{"id":67913,"date":"2019-12-31T14:59:33","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T12:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=67913"},"modified":"2023-07-24T17:26:31","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T14:26:31","slug":"prophets-of-today-natan-sharansky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/prophets-of-today-natan-sharansky\/","title":{"rendered":"Prophets of Today: Natan Sharansky"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[479,697,413,438,327],"acf":{"old_id":"67913","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":65645,"related_cahpter":"384","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"\u201cNext year in Jerusalem!\u201d\r\n\r\n","content":"

Natan Sharansky always struck me as a fearless prophet of our times, ready to speak his mind and declare his faith even when gripped in the claws of the KGB. As a refusenik in the 1970s, he incurred the wrath of the Soviet Union when he applied to move to Israel. Not only was his application denied, but the Soviets put him on trial for spurious charges of passing secrets to the West. To tempt him to help break the dissident movement, Soviet officials said he\u2019d be released to join his wife Avital in Israel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In my chumash, I carry a clipping from the New York Times of July 15, 1978, with Sharansky\u2019s closing statement at his trial in Moscow. I didn\u2019t know it at the time, but before the trial Avital gave him a Book of Tehillim (Psalms), which featured prominently in the aftermath of his trial. Sharansky concludes,<\/span><\/p>\n

For more than 2,000 years the Jewish people, my people, have been dispersed. But wherever they are, every year they have repeated, \u201cNext year in Jerusalem.\u201d Now, when I am further than ever from my people, from Avital, facing many arduous years of imprisonment, I say, turning to my people, my Avital: Next year in Jerusalem.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Now I turn to you, the court, who were required to confirm a predetermined sentence: to you I have nothing to say.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

With his strong faith, Sharansky channeled what I call the \u201ckish mir in tuchas\u201d voice of Daniel and friends\u00a0 when facing down Babylonian officials who demanded they bow before Nebuchadnezzar.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026If you will not worship, you shall at once be thrown into a burning fiery furnace, and what god is there that can save you from my power?\u201d Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego said in reply to the king, \u201cO Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter, our God will save us from your power. But even if He does not, O king, we will not serve your god or worship the statue of gold that you have set up.” <\/span><\/i>(Daniel 3:15-18).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sharansky was released in 1986 as part of a spy swap, strolling across the Glieneke Bridge, the fabled \u201cBridge of Spies\u201d spanning the Havel River between West Berlin and East Germany\u2019s Potsdam. He left the USSR with the Tehillim that Avital had given him, a book that sustained him through the gulag years. He had to<\/span> fight the KGB<\/span><\/a> in his very last moments in the USSR, refusing to leave until agents returned the book to him. He moved to Israel, changed his name and built a family with Avital.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once in Israel, Sharansky wasn\u2019t content to sit on his prophetic laurels. Instead, he formed a political party to acclimate Russian immigrants to Israeli life and served in several governments. The prophet\u2019s day jobs enabled him to put his values into action.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Genesis Prize shows that Sharansky is a prophet with honor in his times. He exemplifies action driven and articulated by faith. He put his life on the line to speak to his jailers in explicitly religious terms, asserting \u201cnext year in Jerusalem;\u201d he never gave an inch to them. Sharansky still carries the battered volume of Tehillim with him, a sign of the Jewish faith that protected him in the fiery furnace of a vanished empire.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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