Divine Messages

Human Responses

A Torah Perspective on the Carnage in Eretz Yisroel
by Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Klugman

Rabbi Klugman lives in Jerusalem where he is a maggid shiur in a yeshiva gedola.
He is a frequent contributor to these pages.

I. Daily Bloodshed

It is now a full year since Jews began to be killed on an almost daily basis in Eretz Yisroel. Suicide bombs, car bombs, drive-by shootings and the murderous actions of every form of malachei chavala have become daily occurrences for the Yidden in Eretz Yisroel.

The threat of terror is everywhere. It happens daily, from Kiryat Shmona to Eilat and from Tel Aviv to the West Bank.

No segment of the population, religious or secular, right or left, the elderly or infants in their mothers’ arms has been spared.

In the last year, over 160 Jews have been murdered and more than 1500 maimed or injured.

Think of the hundreds of yesomim, almanos, widowers, and parents who lost their children.

Think and shudder. Contemplate the hundreds of children who will come home to a house with no one to call Abba or Ima. And if they call, there will be no answer. And ponder the children whose parents will not walk them down to the chupa, or cuddle their grandchildren in their laps.

And think of the parents who have nothing left of their children but memories and visits to the cemetery.

Think, ponder. And cry.

The carnage takes place almost every day. And sometimes, more than once a day. The korbanos are often tamid shel shachar and tamid shel bein ha’arbayim – the daily morning sacrifice and the afternoon sacrifice. By the time the afternoon rolls around, the morning’s outrage is only a distant memory.

And for those not living in Israel, only a Sbarro-type bombing even appears on the radar screen. Of your garden variety – the drive-by shooting, which leaves in its murderous wake almanos and yesomim – one scarcely hears.

Surely, we can discern the Hashgacha prattis – the Divine Providence in the countless miracles where lives are spared. But the miracle to one family will never bring back the parents or children of another.

And then listen to the pure words of eight-year-old Chaya’le Schijveschuurder, whose parents, fourteen-year-old sister, Raya, four-year-old brother, Avrohom Yitzchok, and two-year-old sister, Chemda d”yh, were killed in the Sbarro blast. Listen to little Chaya’le’s response as an entire country heard it on the national media, as she lay wounded in serious condition in Bikur Cholim Hospital.

“Everything that happens is a miracle from Heaven,” eight-year-old Chaya’le said. “Even though I’m injured, and everyone was injured, one must know that it is all from Hakadosh Baruch Hu Who wants us to behave better. When someone is injured and saved, it’s only because of a miracle. And whoever was killed or injured – it’s all Hashem acting from Heaven.

“Never think that it’s impossible to be cured. Hashem is the real one who cures and He Himself will heal me and have me released from here. That one person is wounded or another killed, that too, is from Heaven.”

Listen and cry, and tremble.

Do you have an eight-year-old daughter, granddaughter, or sister? Think of her and then contemplate the future of Chaya’le, and hundreds of Chaya’le’s who, because of the terror of the past year, will be yesomim, with no parent to share their sorrows and joys, no parent to greet them when they come home, or to help them grow up.

And then contemplate the purity and the magnitude of a Yiddishe neshama. Eight-year-old Chaya’le never learned the Ramban in Shemos (13,16), that we are not Torah Jews unless we are convinced that everything in our lives and anything that happens to us – both as individuals and as a group – is Divinely ordained.

But her neshama did. And she inspired an entire nation.

Contemplate what Chaya’le said, and then surely the words we say every morning take on a new meaning. “Elokai, neshama shenasatta bi tehora hi, atta verasa, atta yetzarta ve’atta nefachta bi – My G-d, the soul You placed within me is pure. You created it, You fashioned it, You breathed it into me.”

And then appreciate what follows: “Ve’atta mesham’ra be’kirbi – You safeguard it within me.”

II. The Bane of Routine

This ongoing tragedy brings in its wake other disorders to the Jewish heart and mind. The central character trait of the Jew is compassion – a poor rendition of the uniquely Jewish trait of rachmanus. And one of the great collateral damages of the present situation is that, in a certain sense, we are becoming inured to the suffering of our fellow Jews.

One wakes up in the morning and the question is, lo aleinu, no longer if, but when and where and how many. Each murder results in a lifetime of tragedy for parents, grandparents, children and siblings. And we grieve with them.

For a few hours.

But by the time the afternoon comes around, the murder of the morning is only a distant memory, the fourth or fifth item on the news, because it has been supplanted by a more recent outrage. And by the following week we no longer think about it. Verily tzaros ha’achronos meshakchos es harishonos… yesterday’s pain is lost in the shock of today’s.

When the Torah states in the Tochacha: Ve’hayisa meshuga mi’mar’eh einecha, (Devarim 28,34), surely it includes also the inability to apprehend tragedy in a normal Jewish fashion.

This is not to say that the Torah community has somehow become calloused when it comes to human life. Hardly. The myriad chessed organizations and the untold and heroic efforts of individuals to save human lives and to ease the suffering of others is the stuff of legend and is unparalleled anywhere. But one gets the impression – and perhaps it is nothing more than that – that as far as the almost daily loss of life in Eretz Yisroel is concerned, we have somehow, somewhere, put it in a box, where we sigh, ask what their names were, and then get on with life. Do we change anything about our lives in the face of these daily calamities?

And therein lies the proof that this apparent indifference too is indeed a Divine curse. Look at to what great lengths we will go to save a life, even that of a total stranger. And here, one after the other, Jews are murdered, families are destroyed, and we just krechtz... and move on. When brothers and sisters of ours – atzmeinu ubesareinu, our own flesh and blood – are being murdered.

“My mother,” little Chaya’le told us, “cared about every single person. And if something would happen to someone else, she would cry.” This from little Chaya’le, who will never see her mother again.

The Rambam (Hilchos Taanis I) terms it cruelty when the community allows misfortune to pass without a meaningful spiritual response. Surely we are not cruel.

And yet, for many of us, the birds continue to chirp, the music continues to play, while Chaya’le’s parents – whose response at the blast was to urge their children with their last gasp to join them in saying “Shema Yisroel” – will never see little Chaya’le and her remaining siblings. Chaya’le, and hundreds like her, will never see their parents again.

But for us... life goes on.

Yes, it does.

We are not cruel. And yet as Rabbi Avraham Grodzenski d”yh of Slabodka (Toras Avrohom, p. 15) wrote on the eve of the Holocaust, we do have a propensity to tune out unpleasant circumstances. Our ability to ignore the messages of pain and affliction, he writes, is a function of the melumada-routine dimension of the human psyche. Melumada, doing things by rote, pertains not only to spiritual matters. It applies as well to physical pain and emotional distress. There is room for routine to become second nature, and for pain to become expected, acceptable and tuned out, so that it no longer induces thought, contemplation or change.

Truly a curse of Tochacha proportions.

Areivus – Mutual Responsibility

Perhaps the way to address this difficulty is to contemplate the areivus, the mutual responsibility and the feeling of oneness of all Jews. This closeness has a way of coming to the fore especially in time of tragedy.

That time is now.

But we must not allow the moment to pass. And the Selichos of the Yamim Nora’im can help us in that regard. Almost all the Selichos have one common feature.

We speak to Hashem not as individual human beings but as members of the Jewish People. In the words of Rabbi Hirsch:

The Selichos remind us of our national sufferings, past and present. They seek to make us feel the impact of the …oppressions, the pressures, the contempt, the pain, the sighs, the distress and the misery that blight our existence on earth. We realize that, if anything, these sufferings are proof of our moral defectiveness, of our need to mend our ways, and to obtain G-d’s forgiveness.

Even amidst the darkest centuries, throughout history, there were men of wealth and prestige who could consider themselves emancipated from the pressures of galus…. But such good fortune never allowed our fathers to forget the distress and misery of their less fortunate brethren. They looked beyond their own prosperity to see the distressed and to help the afflicted descendants of Jacob elsewhere in the world.

So perhaps those of us in the Diaspora and in Israel who have been spared, can use the Selichos and tefillos of Yamim Nora’im to awaken within ourselves those natural feelings of oneness of every Jew.

We must recognize that areivus doesn’t only mean feeling for every Jew, but being responsible for every Jew. The message of the Selichos is, in Rabbi Hirsch’s words, that

“every individual is responsible for the misfortunes that afflict our nation as a whole, wherever we may dwell. The Selichos blame the frivolity, the sins, the moral deficiencies and the disloyalties of every individual for the tears that wet the cheeks of Jacob and for the shame that covers the sanctuaries of Judah.”

Yamim Nora’im, then, constitutes a magnificent opportunity to strengthen the caring, the concern and the mutual responsibility of every Jew.

III. Enemies and Adversaries

What are we to make of the murderous ferocity of the Palestinians and the indifference, antipathy, and even hostility of most foreign governments and the bulk of the international press?

The Torah (Devarim 30,7) declares that in the end of days, Hashem will bring the imprecations of the Exile al oyveinu ve’al soneinu – upon our enemies and our adversaries – a reference to the two nations, Eisav and Yishmael, to whom we will be in bondage and exile. Rabbeinu Bechaya explains the difference between an oyev and a soneh. The enmity of the oyev – Yishmael, the Arab – is undying, he cannot be mollified and he will not evince any pity for his victim. The soneh, on the other hand, is a reference to Eisav (Halacha beyadua...). He can be objective, can sometimes act with compassion, and there can be times of respite.

So when the Palestinians turn out to be bloodthirsty thugs, and when the European “friends of Israel” become “evenhanded, impartial” and support our enemies, should we be surprised?

There is another interesting phenomenon that deserves attention. Much of the Palestinian success in enlisting the support of foreign governments and the international media is an outcome of their uncanny ability to present themselves as the victims and the Israelis as aggressors. Considering the fact that the reality is quite the opposite, one must conclude that this, too, is by Divine design.

The Ramban (Bereishis 16,6) explains that the Jewish people over the centuries has to endure “all types of suffering” at the hands of the Arabs (Yishmael’s descendants) as a result of the fact that Hagar, Yishmael’s mother, was a “victim” of Sarah Imeinu.

Victimhood, then, is the Arab’s ultimate source of strength in his battle with the Jew. And as Palestinian history has shown, they wield this weapon with unusual dexterity.

Although this may also explain the world community’s sympathy for the Palestinian cause, one is forced to admit that much of the world press and foreign government’s antipathy to Israel is nothing more than good, old-fashioned anti-Semitism.

But there may be more to it than that. One gets the feeling, and the more virulent Jew-baiting newspapers often let it slip, that their animosity is also fueled by a deep-seated need on the part of the European nations to justify their roles in the Holocaust. “The Jews do it in just the same manner,” the reasoning goes, “so they’re no better than us.” A marvelous way to assuage guilt feelings about the Holocaust.

IV. Divine Justice

Why does all this happen? Mortal man can never know the why of Hashem’s direction of human affairs. A human being is incapable of understanding how Hashem directs the affairs of men. “Ki lo machshevosai machshevoseicheim ve’lo darcheichem derachai – Your thoughts are not comparable to Mine, nor are your ways like Mine.”

Ramchal (Daas Tevunos, pp. 193-194) explains that Hashem directs the affairs of the world on more than one level. There is the overarching guidance of the world to its purpose and, within that larger picture there is the direction of the affairs of men, based on their actions (hanhagas hamishpat) and on what is required for the world to attain its objective as willed by Hashem (hanhagas hamazal). The intertwining of these strands is one of the mysteries of the world, and is beyond human understanding. (See also Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz, Sichos Mussar, 5732, #9.)

The world, as Rabbi Yeruchem Levovitz l”xz (Mashgiach of Mir) explained, is a very deceptive place, and one can easily come to the erroneous conclusion that it is the wicked who are the cause of tragedy and suffering. But that conclusion is a denial of Divine direction of world affairs.

However, as the Slabodka Mashgiach, Rabbi Avraham Grodzenski d”yh, wrote: Yesurim – suffering and adversity – are Divine messengers, intended to show us the error of our ways and to illuminate the path ahead. Suffering in our times, he writes, is the Divinely-ordained surrogate for prophecy, tailor-made for the individual, even for one who would not be deserving of a prophetic vision.

Thus, it is axiomatic that whatever suffering one undergoes is formulated in such a way that one can understand its message. If one refuses to perceive misfortune as Divinely orchestrated, but views it only as happenstance (“im teilchu imi bekeri”), then the next blow, says the Ohr HaChaim Hakadosh (Vayikra 26,24), will be delivered in a seemingly random fashion, in which one cannot determine its cause.

So although we have no way of knowing why Hashem inflicts punishment on one and not the other, everyone is absolutely required to try, to the best of our abilities, to attempt to fathom what lessons He wants us to learn from this, and how He wants us to respond. The midda keneged midda principle, which tells us that Hashem’s direction of the affairs of men is prescriptive, will, if we are intellectually honest, help us to divine what Hashem’s message is (see Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz, Sichos Mussar, 1972 #11).

If we apprehend the concept of kol Yisroel areivim zeh bazeh and realize that someone else may suffer for my misdeeds, then one is surely required to attempt to understand what Hashem is telling us.

We are certainly not capable of explaining the why and the what of these tragedies. One would venture, however, that there are several lessons that we can learn from the general trend of events of the last year. And there are the responses which the Torah prescribes.

V. Two Outlooks

First, the historical lessons we can draw. Two world-views have informed the perspective of a secular Jewish nation and homeland for a century: Nihiyeh kechol hagoyim and kochi ve’otzem yadi. The former posits that the more we resemble the other nations of the world, the more we will be accepted by them, and the more the scourge of anti-Semitism and the danger to the Jew will evaporate. The “Jewish problem” will be solved, so the thinking went, when we become “normal, a nation like all the others.”

The second view grants that the Jewish people is unique, but is convinced that the troubles of galus stemmed from the fact that we were stateless, and hence defenseless, for two millennia. All this would end, so the reasoning went, with the establishment of a Jewish State, which, in this view, would be the source of security for Jews and also be a guarantee against any calamity of Holocaust proportions.

Indeed, for the past fifty years, Israeli governments of both persuasions have never tired of declaring on Holocaust Memorial Day that the existence of the State is the only assurance that “never again” will there be a Holocaust, and that it is the singular guarantee of Jewish security.

Both beliefs have been proven utter failures.

The founding premise of the Jewish State – that its very existence will ensure that there will be one place in the world where the Jew will be safe – has proven to be hollow. Because the one place in the world today where Jews are being killed or maimed on an almost daily basis because they are Jews is the State of Israel.

Many of the girls of the canceled Israel summer tours for Bais Yaakov girls went instead to... Poland. There has to be more than a little irony in the fact that barely 50 years after the Holocaust, an 18-year-old Bais Yaakov girl feels safer touring the blood-soaked country of Poland than she does in Eretz Yisroel. The assurance that it is “the Land upon which Hashem’s eyes are constantly focused” (Devarim 11,12) somehow seems lost on them.

It has become painfully clear, then, that a Jewish state per se is no guarantee of Jewish survival in a hostile world when that State cannot even protect Jews in the very epicenter of their own capital, Jerusalem. Because, “Im Hashem lo yishmor ir shav shakad shomer – if Hashem will not protect the city, the watchman has guarded in vain” (Tehillim 127) is the genuine Jewish defense doctrine. And Am levadad yishkon – a Nation that dwells alone” is the Jewish geo-political reality.

It has always been that way. And it will continue to be so.

There may be another lesson here. The current situation poses dangers of a different type than those which Israel faced in the first half-century of its existence. Until now the peril faced by Jews in Israel has generally been in the form of a threat to the entire country’s existence. Now, however, the danger is to individuals in the Land of our Fathers.

Perhaps we are being taught that even when living in Eretz Yisroel, one can be in galus, and that so long as the Divine Shechina is in galus, we are in galus. The life of the Jew is at risk not only as a citizen of a sovereign state, threatened by its neighbors, but as an individual Jew, wherever he may be.

And those individuals may be in Netanya or Jerusalem, on the road or in a restaurant. It is a galus-form of suffering, and it brings home the point again. Because the founding premise of the Jewish State was that although there may be a danger to the country from without, surely on the inside the Jew will be safe. That, too, has turned out to be a mirage.

Speak to people who lived in anti-Semitic Poland between the World Wars, and they will tell you that although Jews were accosted and often received a beating at the hands of anti-Semitic thugs, the life of a Jew was not at risk on a daily basis.

But in Israel a mere 70 years later, it is.

VI. No Clear Resolution in Sight

It would seem, then, that there is no end in sight to the year-long intifada, and that there is no solution al pi derech hateva. For there is almost no way to protect against the suicide bomber, the new type of menace that Hashem created, which was never used against the Jews in the 2000 years of their exile.

For the Arabs who believe that getting blown up in the name of Allah is a one-way ticket to paradise, killing more perpetrators will not make a fundamental change.

Because, as the Brisker Rav once explained, killing Arabs is no deterrence at all. The Torah (Devarim 1,44 – see Rashi there), tells us that our enemies in Eretz Yisroel will attack us like bees. Just as the bee, the Midrash tells us, dies as soon as it stings, so too will our enemies die when they kill us. But, like bees, that will not stop them. Because when an enemy chases us ad charma, said the Brisker Rav, he is doing so as a Divine messenger, just like the bee. So no amount of killing them will stop them. Thus, the Hamas suicide terrorist is not the cause of our misfortune. He is only the messenger.

More. Israel is far stronger militarily than the Palestinians, but it is to no avail. Because it is keenly aware that using that strength might risk bringing upon it the wrath of the international community. This, the Netziv of Volozhin explains, is what the Torah means when it warns in the Tochacha: “Vehayisa meshuga mi’mareh einecha – You will become insane from what you see.” You will have the military strength but you will not be able to deploy it.

Nor is there a “diplomatic” solution. (What a dignified word for the attempt to appease a band of vicious foes!) There are several reasons for this discomforting fact. Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians far more that any Israeli leader could have offered, or ever will be able to offer. And Arafat turned him down. Anyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of the Arab mentality knows that no Palestinian leader will ever be able to accept less. And after Ehud Barak’s unprecedented 25% margin of loss in the recent elections, no Israeli leader will ever to able to offer close to what Barak proposed.

Secondly, it is difficult for a reasonable Western mind to fathom the depths of the Palestinian hatred for Israelis. To Western governments, the Middle-East conflict is simply a squabble between two neighbors over territory. Move a boundary here, give up some land there, show a little understanding and accommodation, throw in some “confidence building measures” (a neat little term for paying blackmail to mortal enemies) and the solution is in sight.

That view is unmitigated foolishness. Not that we harbor right-wing views of the Arabs or espouse any Greater Israel philosophy. It is foolishness because the Arab – especially the Palestinian – airwaves and newspapers, including the official media, have been filled for years with rabid, unvarnished incitement to murder Jews.

VII. The Divine Vista

Hashem gave us a century to figure this all out. “Yoshev baShamayim yis’chak Hashem yilag lamo – He Who sits in Heaven smiles, the L-rd will mock them” (Tehillim 2,4). In Rabbi S.R. Hirsch’s immortal words: “G-d permits men to engage in lengthy experiments in the carrying out of their plans, and in the testing of their strength, which they overestimate. Without intervening directly, apparently resting, He sits in Heaven... and mocks the endeavors of men. G-d... holds in His hands the reins of all that exists and all that is yet to be…. He can let men go in their own ways, for the final, sum total of their experiences will lead them to the realization that the path of immorality and wrongdoing is not the way to collective salvation.”

The events of the last year have proven conclusively that the political debate between Right and Left in Israel is an apparition, and that politicians’ statements are no more than so much posturing. Neither military might nor diplomatic appeasement has or will make any difference. Both have been tried without success. It is only the natural human inability to admit that one’s entire worldview has gone up in smoke that prevents such an admission.

If the Jewish People is honest with itself, it will come to grips with the awareness that it is difficult to envision what the human solution will be.

There is no clear human solution in sight.

And that realization is itself the window of hope. Because that recognition will make us eligible for Divine intervention. Because the awareness that ein lehisha’ein ella al Avinu ShebaShamayim, the awareness, that as the Mishna states at the end of Maseches Sota, we have no one on whom we can depend except on our Father in Heaven, is the final harbinger of the geula.

The Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim (Part III, chap. 51) and the Ramban in his commentary to Iyov (36,7) both make it clear that the level and the intensity of one’s Divine Providence is in direct proportion to that person’s closeness to Hashem and his awareness of the Divine direction of his affairs. The closer man is to Hashem, the less he will be susceptible to the deleterious effects and natural outcome of human actions and natural phenomena.

Thus, heightened awareness of Hashgacha prattis should not only be the outcome of Hashem’s reminders, but rather can and should serve as a precautionary measure, and a means of protection. For the more we are suffused with appreciation of Hashem’s control and direction of events, the more we will merit his protection every step of the way.

And we have merited that special protection in the past here in Eretz Yisroel.

Eretz Yisroel, the Torah says, is Eretz asher Hashem Elokecha doresh osa – a land that Hashem continually oversees. The Mesora connects this to the verse that tells v’es se’ir hachatas darosh darash Moshe vehinei soraf – Moshe searched for the goat which was to be a sin offering and it was consumed by fire. The Yesod Ha’Avoda of Slonim explained this mesora to mean that it is precisely when life in Eretz Yisroel is going up in flame (vehinei soraf), that the Eretz asher Hashem Elokecha doresh osa becomes evident.

We have very short memories. But the yishuv in Eretz Yisroel has been in danger before, often with no foreseeable solution in sight; and Hashem has pulled us through, time and again. And “ki lo yitosh Hashem amo ve’nachalaso lo ya’azov – Hashem will not abandon His people or His heritage” has been the reality of Jewish existence for the last three thousand years. And it will continue to be that way.

So one can wonder why all this is happening. And maybe we will understand and maybe we will not. But we are required to attempt to draw honest conclusions from divinely orchestrated events and trends.

And, more importantly, one must contemplate what our response as Torah Jews should be.

VIII. Emuna – The Dependence Prerequisite

Emuna – not belief, but conviction – that everything that happens is Divinely ordained, is the central motif of the life of a Jew.

More. The awareness of our dependence on Divine favor and direction is the sine qua non of geula.

It is precisely when man acknowledges that he really is powerless and that he does not have the solutions to the difficulties of existence; it is when human hubris and self-importance end, that the revelation of Divine Providence and redemption begins.

The prophet Jeremiah (31,10) describes the ultimate redemption as the time when “ki phada Hashem es Yaakov u’ge’alo miyad chazak mimenu – When Hashem will have redeemed Yaakov and delivered him from a hand mightier than he.” Rabbi Hirsch explains that the Prophet calls the Jewish people “Yaakov” in the context of redemption to indicate that it is only as the weak, defenseless nation of Yaakov that it will be redeemed. It is exclusively with the realization that only Hashem can deliver it from forces more powerful than itself, that Klal Yisroel is deserving of the geula.

And it must be so. Because geula, more than anything else in this world, is bound to be a clear and unambiguous manifestation of G-d’s power and commanding direction of the affairs of men. And so long as we speak and think with a sense of pride in our strength, of the might of the IDF and its power to really “give it to them,” we will have to wait for the geula.

It is the conviction that we are not the masters of our own destiny that makes us eligible to live in Eretz Yisroel. The land was originally called Eretz Canaan, explained the holy Rabbi Chaim Vital, because the etymological root of Canaan indicates subservience (hachna’a). To thrive in Canaan, he explains, one must realize that one is a mere servant of the L-rd and not master of one’s fate.

“Tova Haaretz me’od me’od, the Land is exceedingly good,” explained the Sabba Kadisha from Lechovich, is for one who exemplifies “me’od me’od hevei sh’fal ruach,” for one who is exceedingly humble.

Spreading Emuna baHashem

But there is more that we can do. Chazal (Pesachim 87b; see Maharsha there) declare that the mission of Klal Yisroel in Exile is to spread emuna baHashem. Were galus only meant as a punishment, the Maharsha explains, Hashem could have employed other means. Rabbeinu Bechaya (Kad Hakemach, Geula I; see also Vayikra Rabba 6:5; Ha’amek Davar, Bamidbar 14,21) writes that the mission of Klal Yisroel in galus is to spread the belief in His existence in whichever country or locale Jews may find themselves.

Clearly, it is not Israel’s mission to teach the nations in an active sense. Rather, the continued existence of the Jewish People after two millennia of galus, and the life and conduct of shomrei Torah u’mitzvos as individuals and as a group, can and should be the most compelling testimony of the existence of the Living G-d.

It would stand to reason, then, that in this day and age, when the overwhelming majority of the Jewish People are not shomrei Torah u’mitzvos and do not by their very existence proclaim emuna baHashem, that our task in galus is first and foremost to spread emuna among our own brothers and sisters.

Orphaned, wounded little Chaya’le spread emuna baHashem to an entire bewildered country: “I want to tell you that even though I was injured and others were injured, that too, is from Hashem.”

Are other Torah Jews doing anything about spreading emuna?

Absolutely.

Emunas’cha Baleilos

The Sefarim Hakedoshim explain the statement of Chazal that one is obligated to say the “V’emuna kol zos” beracha of Maariv in the evening to indicate that it is especially during the dark nights of galus that the stress on emuna is crucial to a Jew’s very existence.

The amount of emuna baHashem that is being spread during these dark galus nights among thousands of Yiddishe kinderlach who are being newly enrolled in Torah schools each year in Eretz Yisroel is hard to imagine. This revolution–there is no other word for it – is being led not only by “kiruv professionals,” but by bnei Torah, yeshiva bachurim and Kollel yungeleit, who register these children and help their hitherto non-observant families back to Yiddishkeit.

Go and visit the Minchas Shai junior high school in Netanya, where the common denominator of all the children is that but a year or two ago they attended secular schools. Enter a classroom and gaze upon the purity – yes, the purity – on their faces, and see if you don’t reflect the joy, the shining glow that radiates from the visage of one who learns Torah.

Visit the second or third grade in the Shaarei Yehudis school in Kadima, and talk to the children, listen to their hevel peh, to their chatter: about Hashem, about teshuva, about pure emuna in a Borei Olam, and then decide what hevel peh means. Ask the little girls what their aspirations are, what they daven for, and they will tell you: “I daven that my father should be chozer beteshuva, that my mother should dress modestly, that my brother should learn Torah.”

And, by all means, visit the Bais Yaakov high school in the north of Israel, which has special ninth and tenth-grade classes for girls who, but a year or two ago, were on the streets and attending secular, or better yet, anti-religious schools.

Talk to the students. “Why did you switch from your prestigious secular school to Bais Yaakov?” someone asked one of the young ladies.

“Because here they teach the emes,” was the reply.

“But how do you know that this is the emes?” that tenth grader was asked. She looked her questioner in the eye, and with that unique blend of Jewish tzenius, purity and radiance for being Hashem’s child, she replied resolutely, “How do I know this is the emes? Because I have already seen the shekker.” This from a modest, young Bais Yaakov student, who is as convinced of her Yiddishkeit as any girl her age who grew up in a frum home.

Until today, all efforts at returning lost brethren home have centered on the second half of the verse heralding the arrival of Eliyahu Hanavi: the return of lev banim al avosam – the children’s return to the parents’ heritage.

We are beginning to witness the fulfillment of the first half: veheishiv lev Avos al banim, the children – not the grownups who attend baalei teshuva yeshivos, but the kinderlach the first, second and third graders – they, with the pure eyes and unsullied neshamos, are bringing their parents back home.

It is happening in thousands of homes, each day in Israel.

And Chaya’le’s brother did this.

When Prime Minister Sharon came to be menachem avel, the boy had one request. “Please, Mr. Prime Minister, keep one Shabbos.”

He promised to try.

And when he was asked by Chaya’le’s grandmother the following week if he had kept that one Shabbos, he replied in the affirmative.

IX. The Tefilla Imperative

In situations like this, and we’ve been there before, there is a certain familiar type of weary sigh, “Here we are again,” and we mouth the words: “Nu, iz vos ken men ton – what can we do?” And when we respond, to ourselves and to others, that m’darf davenen, we must pray, it is with perhaps an ever-so-slight, nagging sense of disbelief. Not, chalilla, that we doubt for a moment the power of tefilla. “But,” we think to ourselves, “whose prayer? What difference can my inferior, flawed tefillos really accomplish in the face of what seems to be a Divine plan to destabilize life in the Holy Land?”

If we understand tefilla only as a form of human request and Divine response (see Nefesh HaChaim, Shaar II), then our skepticism – completely erroneous, of course – at the power of imperfect, sullied tefillos could perhaps be understood, if even only on the psychological level. The fact is, our Sages tell us, that no tefilla goes unanswered, no matter from whom. It is just that we are not always privy to where and how Hashem responds.

But that uncertainty regarding the strength of our tefillos only obtains if we view the vicissitudes of life as a cycle wherein we get into trouble, suffer, pray to Hashem for help, and then wait for results. The Divine principle of being makdim refua lemakka, providing the cure in advance of the ailment, explains Reb Yeruchem of Mir, means that the purpose of the makka (strike) is to promote closeness to Hashem, which will be engendered by the tefilla, and the refua that the makka was meant to bring. So the objective of the makka is precisely because Hashem wants our tefillos, Hashem wants a relationship with us, and this is His way of telling us when we ignore all other hints. “Hashme’ini es kolech, Let me hear your voice, [Hashem tell us, precisely when] yonasi, my dove (an allegory to the Jewish People) is bechagvei haselah caught in the fissures of the seemingly immovable rock.”

And when we daven with sincerity, we are effectively re-establishing that relationship with Hashem, and hence the difficulty has served its purpose in bringing us closer to Him.

Tefilla, as Rabbi Hirsch (Psalms 86) explains, is particularly effective when one recognizes that both as regards one’s difficulties as an individual and in our travails as a nation, we are weak and dependent on Hashem’s favor. “The goal of prayer should be not so much to obtain the desired help, as to reassure oneself of G-d’s nearness in times of trouble; the awareness of this nearness is in itself the answer to prayer. ‘It is sufficient for me to know,’ David tells Hashem, ‘that You know that I am suffering, and that You are aware of how I bear my troubles...’” That aspect of prayer is surely attainable, in abundant measure, by each and every one of us, righteous and incomplete alike.

The emuna BaHashem and the clear conviction that only He can sort things out must be the sine qua non of our tefillos. And this conviction that He alone can take care of us and lead us out of this trouble is all that much easier when we come to the Divinely inspired realization that human solutions to our present circumstances do not exist. We may not have understood this at the outset, but by now it should be clear to any straight-thinking person.

More. When things go easy, some of the words of the davening may pass us by and they may not “speak to us.” But when we’re in trouble, the timeless formulations of the Anshei Knesses Hagedola suddenly come alive.

In the seconds after the blast, and seconds before he died, in the midst of the inferno and devastation, Chaya’le’s father, Reb Mordechai d”yh, had the instinctive presence of mind to tell his children “Let’s say Shema Yisroel together.”

When we hear that there are among us people like that, don’t the words we recite twice daily – Shomer Yisroel sh’mor sh’eiris Yisroel v’al yovad Yisroel ha’omrim Shema Yisroel1 – take on a different meaning altogether?

But this is not the end of the story. It is human nature, Reb Yeruchem of Mir said, that when things get tough, we promise Hashem the moon. But when the pressure eases a bit, we return to usual routine.

So will we be able to sustain it? Experience tells us that we probably won’t. But every spiritual gain, even if not completely sustained, will, slowly but surely, raise the level of closeness in our relationship with Hashem, the ultimate goal of every Jew.

X. David Hamelech’s Solution

When an individual Jew or when Klal Yisroel endures suffering and tragedy, he and we turn to the expressions of David Hamelech, shepherd of the Jewish People, who was unique in his ability to express our innermost feelings and emotions, and who – as the divinely appointed leader of the Jewish people – was uniquely qualified to feel our needs and prescribe the remedies for our suffering.

And what does this have to do with saving lives in Eretz Yisroel?

Everything.

King David tells us how to overcome mortal enemies. Mi’pi olellim ve’yonkim yisadeta oz, [he said,] lehashbis oyev u’misnakem – Out of the mouths of children and infants have You fashioned an invincible might, to put an end, at last, to foe and avenger” (Tehillim 8,3).

Aren’t the words of Chaya’le exactly that?

Talk to “Yitzchak” from “Netanya,” whose face shines with the glow unique to one who learns Torah mitoch hadchak – in spite of extreme difficulties. No, it is not physical poverty that he overcomes daily, but spiritual adversity. Ask this seventh grader with the white shirt, payos, long tzitzis and brilliant, shining eyes what he does when he gets home every evening. And he will hesitate, look at the floor, and reply, “Well, I learn at home as well.”

And his teacher will later explain his bashfulness. “You see,” his rebbi will tell you, “a Kollel volunteer influenced his family to bring him here from a secular school. But his parents are not religious. He still lives at home on a non-religious moshav, and every day he goes home, shteigs and finishes perek after perek of Gemora. Amidst all the secularism.”

Is there any greater limud HaTorah mitoch hadchak – not of an adult, but of a youth who is not yet even bar mitzva? Is this not what David Hamelech meant when he spoke of the pi olelim veyonkim, of the pure Torah of our youth putting an end to oyvim-foes (yes oyvim, see Rabbeinu Bechaya above) and avengers?

With each new child learning emuna, with the addition of yet another pure neshama to the ranks of those who fulfill “t’na hodcha al HaShamayim, [who] constantly proclaim Your might unto the Heavens” (ibid., v.2), we are making progress. One more child in Shaarei Yehudis in Kadima, one more Bais Yaakov girl in Haifa, one more newly ma’amin cheder yingel in Minchas Shai in Netanya, makes mipi olellim ve’yonkim yisadeto oz a stronger reality and will eventually bring about “le’hashbis oyev umisnakem – the defeat of the enemy and avenger.”

It is the pure emuna of the eight-year-old Chaya’le’s of this world, and there are many, observant and newly observant; it is their hevel pihem shel tinokos shel beis rabban which will bring the geula.

XI. Al Ma Avda Ha’aretz

But there is more that we can do. If we are to attempt to do whatever is in our power to lighten the burdens of the galus in Eretz Yisroel, we must ascertain its root causes, and attempt in our own lives to avoid the same mistakes that brought it about.

In a 1988 address to the famed Ponovezh Yarchei Kalla, Rabbi Eliezer Shach a”jyls posed the following question: Chazal (Nedarim 81) relate that the enigma mentioned by the Prophet Jeremiah (9,11), “Al ma avda ha’aretz, why was the Land destroyed?” was first posed to the Sages, to the Prophets and to the Angels, none of whom had an answer. Only Hashem was able to provide the explanation: “al ozvam es Torasi (because they abandoned my Torah),” which Chazal explain to mean that Torah study did not have the primacy that it should have had in Jewish life. (See Ran there and Mishnas Reb Aharon I, p. 28.)

How could it be, the Ponovezher Rosh Yeshiva asked, that the Jewish people was punished for something that the Sages, the Prophets and even the Angels were unable to discern?

The answer, he said, is that man – whether prophet or sage – may not be privy to what transpires in the heart of his fellow Jew. Even angels do not know what goes on in someone else’s heart and mind. But each person to himself, with a neshama which is a cheilek Eloka mima’al – a breath of the Almighty, as it were – every individual, knows and feels within the confines of his own heart and mind what needs fixing, and how and where he allows Torah to lose its rightful place as the central theme of his life. Man’s ability to divine his own, personal errors is greater than that of any prophet, sage or even angel.

So if we want to bring about the geula, we must, each of us, in his own heart and mind, restore the study of Torah to the primacy it deserves. And each of us (as the Brisker Rav explained) must say of himself, when the ship of state is tossed about in stormy seas, as did Yona Hanavi, “Besheli hasa’ar hagadol hazeh. This turmoil is because of me.”

Not because of someone else.

Because of me.

After the recent Sbarro bombing in Jerusalem, a friend asked Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman, “How is it that we are able to see everything, hear everything, and ultimately ignore it all?”

He responded by showing my friend the Gemora (Moed Kattan 26a) which recounts how King Yehoyakim was told that Jeremiah wrote the book of Eicha, describing the imminent exile.

“What does it say?” he asked.

“Eicha yashva vadad – Alas – she sits in solitude,” was the reply.

“But,” Yehoyakim replied, “I am a King, and it doesn’t say anything about kings.”

“But it says ‘bacho sivkeh balayla – She weeps bitterly at night,’” he was asked.

“But it doesn’t speak of kings,” was his insistent response.

“Darchei Zion avelios – the roads of Zion are mourning.”

“But it doesn’t mean me. I’m a king.”

“But it also says ‘hayu tzareha lerosh – her adversaries have become her master’ – a reference to the leadership.”

“Who said that?” he asked

“Ki Hashem hoga al rov pesha’eha – for Hashem has afflicted her for her abundant transgressions,” was the reply.

Yehoyakim’s reaction was to rip out all mentions of Hashem’s Name from Sefer Eicha and to consign them to the flames.

We can be like Yehoyakim.

We don’t live in Israel. We don’t eat in restaurants. We stay away from buses, and we never visit the shuk. So what does it have to do with me?

Or we can learn from Chaya’le, who will never again see her parents and three siblings. She taught an entire nation a lesson in pure emuna, when she echoed the immortal words of the Ramban, that one is only a Torah Jew if one knows that there is no such thing as a random event. In Chaya’le’s words, “Everything that happens, both good and bad, is a miracle from Hashem.”

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