Learning to read the Book of Life

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, Sept. 28, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.

This past week, Jews around the world celebrated the new year. According to the Hebrew calendar, the Jewish people have been recording history for 5,775 years, which makes their perspective on issues and events a position that cannot be ignored and should not be forgotten.

From the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, which started Wednesday night, until the end of Yom Kippur on Saturday, Jews must reflect on their lives during the past year, atone for their sins and seek forgiveness while they pray to be inscribed in the Book of Life for another year.

It seems appropriate during this High Holy Days observance that a sea change seems to be occurring in the neighborhood of the State of Israel, which is the homeland for all Jews — both in biblical and modern times.

This change has aligned a number of Arab countries with the United States in our quest to rid the world of a scourge that knows nothing of decency or respect for human life, plays by no set of rules and would turn the world back to the Dark Ages if given the chance.

All it took was enough people of goodwill to have the good sense to realize that if the world did not act now and with unity and strength, then what the Jews have been suffering for many thousands of years would be visited upon the larger world.

As much as many Americans would have loved for President Barack Obama's approach to world peace be an effective one, the fact is what we wish for and what we get are often a world apart.

And so it took the president six years to figure out what the Jewish people have known ever since Israel was declared a state in 1948. Israel exists — thrives — in a very dangerous neighborhood.

And the only reason it is able to live among a group of neighbors who have tried — some continue to try — to annihilate that tiny state and the people who live there is because Israelis understand strength is a virtue, vigilance a necessity and cooperation with former enemies a desire to be achieved when people stop trying to kill you.

I believe most of the world is tired of death and destruction. Unlike decades past, we live through the pain of war in real time. No sane person should want to continue along that dead-end path.

And that brings us to those who don't want to live in peace, see their children grow and prosper and live their lives to the fullest. Those people don't care about the Book of Life. Theirs is a book of death and destruction.

Obama has managed to get Arabs to fight Arabs, Muslim leaders to start speaking out against fellow Muslims who use their religion for evil purpose, and a world to start seeing bright lines of right and wrong where before there was an ambivalent grey.

It took him six years to get here, but I am happy he has arrived. When you think about six years against 5,775 years of learning to live in a dangerous world, that doesn't sound like a very long time! Let's hope it lasts.

A new year brings the promise of hope. That's what gets people up in the morning.

So, to all people of goodwill and good intentions, may you be inscribed in the Book of Life.

To those who wish nothing but death and destruction? There's a different book being written daily.

Brian Greenspun is owner, publisher and editor of the Las Vegas Sun.