President Ronald Reagan Remembered

by Rabbi David Eidensohn

President Ronald Reagan was a smile and exuberance in a world of despair. Those of us who remember the stress of the Cold War can well appreciate what a smile was worth in those days. Ronald Reagan's confidence in himself, in America, produced the pressures that resulted in the miracle of periostroika, the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We owe such a person our thoughts on the occasion of his ascending to a better world. We commiserate with Nancy Reagan, who watched President Reagan's vibrancy and vitality surrender to Alzheimer's disease. Only someone who has such a relative can appreciate her pain. We must be sad. We must feel the loss, the sorrow, when the world loses such a force.

But we are amiss in our moral duty if we do not take the torch from this spirit and light with it our path today. Our world is awash in radicalism that destroy family and biblical religion. American public schools teach little children about surgery to change a man to a woman. The culture ridicules fathers and family women. Marriage is collapsing. Everywhere, there is fear. The Evil Empire is upon us. The Gay Lobby goes from strength to strength, and we stand baffled, defeated, frightened, and have no smile and no exuberance to lead us in battle.

Let us take heart. Above the Evil Empire is a Higher Power. When we think of it, when we invoke it, we feel a smile, an exuberance, and a confidence that Good will eventually dominate the manifestoes of the fanatics.

Good-by President Ronald Reagan. Take your cheer and courage to the Heavenly Court, and tell them how we miss your confidence that the Evil Empire cannot survive. As for us, we will remember you, in the darkest moments, and march with a renewed energy, until those who want to teach our children hate for parents and the bible collapse.