Just an Ordinary Jew

My name is Steve Rosedale. I grew up just an ordinary Jew in a neighborhood full of Jews. We were Jewish just because that’s what we were. We didn’t give it much thought. That changed in my last year of college when I bumped into a young Sabra (born in Israel) and was instantly smitten. She said she was going to Israel that summer and without a second thought I said, “Me too!”

Well, I didn’t get the girl but I did have this ticket to Israel and ended up on a student flight from Basel, Switzerland. It was midnight, I looked out at the stars, the students on the plane were singing these songs. I didn’t understand the words, but something moved in my heart. By the time we touched down on the tarmac, I got out, kissed the ground and thought to myself, Why am I having these feelings?

I spent four and half months in Israel, grew to love the land and its people, my people. It felt like I had come home and while I didn’t understand where these feelings came from, given my background, it was liberating. I knew that if God existed, this was where He lived.

It felt like I had come home and while I didn’t understand where these feelings came from, given my background, it was liberating.

On my last day I was at the train station. Someone grabbed me, spun me around, and poked me in the chest. I looked up at this tall, red-bearded Hassid. He said, “You Americans, your mothers teach you Greek and Latin, what do you know of your own heritage?”

I backed away but it stuck in me like an arrow. Why had I fallen in love with this place? What did I know of my own heritage?

But my time there came to an end. It was during the Vietnam war and for whatever reason I wanted to see it. So, I joined the American Army, ostensibly to be in the Medical Service Corp, but the Army had other ideas, gave me a gun and sent me off to fight. I went over with a bunch of other innocent, nice American boys. We had no idea what we were getting into.

I remember going south, to the top of the Delta, where we replaced another battalion. As the guys got on the trucks their heads down, shuffling their feet, looking more like ghosts than men, I shuddered. What happened to these guys? We soon found out.

Humping through rice paddies and jungles, sweat pouring down my back, my heart thumping, never knowing what was around the corner, whether the next moment would be my last. I felt my soul pressed up against my own mortality. It was sobering.

In Vietnam, I felt my soul pressed up against my own mortality. It was sobering.

I ended up severely wounded, spent six months in hospitals and returned to a divided country. It left me with a lot of questions. Sort of like now.

After discharge I tried to get on with my life, got married, had kids, and remembered what the Hassid said. I sent my kids to a Jewish Day School so they could have what I didn’t. I wasn’t religious but I least wanted them to know something of their heritage.

After my oldest son graduated, the principle insisted that I should send him to a Yeshiva, that was out of town no less. I told him, respectfully, that he was crazy. He pestered me for three weeks and finally he said, “For the sake of your child, won’t you at least look?”

I did, and I was mesmerized. I knew something special was happening there. The people were so different, so wholesome, such a sense of deep wisdom. Like that feeling I had in Israel, that if God existed He lived here.

We got on with life but, sometimes life is difficult. In morning prayers, we recite, “Enlighten our eyes in your Torah, attach our hearts to Your commandments, and unify our hearts to love and fear Your name, so that we may not feel inner shame nor be humiliated, nor stumble for all eternity.” I didn’t know those words at the time. We didn’t have a rulebook. Even when you are doing the wrong thing you don’t always know what the right thing is. When you only have yourself to turn to, who will fill your heart with wisdom? And when life is a series of trial and error, it sometimes goes from bad to worse.

So we stumbled on sharp thorns and broken hearts, and we lost the ability to heal our marriage. I watched my precious family disintegrate. It was devastating.

They say that many of the gates of Heaven are closed, but never the gate of tears. I remembered what good looked like. I remembered my grandparents and the white table cloth and gleaming silver candlesticks on Shabbat. I remembered my grandfather reading in this book and crying. Then one day walking in a supermarket with my youngest son, who was wearing his kippah, an old Russian woman looked at me and said, "For the kinder (the child) you couldn’t wear a kippah?”

It broke my heart. Why was I resisting so hard? That Shabbat, I was talking to a friend at a Bar Mitzvah and said, “You know, I’ve been thinking, I’m putting this kippah on my head today…” and just like that I said, “and I’m not going to take it off for the rest of my life.”

From that moment on my life changed dramatically. It’s not that I had all the answers, but I said, Master of the Universe, I’m drowning, I’m turning my life over to You. Somehow the weight of the world, at least my world, was lifted off my shoulders. I went to my local Rabbi and said, “Tell me how to be a Jew.”

I’ve learned that when you do the right thing, blessings follow.

I’ve learned that when you do the right thing, blessings follow. Within two months someone from the Yeshiva came to me and said he had two names. Of what I asked. Of women. For what, I asked. To get married.

“Are you crazy?” I said. “I barely know you!”

After pestering me for several weeks I agreed to take a name, figuring I would explain to this lady the embarrassing situation, that I was a newbie and it would never work. Apparently, the lady, religious from birth, had the same idea.

After talking for 20 minutes I knew I was going to marry this lady. She became the center of my life, my partner, the mother of my children and together we built our family. It’s been more than 36 years. My children came back, we built a family, then a community, and the one thought in my mind was how could I repay the good Lord for the blessings he showered upon me.

You might think it was just that I found the right woman, and of course you’d be right, but I don’t believe in coincidences anymore. For sure she never would have spoken to me if I wasn’t religious. I know that doing the right thing brings precious blessings, because that’s the way God set up the world. I’ve built a large health care company, I help take care of religious Jewish soldiers, and currently I serve on the Board of the Jewish Agency where I’ve seen first hand the destruction in lives and property that Oct. 7^th brought.

So what’s going on in Israel? Why is there such a worldwide outcry that has even divided the Jews? If there ever was purpose in this world it is in this miniature State, this motley collection of cast-off peoples from 70 nations with 70 languages, who have somehow come together to recreate a dream, the dream that we Jews actually have purpose. It’s not the purpose of gathering things, of furtive flings, of fads and fancies. It’s not for the cars, the jobs, the toys, the ever-climbing egos to mean something in a meaningless world.

It’s not the emptiness of a rolling stone but of a people who have come home. To a home where our roots sink deep beyond the deepest history to the beginnings of time and this world. To a home where our holy purpose is to do good on this earth. As the Prophet says, “For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of God from Jerusalem.”

And we, this tiny band of brave Jews, standing up against evil in this world, hated from every corner of this earth, it’s our job to build on this earth a place that recalls the Garden in Eden, and within our individual and collective lives create the blessings that God has given to mankind to live in goodness all our days.

When you come to Israel you are part of one beating heart.

When you come to Israel you are part of one beating heart. We celebrate as each hostage is freed, grieve with each loss. Our hearts were broken when they delivered the bodies of those precious red-haired children and their mother. We are a family, we Jews, and we know that this war which has spread throughout the world is between good and evil, and it’s our job, our mission to carry God’s morality in our hearts and live it in our lives, and stand up for the good.

I am now running as a delegate to the World Zionist Congress on the Aish Ha’Am slate, an extraordinary organization, for sometimes a Jew has to stand up and be counted. Sometimes you have to pay back, and in this time in this place standing up for the Israel and the Jewish People is the right thing.

You too can stand with me and all those who are part of the Aish Ha’Am slate, with the young widows, the orphans, the hostages. I ask that you consider voting for Aish Ha’Am so together we can make a difference. https://aish.com/vote/StephenRosedale.