Dr. Ruth Westheimer AJC Ad “What Being Jewish Means to Me”

Dr. Ruth Westheimer
Psychologist, Writer, Broadcaster

All grandparents really feel a particular glow after they see their grandchildren. However after I look into the faces of my grandchildren Ari and Leora, there may be an added purpose for my coronary heart to rejoice. You see, I’m initially from Germany and misplaced my household within the Nazi terror, so I do know that Hitler did every little thing in his energy to insure that these kids would by no means be born. And but right here they’re. They signify for me small victories within the persevering with wrestle in opposition to evil, particularly the evil of anti-Semitism. Final week, when once more watching Schindler’s Record, I used to be struck by one reality in Steven Spielberg’s postscript: The 1200 Jews saved by Oscar Schindler now have greater than 6000 kids and grandchildren. What if thousands and thousands had been saved?

Each baby born right into a Jewish household represents a blessed hyperlink within the lengthy chain of Jewish life stretching again to Abraham and Sarah. The soul is seared by the considered the generations that, due to the Nazi Holocaust, is not going to be born.

The world can be taught one thing helpful from the Jewish expertise. We’ve got been the objects of probably the most perverse type of human hatred — the try and destroy a complete folks. However we by no means permitted that hatred to find out who we’re or what we stand for. As Jews, we by no means forgot that we’re known as upon by our custom to restore the world by remodeling hatred into love and by instructing and dealing for justice and peace.

After I take a look at my Ari and Leora, I do know that the Nazis weren’t capable of accomplish their supreme aim. Sure, they destroyed my household, together with my beloved mother and father and grandparents, however they couldn’t eradicate my will to dwell and move on to my kids and grandchildren my love for Judaism, Israel, and the Jewish folks. For me, the phrase “Am Yisrael chai” — “The Jewish folks lives” — holds particular that means.

And for a Jewish folks whose numbers have been so decimated, let future generations fulfill the Biblical commandment — one Dr. Ruth particularly endorses — “be fruitful and multiply.”

Reprinted from AJC’s Full-Web page Advert in The New York Instances, Sunday, March 2,1997