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APRIL 1998 EDITION
14. HALLEL
HALLEL: The songs of praise.
My grandfather once helped someone who is now one of the most respected members of Congress break through what was then an almost impenetrable racial barrier. He gave him a job, an opportunity, and hope where society said he must not. He was tough, he was encouraging, and he was a friend. My grandfather is not with us anymore; but whenever given the opportunity, there is one man on Capitol Hill who continues to sing his praises.
From the liberation in Egypt to the impossible rebirth of Israel, it sometimes seems that little has changed.
| A Jewish cadet at West Point was taking a course on modern warfare, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iran-Iraq the Falklands, and even the invasion of Grenada. Each was carefully analyzed for lessons which might be applied to future conflicts involving U.S. troops.
Well into the curriculum this cadet had a question. Why was it, he asked a commander, that not one battle involving Israel was ever studied? Not the Israeli War of Independence fought by a tankless, planeless "army" of hastily trained soldiers and Holocaust survivors against a well-armed invasion force; not the Six Day War, which Arab leaders promised would be the Jews' final dying breath; not the Yom Kippur War, which snatched near disaster from the jaws of one of histories largest sneak attacks; not a single one?
Could these glaring omissions be reflective of an anti-Semitic blind spot? Could Americans not stoop to learn how to fight from Jews? No, the cadet was assured, this was no ethnically derisive oversight - those wars just weren't normal. Those types of events, that type of fighting - the things that took place in all the battles that birthed and sheltered the Jews of Israel - just doesn't happen anywhere else. It doesn't pay to study them, because there is nothing for other countries to learn.
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Tonight we feel the freedom of our history. Free of the historical strings which seem to bind all people to the predictable routes of nations and civilizations. Free of every societal force which attempts to restrict us to its path, its ideals.
Tonight we are free to be Jews. To be the Jewish people, and to make a difference. And free to sing the praises of One who broke the chains of bondage to set us free.
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