Parshat Pinchas: Happy 250th
The United States of America is celebrating its 250th birthday on Shabbat. Growing up in Canada in the 60’s we had very little connection to the USA. Our main window into our neighbours to the south was the Buffalo television stations. We would watch Irv Weinstein describe the many house fires in places like Tonawanda and Cheektowaga. For some reason there were more homes burning down in Buffalo than in Toronto. Maybe they should have built them from brick like ours, and not wood.
My Bubby had a cousin, “Pearl from Vashington” who would visit. It was always Vashington, not Washington, and I have been calling it Vashington ever since. As a kid I didn’t know what the whole Vietnam War was all about. All I knew was that the US was involved and Canada wasn’t and why was the US fighting in a far off jungle anyway? And what was with the forced busing kids to school all about? I was so happy that I lived in a place where I could walk to my local school and not be forced to get on a bus to a different neighbourhood.
In short, through my young Canadian eyes, America seemed like another planet.
But then fast-forward about 25 years and all of a sudden I find myself coming to Miami and living here. It figured to be a soft landing since my parents and grandparent both had condos at the time. People wondered why we were moving to Florida as it was reputed to be for old people, “God’s waiting room” so to speak. Little did anyone know that decades later everyone would want to move here. BH we got in on the ground floor.
Karen and I have been living in South Florida for 37 years now – more than anywhere else in our lives. The USA has been our home where we have created a family and community and have been involved in the lives of literally thousands of others here in the United States. Karen often says she feels more American than British. And given the direction that Canada has taken this past decade, even though I still root for them in international sporting events like the Worlds Cup and of course hockey, I feel much more akin to being an American than a Canadian even though I have citizenship in both.
The fact is that, other than Israel, the United States has been the best place for Jewish people throughout history and today as well. And this is natural because so many Jewish values are in the DNA of this nation. The Lubavitcher rebbe referred to America as “A Medinas Chessed – a country of Kindness where Godliness can shine openly.” And Rabbi Sacks zt”l eloquently expressed the intimate connection between early American history and its founding to its predecessor of Biblical Israel in Jewish history:
Biblical Israel had a Society long before it had a State. Before it had even crossed the Jordan and entered the land – which explains why Jews were able to keep their identity for 2000 years in Exile and dispersion. Because although they had lost their State, they still had their Society. Although they’ve lost their Contract, they still have their Covenant. And there is only one nation known to me that had the same dual founding as Biblical Israel, and that is the United States of America which had its social Covenant in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and its social Contract in the Constitution in 1787.
And the reason it did so is because the founders of this country had the Hebrew Bible engraved on their hearts. Covenant is central and presupposed in the most famous line of the Declaration of Independence. Listen to this sentence (and) see how odd it might sound to anyone but American. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”
Those truths are anything but self-evident. They would have been unintelligible to Plato, to Aristotle, or to every hierarchical society the world has ever known. They are self-evident only to people, to Jews and to Christians who have internalized the Hebrew Bible.
It is no accident that the United States has become the most accommodating, friendly and open nation to Jews throughout history given our similar histories and character.
One can only hope that the United States of America never loses sight of its beginnings which is the source of its blessings from Almighty God. A true fulfillment of God’s initial blessings to the first Hebrew, Avraham when he was told that “Those who bless you I will bless, but those who curse you I will curse.” Today there are many politicians who have gone to great lengths to disassociate this nation from these founding principles as they become enthralled and seduced by the failed visions of Socialism and even Communism. And it is no accident that these self-same politicians and their supporters have become the most vocal opponents of Israel and by extension, of Jews.
America was founded on the principles of the Hebrew Bible that brought it blessing, as was prophesied early on. We hope and pray that those who wish to uproot this winning formula do not succeed and thereby bring ruin and curse on this great nation.
May God continue to Bless the United States of America. And May God protect it from its enemies – both from without and from within.
Far
We’ve been traveling far
Without a home
But not without a star
Free
Only want to be free…
On the boats and on the planes
They’re coming to America
Never looking back again
They’re coming to America
-Neil Diamond
