When there are wars in Israel, they arouse
fierce emotions. To the extent that they involve us personally, they make us
ask ourselves who we are and what is important to us. Here is a “war story”
from my own past.
A friend of mine,
a pulpit rabbi in a large city in the United States, was approached by parents
from his congregation when the 1990 Gulf War broke out. Israel was being bombed
by Saddam Hussein of Iraq. The couple had a son in his “gap year” learning in a
Jerusalem yeshiva, and they were concerned. They asked the rabbi if they could
bring their son home. He answered, “You can do it, but realize that if you
bring the boy home, he will remember for the rest of his life that you pulled
him out of Jewish history.” This gave them new focus, and they let their son
stay.
My friend, a
learned man and a gifted speaker and writer, could have enjoyed making aliyah, but he sacrificed himself and
spent dozens of years coaching and convincing young boys and girls from liberal
Orthodox families to give a year of their lives to intense yeshiva or seminary
study in Israel. Those young people came home different from what they had been
when they left. The experience colored and defined their whole lives.
A week after that he gave that advice, my
friend decided to fly to Israel. We made a lunch date, and he told me that he
felt right in giving this advice, but he simultaneously felt guilt over putting
parents in a situation that he was not in, and he could not live with that, so
he came to Israel himself to “put his money where his mouth was.”
Now Israel is at
war again, and we cannot predict its scope or duration. America is already
involved with Yemen and with Hezbollah, and apparently will still be involved
after the American elections in November. I would like to share with you what I
am feeling since, after 44 years in Israel, this is my first real contact with
war. True, I mentioned the Gulf War, but in hindsight, that was no war. Israel
did not fire a shot. Thirty-six scud missiles fell on Israel, but not a single
Jew in Israel was hurt. Additionally, the 13 years I served in the Israeli reserves
as an artillery soldier, 1987 to 1999, were arguably Israel’s quietest time.
Humility and Pride
Pride is the
strongest emotion I feel. I am proud of the younger generation. They are super
patriots, all of them, and they responded 150% to the October 7th
call-up. I have a son and two sons-in-law who raced to join their units that
first day, Simchat Torah. All three are pious Jews, but they raced in their
cars in the middle of Simchat Torah to reach the rendezvous spot on time.
Five years ago, my
son-in-law Shaked, husband of my daughter Tzippora, made a siyum on all
of Seder Nezikin (the gemarot) at the brit milah of his first son. Shaked and my daughter had just
celebrated the completion of their beautiful new home in Negohot, in the
Southern Hills of Hebron. But he left his wife and his new home and raced to
the front. He was in Gaza for 80 days, during which he celebrated his 32nd
birthday. Now he is home again. He has done his part for now. I hope it is not
selfish of me to hope that he has a long rest. But it doesn’t depend on me.
With my pride comes humility, to see the younger generation so brave, so
unhesitating in their wish to protect their land.
Not all of my
heroes are younger than me. Yisrael Ze’ev, whom I described 18 months ago as my
Sefat Emet teacher on Shabbos mornings, is a 74-year-old resident of Hebron,
and he has volunteered for Hagana Merchavit, the local reserve force
that guards Kiryat Arba and Hebron. He is in his uniform eight hours a day,
doing guard duty.
Another source of
my humility is to see the younger generation much more unified than mine. We
have just had a number of years of political turmoil. But there is none of that
among the soldiers. There is only unity. It is a unity based on love of G-d and
love of their fellow men, and the events of October 7 contributed to that.
Happiness
Recently, a unit
of officer cadets left Gaza after a long period of fighting there, singing “Asher
bachar banu mikol ha’amim,” praising God for “choosing us from all the
nations.” These officers in training were not all outwardly religious, but they
all sang.
The young Israeli
comedian Guy Hochman was recently quoted as saying, “After the 7th
of October, we are all more Jewish.” He added, “The Hamas terror attack was a
sign to all Jews to wake up. We received a slap in the face.”
One soldier at the
front started a new initiative: Hundreds of soldiers are creating short videos
on social media in which they show themselves in uniform, saying some version
of, “Politicians and newsmen, if you don’t have something unifying to say, Shut
your mouth!”
One soldier in
Gaza since October 7 who created such a video is Idan Amedi, a singer and actor
in civilian life, one of the stars of the internationally popular Israeli
series “Fauda,” shown on Netflix, and part of the engineering corps in the
reserves.
I wrote about
Amedi in these pages six years ago, before “Fauda,” when he was just a young “heartthrob”
for teenage girls. He does not wear a yarmulke, but like many young Israelis,
he has started to keep Shabbat and to put on tefillin, and he publicly praises
what these mitzvot do for him. He says he was influenced by reading Rabbi
Yisrael Meir Lau’s biography.
In his own “unity”
video, he says, “To all those [politicians and newsmen] who went back to their
old habits from the day before, stop! There is a direct link between your
ability to unify the ranks and the plight of the fighters at the front. Say
little. Do much.”
Unfortunately,
Idan Amedi, just two days ago, was wounded in an explosion, and he is presently
hospitalized, but he has come out of danger. His Hebrew name is Idan ben Tova,
and I ask you to pray for him.
Worry
Of my three
soldiers, Shaked, is the one we worried about the most. Since the ground
incursion began, 186 soldiers have been killed, in addition to the 334 who died
that first day, when over 3,000 Hamasniks entered Israel. Only now, at age 68,
can I understand my parents’ fear and their reservations about my becoming an
Israeli soldier when I came on aliyah.
Having a soldier fighting in Gaza, with its terror tunnels, creates a pain in
the gut that does not go away. You wake up each day hoping you will make it
through the day without bad news. You have these fears, but you realize that
there is no choice. Someone has to defend the country, or everyone will die.
My daughter,
Shaked’s wife, and I recite the book of Psalms, each completing it every week.
That’s almost all that we can do. It took me a while to understand that I
should be praying for everyone, not just for Shaked, but I now understand that,
so that even after he has come home and is about to go back to work, we are
both continuing to recite the Tehillim.
My other
son-in-law, Aviad, 27, who married my daughter in May – they are still
newlyweds in their first year – is an officer in artillery. He sits at a
computer in Israel 12 hours a day, applying differential equations that tell
Howitzer gunners where to aim their gun turrets. I worry about him less, but I
still worry. My 37-year-old son Ze’ev is stationed in the south of the country,
cooking for hundreds of people and simultaneously doing the work of a mashgiach kashrut, which is his regular
job in civilian life.
The whole country
is worrying, but we don’t just worry – we pray. Many hundreds of synagogues in
Israel recite Avinu Malkeinu twice a day and psalms 130, 121, and 83,
three times a day. We have much to pray for. We are in a difficult period, but
if this war had not happened when it did, it would have happened later. There
was no avoiding it. Let us all pray for the Jewish people to succeed in this
terrible conflict. G-d willing, we will be successful.
