When a Commercial Can Make You Cry
Surfing the blogosphere, one of my regulars directed me to the following video, an El Al commercial running in Israel, in honor of Independence Day.
Now, to be fair, I don't generally think of myself as a very sappy guy. But watching this ad over and over and over, I can't help but find myself on the verge of tears.
The colors, the words, the people, they all come together in this 50 second advertisement to create a bit that makes me want to jump up and hug an El Al employee. I find myself ready to leave Brooklyn and make aliyah immediately.
But it's just a commercial! It's just some people, payed to sing an anthem!
No. These aren't just words. These aren't just people.
They're ideas, yearnings. Hope. Fifty seconds of a smorgasbord of Jews expressing their spiritual and nationalistic aspirations. Different colored skins. Different backgrounds. All Jews, a free people, in their own land, wearing nice shirts and celebrating independence.
And then, at the end, the voice over says, "Our hope, to continue to bring the Jewish people home for the sixty years to come."
When an airline is the vehicle for Jewish theology, the expression of where a Jew is home, and what our people yearn for, ZIonism has succeeded. Who needs the Talmud when we've got airplanes?
This is all to say that, despite its problems and quagmires and deep fissures, it is undeniable that Israel has succeeded in something profound: seeding in so many of us an expression of hope and admiration, an allegiance of aspirations, that has not existed before in the history of the Jewish people, for many thousands of years, if not since the Exodus itself.
The beauty of this phenomenon is apparent when a TV commercial is able to lift you spiritually; when a commercial reminds you of who you are in the world and what you hope for; when a commercial can make you cry.

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