The Jewish People, Lacking Hope and a Home

            My ancestors were displaced people. They were people driven away from their country during the Holocaust and left with no place to call home. I felt a great connection to the film The Long Way Home because I am Jewish and I couldn’t help but picture myself in their degrading and morbid situation. I come from a hometown that has a very high Jewish population with four synagogues in a two-block radius. Therefore, it is hard for me to comprehend the idea that people were punished and killed for being Jewish. The Long Way Home caused me to think about the real meaning of the word home and my support for the land of Israel.

            This upcoming weekend I plan on going home to celebrate the Jewish holiday, Yom Kipper. Luckily, it is not a Long Way Home for me and I get the opportunity to not only celebrate my religion but also see my family, pets, and other things I associate with home. To me, the word home means familiarity and comfort. It means climbing into my warm bed, eating my mother’s home cooked matzo ball soup, and waking up to the annoying barking of my dog. My house even has a familiar smell that I can recognize right when I step through the front door; it’s the smell of being home. The word home means something different to everyone but the idea that a person can become attached to a location remains true for all. For example, I have started to call my Bucknell University dorm room my “home” because it is where I sleep and spend most of my time. However, my attachment to my dorm room will never be as strong as my love for the house I have lived in since birth in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Unfortunately, not everyone can be as fortunate as I am and those people are known as displaced people. A displaced person is a person who is forced to leave home.

            Based on what I saw in the film I agree with the UN’s decision to establish a Jewish State. I have a biased opinion because I am Jewish and spent a month in Israel. However, I think it is only fair for a people to have a place that they can call home without being harassed for the religion they believe in. When visiting Israel, I learned how much the Israeli citizens appreciate their country and that they would do anything to protect it. Both the women and men are proud to serve in the Israeli army and they wear their uniforms with pride. Because of the fact that the Jewish people fought for their country and went through such a struggle to get to where they are now, they seem to feel destined to protect it. The conflict in the Middle East upsets me because the Jews have been through such hardship and it never seems to come to an end. Unfortunately, I witnessed the conflict first-hand when traveling through Israel. My tour group was planning on driving to Jerusalem for a day of exploring the city but there needed to be a change of plans because a bus was blown up right near our destination. This scared me and made the Middle East’s continuing conflict a reality to me rather than just a headline I may read about in a daily newspaper.

            The Long Way Home encompasses the struggle the Jewish people in Europe faced when Hitler came to power and the difficulties they had to deal with after they were freed, creating the term Displaced Person. The movie touched me emotionally and made me thankful that I have a place to call home.