Page 55 - HaMizrachi Chanukah 2021 - USA

Now it is the silence that hurts ... for it is A life ofYaakov's ladder and Yosefs bones,
the silence of failed expectations. • brought to the promised land.
It is a silence borne in agony. A life of heroes and prophecies, of hope and pride,
For that is how dreams die - in the silence of and Jewish destiny.
one's thoughts, in the depths of one's soul.
Day after day, year after year. For dreams don't die. Only dreamers do.
This is how dreams die. And this is the way dreams live.
They live with the butler, who finally remembered
Yosef ... and became the ally he needed.
Is this how Moshe felt?
They live with Yaakov's financial planning ...
Hidden by his mother, raised by a1;other,
and his determination to leave Lavan.
chased by Pharaoh, adopted by Yitro.
They live with G-d ... Holder of Dreams,
Taken from his family, cut off from his home.
who was always at their side.
He was given a dream.
This is the way dreams live.
A free nation and covenant with G-d; his dream
was lofty. A dream, like Yosefs and Yaakov's, They live as a double-edged sword;
that would bring him to the land. they hurt but also give us life.
Torah in hand, the people would follow, The Zohar teaches: 'Through a dream Yosef was
they would all cross the Jordan ... distanced from his brothers, and through a dream he was
but he never did. raised above his brothers, and above the entire world.'
Not that year, nor the next, or even 40 years later. For this is the way dreams live: They bring
As he stood on top of a mountain overlooking us down, and they raise us up.
the Promised Land, he no longer dreamed.
• He begged. But G-d would not let him go further. With anguish and hope,
For this is how dreams die: with advancing age, We long for the land of dreams.
With patience, with faith, with perseverance.
and endless wandering in a personal desert.
Yosefwaited two years, Yaakov 20; our people, 2,000.
And me? My dream lives on.
But this is also how dreams live.
With a heart that beats faster to the cadence of HaTikvah.
With blood that runs blue and white
- the colors of Jewish dreams.
With the pain of being a stranger in a strange land.
The agony remains, but also gratitude.
For Israel has given me an indescribable gift:
I live the life of a dreamer.
A life of broadened horizons, and untold possibilities. Rabbi Natan Kapustin is the Dean of Students and 12th Grade
A life of imagination, of legend, of linkage to ancestors. Dean at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in Manhattan.

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