Viewing One Another with a Favorable Eye
Just before Rosh Hashanah, Rachel Fraenkel, the mother of Yaakov Naftali Fraenkel, one the three murdered yeshiva students, issued a video message through Aish.com to the entire Jewish people. She recounted very briefly the torture of the18 days of searching for her son and Eyal Yifrach and Gil-ad Shaer: The parents knew almost from the beginning that their sons had almost certainly been murdered, and yet they maintained stoic countenances, filled with faith, throughout. Their nobility awed the entire nation.
Her message, however, was not about what the parents suffered or about the irreparable hole in their hearts. Rather she focused on those “amazing hours” of which it was said, “We went out searching for the boys and we discovered ourselves.” She likened those days to a flash of lightning on a dark and gloomy night that illuminates the way forward: “We had days and days of lightning. . . . [W]e saw about ourselves that we are part of something huge, a people, a true family. That’s for real.”
Mrs. Fraenkel knows that it is not all kumbaya moments ahead of us, and that we will return to old patterns – indeed we already have. Yet, she insists, that the closeness of what Jews around the world felt in those eighteen days and during the fifty days of Operation Protective Shield is no illusion, and urges each of us to do something tangible to preserve those feelings of caring intensely for one another.
MRS. FRAENKEL’S THEME of Jewish unity and concern for one another also happens to be one of the principal themes of the three holidays in the cycle of repentance – Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot – in which we currently find ourselves. On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate the creation of the world, which came about only because of G-d’s desire to give to a being outside of Himself. And we emulate His chesed by inviting friends and guests to join us in festive meals.
The goal of Rosh Hashanah is to crown G-d as King. Without a nation there can be no King, our Sages tell us. And without a sense of common purpose and being joined together in some fundamental fashion, there is no nation, only a motley crew of individuals.
In recognition of this fact, there hung in the Talmud Torah of Kelm throughout Elul a yellowing sign from the days of the Alter, proclaiming: “All the Rosh Hashanah prayers are designed to glorify the Kingdom of Heaven, and we, for our part, are called upon to crown the Lord as King of Kings. With what shall we crown Him? With love for others and charitable acts, as Moshe said in his parting blessing: ‘There will be a King in Yeshurun when the leaders of the people gather together, with the tribes of Israel as one.'”
During the Ten Days of Repentance, which culminate with Yom Kippur, the principal means of arousing G-d’s mercy is through the recitation of the 13 Divine attributes, which G-d taught to Moshe Rabbeinu. These can only be recited by a minyan of Jews, not by an individual. On Yom Kippur, all the Al Cheits — For the sin which we committed . . . — are in the plural: Because Jews are responsible for one another we are each implicated in the sins of our fellow Jews.
A Midrash on Sukkot, explains that we leave our well-protected homes for a flimsy, temporary dwelling as a protection against the extension of our current exile, which resulted from sinat chinam, causeless hatred. How so?
When we exchange the security of our homes to live in a dwelling that reminds us of the Clouds of Glory that protected our ancestors in a howling wilderness, we simultaneously leave the material realm for a more spiritual realm. To the extent that we maintain a materialistic perspective, we tend to view our fellow Jews as competitors in a zero-sum battle for larger slices of a limited pie. But the spiritual realm is infinite, and when it is our focus, our fellow Jews become not competitors but partners in spiritual growth. Thus the sukkah serves as an antidote to the division and hatred that brought about our millennial exile.
I AGREE with Mrs. Fraenkel that the events of the summer aroused/revealed a powerful yearning for greater unity among Jews. That yearning is no illusion. We watched the three sets of parents through their ordeal and were overwhelmed by their strength. And a few weeks later, we were again awed by the bravery of young Jewish soldiers putting their lives on the line to enter the Gaza Strip with its labyrinth of underground tunnels and booby-trapped homes, from which heavily armed enemy might suddenly jump out at any moment. Over the summer, I suspect that there were few Jews in Israel not filled with gratitude for the privilege of being born into the eternal Jewish people.
By giving open expression to our gratitude, admiration, and respect for Jews perhaps not exactly like ourselves, we gained a taste of what it might be like to view one another as precious brothers and sisters whose positive traits are far more prominent in our eyes than the negative. And we discovered that we like the taste. We learned that we don’t have to construct our identities on the basis of denying any qualities worthy of emulation to those who do not belong to our group.
I was gratified that the haredi community did not stand apart from the intense identification with one another. In every neighborhood, there were collections of food and other items for the soldiers.
One person I knew I’d see this summer was Rabbi Aryeh Sokoloff, a black-hatted rabbi from Queens. I first met him during the Second Lebanon War when he travelled around the North for several weeks giving encouragement to residents stuck in shelters. The next time I met him was at the shiva home of one of the eight yeshiva students murdered in Mercaz HaRav: He had flown in for a day to visit all eight shiva homes. And this summer, he came on his own dime, after the ceasefire had gone into effect, to visit the most seriously wounded soldiers in hospitals from Haifa to Beersheba.
When I wrote about his trip in Mishpacha, the largest circulation haredi publication in the world, the response was overwhelming. But the most important was that of Mrs. Tzila Schneider, who runs an organization called Kesher Yehudi, which sets up learning partnerships between haredi and secular Jews. She dispatched a group of volunteers to Tel Hashomer Hospital, where the largest contingent of seriously wounded soldiers is in rehabilitation, with the injunction: This is not to be a one-time visit only, but an ongoing relationship. There are now close to thirty volunteers learning weekly with soldiers who will likely be in hospital for a prolonged period of time.
IN THE SPIRIT OF THE MONTH of teshuva and in response to Mrs. Fraenkel’s plea that each of us try to do something to keep the spirit of the summer going, I’d like to express two things that I admire about my fellow Israeli Jews.
By definition anyone living in Israel must have some level of faith. There is no country whose citizens face on a constant basis so many mortal threats. Hezbollah possesses a huge arsenal of missiles – ten times what Hamas had at the outset of Operation Protective Shield and of greater range and sophistication. It has the capacity to overwhelm the Iron Dome system. Iran’s proxy on our border has also gained much battle experience in Syria.
The Golan Heights border is heating up again after decades of relative quiet, Jordan’s long-term stability is very much in question, and the Egyptian army is a long way from suppressing any threat from Sinai jihadists. And each of these threats – indeed all of them combined – pale besides that of a nuclear-armed Iran committed to wiping Israel off the map.
Yet Israeli Jews remain by almost every measure among the most optimistic people in the world. Perhaps it is davka because they subject themselves to so many dangers to live in Israel that Israeli Jews remain so optimistic about the future. Rabbi Noach Weinberg always used to challenge new students at Aish HaTorah to tell him what they’d be willing to die for. “If you don’t know what you’d be willing to die for, you don’t know what you are living for either,” he would say.
Because Israeli Jews know that there is something they would be willing to die for they also know that there is some purpose to their lives. In the course of Operation Protective Edge, many farewell letters (to be opened only in the case of death) of soldiers killed in battle were published. I was struck by how many of those soldiers, and not just the religious ones, expressed their eagerness to risk their lives to protect “the Jewish people.”
The second quality that stands out about Israelis is a certain moral seriousness. When a suffocating political correctness has rendered common sense remarkably uncommon and the basic instinct for self-preservation has atrophied in Western societies, both qualities are plentiful in Israel. Israel’s situation does not permit us the luxury of viewing the world around as we would like it to be, not as it is.
Every time I fly out of Israel without having to remove my shoes or being left clutching my pants after having been deprived of my belt, I’m grateful to live in a country where it is not forbidden to use a flicker of intelligence in determining whom to search. For that too I am grateful.
Rabbi Rosenbloom – this is beatiful. Really.
My son just finished his advanced infantry soldier training and will be shortly sent with his unit up north to what you describe as where “the border is heating up again after decades of relative quiet”. So many people have said to me that aside from getting the clodest 5 months of the year up there for his brigade’s 5 month rotation he should count himself lucky as it’s relatively a better and quiter service. Of course we know that after 40 years of “quiet” this is no longer the case….
One thing however – while we appreciate the work of “kesher yehudi”, I think my son and I would appreciate it more if kesher yehudi encouraged haredi youth to join him at his side at the start of basic traning and in uniform. Not wait for the hospital visit. Leave that to people who have been discharged by teh army due to age or medical necessaity or other reasons. Not people who have self-selected themselves for a discharge. Thank you.