Give my regards to Broadway

After ten years in Israel, I conclude Israel is for Israelis. If you grew up here, if you have family here, if all your childhood memories are from here, if you speak fluent Hebrew, if you have an Israeli mentality (and we all know what that means), if you have just the right connections to help you earn a parnassah here, if you can deal with three years of servitude in the military, you can live in Israel. Perhaps if you are a crazed Zionist, have totally been taken in the Zionist story line, you are very aggressive, believe that the Israeli government is always right in whatever it does, and speak fluent Hebrew, then you also can come.

But don't come here just because "you support Israel," whatever that means, or because you "always wanted to live here," in some vague way, or because you liked it here when you stayed in your American seminary for a year.

Imagine a woman from Montanna, who likes musical theater. She saw Guys and Dolls at the local high school. She watched South Pacific on Turner Classics. Does that mean she should move to New York City and try to make it on Broadway?

I know many who tried that. I'm sure many thousands have tried it. Few make it. I know one gentile woman who is now in her sixties. She came to New York from a small state. She never married, never had children, and now lives by herself in a small apartment that is much smaller than her state. I'm quite sure she should have stayed in her home state and enjoyed a normal life there. She would have found more stage work at the local theater than she ever did on Broadway.

Remember George M. Cohan's song, "Give my regards to Broadway." 

Give my regards to Broadway 

Remember me to Herald Square

Tell all the gang at Forty-Second Street

That I will soon be there

Whisper of how I'm yearning

To mingle with the old time throng

Give my regards to old Broadway

And say that I'll be there e'er long

Now rewritten for Israel:

Give my regards to Israel Remember me to the Kosel Tell all the gang in Yerushalayim That I will soon be there For generations we have been yearning for Moshiach to arrive with song Give my regards to Eretz Yisroel when he comes I'll be along.