                          I am no Hero
                        November 7, 1993
                     by Gary M. Cooperberg

     I wish I had a nickel for every time a visitor complimented me on what a hero I am to
have given up the good life of America to sacrifice and be a pioneer in Israel.  While it is
certainly nice to get compliments, and even tempting to permit my ego to be stroked, the fact
is that to do so would be to perpetuate a grave error.
     I did not come to Israel or to Kiryat Arba to be a hero or a pioneer.  I came home
because it is home and, baruch HaShem, it is today under Jewish control.  The "compliment"
which, on the surface, seems so nice, is not really a compliment.  It is an excuse to explain why
he who issued this compliment has not chosen to live here.  If I accept that compliment then,
in effect, I am telling this visitor that he is correct in not thinking about aliyah because only
heroes and pioneers would do such a thing.
     This is simply not so.  It has always been a mitzvah for a Jew to live in his homeland. 
Yet, before 1948, it could be said that to do so was a great hardship and even a danger to life,
and thus understandable why most Jews felt unable to perform this mitzvah.  Today there is no
excuse.  While, indeed, financially it may be somewhat of a hardship for Jews to start a new
life in Israel; the fact is that world wide antisemitism is on the rise.  Every day it becomes more
dangerous for Jews who live outside of the Land.  As such it would be an act of negligence
and irresponsibility to help perpetuate the illusion that there is a place other than Israel where
it is safe for Jews to live.
     Aliyah is part of Jewish destiny.  The whole concept of an ancient people which has
miraculously survived for so many generations after having been persecuted, slaughtered and
nearly annihilated, to somehow pick up their bedraggled remnants and come home and rebuild
their homeland under the very noses of viciously hostile neighbors who would rather see them
disappear altogether, defies the imagination.
     It is unnatural for any person to decide to just change his life, quit his job, sell his home
and go to the other side of the world to begin again.  It is very understandable why Jews living
in the United States, even as things deteriorate there, refuse to consider the possibility of
taking such a drastic course.  On a scale of simple logic it is just plane absurd.
     But we must remind ourselves that, as Jews, our entire existence is a defiance of logic. 
The Creator of the Universe took us to be living proof of His existence and His control of a
world which Man thinks he controls.  It is via this dramatic, logic- defying proof that the
world will come to recognize Divine authority and thus arrive at genuine peace by accepting
that authority.  There is no other way to achieve real peace.
     So next time someone from chutz l'aretz tries to use you to justify his risking his own
life and that of his family by remaining outside of the Jewish homeland, don't fall into the trap. 
Instead, tell him that you are no hero.  On the contrary, I came to live in Israel because I fear
for the future of my children.  I am not as brave as you who live under foreign rule which will
eventually turn against Jews as has consistently happened throughout Jewish history.  I really
cannot understand how you can continue to take such chances.