John Kerry said in his speech that Israel cannot be Jewish and a Democracy at the same time.  This is such a ridiculous, ignorant, and uneducated statement.  Jews are all over the world, and are many things as once.  I was born in Moscow, Russia, on mine and every passport of a Jewish person, it listed “Hebrew” as our nationality, that is the translation of Jew in Russian.  My father was born in Grozny, Chechnya, which used to be part of the Soviet Union, and borders Turkey and Iran, where Mizrahi Jews have lived since the times of Purim and the large Persian empire, which had borders sprawled far and wide.  I am a citizen of the United States of America for over 35 years, and first and foremost identify as a Jew.

Every Jew you meet will have a similar story of nationality, race, background, ethnicity, and various traditions spanning the globe.  There is one thing that will not change, we have one main language, Hebrew, we all celebrate the same holidays, we all play Dreidel!  We have survived kings, leaders, empires, and one thing has never changed, we held on to our roots, our Torah, our connection with God, and it is beyond religion, it is a way of being and a way of life.  Throughout history nations have migrated, been destroyed, assimilated, and extinguished, but somehow the nation of Israel lives on, from generation to generation, connected deep to our ancestors and preserving it in our children.

We are one big family, but we all have our different opinions, way of celebrating, and we respect that everyone is different.  In Israel, Muslims and Christians are not forced to be Jewish, that is the difference in every other country in the region, women and LGBT have no freedom in the Middle East.

I hope the lights of Chanukah wake the world up to the blindness and rewriting of history by the United Nations, and other people around the world that just don’t know that Jews have been around since the beginning of time, and Israel has always been our home

Chanukah day 6,

Chag Sameach,

Coach Yulia