Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

Chaim Weitzman, who was to become the first President of the State of Israel, once used Mother’s Day to advance the argument for a Jewish State in what was then Palestine.  The story goes that a British gentleman said to him: “Dr. Weitzman, what do you need to start a Jewish country for in that God-forsaken corner of the Middle East?  Why don’t you take your Jews – who evidently need some refuge from persecution – and take them to Argentina or Uganda or the Canary Islands or someplace else?  What do you need Palestine for?”  And Weitzman said to the man: “You may be right, but before I answer you, let me ask you a question.  I understand that every year on Mother’s Day and on a good many other occasions during the year, you drive all the way across the city of London in order to visit your mother at the nursing home where she lives.  There are lots of other old ladies in London.  Why don’t you visit some other woman who lives closer instead of visiting your mother?”

Just as we can never find a substitute for or forget our own mothers, so, we can never find a substitute for or forget that this small slice of land in the Middle East is our Jewish ancestral land. “If I forget Thee, O Jerusalem, May my right hand lose its power”.