From the Editor Mar/Apr 2015
Dear Friends,
When I was reading the book of Obadiah awhile back, I felt it offered so many good principles for everyday living that I thought you might enjoy an entire issue on it.
Many months later, as I was preparing to send the finished articles to our art director, Tom Williams, I received the news.
Our beloved Zvi Kalisher had left us. At the age of 86, he was ushered into the Lord’s presence on November 17 at 9:30 A.M. from a hospital bed in Jerusalem, surrounded by his loving family. I can’t imagine how he felt when he stepped into heaven and beheld the face of his Savior, whom he had served so well on the streets of Jerusalem for more than 55 years.
Zvi’s first article for Israel My Glory ran in the June/July/August/September 1959 issue, when the incomparable Victor Buksbazen was our executive director. Zvi was 30. Through the years, we’ve changed his column’s name four times, the latest being to “Apples of Gold” after he had become too ill to write.
Zvi Kalisher taught me the importance of moving slowly when sharing your faith. “If you go quickly,” he said, “you just break their legs quickly.”
He was a man of infinite wisdom who had suffered through the Holocaust. Yet, rather than becoming an atheist because of it, as my father had, he became a devout believer in Jesus, whom he loved profoundly and served faithfully for the rest of his life.
I can’t think of anyone better to write our main tribute to him than another man of infinite wisdom who knew Zvi better than anyone else did at The Friends of Israel: our retired executive director, Elwood McQuaid.
Elwood penned Zvi’s biography, not once but twice. In 1978 he wrote ZVI, and in 1988 he wrote Zvi and the Next Generation. In 2000 we combined the two into Zvi: The Miraculous Story of Triumph Over the Holocaust. Elwood also traveled to Poland with Zvi to film Zvi: The Return more than 50 years after the Holocaust. It was Zvi’s first trip back after immigrating to Israel in 1947.
You’ll notice a few of our regular columns are absent, but they’ll return, along with “Apples of Gold,” in the May/June magazine. This is a special issue of Israel My Glory. The Bible teaching is devoted to Obadiah, but the issue is dedicated to our dear friend Zvi, who lived by the Bible’s principles. We will miss him enormously. Please pray for his family.
Waiting for His Appearing,
Lorna Simcox
Editor-in-Chief
