A Soulful Journey

A fox was once walking alongside a river and observed fishes swarming. He said to them, “From what are you fleeing?” They answered, “From the nets cast for us by men.” The fox said to them, “Come up on dry land so that you and I can live together in the way that our ancestors lived with each other.” They replied, “And you are called the most clever of all animals??  You are foolish. If we are afraid in the element in which we live, how much more so in a foreign place. This was Rabbi Akiva’s response to a colleague when he placed himself in danger for teaching Torah.   -berachot 61b Torah is our "water," our element, our home.

Joseph Herman Hertz's passionate love of rabbis was poignantly conveyed in a story told after his death in 1946.  It related back to his 1920 pastoral tour of Jewish countries in the British Commonwealth, a tour undertaken in the same year in which he officially launched the writing of the Pentateuch. On his return journey from Bulawayo, just as the train was about to leave the railway station...a man of Jewish appearance passed and repassed his window.  When Dr. Hertz approached him with the traditional Shalom Aleichem the man told him how he and three other Jewish families from Que Que had traveled some ten hours by train on the road from Bulawayo to Salisbury, hoping to see him.  But though he was so anxious to hear of there Jewish life of that miniature Kehilla Que Que, he did not manage to do so because the train was already beginning to move ahead and he had only time to ask: "Is there are Shass (a complete set of the talmud) in Que Que?"  "Two sets (zwei Shas...

"They'll have to shoot me first to take my gun.  I wouldn't feel safe if I didn't have a gun in my house..."  -Roy Rogers Hopefully some things do change.