Happy Birthday Israel: Being Jewish and Worldwide Antisemitism

 I've been spending a lot of time recently examining my beliefs and spirituality.

There are plenty of reasons for this. I'm getting older. The end is much closer than the beginning. But this wouldn't be anything new. I could have said the same thing at age 45.

I also now have a chronic ailment. Lot's of people find God when this happens. I already believed in God...we just aren't particularly close. This really didn't change anything.

Almost from birth, I've been a non-practicing Jew. I rarely go to Temple...and believe me when I say I'm asked about it a lot. I'm not big on prayers. I've been known to eat a big dinner on Yom Kippur. Bread is ok by me during Passover. Okay already..we get it.

Lately I've been feeling closer to my roots. I seem to be feeling more Jewish. It's not for any of the above reasons, although I'd love for someone to tell me what God is really like and if there really is a Heaven & Hell. It's because there's so much worldwide antisemitism going on.

I realize this is nothing new. It's been going on for thousands of years For some reason it's hitting me harder at age 61 than it did at age 21 or 31.

When at age 12, I was called a kike by a neighbor for letting a baseball go on his lawn, I was able to laugh it off. I just don't see anything funny about that stuff today.

Let's take a look at recent events. There's a shooting at a Jewish Community Center. The first report has the motive for the shooting is unknown. Really? The first word in JCC is all you needed to know.

There's a story out of the Ukraine that Jews need to register with the government. It turned out to be false but the outrage over the report showed that we weren't surprised and wouldn't be shocked for that to happen.

The University of Oklahoma Art Museum is involved in an ownership fight over a painting that was seized by Nazi's from a Jewish family during World War 2. Is antisemitism involved? I hope not...especially since I was a student at OU during the 1970's.

Last December, I visited a Holocaust museum in the Chicago suburb of Skokie. The exhibits there pull at your heart. Any one of them can bring you to tears.  And yet there are people who still want to deny that the Holocaust occurred. Sad. Pathetic.

 Today is Israel Independence Day. It's the 66th birthday of the state of Israel. The date changes due to the Jewish Calendar but the reason for celebration remains the same. In 1948, Jews now had a place to call their own. A land where they could freely lived their lives and practice their religion. Amazingly this occurred just a few years after one third of the world's Jewish population was murdered.

Celebrations will take place not only in Israel but all over the world. I'm going to a celebration in downtown Chicago. It's a good day to celebrate. It's a good day to be Jewish.

There will also be protests of Israel and their policies all over the world.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.