Memo from JINSA's Executive Director Tom Neumann

JINSA
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April 24, 2006

Billy G. Goldberg

We do not customarily write about the passing of JINSA members and
supporters. We break with tradition to note the passing of Billy B.
Goldberg because with his passing we are witnessing the end of an era.
It is this event we commemorate.

You have likely never heard of Billy Goldberg. He is a figure from
another era and most of his admirers preceded him in death. "There was
a new generation that knew not Joseph." And that's the point; they may
not know Joseph because there are so few Josephs left to know.

When Ariel Sharon passed from the Israeli political scene, an era in
Israel's history came to an end. What follows will be dramatically
different; the product of a different experience. The same is true of
American Jewry with the passing of Billy Goldberg.

Most of us support Israel because it has a right to survive and a right
to live in peace. Billy supported Israel because he had a dream, a
vision. As our American forefathers saw this country, he saw Israel as
an experiment for a better world and a dream of what the future could
hold. To him Israel was a land of milk and honey and made the dessert
bloom – terms rarely used or even thought of by the current generation.

He was a giant of a man. At the age of seventy-two when most of us see
our future behind us, a then broke Billy Goldberg rebuilt his fortune.
That was his way.

Billy used to say that there were three kinds of people – those who talk
about other people; those who talk about events; and exceptional ones,
whom he admired, who talk about ideas. And then there was Billy
Goldberg who spoke of the impossible as if it was possible. And he was
right. The impossible is possible when your mission is noble and your
zeal for it is boundless.

His dream was the return of the people of the Bible to Zion to build a
Utopia after years of disenfranchisement; not only for the Jews, but one
that would be an example and catalyst for the world. A place and a
people that would be simultaneously close to the earth and the heaven,
and which would foster democracy and be a haven of morality. A land
that would blossom both in fruit from the earth and spirit ennobled and
educated by its suffering. A land where the victim had something to
give and teach his tormentor.

Billy dreamed the same dream for America and Israel. He was a lover of
both Zions, a toiler and tireless fighter for both. But tormentors have
tried to hijack the dream. Soon there may be no more dreamers and the
tormentors may have their way.

It is up to us, the successor generation, to remember the greatness of
both the American and Israeli dream. It is to remind us of that we
eulogize Billy B. Goldberg.

Tom Neumann
Executive Director, JINSA

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