All of Our Children By Rabbi Shimon Russell | August 3, 2021
As the time of Mashiach approaches, Hashem will rouse us through the most painful and sensitive wake-up call of all: the scattering of our children.
Having just read Rav Aaron Lopiansky’s excellent piece “Crumbling Foundations,” I find myself both sad and inspired. Sad, because his premise is so painfully accurate. Inspired, because that premise resonated deeply with me, and I feel compelled to put pen to paper in an attempt to urge us all to do something about it.
Are we brave enough to do a little research? Consider interviewing a random sample of all students graduating from our schools and yeshivos, including a representative sampling of students who dropped out (or were pushed out) before graduating. Let’s ask them the following multiple-choice question:
Three decades later, Lockerbie’s hidden angels relive the rescue of their brethren’s remains and bringing them to kever Yisrael
Photos: Family Archives
Air-traffic controller Alan Topp sat with his eyes fixed to the radar screen, watching the white marker indicating that Pan Am Flight 103, which had taken off from London’s Heathrow airport 27 minutes before, had crossed into Scottish airspace on its voyage across the Atlantic to New York. It was a pretty standard route, nothing too interesting that December night over three decades ago, but suddenly, Topp shot to full attention: The radar screen showed not just one blip where Flight 103 should have been, but four. Topp tried to contact the pilot of the aircraft, but there was no response. He buzzed the oceanic controllers responsible for the plane’s Atlantic crossing, but they too had lost contact with the plane. As his colleagues gathered around his screen, they would soon learn that those four blips represented the c