I AM A JEW! Yes, that’s right I said it! No, I won’t apologize. No, I’m not afraid of being targeted or ridiculed. It’s time for the Jewish Nation as a people to rise up world wide and unite in strength! No longer will we be silent! No longer will we sit idly by while our brothers and sisters are murdered over seas and then painted as war criminals by the very assassins and murderers who have the audacity to claim the identity of David while some how masking their Goliath-like stature from world view!

I am an American, but first and foremost I am a Jew, a Hebrew, a Son of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob! Royalty flows in my veins, the blood of prophets and kings from Moses to David and Solomon, from Queen Esther to Golda Meir! We are the Jews, and we will no longer be silent, for Zion is our home! Yes I am a Zionist and proud, no apologies to anyone. Our journey is just beginning, Herzl’s dream is not over. It’s up to us to take the next steps. To my fellow Jews in America and all over the world! Stop apologizing for who we are! Embrace our identity! Remember Moses and David, Deborah and Esther! Rise up! Defend Zion! Defend Israel’s right! From the border of Egypt to the Lebanon! The Arab world will hate us, what else is new? But let them learn to respect us! It’s time for Jews to stop thinking of ourselves as the weak minority and start remembering Who we have on our side and believe! Assimilation will have us believe these stories are fairy tales. Tell that to our grandparents who survived countless onslaughts of the nations to destroy us, and are alive today to keep the flame of Faith burning! And to never let it go out!

The settlements are not the problem! Israel is not the problem! Israel is not the aggressor! It’s time to stop being politically correct and stand with our people! In every country we have gone throughout history, our people have prospered and flourished for generations, and then come the politics which rise against us to blame us for their woes, and I dare say, in America it will be no different. I’m proud to be American, but I am a Jew first and I have chosen Israel as my lot. I hope that day is far off, but when it comes, we must realize there is one major difference today, that is that Israel will be there to take us in! But must we wait till such a day for us to unite? To put our differences aside and hold fast to the tzitziot of our forefathers? Must it take hardship to bring us together? Or can we make a difference today?

I heard a wise rabbi once say, “Rather than being children of exile, we must be builders of redemption.” I could not agree more, and I understand these are two very different mind sets. We can either go on bowing our heads to the whims of the nations, feeling sorry for ourselves and thinking those anti-Semites are right and that we are the root of every problem of the world. Or we can stand up in their faces and scream ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!  The time of exile is over! Let the redemption of Zion live with us! It began with a dream with Herzl, and Ben Yehuda gave it words. Weizmann, Ben Gurion, Meir, Dayan and Begin, they fought for it along with countless of our fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts! Did they fight for nothing? Will we now give up the dream whose price was so high? All because our enemies demand that OUR HISTORIC HOMELAND belongs to them and that we are the invaders? NO! THE ANSWER WE MUST GIVE FOR OUR FAITH, FOR OUR FALLEN BROTHERS AND SISTERS, FOR OUR MOTHERS AND FATHERS AND FOR THE FUTURE OF OUR PEOPLE, IS “NEVER AGAIN!”

Therefore it is time for Israel to rise up, and I not only speak of the physical nation, but of the people of the Book, the chosen ones scattered into every region and every tribe and tongue who have allowed the coils of assimilation to wrap themselves around us and squeeze our identities into utter oblivion, the time is now! No more will Israel call and our answer be silent judgement, let us answer her call! When she calls let every Jew from every corner of the world let their voices be heard like mighty lion roaring! That the peoples and nations would hear and tremble, not at our cry, but at the roar of the ONE Who guides and protects us from the days of Sinai to this day until Mashiach comes. Until that day let us pick up where Herzl left off, let us look to our roots! Look to Abraham our father, to Sarah our mother! To Moses our teacher, to David our king, and march on with that same zeal toward our bright and glorious future. Let us recall the words of the prophet Isaiah and may it become our battle cry: “FOR ZION’S SAKE, I WILL NOT BE SILENT! AND FOR THE CAUSE OF JERUSALEM, I WILL NOT HOLD MY PEACE, UNTIL HER RIGHTEOUSNESS SHINES LIKE THE MORNING, HER SALVATION LIKE A BURNING LAMP!”