I am a Jew

Our condition, in Israel , has never been better than it is now! Only the television and the media make people think that the end of the world is near..

Only 65 years ago, Jews were brought to death like sheep to slaughter. NO country, NO army Only 60 years ago, seven Arab countries declared war on little Israel , the Jewish State, just a few hours after it was established. We were 650,000 Jews against the rest of the Arab world. No IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) or Air Force. We were only a small group of stubborn people with nowhere to go. Remember: Lebanon , Syria , Iraq , Jordan , Egypt , Libya , and Saudi Arabia, they all attacked at once The state that the United Nations "gave" us was 65% desert We started it from zero.

Only 41 years ago, we fought three of the strongest countries in the Middle East , and we crushed them in the Six Day War. Over the years we fought different coalitions of Arab countries with modern armies and with huge amounts of Russian-Soviet ammunition, and we still won. Today we have a beautiful country, a powerful Army, a strong Air Force, an adequate Navy and a thriving high tech industry. Intel, Microsoft, and IBM have all developed their businesses here. Our doctors have won important prizes in the medical development field. We turned the desert into a prosperous land. We sell oranges, flowers, and vegetables around the world. We launched our own satellite! Three satellites at once! We are in good company; together with the USA (280 million residents), Russia (220 million residents), China (1.3 billion residents) and Europe ( France , England and Germany 35 million residents), we are one of the only countries in the world that have launched something into space! Israel today is among the few powerful countries that have nuclear technology & capabilities. ( We will never admit it, but everyone knows.)

To think that only 65 years ago we were disgraced and hopeless. We crawled out from the burning crematoriums of Europe . We won in all our wars. With a little bit of nothing we built an empire. Who are Khaled Mashal (leader of Hamas) or Hassan Nasrallah (leader of Hezbollah) trying to frighten us? They are amusing us.

As we celebrate Independence Day, let's not forget what this holy day is all about; we overcame everything.. We overcame the Greeks, We overcame the Romans, We overcame the Spanish Inquisition, We overcame the Russians pogrom, We overcame Hitler, we overcame Germany and overcame the Holocaust, We overcame the armies of seven countries.

Relax chevray (friends), we will overcome our current enemies. Never mind where you look in human history. Think about it, the Jewish nation, our condition has never been better than now. So let's lift our heads up and remember: Never mind which country or culture tries to harm us or erase us from the world. We will still exist and persevere. Egypt ? Anyone know where the Egyptian empire disappeared to? The Greeks? Alexander Macedon? The Romans? Is anyone speaking Latin today? The Third Reich? Did anyone hear news from them lately? And look at us, the Bible nation – from slavery in Egypt , we are still here, still speaking the same language. Exactly here, exactly now. Maybe The Arabs don't know it yet, but we are an eternal nation. All the time that we will keep our identity, we will stay eternal. So, sorry that we are not worrying, complaining, crying, or fearing…

Business here is beseder (fine). It can definitely be much better, but it is still fine. Don't pay attention to the nonsense in the media, they will not tell you about our festivals here in Israel or about the people that continue living, going out, meeting friends. Yes, sometimes morale is down, so what? This is only because we are mourning the dead while they are celebrating spilled blood. And this is the reason we will win after all. You are all part of our force to keep our existence. May this help us lift our heads up and be proud to say: I AM A JEW .

Kirk Douglas-aka Issur Danielovitch

Los Angeles - Over the course of an illustrious Hollywood career spanning more than five decades, Kirk Douglas has played many parts: Vincent Van Gogh, Spartacus and boxer Midge Kelly, to name just a formidable few. But the one character he has never played - to his deep regret, he now says - was that of Issur Danielovitch, his own former self.

Douglas revealed this, and much more, when he opened his Beverly Hills, Calif., home to the Forward for a wide-ranging chat in advance of his newly released memoir, "Let's Face It: 90 Years of Living, Loving, and Learning" (John Wiley & Sons). Wearing a pale-green cotton sweater, khaki pants and tan canvas Vans, the cleft-chinned former Adonis of the silver screen chatted with us about the importance of living a good life, how to sustain a marriage. But Douglas reserved his most ardent feelings for a topic that has become close to his heart: the renewed state of his Jewish identity. " Now" he writes in his book, "I feel guilty for abandoning Issur Danielovitch.."

It was clear from Douglas 's desire to share his reflections on life - both in person, with a reporter, and on the printed page - that he is painfully aware he is nearing his end.. The book, in fact, reads like a self-conscious swan song: a final burst of thoughts and opinions on everything from Jimmy Carter's recent tome on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the tragic death of Douglas 's son Eric, three years ago, from a drug overdose. But the book also showcases the vitality and verve still fueling the man who helped break the Hollywood blacklist when he hired Dalton Trumbo to pen the film "Spartacus": It is sprinkled with a hefty smattering of salacious anecdotes from Douglas's salad days as a young Hollywood buck - the days when he was known to most women under 30 as someone other than Michael Douglas's father.

With slightly slurred speech - the result of a stroke he suffered in 1996 - Douglas waxed poetic about more serious topics, as well, including his own history.. The child of Russian immigrant parents, he grew up in a Yiddish-speaking home in Amsterdam, N.Y., a small upstate town, where he endured daily run-ins with a street gang who pelted him with pebbles wrapped in women's stockings, and called him such names as "Jew bastard" as he walked home from Hebrew school. He was also a promising student of the Torah who had to beat back his community's efforts to ship him off to yeshiva.

Douglas first rediscovered Judaism after being in a helicopter crash in 1991. He reconnected with his roots, and had a second bar mitzvah at the age of 83. Now he studies weekly with Rabbi David Wolpe, a Conservative rabbi who occupies the pulpit at Los Angeles 's Sinai Temple .. Douglas has also has emerged as a committed Jewish philanthropist, giving money to rebuild playgrounds in Israel - in both Arab and Jewish neighborhoods - and to a multimedia theater at a Jewish outreach organizationAish HaTorah's World Center in Jerusalem, where visitors learn about the history of the Western Wall.

Because Douglas married two non-Jewish women, none of his four sons is technically Jewish, nor were they taught any of the customs and traditions. While Douglas contends in his book that he is not bothered by the fact that his children aren't Jewish, saying he cares only that they do good in the world, in person he is more candid.

When I asked, sitting in his sprawling front parlor in front of an abstract Robert Rauschenberg painting that contains the word "kosher" in bold letters, whether he is truly remorseless about not having Jewish offspring, he back-pedaled. "That's half-correct" Douglas admitted. "You see in the entrance to my home that I have a mezuzah" he said, pointing to the front door. "In it, it says you should teach your children. I never did that."


But if his sons Peter, Michael and Joel do not practice his religion - Eric was eventually bar mitzvahed during a stint in rehab - "they are" he said, "acutely aware that their father is Jewish". Resting on a bookshelf, above a copy of Leon Uris's Holocaust tale,QB VII, prominently displayed in the inner sitting room, is an ornate menorah in violet, and peach-colored flower buds candleholders - a gift from Michael, on the occasion of his father's 90th birthday. "They've given me so many menorahs, I have to laugh," Douglas said referring to his children. (For his 86th birthday, he added," Michael had 86 trees planted in Israel " in his father's name.)

But it is Douglas 's German-born wife of 53 years, Anne, who may have given him the biggest Jewish-themed gift of all. On the occasion of their "second wedding," commemorating their 50th anniversary, Anne announced that she was converting.

Judaism may have even skipped a generation in the Douglas line. His 14-year-old granddaughter, Kelsey, decided without any prompting that she wanted to have a bat mitzvah. Douglas said that at first he wasn't convinced of her seriousness, thinking that she just wanted the extravagant party, but he was proved wrong. She studied hard to learn her Torah portion, he said, and now, even her 11-year-old brother, Tyler, is talking about having a bar mitzvah.

Douglas 's final book - his ninth in a slate that includes two novels - is dedicated to his seven grandchildren. He worries, he said, that they are poised to inherit an intractably troubled world.

"Let's face it, the world is in a mess," he said. "Horace Mann, a great educator, once said, ' Be ashamed to die before you do something for humanity,' and as I get older, I see how correct that is."

The writer, Rebecca Spence, is a staff reporter at the Forward.