three times a day, keep kosher and live in a Jewish community, we acquire some of the same qualities that the military teaches.

So for me, becoming an observant Jew was a straightforward transition. Nothing else would suffice. I continue to learn and grow Jewishly. I’m even on the board of my synagogue now.

I ask myself, would I want my son, when one day God grants me one, to join the military? In both good Jewish and military tradition, I will cross that bridge when I get to it. My more immediate objective is to find my beshert (romantic soulmate). However, I know that if my future son does serve in the military, he’ll be a better man and a better servant of God because of it.

Mikhail Ekshtut is a civil engineer in Seattle and chaplain assistant in the Air Force Reserve. He can be reached at sgteks@tranplaneng.com.

With war raging in the Middle East, with global terror reaching new heights,
with global anti-Semitism on the rise, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on why I’m proud, more than ever, to be a Jew.

—- I’m proud to be a Jew because Jews don’t kidnap.

—-I’m proud to be a Jew because Jewish education does not consist of
teaching martyrdom and hatred.

—I’m proud to be a Jew because my religious leaders and religious services don’t whip me into a frenzy to kill others.

—I’m proud to be a Jew because in the middle of a war, Jews still
demonstrate and protest to protect the rights of the Arab-Israeli minority to voice their opposition to the war.

—I’m proud to be a Jew because even when Israel is wrongly and falsely accused of killing innocent civilians, Jewish leaders apologize immediately for any loss of life-instead of celebrating these deaths by passing out candy and shooting celebratory gunshots into the air.

—When the world accuses Israel of massacre in Jenin-when the world accuses Israel of bombing civilians on a Gaza beach-when the world accuses Israel of shooting a child cowering against a wall-when the world accuses Israel of bombing a Lebanese apartment building killing 56 civilians-when all of these accusations turn out to be totally false -to be vicious anti-Semitic lies-and when all along I knew in my heart that these stories just could not be true-and I’m later proven to be right-then I’m proud to be a Jew.

— I’m proud to be a Jew because the Israeli Army is so, so good, that when it takes more than four weeks to wipe out a sophisticated enemy who has prepared six years for this war, the world criticizes the IDF for not getting the job done quickly.

—-I’m proud to be a Jew when my army, the Israeli army, drops leaflets and makes calls to Lebanese citizens on their cell phones to warn them to evacuate before bombing begins.

—I’m proud to be a Jew when the democracies of the world talk about fighting the war on terror, but only Israel is left alone to bear the burden of eradicating Hezbollah, the proxy army of Iran and Syria.

—I’m proud to be a Jew when entire Israeli towns in the north-Nahariya,
Kiryat Shimona, Safed, are reduced to ghost towns due to the constant shelling, and yet not one looter has appeared to empty out the property of others .

—-When Israel must defend its very right to exist, when it must fight a well armed enemy representing the Islamic Fascists, as President Bush has called them, when Israel must conduct this war on terror with its hands tied behind its back so as not to take an innocent life lest the media have something true to report, that it must fight this war of survival under the cloud of “disproportionality”, as if thousands of Katusha rockets falling on its citizenry is somehow “proportionate”-when Israel simultaneously pushes back these threats both in the North and in the South under the added pressure of a biased media, then I’m proud to be a Jew.

—I’m proud to be a Jew when the Edinburgh Scottish film festival tells an Israeli director to stay home although his film is being screened and the director says “No, I’m coming.”

—I’m proud to be a Jew because Mel Gibson is not a Jew .

—I’m proud to be a Jew when the UN’s Human Rights Commission consists of countries like Syria , Libya and Iran and Israel is not asked to join.

–I’m proud to be a Jew when magician David Blaine announces his trip to Israel next week to entertain the children living in bomb shelters and tells the press he’s doing it to encourage other performers to stand up for Israel and its right to defend itself.

—I’m proud to be a Jew when a Russian/Israeli businessman single-handedly creates not one but two tent cities on the beach to house Israelis fleeing the North and provides shelter, bedding, food and drink, showers and bathrooms-all done without red tape in a matter of 24 hours-to house over 6,000 Israeli’s, one of whom described it as a “poor man’s Club Med.”

—-I am proud to be a Jew when Israelis on the left and on the right support the government’s decision to fight-when 97% of the country is united in its own defense-when Israeli’s from Jerusalem give shelter to families from Haifa-when food from the Negev is donated to feed soldiers at the front-when the IDF deploys soldiers on special assignments to deliver diapers to shelters and to entertain and calm the frightened children.

Annie Stancheler
Paris, France

 

 

By T. Hamid

Posted Jan 3 2005

To be a Jew means to belong to the nation that wrote the greatest story in history.
To be a Jew means to belong to the nation that sanctified the name of G-d with no idols beside him for thousands of years.
To be a Jew means to belong to the nation that suffered under Pharaoh, the injustice of the Romans and the oppression of the rest of the world……yet………they survived.
The pharaohs disappeared, the Romans vanished, and the Nazi has gone but the Jews are still there……building and creating.
When I remember the Jews I remember the meaning of integrity and strong principles. I remember the nation that refused to convert to other religions that worship other Gods, idols and humans…..the Jews could have converted to relief their suffering in many areas of the world….but they did not and they set the best example in history of what it means to keeping ones principles………………..
When I am in pain I always remember the pains of the Jews and how they did not change their principles while under the most oppressive systems in history………….
From the time of Pharaohs till now they kept their G-d, their principles, and their wonderful identity…….Does that tell us something. Yes it certainly tells a lot……it tells that G-d, Hashem, wants to say something to the whole world via the Jews…..he wants to say it is not by human power that nations survive but it is by his power….. The Jews are telling us something and we should hear it.
He wants to say…. it is My will and My desire to support the weak who loved me and kept my covenant
He wants to say to the whole world that ….I am G-d……I am the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob……..I am the G-d of Moses …..And I am the G-d of those who loves me from their hearts……………….. he wants to say I am here……caring for my people …..making their dreams real…….and proving to the whole world that …..I am G-d
The story of Judaism is the greatest story in history……it started thousands of years ago by torturing and suffering of the oppressed Jews who refused to bow to the idols of the pharaohs and preferred to suffer than compromise their principles and values …..
It is the story of integrity that should be taught to the whole world……the story of a special bond to G-d ….a story of hope and dreams…….
When I remember the words “hope and dreams”, I remember a story that I wrote long time ago about an old Jew who lived under the unimaginable oppression during the dark ages in Europe…..The old Cohen insisted to keep his identity as a Jew….Every year the old Cohen used to celebrate the Hanukah with his wife and young daughters……after they lighten the candles…..he used to say to his daughters….
”Next year in Jerusalem”…..time passes and the old Cohen repeated it every year “Next year in Jerusalem”……the old Cohen was dreaming to go back to his home land…..the land of his fore fathers…..the old Cohen dreamed and dreamed….his daughter asked him one day “When the next year is going to come my father”….the eyes of the old Cohen were immediately filled with tears and he said to her “soon….my daughter”….and in the last moments of his life his daughters asked him what shall we say to our kids …our father……(he said to them “tell them in every Hanukah that… Next year in Jerusalem”)
This story that was written with tears and blood should not stop……You are the ones who will make it continue
….you are the ones who will not only write the story of Judaism….but will also inscribe it in stones and in the top of every mountain
….you are not part of the story ….you are the story itself………….
So, from now on if people asked you who are you?
Tell them I am the Jew who…….carried the stones during the time of Pharaohs
Tell them I am the Jew who…….crossed the sea with Moses
Tell them I am the Jew who…….received the words and covenant of G-d on Sinai
Tell them I am the Jew who…….entered the Holy land and built the great kingdom of Israel
Tell them I am the Jew who…….built the kingdom Israel
Tell them I am the Jew who…….was a captive in Babylon
Tell them I am the Jew who…….returned back to his home land
Tell them I am the Jew who…….lived every where in the world and suffered for thousands of years
Tell them I am the Jew who…….was burnt in the ovens of Hitler
Tell them I am the Jew who…….built Israel again
Tell them I am the Jew who…….dreamed and made my dreams real
Tell them I am the Jew
Finally, even though I am not a Jew but It is my greatest honor and privilege to stand in front of the whole world and say it loudly that……Yes……I am a Jew.
So Please……continue the story that was written by the blood and tears of your ancestors…..continue the greatest story ever…….the story of Judaism.

T.hamid
Mr. Hamid was born and raised as a Muslim in the Arab World
11-Nov-2004

Why I Am a Jew

by Edmond Fleg, 1927

(Translated from French. Excerpts from original as reprinted in The Zionist Idea; a Historical Analysis and Reader edited by Arthur Hertzberg)

People ask me why I am a Jew. It is to you that I want to answer, little unborn grandson. When will you be old enough to listen to me? My elder son is nineteen, the younger fourteen. When will you be born? Perhaps in ten years’ time, perhaps in fifteen. When will you read what I am writing? In 1950 or thereabouts? In 1960? Will anybody be reading in 1960? What will the world look like then? Will the machine have killed the soul? Will the mind have created for itself a new universe? Will the problems that trouble me today mean anything to you? Will there still be Jews? I believe there will. They have survived the Pharaohs, Nebuchadnezzar, Constantine, Mohammed, the Inquisition, and assimilation; they will know how to survive the motorcar.

But you – will you feel yourself a Jew, my child? People say to me, “You are a Jew because you were born a Jew; you neither willed it nor can change it.” Will this explanation satisfy you if, though born a Jew, you no longer feel one? When I was twenty I too had no lot, nor part in Israel; I was persuaded that Israel would disappear, and that in twenty years’ time people would no longer speak of her. Twenty years have passed, and another twelve, and I have become a Jew again-so obviously, that I am asked, “Why are you a Jew?”

What has happened to me can happen to you, my child. If you believe that the flame of Israel is extinguished in you, watch and wait; one day, it will burn again. This is a very old story, repeated in every generation: A thousand times Israel it has seemed, must die, and a thousand times she has lived again. I want to tell you how she died and lived again in me, so that, if she dies in you, you in your turn can feel her born in you once more.

So I shall have brought Israel to you, and you shall bring her to others, if you will and can. And both of us, in our own way, will have preserved and handed on the divine commandment:

“Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul; and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them to your children.”

Since the beginning of the Dreyfus affair the Jewish question had seemed to me a reality; now it appeared tragic: “What is Judaism? – A danger, they say, for the society to which you belong. What danger?… But first, am I still a Jew?… I have abandoned the Jewish religion…. You are a Jew all the same…. How?… Why?… What ought I to do?… Must I kill myself because I am a Jew?”

At moments I envied the strong and narrow faith of my ancestors. Penned in their ghettos by contempt and hatred, they at least knew why. But I knew nothing. How could I learn?

Of Israel I was entirely ignorant. And I regretted all the years I had spent in the study of philosophy, of Germanic philogy, and of comparative literature. I ought to have learned Hebrew, to have studied my race, its origins, its beliefs, its role in history, its place among the human groups of today; I ought to have attached myself, through my race, to something that would be myself and more than myself, and to have continued, through her, something that others had begun and that others after me would continue.

And I told myself that if I made some other use of my life, if I devoted myself to some other study, if later I founded a family without being able to bequeath to my children some ancestral ideal, I should always experience an obscure remorse, the vague feeling of having failed in a duty. And I remembered my dead father, I reproached myself with not having understood that Jewish wisdom of which he talked to me and which lived in him – and with no longer finding, by my own fa ult, anything in common between Israel’s past and my own empty soul.

It was then that, for the first time, I heard of Zionism. You cannot imagine what a light that was, my child! Remember that, at the period of which I am writing, this word Zionism had never yet been spoken in my presence. The anti-Semites accused the Jews of forming a nation within nations; but the Jews, or at any rate those whom I came across, denied it. And now here were the Jews declaring: “We are a people like other peoples; we have a country just as others have. Give us back our country.”

I made inquiries: The Zionist idea, it appeared, had its origins far back in the days of the ancient prophets; the Bible promised the Jews of the dispersion that they should return to the Holy Land; during the whole of the Middle Ages only their faith in this promise kept them alive; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such great spirits as Maurice de Saxe, the Prince de Ligne, and Napoleon had caught a glimpse of the philanthropic, political, economic, religious, and moral advantages which a resettlement of the Jews in Palestine might offer; since 1873 colonies had been founded there and were developing; and now a new apostle, Theodor Herzl, was calling upon the Jews of the whole world to found the Jewish state. Was this the solution for which I was looking? It explained so many things. If the Jews really formed but a single nation, one began to understand why they were considered Jews even when they ceased to practice their religion, and it became credible, too, that a nation which had welcomed them should be able to accuse them of not always being devoted to its national interests. Then the Zionist idea moved me by its sublimity; I admired in these Jews, and would have wished to be able to admire in myself, this fidelity to the ancestral soil which still lived after two thousand years, and I trembled with emotion as I pictured the universal exodus which would bring them home, from their many exiles, to the unity that they had reconquered.

The Third Zionist Congress was about to open at Basel. I decided to attend it. My knowledge of German enabled me to follow the debates pretty closely.

I listened to it all; but, with even greater interest, I looked about me. What Jewish contrasts! A pale-faced Pole with high cheekbones, a German in spectacles, a Russian looking like an angel, a bearded Persian, a clean shaven American, an Egyptian in a fez, and, over there, that black phantom, towering up in his immense caftan, with his fur cap and pale curls falling from his temples. And in the presence of all these strange faces, the inevitable happened; I felt myself a Jew, very much a Jew,…

…What then, for me, was Zionism? It could enthrall me, it enthralls me still, this great miracle of Israel which concerns the whole of Israel: three million Jews will speak Hebrew, will live Hebrew on Hebrew soil! But, for the twelve million Jews who remain scattered throughout the world, for them and for me, the tragic question remained: What is Judaism? What ought a Jew to do? How be a Jew? Why be a Jew?

I am a Jew because, born of Israel and having lost her,

I have felt her live again in me, more living than myself.

I am a Jew because, born of Israel and having regained her,

I wish her to live after me, more living than in myself.

I am a Jew because the faith of Israel demands of me no abdication of the mind.

I am a Jew because the faith of Israel requires of me all the devotion of my heart.

I am a Jew because in every place where suffering weeps, the Jew weeps.

I am a Jew because at every time when despair cries out, the Jew hopes.

I am a Jew because the word of Israel is the oldest and the newest.

I am a Jew because the promise of Israel if the universal promise.

I am a Jew because, for Israel, the world is not yet completed; men are completing it.

I am a Jew because, above the nations and Israel, Israel places man and his Unity.

I am a Jew because above man, image of the divine Unity, Israel places the divine Unity, and its divinity.

Sometimes, my child, when I wander through a museum, and stand before all the pictures and statues and furniture and armor, the faience, the crystals, the mosaics, the garments and the finery, the coins and the jewels, gathered there, from every place and every age, to hang on the walls, to stand on the plinths, to line up behind the balustrades, to be classified, numbered, and ticketed in the glass cases, I think that one or other of my ancestors may have seen, touched, handled, or admired one or other of these things, in the very place where it was made, and at the very time when it was made, for the use, the labor, the pain, or the joy of men.

This door with the gray nails, between two poplars, in a gilded frame, this is the Geneva synagogue where my father went in to pray. And see this bridge of boats on the Rhone: my grandfather crossed the Rhine, at Huninger. And his grandfather, where did he live? Perhaps as he dreamily calculated the mystical numbers of the cabbala he saw, through his quiet window, this sledge slide over the snow of Germany or Poland? And the grandfather of his grandfather’s grandfather? Perhaps he was this money-changer, in this Amsterdam ghetto, painted by Rembrandt…

…One of them drove this plow, tempered in the fire, through the plains of Sharon; one of them went up to them Temple to offer, in these plaited baskets, his tithe of figs…

…and this Sumerian idol, with spherical eyes and angular jaws, is perhaps the very one that Abraham broke when he left his Chaldean home to follow the call of his invisible G-d.

And I say to myself: From this remote father right up to my own father, all these fathers have handed on to me a truth which flowed in their blood, which flows in mine; and shall I not hand it on, with my blood, to those of my blood?

Will you take if from me, my child? Will you hand it on? Perhaps you will wish to abandon it. If so, let it be for a greater truth, if there is one. I shall not blame you. It will be my fault; I shall have failed to hand it on as I have received it.

But, whether you abandon it or whether you follow it, Israel will journey on to the end of days.