Max Fink
EIE Spring 2017
Rabbi Avraham Infeld
When I first read the prompt for this essay I was very conflicted. While yes, it would be very interesting to write about someone as influential as Benjamin Netanyahu, as funny as Sarah Silverman, or as profound as David Ben Gurion, I could not bring myself to write about people who I would consider the obvious answer. There are so many ways to interpret what it means to be famous. To me, being famous is not categorized by your net worth, the amount of power you hold, or the number of followers you have on Instagram. One is really made famous by the content of ideas and the impact on society. For this reason, I decided to stray from the regular path and have decided to write about Rabbi Avraham Infeld. Rabbi Infeld was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1943 to Zvi and Olga Infeld. Both were Jewish educators who raised their children in a highly Zionist household. This inspired Infeld to move to Israel later in his life. He grew up attending the King David school and established the South African Zionist Federation. It was then, at age 16, that Avraham decided to make Aliyah. To this day he still resides in Jerusalem. I came across Infeld almost by accident, but what a wonderful accident it was. My good friend Matthew …show more content…
The legs represent Memory, Family, Covenant, Hebrew and Israel. Each of these make Judaism what it is, and that is what I find so compelling. Take away any one of these and we’d be nowhere near where we are today. The pillar that I personally would like to talk to Rabbi Infeld about is memory. He states that he places memory in place of history for one major reason. This reason is that history is solely about the past, whereas memory is how we take the past and allow it to effect our
EIE Spring 2017
Rabbi Avraham Infeld
When I first read the prompt for this essay I was very conflicted. While yes, it would be very interesting to write about someone as influential as Benjamin Netanyahu, as funny as Sarah Silverman, or as profound as David Ben Gurion, I could not bring myself to write about people who I would consider the obvious answer. There are so many ways to interpret what it means to be famous. To me, being famous is not categorized by your net worth, the amount of power you hold, or the number of followers you have on Instagram. One is really made famous by the content of ideas and the impact on society. For this reason, I decided to stray from the regular path and have decided to write about Rabbi Avraham Infeld. Rabbi Infeld was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1943 to Zvi and Olga Infeld. Both were Jewish educators who raised their children in a highly Zionist household. This inspired Infeld to move to Israel later in his life. He grew up attending the King David school and established the South African Zionist Federation. It was then, at age 16, that Avraham decided to make Aliyah. To this day he still resides in Jerusalem. I came across Infeld almost by accident, but what a wonderful accident it was. My good friend Matthew …show more content…
The legs represent Memory, Family, Covenant, Hebrew and Israel. Each of these make Judaism what it is, and that is what I find so compelling. Take away any one of these and we’d be nowhere near where we are today. The pillar that I personally would like to talk to Rabbi Infeld about is memory. He states that he places memory in place of history for one major reason. This reason is that history is solely about the past, whereas memory is how we take the past and allow it to effect our