Impossibilities Become Achievable Objectives

by Sanford Hollander

There has been so much written about the deterioration of the relationship between the Israeli Jewish community and the American Jewish community. It has been often repeated that we American Jews are becoming impatient with the lack of progress in the “peace process” and that it is an impossible situation that is insoluble. It is said that it is impossible for Israel to be both a democratic state and a Jewish state. It is impossible to resist the Islamic demographic avalanche that is overwhelming Europe and will overwhelm Israel. It is impossible for Israel to deter Iran from securing atomic weapons. It is impossible for the American Jewish community to resist the momentum of assimilation.

“There’s no use in trying,” Alice said, “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

The impossibilities become achievable objectives when there is enough will power. United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ has never viewed its continuing struggle for human dignity as an impossibility.

“The mission of the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ is to enhance the life of our Jewish community. We will create a future rooted in our religious heritage nourished by our dreams. Our endeavor affirms our commitment to the Jewish People – in MetroWest, in Israel, and throughout the world.”

Moshe Dayan spoke on this identical theme in his autobiography. He told of his parents, who wanted to come to Palestine to be farmers, and their friends said it was impossible. He referred to the plan for illegal immigration, which was derided by those who said it was impossible to fight the British on this matter. He analyzed the wars, in which Israeli chances were said to be impossible because of Arab superiorities in men and equipment. And he concluded that this whole list of impossibilities made him believe that whenever someone said a thing was impossible, this thing would come to pass. We could each add to this list Entebbe, the migration of over 120,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel, Operation Moses and Operation Solomon, and the boring of a hole in the iron curtain which more than a million Jews from the former Soviet Union crawled through.

These impossibilities became achievable objectives when there was enough will.

The Jewish People is great because it was never without determination and resolve. Our majesty derives from a transcendent sense of destiny, backed by an incredible stubbornness. This double characteristic, belief in a cause and fierce effort to realize it, has marked our progress and survival through all the centuries. Now in the third commonwealth, re-established but still in danger, we must manifest with supreme skill our twin capabilities. No one can help us, save we ourselves.

Mansfield, the English poet, said: “Love is a flame to set the will on fire.” How deep is our love for people, faith, ancestral home, for self?

Pericles shouted to his Athenians when they weakened and to us in the Jewish community in the United States today: “You should not covet the glory unless you will endure the toil.

“O blessed generation – endure the toil, give thanks for the toil, revel in the toil, perform the toil – and perform it well – for then ye shall have the glory, the honor and the glory, of bringing our children to a safe harbor wherein every person shall be at ease and our nation can find the peace it has sought from its beginning.”

Sanford Hollander is an “elder statesman” of the MetroWest Jewish community.

BACK TO TOP