Veffer made aliyah to Israel from Denver, Colorado, in 2006. Since then she has lived in the Zayit neighborhood in Efrat, in the Etzion Bloc. She keeps in touch with friends and family in the United States through Facebook, among other means.
After the speech, she noticed that all of her Israeli friends wrote Facebook “status” messages against Obama, or against the United States. She saw no such reaction among her U.S.-based friends, however.
“None of my [U.S.] Facebook friends said anything about Obama’s speech,” she explained, “while here in Israel we were all extremely worked up over it. I could not understand how they do not react, do not try to defend us, the State of Israel.”
“I started to feel that in the U.S., it is not considered cool to defend Israel. No celebrity stood up for Israel, except for a few Christians. No Jewish American leader made his voice heard.”
That was when Veffer decided that the least she could do was to speak to the hearts of American Jews, in the form of a poem. Daniel Sass, also an Efrat resident, saw the poem and prepared a simple clip that uses the Kotel as background.
The message is a clear and strong one. Will U.S. Jews get it?
