Another brag, this one as Proud Papa…
For his Bar Mitzvah tzedakah project, my son Gabe decided to raise funds for Unite for Sight, an organization that promotes optical surgeries and eye care around the world. (Part of the inspiration for his project was personal: when he was ten, Gabe underwent emergency eye surgery to repair a detached retina that occurred during a soccer accident.)
Here’s an excerpt from Gabe’s Dvar Torah, which he gave at his Bar Mitzvah ceremony this past September:
One curse in my Torah portion especially interested me: “Cursed be he who misdirects a blind person on his way.” (Deuteronomy 27:18) On one hand, this could mean taking advantage of someone like a tourist that doesn’t “ know the ropes” in a situation. The Torah teaches that we have a responsibility to be trustworthy and help others find their desired destination.
In a more literal way, we can interpret this commandment to mean we have a responsibility to help people who suffer from the curse of blindness, especially preventable blindness.
Here is a shameful fact: millions of children die every year from preventable diseases. While many of us in America can afford surgeries and treatments, people in other countries are getting sick and dying from easily treatable diseases. Each year more than 10 million children die worldwide before the age of five from preventable illnesses.
There are similar statistics when it comes to preventable blindness. Worldwide, up to 70% of childhood blindness is preventable. An estimated 1.4 million children throughout the world are blind. 320,000 of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa, where most of them cannot afford surgery or treatment.
What would it take to stop the curse of preventable blindness in developing countries? More affluent countries should realize that they have a responsibility to stop the diseases and would need to donate money for more optic surgeons and more hospitals in these parts of the world.
Because of this lesson I have learned from my Torah portion I have decided to spend the next year raising money for a caring organization called Unite for Sight. Unite For Sight empowers communities around the world to improve eye health and prevent blindness. The volunteers that work there work with partner eye clinics in developing countries to provide eye care and eye health education programs.
It is easier to make a difference than we often think. According to Unite for Sight, $50.00 can restore sight to one person in Africa. That means if everyone in this room donated $10.00, we – each of us here today – would together restore sight to 100 people. It’s that simple to change a curse into a blessing!
To date, Gabe has raised almost $6,000.00 for Unite for Sight. The funds raised will be used to purchase a visual field analyzer for the Eye Clinic of the Teaching Hospital in Tamale, Ghana – which the clinic desperately needed in order to help diagnose glaucoma in their community. In a letter to Gabe, clinic director Dr. Seth Wanye wrote:
We have never had this equipment in the history of the eye clinic and it is going to help us diagnose and treat tens of thousands of glaucoma patients so that we can give them the proper treatment to preserve their sight…Your work is very important to what we are doing in Tamale. On behalf of the eye clinic and all the staff and and on behalf of Unite for Sight, I want to thank you for the wonderful thing you have done for us and our clients.
And the kvelling doesn’t stop there: this April, Gabe will travel to California, where Unite for Sight will honor him at their annual conference!
You can donate to Unite for Sight by clicking here. To paraphrase Gabe, it’s that easy to make a difference.
In honor of 
Parashat Vayetze 5767
The vivid image of angels ascending and descending the ladder in Jacob’s dream has been interpreted in many ways by many commentators. One famous midrash suggests that the angels represent prominent empires that would rule the world. (See for instance Pirkei D’Rabbi Eliezer ch. 25). Though mighty nations such as Babylonia, Persia, Greece and Rome (represented by his brother, Esau) would later ascend to a place over power over the Jewish people, Jacob was reassured by God that these nations, like all empires, were eventually fated to “descend” and fall. In much the same way, the rabbinic authors of these midrashim may have sought to reassure a beleagured Jewish people that the small Jewish nation yet lived while the empires that oppressed them (yes, even the mighty Roman Empire) inevitably disappeared into the annals of history.
This reminder should serve not only as a reassurance for nations at their lowest moments, but as a caution for empires at their mightiest. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War, the United States has held tightly to a self-image of itself as the “world’s only superpower.” But we are increasingly coming to understand that even 21st century empires are subject to the ever-shifting sands of history.
For instance, journalist Roger Cohen recently wrote in the International Herald Tribune that we are currently witnessing the emergence “of a new bipolar world whose centers are in Washington and Bejing.” Analyst Charles A. Kupchan (“The End of the American Era”) and others point to the rising power and influence of the European Union. Much like the angels on Jacob’s ladder, the world now finds itself in the midst of a new pattern of “ascendancy” and “descendancy.”
Though every empire tends to view itself as the sine qua non of its time, history tends teaches us otherwise. In the end, as the Jewish people knows all too well, a nation’s longevity is determined by factors much deeper than mere power and might.
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