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"After the Six Day War, the IDF exulted, dancing in the streets," are the opening words of HaRav Chizkiyohu Mishkovsky.
The army was hailed and adulated by all. They even invited the famous maggid, HaRav Shabsai Yudelevitz, to speak at an Air Force base. Rav Shabsai at first refused. However, after much pleading, he finally capitulated. En route, he again had reservations but it was already too late to back out, and he just said that he would only speak briefly.
The commander of the base, in all of his arrogance and self-importance, addressed the whole assembly and said, "What is the glory of rabbonon? The army is composed of various divisions. Our air force division contributed much towards the victory," and he began enumerating them. "All of us together were instrumental in liberating Jerusalem, the Kosel Hamaaravi and Kever Rachel etc. What did the yeshiva world contribute to the army's victory and to the Jewish People?" he questioned very cynically.
HaRav Shabsai was not taken aback. "I was asked a question here. And as representing the Torah world, I want to tell exactly what the yeshivos contributed.
The State of Israel is not starving the Gaza population. It never did. Perhaps there is hunger, but not because of a lack of food, rather it is due to a deliberate political diplomacy of the Hamas organization which has gone on a campaign of starvation and succeeded in felling a shattering downfall to the Zionist rule.
The fact that the world media has fallen into the Hamas trap is nothing new. The world press serves this organization well and crumples its enemy without battle which it wages day and night. This begins with the number of uncertified fatalities which spirals astronomically without any relationship to IDF activity there, together with the data of children killed reported from a most 'reliable source' - the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is none other than a 'laundered' name for the Hamas propaganda machine. Nor has anyone examined how much food enters Gaza and who, exactly, is starving the Gaza population.
But how did the Israeli newspapers who are expected to at least report the truth to its readership here, transform themselves into the propaganda clarions of this terrorist organization?! Why have they joined the Hamas campaign without placing at least a shadow of doubt on the disinformation?
Part III
This was originally published in the English edition of Yated Ne'eman in 1993, that is, 32 years ago.
In the first part, HaRav Brevda discussed the efforts of the erev rav in taking charge of the affairs of our people in the golus. These are people who appear as Jews, but do not have a real Jewish soul. These people are trying to destroy Torah and mitzvos, and the chachomim find it necessary to add various restrictions to the basic laws in order to repair what the erev rav destroy.
The fact that the mourning in the Three Weeks and Nine Days is replete with restrictions added on since the beginning of the golus is thus indicative of the fact that the erev rav are working to destroy our aveilus over the churban. And they have been frighteningly successful.
Why have they worked so hard against the aveilus? Because it is a key to participating in the redemption. If we mourn the Destruction, we will participate in the celebration over the Redemption. The impact of this redemption will be that our soul will decisively triumph over our material selves. We will live a dominantly spiritual existence.
To participate in that simcha before Hashem, it must engage our heart. Only if we suffer and toil and mourn in advance will we be able to feel its depth when the geula comes.
No Pain, No Gain
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Opinion & Comment
"And you shall love Hashem your G-d . . . with all your means (bechol me'odecho)' -- with every measure He metes out to you" (Chazal).
The word me'od, exceedingly, in great measure, generally serves to emphasize the unique. When we seek to stress that we are not talking about "good" in the usual sense, or "great, big," in normal terms, we say tov me'od, good indeed, or godol me'od, exceedingly large.
The word rarely assumes a noun form, however, as it does here, as a capacity.
The Meshech Chochmah infers that one must learn how to utilize one's love for Hashem to its fullest, to exploit it for the good. One must use not only the simple innate characteristics, but also those special, unique kochos hanefesh that are shared by mankind and not by other living creatures.
We see that animals are also capable of love and hatred: they all love what is beneficial for them and favor whoever provides these benefits. Good and bad, however, is defined by them only in pragmatic terms of the present: what is pleasant and palatable right now, not what is beneficial for the future.
Man is different. Man is capable of projecting his inborn capacity for affection and esteem, which he shares with other creatures, and developing them with regard to the future and future welfare. Good and bad are not necessarily what is pleasant right now, but what can be beneficial in the future.
This capacity is the me'od of man. The Torah commands us to love Hashem with all our means, our might, our power of faith in the goodness of the future.
Opinion & Comment
The following essay was sent to us by Am Echad, the American organization that promotes Jewish unity through an appreciation of the common tradition shared by all Jews.
I felt like a sociologist in a documentary film. Surrounded by at least a hundred dark-suited and for the most part black-hatted and bearded men, ritual fringes hanging at their sides, I -- a comfortably Reform Jew from the suburbs -- definitely stood out in the Friday night crowd at this particular synagogue.
I was out of my element, though, not for any professional reason, but simply because of a sense of adventure -- and because I wanted to learn more about parts of the Jewish religious map distant from my own.
I had befriended a rabbi on the Internet and, after meeting him once at a lecture (and being surprised by his distinctly "right-wing Orthodox" dress), accepted his invitation to me and my family to drive up from our Virginia home to join him and his family in Baltimore for a Shabbat.
We arrived somewhat curious, a bit excited and petrified. We knew that the Orthodox world had countless Sabbath rules, and had heard there were prohibitions against a host of mundane things from turning on lights to tearing toilet paper. And we wondered how we would deal with them all. But we also knew that Shabbat in an Orthodox environment would, more closely than anything we had experienced, resemble the Jewish day of rest as my ancestors -- and the ancestors of all Jews -- observed it.
Our host was not a pulpit rabbi; we were attending services at a shul a few blocks from his home. As services were about to begin, he explained what I should expect: recitations, spirited singing, the reading of the Shema and the silent recital of the Amidah. As things got under way, I could almost see the documentary's opening credits scroll down my field of vision. I tried to keep my eyes on the siddur but could not help but check out the scene. I was just about the only one present not wearing a black hat (other than a handful of obvious visitors -- come to think of it, I was probably an obvious visitor myself). For a while I had a hard time figuring out what page people were on, but then I realized that most everybody was on a different page. I decided to focus on the page before me.
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