On the Friday preceding the President’s Conference convened by Shimon Peres in Jerusalem in May, I partook of one of my most favourite activities. I visited the Pomerantz Bookstore, located at #5 Be’eri St. It is a marvelous experience to browse through this Judaica store, with its exceptionally helpful personnel whose knowledge of Jewish issues is without a doubt the best there is. I was interested in one particular book and within minutes they were able to track it down. The book in question is entitled, Sacred Fire: Torah from the Years of Fury 1939-1942, and is written by Rabbi Kalonymos Kalmish Shapira who was the Rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto. I was interested in trying to understand how men of faith related to what was happening around them as Jews were rounded up, beaten, starved and humiliated on a daily basis. How did Rabbi Shapira address this issue in his writings and his commentaries?

The book is well worth reading for those who are interested in the topic of how Job persevered when all he loved was taken from him. But the book also began to hold increasing relevancy for me as I attended the President’s Conference. I began to understand more poignantly one’s ability to exist in parallel worlds. Inside the venue of the President’s conference persons moved about, seemingly content in their own world, trying as much as possible to filter out reality. Eclectic personalities moved about in an atmosphere at once insular, as well as intellectual, highly motivating, most inspiring and also entertaining, without any real reference to the reality of what was occurring outside the conference hall.

The conference was aptly named Facing Tomorrow, not Today and Tomorrow, for if it had to address the current on-the-ground realities, the fanciful speeches and visionary thinking dreaming up a new Middle East and its glorious future would be shattered.
(more…)