re: #9 turn

What makes you think you will be allowed to drive so fast?

The latest immigrants from the Yemenite community of Raida - a town fraught with tension between its Jewish and Muslim residents in recent months - the Ben-Yisraels, accompanied by another young man from their community, arrived in a special aliya operation, shrouded in secrecy, organized by the Jewish Agency and Yemenite Jewish Federation of America.

As they stepped into the arrivals hall, the Ben-Yisraels looked as if they had walked through a time warp. “Thank God, I’m happy to be here,” said family patriarch Said Ben-Yisrael, clad in a felt yarmulke and long black side curls as he stood in front of his wife and seven children.

Greeted by a Yemenite rabbi who lives in Israel, Ben-Yisrael recited the “Sheheheyanu” prayer, which is said upon arriving at a particularly festive or joyous occasion. The crowd of reporters and cameramen who swarmed around the family as they entered the arrival terminal answered “Amen!”

Things like this are why I am proud to be a Jew. This family was facing certain doom in Yemen; imagine being Jewish in friendly sunny Yemen, the Jewish Agency, the international non-profit that helps Jews all over the world, acted and got these people out. While I commend the government of Yemen for offering new homes to Jews who felt they could not continue to live in the villages that the remaining hundreds of Yemeni Jews live in, all I can add is my own: AMEN!

Amen that Jews stand together. Amen that the color of your skin or the perfection of your Jewish pedigree is less important than saving your life. Next to watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon, and holding my sons for the first time, the next greatest moment of my life was picking up my New York Times and seeing that Israel had saved 30,000 lives in a day. They put over 1000 people on a 747, everyone had a number so no one got lost and, guarded by Zion’s Army, each was brought safely to a new life. Five months later in Israel, I saw these distant cousins of mine at an absorption center in Israel.

Amen!

A year previously I had personally witnessed and greeted a planeload of Russian Jews the moment they got off the plane in Israel. Two hundred of my fellow American Jews and I gave them gifts and hugs of welcome. Soldiers with guns ready protected the plane and the welcome party.

Amen!

In the new age there are more welcoming parties to come. The Jews of Europe will flee the new dark ages before they are murdered by our other distant cousins committing Islamic Neo-colonialism on Europe.

When they arrive, I shall say Amen to that too.