As we
approach this year’s Yomim Nora’im, we cannot forget the horrors that occurred
on October 7, 2023, which, last year, coincided with Shemini Atzeres.
A year ago, Jews in Israel were
vociferously divided and rigid in their animosity towards one another. This
culminated last Yom Kippur, when secular Jews broke up a group of worshippers
in Tel Aviv claiming that they – the worshipers – were destroying the city’s
secular ambiance. On Motzei Yom Kippur, when I read about the Tel Aviv tragedy,
my heart sank. I knew that when there is such extreme animosity among Jews, we
become weakened and vulnerable. I felt that something awful was going to occur.
Then, just 13 days later, the slaughter happened. Of course, our enemies do not
discriminate between secular and religious Jews. In their reptilian eyes, a Jew
is a Jew.
Sadly, many of our Israeli (and Diaspora)
brothers and sisters are still divided, but this Rosh Hashanah, our enemies in
the North have served as the catalyst for some renewed internal unity among the
Jewish people. How tragic it is that, for most of Jewish history, our unity has
been inspired by those who desire our destruction.
* * *
I had the good fortune to grow up
after World War II. In those post-Holocaust years, Jews appreciated each other,
and every Jew counted. Therefore, all kinds of Jews were able to come together
to pray, to study, and especially to celebrate life. My class at TA had boys
whose fathers worked on Shabbos as well as boys whose fathers were roshei yeshiva, mixed in with the sons
of chasidishe Rebbes who had survived
the Holocaust. We were one class – with one heart. We played together, got into
trouble together, and learned together. Our beloved rebbe, Rav Boruch
Milikowsky, zt”l, a survivor who made
it to Shanghai, understood our class – and gave each boy what he needed. He
also could hit a baseball higher and further than anyone in our class. That
skill was certainly a contributing factor in the respect we had for Rebbe.
There was a palpable feeling in that
post-Holocaust generation that, in an odd way, we were all part of rebuilding
the Jewish people. Back then, there was unity and common cause among Jews in
Israel and in the Diaspora.
October 7th, 2023 was a
jolting reminder that we are indeed a nation apart from all others. As Balaam
prophesied, “The nation shall dwell alone and not be reckoned among the nations.”
(Bamidbar 23:9) No matter how hard some Jews seek to be “among the nations,”
that was never supposed to become our destiny. If we would embrace our true
destiny – “I will make you a light unto the nations.” (Isaiah 42:6) – then there
would be unity among Jews, and instead of enmity, the nations of the world
would recognize that “The L-rd shall be King over all of the earth; in that day
the L-rd will be one and His name is one.” (Zachariah 14:9) The nation of
Israel exists to serve Hashem. When we Jews understand that, then Hashem’s
glory will be revealed to all mankind, and there will be peace in Eretz Yisrael.
* *
*
There is a story of a group of
yeshiva bachurim who were observing a
classmate studying a daf (page) of
the Talmud. They noticed that no sooner did he finish reviewing the page then
he would start over and read it again. After he had done this a number of
times, an older bachur approached him
and asked, “Shmuel, why do you keep going over and over the same page?”
Shmuel replied, “Az ess iz mir gut dah, vos darf ich gehn
veiter? – If I’m enjoying it so much here, why should I look further?”
This story reflects the very human
tendency of wanting to hold on as long as possible to an enjoyable and
pleasurable experience, and the deep reluctance to move on to a new phase,
which requires entering the realm of the unknown. Often, a child seeks to
prolong his adolescence, fearful of adult responsibilities. Life, however, does
not stand still. “For everything there is an appointed time, and for all things
there is a season,” says the third chapter of Ecclesiastes. “There is a time to
be born and a time to die….” And between these two milestones, our journey
through life moves from stage to stage and season to season.
One may cling longingly to the same
enjoyable page of Talmud, but in the book of life, the pages turn whether we turn them or not. There is a time to
be a boy and a time to be a man; there is a time for frivolity, and there is a
time for sober reflection and solemnity. Those who try to defy the passage of
time, who seek to repeat the same page in the book of life, invite stagnation,
stunt growth, and elude the richness and fullness of leading a meaningful life.
As Tishrei approaches, the calendar
reminds us of the change of seasons. Those who have been privileged to enjoy a
relaxing, carefree summer are no doubt reluctant to see it go. If they could,
they would cling to the long sunny days, the unhurried pace, and the serenity
and charm of lovely sunsets and carefree evenings. But the summer ends; the
days all too rapidly get shorter, the nights become longer, and the chill of
autumn arrives.
The Jewish calendar does more than
remind us of the change of seasons; it creates a change of mood. It reminds us
to consider the serious reality of the Yomim Nora’im. It reminds us to think
about the direction in which we are going, the quality of our lives, our
spiritual condition, our duties, and our responsibilities. Autumn is the time
for introspection, especially because, with Elul, we begin sounding the shofar
daily. For me, this personal introspection – combined with the volatile
situation for Jews in the world – has made the coming of Rosh Hashanah this year
much more of a wake-up call than in previous years.
* * *
During my early years as a rabbi in
Cape Town, our shul had an afternoon Hebrew school. Fortunately, after a few
years, I was able to convince parents to send their children to the day school,
where my assistant rabbi, Rabbi David Rifkin, was the head of Jewish studies.
While our Hebrew school was in operation, I would stop in from time to time to
speak to the children – especially before the Yomim Tovim. The week prior to
Rosh Hashanah, I would blow the shofar, which was always exciting for the
younger children. One year, just before Rosh Hashanah, the first-grade teacher
gave me a l’shana tova packet of
drawings made by her class of me blowing shofar.
On Rosh Hashanah, one of the first
graders came up to me and said, “Did you recognize yourself in my picture,
Rabbi?”
I smiled and said, “Absolutely,
great job, looks just like me.” I decided not to mention that the size of my
kippa and the shofar overshadowed everything and that, fortunately, my nose was
actually in the center of my face, and my neck wasn’t half the size of my body.
Otherwise, I guess it did resemble me – certainly from the standpoint of a six-year-old.
But what struck me when I studied his picture and some of the other ones more
carefully was that the rabbi, in almost all of their pictures, had no ears!
I thought that, possibly, first-graders
concentrate on their sense of sight, smell, taste, and touch. Hearing and
listening might be a lower priority for them as they explore the world around
them. Only if they still don’t know what an object is do they shake it or put
it next to their ear to hear what sound it makes. For six-year-olds, listening
is not their first priority.
But perhaps this budding artist, in
his innocence, was really teaching me something about myself and about other
adults. Too many of us go through life using our eyes, our nose, and our mouth
much more often than we use our ears. We simply don’t listen enough. Most of us
are better at speaking than at listening. We don’t always hear what our friends
and family are saying, and if we do, we don’t necessarily listen to what they
are really saying. For example, after shul on Shabbos, people greet each other
and reflexively ask, “How are you?” What if someone answered, “I just swallowed
a knife” or “I just got diphtheria.” Generally, in our haste to reach the
kugel, we assume that they said, “Fine, thank you” and move on to the next
person at the kiddush table, saying, “How are you?” It is almost as if we have
no ears, just like the faces on my Rosh Hashanah pictures.
Why do I share this with you?
Because I suspect that I am not alone in being a better speaker than listener.
Maybe we all need to learn to speak less and to listen more. During these very
challenging times for Jews everywhere, especially in Eretz Yisrael, it is
sometimes helpful to remember that there are still “chasidei umos ha’olam,” righteous gentiles among us. In these times,
when so many “useful idiots” have no ears, I am buoyed by the voices of honesty
and integrity that are usually drowned out by those mentally disturbed
individuals who shout “from the river to the sea” but have no clue which river
or sea or even how to find the Middle East on a map. Recently, a courageous
non-Jewish British journalist, writing for a major UK newspaper, wrote the
following article. I felt that it was important to share it to remind us that
there are still some normal, rational, moral, and ethical people out there.
* *
*
Daily Telegraph, London, 18 September 2024
by Allister
Heath
Robbed
of its moral bearings, bereft of any sense of right and wrong, incapable of
distinguishing heroes from villains, the West can no longer celebrate when good
triumphs over evil.
Israel’s brilliantly audacious booby-trapping of thousands of
Hezbollah pagers, followed by the blowing up of the terror group’s
walkie-talkies, is a stunning victory for the forces of civilization worldwide.
A tiny nation of just 9.3 million, of which 7.2 million are
Jewish, living in a country the size of Wales, reeling from the worst antisemitic
pogrom since the Holocaust, Israel is leading the war against barbarism, its
young conscripts doing a job that would once have required intervention by a
Western coalition acting as global policeman.
The fact that so many in Britain, Europe and America,
especially the young, no longer take Israel’s side in this existential combat
exemplifies our cultural, intellectual and ethical degeneration.
The Biden administration is obsessed with preventing “escalation,”
even though that is what is required if Iran is to be stopped from gaining the
means to wage a nuclear World War III. All too predictably, America, seemingly
determined to ensure the survival of every regional terror group, appeared
upset at the successful attack on Hezbollah. David Lammy, our [British] foreign
secretary, is delivering speeches claiming climate change is a worse threat
than terrorism; in a rational world, Lammy would be privately congratulating
his Israeli counterparts for the most successful surgical operation ever
conducted against a terrorist organization, with few civilian casualties, and
pledging Britain’s help.
Instead, [Prime Minister] Keir Starmer has turned against
Israel, banning the sales of some weapons – a policy that Germany appears
intent on following – and refusing to oppose lawsuits against the Jewish state,
in an unforgivable moral inversion.
Labour has placed Britain on the side of those nihilists
masquerading as human rights lawyers who negate the essential distinction
between victims and aggressors, between rule-bound democracies desperate to
minimize civilian casualties, and bloodthirsty dictatorships for whom their
people are pawns to be sacrificed.
Hezbollah is funded and controlled by the Iranian regime, an
obscurantist, fascistic, millenarian tyranny that persecutes minorities, women,
and dissidents. Violating human rights and plotting war crimes is Hezbollah’s
raison d’etre; its 150,000 missiles point towards civilian centers, and, like
Hamas and Iran itself, it seeks Israel’s liquidation, guaranteeing the
massacre, expulsion, or subjugation of Jews. Hezbollah has forced some 63,473
Israelis to flee their homes since October 7. This is unsustainable and
explains why a major Israeli response is looming; obscenely, this will trigger
widespread condemnation of the Jewish state.
Western foreign policy is a mishmash of cowardice, delusion,
and contradictions. Iran is a threat to the world; its alliance with Russia is
deepening. Turkey, led by the despot Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has threatened
Israel with invasion yet remains part of NATO. Qatar, which puts up senior
Hamas terrorists in luxury hotels, is a major non-NATO ally of the U.S., home
to a crucial Western military base and a major investor in London. Egypt, a
recipient of U.S. aid, has tolerated myriad tunnels to southern Gaza, refused
to let in any Palestinians and, bizarrely, is not held responsible for
supplying Gaza with provisions, that task falling to Israel. None of the three
latter regimes face sanctions: Global ire is reserved for Israel.
One reason Western elites have become so Israelophobic is
that, infected by wokery, they increasingly loathe Europe’s and America’s
history and traditions and view the Jewish state as a standout example of a
Western model they reject.
Winston Churchill would be convicted for crimes against
humanity today, as would Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman. D-Day would be
ruled illegitimate because so many French civilians died during the Battle of
Normandy.
Democracies might as well not bother with nuclear weapons,
for detonating one, even in retaliation for an unprovoked attack, would be
deemed a war crime. I’m in favor of much stricter rules than those governing
World War II, of doing everything possible to protect civilians, but this is
madness.
The “just war” is a foundational principle. States have the
right to defend themselves. Every civilian life lost as collateral damage is a
tragedy, but pacifism is a deluded utopia that fails to grasp the reality of
the human condition. It is madness to criminalize all warfare, and despicable
to focus on that conducted by democracies and ignore that advanced by our
enemies.
It is equally stupid to entrust so much power to legal
activists. Much historic antisemitism has been ratified by kangaroo courts,
including during the 1930s. The Trial of the Talmud took place in France in
1240, with rabbis forced to defend religious texts against trumped-up
accusations of blasphemy and obscenity.
Other bigot-fests masquerading as ordinary trials include the
Disputations of Barcelona and Tortosa, the Damascus Affair, the Dreyfus affair (which
prompted Emile Zola’s seminal “J’Accuse”), and the trial of Mendel Beilis in
Ukraine in 1913. It is a well-established model that hasn’t gone out of fashion
in far-Left quarters. They no longer explicitly single out religious beliefs or
individuals but leverage lawfare to delegitimize what just happens to be the
only Jewish state.
The fact that the International Criminal Court and the
International Court of Justice have the trappings of a legitimate legal setting
does not mean they necessarily embody justice. The fact that their rulings are
deemed legitimate by Left-wing elites doesn’t automatically make them such. The
fact that today’s blood libels take on the language of “human rights” doesn’t
make them less monstrous. The fact that it is possible for a country as
unjustly governed as South Africa to lead a genocide case against Israel proves
that the entire system is rotten. The case is backed by Iran, Brazil’s far-Left
president, Ireland, and Egypt. We must have been transported into an
alternative, Kafkaesque universe.
Israel is the supreme embodiment of law-bound national,
democratic sovereignty, of peoplehood, of matching a nation to a state, of
post-imperialism, of capitalism and technology, and of the continued relevance
of the monotheistic religions. If you tear down Israel, you destroy the very
ideas that underpin the West, the international order implodes and the
autocracies triumph.
The stakes are thus unbelievably high. We must support
Israel, and allow it to finish the job of annihilating Hamas and defeating
Hezbollah.
* * *
Allister Heath’s article concisely
sums up the situation that the West now faces due to utterly incompetent (so
called) leaders, who believe that Iranian appeasement is a great strategy.
Eighty-six years ago, following Neville Chamberlain’s famous declaration of “peace
for our time” via his appeasement of Hitler in the Munich agreement (which sold
out Czechoslovakia), Winston Churchill said, “An appeaser is one who feeds a
crocodile hoping it will eat him last.” Had it not been for Churchill, England
may very well have been eaten by the Nazi crocodile.
* * *
Have you noticed that you will
occasionally find a tiny stain on your clothing that, in truth, no one else
would see? It bothers you nevertheless because it’s there, and it shouldn’t be.
This morning, as I was about to go out, I noticed a tiny stain on my recently
laundered shirt. I was hit with the awareness that, just as the shofar reminds
us to examine ourselves more carefully, this tiny stain could serve as a
reminder for me to do exactly that. Too often, we look for – and find – other
peoples’ stains. But during these terrible times for Klal Yisrael, we must focus on removing our own blemishes and
stains.
As we enter these Days of Awe, most
of us, with good reason, have feelings of trepidation and anxiety. Yet it is important
to remember that we are commanded to serve G-d with joy. Joy doesn’t mean fun.
It means wholeheartedness. I have thus composed a list of questions to ponder:
·
What was my greatest achievement in
this last year?
·
What was my greatest disappointment
in this last year?
·
What in this last year brought me
the most joy?
·
What brought me the most regret?
·
Where would I like to be five years
from now (G-d willing)?
·
If I had all the money I needed,
would I still work at my present job?
·
Whom do I admire the most and why?
·
Whom did I disappoint this past
year?
·
Whom do I wish I could help in the
coming year?
·
Which middah do I need to improve upon most?
Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,
during the Aseres Y’mei Teshuvah, we recite the Avinu Malkeinu prayer. We ask
that Our Father Our King bless us for a good year, that He nullify all harsh
decrees and the designs of those who hate us, and that He remember us for
sustenance and support. We ask that He accept our prayers with compassion and
favor.
May we, G-d’s children, make 5785 a
year of achdus (unity), victory, and
peace. And may we serve G-d with joy! L’shana
tova!
