Angels in America2003

The Rabbi:
[Rabbi's opening monologue in 'Angels of America' about the death of Sarah Ironson] This good and righteous woman... she was not a person, but a whole kind of a person - the ones that crossed the ocean that brought with us to America, the villages of Russia and Lithuania. And how we struggled! And how we fought! For the family... for the Jewish home! Descendants of this immigrant woman, you do not grow up in America - you and your children, and their children with their goyische names. You do not live in America - no such a place exists. Your clay is the clay of some litvak shtetl, and your air is the air of the steppes, because she carried that Old World on her back, across the ocean, in a boat! And she put it down on Grand Concourse Avenue... on Flatbush. You can never make that crossing that she made, for such great voyages in this world do not any more exist. But every day of your lives, the miles - that voyage from that place to this one - you cross. Every day! You understand me? In you, that journey... is.