After having written more than 15 books on Jewish history, it might seem overwhelming to boil thousands of years of history or even seven decades to a presentation lasting less than an hour, but Rabbi Berel Wein did just that for an audience at the Marion & Gural JCC in Cedarhurst on April 18.
Wein, 84, is the founder and director of the Destiny Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to bring Jewish history to life with an array of educational programs. For more than 25 years, he has been recognized as one of the most renowned Jewish Orthodox historians. The recipient of the Torah Prize award from Machon HaRav Frank in Jerusalem for teaching Torah, Wein is also a columnist for the Jerusalem Post.
“Rabbi Wein offered and called us,” said Rachayle Deutsch, the Cultural Arts and Education director for the Gural JCC who coordinated the event. “The rabbi is such a name.
Standing at the lectern, Wein, who headed a yeshiva in upstate Monsey for more than 20 years, began by careering into a metaphor that one doesn’t frame a Rembrandt masterpiece with an inexpensive frame and drew the conclusion that Israel, a Jewish state that is celebrating 70 years in 2018, “is the masterpiece, is a Rembrandt.”
“Israel flourishes in the sand and out of the desert, surrounded by enemies,” he said, disproportionately influential in the world.” Covering a little more than 8,000-square miles, Israel is roughly the size of New Jersey.
Then Wein pivoted and said that “Israel is not framed corrected,” because like looking at a painting you need some distance to truly see the artwork to be “overwhelmed by the beauty, the color, the composition of the artwork.”
Wein explained what 70 years of Israel means to the Jewish world by taking us back to May 14, 1948. It was a Friday, he said: “My father cried every step to shul. That made an impression on me. It put it into proper perspective.”
Coming out of the Holocaust, Wein noted that the Jewish people were the refugees no different from the Syrian refugees of today. “There was a time we were the refugee problem,” he said.
The immediate recognition of Israel as a state had its roots in World War I, Wein explained. “In [President Harry] Truman’s artillery unit there was a Jew, Eddie Jacobson, who Truman became friends with and they became partners in a haberdashery business in Kansas City, Missouri,” the rabbi said. Jacobson came from the Lower East Side.
Years later Jacobson, called on his friend to meet with Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann. “Harry, I know Andrew Jackson is your hero, I want you to do know that Chaim Weizmann is my hero, you got to see him,” Jacobson said, according to Wein. Weizmann, the president of the Zionist Organization served as Israel’s first president from Feb. 16, 1949 until he died in 1952.
Wein said that there are now 6,800,000 million Jews in Israel. “How did that happen?” he asked. “Jews stood up. We’re not gonna take it anymore,” as the rabbi channeled his inner Dee Snyder.
Beginning to see the forest from the trees, Yehudah Levine, 18, a Lawrence High School senior, said he the rabbi’s talk had an impact. “It means Israel has evolved and changed in a very profound and amazing way and it inspires me to continue on,” he said.
