JEWS: AS TOUGH AS THEY EVER WERE

My great uncle as a young boxer with a Magen David on his shorts. This is London. Post-Holocaust. Never Again was fresh. It was raw. The magnitude of what diaspora Jews heard and saw coming from those death camps changed them forever. Nothing would be the same.

They say Jews were tougher then. No. Necessity made them so. And we are just the same. Necessity will make us so. Necessity already is. Every single one of us is just as tough. And we know how to fight. And as the days and weeks go on we will learn how to fight better. We will fight with our words. We will fight with our actions. We will fight for ourselves and each other. We will fight and we will win - wherever it is necessary for us to win - and however it is necessary to win. And we will do so with the same righteous conviction that ran through the veins of those tough Jews back then. Because the same courage that awoke in their blood runs in yours too. What they witnessed was designed to make them crumble. They didn’t. They rose. What we have seen was designed to make us crumble. We won’t. We will rise. We are rising.

Where we have allies - fantastic. Where we don’t - also fantastic. Because we have each other and we have our ancestors. Look to your own family. Every one of them strong. Every one of them a survivor. Years from now your descendants will look to you as an example of how to be strong. How to survive. And look to your larger family also. Your tribe…

We are Jews. We walk in the footsteps of those who marched through the parted sea and we will hold our heads up high.

We are Jews. We will never be lost, because we follow in footsteps that have been trod for a hundred generations.

We are Jews. And now, as then, the path to victory lies in putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward.

We have walked for four thousand years in the hope of arriving at a promised land of peace. We can walk a little further. And we will help each other in turn should any of our steps ever falter or should our hearts grow faint.

We will persevere. We will continue. We will not be overwhelmed.

This is my great uncle. His name was Hyman or Chaim. It means life. He was a fighter and his name was life.