War—and the day of rest in Israel

Shabbat is the Jewish day of rest. It is the seventh day of the week—Saturday. All over Israel, life slows down. After all, it’s our time to rest.

In our neighbourhood, week-day life seems to come to a halt. On Shabbat, we walk in the street. On Shabbat, our young children play in the street.

We do this because on Shabbat in our neighbourhood there is no car traffic. The streets are empty, except for those who walk and play.

Shabbat is also a time to pray. Our morning prayers are longer than our week-day prayer, perhaps 90-100 minutes longer. We take more time to pray because the G-d of Israel has given to the people of Israel a Shabbat—a day to rest—as a reminder that He is our Creator. Shabbat reminds us that everything we have comes from Him.

For this reason, we dress up on Shabbat. We prepare special meals for Shabbat. We say special prayers for Shabbat. We linger over our praises to our Creator on Shabbat.

We celebrate the day. We celebrate our Creator. We celebrate the ‘rest’ that G-d has given to us.

Yesterday (Shabbat), two special ‘things’ happened during our prayer service. First, as usual, we read a special prayer for the sick. This prayer is built in to our service. During that prayer, the Reader leading it pauses so that anyone present who wishes to whisper the name of one who needs a blessing for recuperation can say that name. Normally, that pause takes perhaps ten seconds—or less.

Normally, that’s as much time as one needs to recite the names of those who need that special blessing.

But yesterday was different. The pause for names to be recited didn’t take ten seconds. It didn’t take twenty or thirty seconds.The pause lasted almost two minutes. It seemed a very, very long pause.

The names of soldiers wounded in Gaza were being read. It took almost two minutes to read all the names.

It was a pause that sobered all of us. Our soldiers—our children—needed our blessing.

War in Israel is never far away. In fact, for us in central Israel, the war is a 1.5 hours car-ride away. When an air raid siren sounds for us, the war is even closer: we have 60 seconds to get to a shelter. In Sderot, Ashdot, Ashkelon and for dozens of small communities close to Gaza, the war is even closer: residents there have only 15 seconds to find shelter.

The war is close—very close.

The second thing that happened yesterday occurred at the end of services. The Rabbi making community announcements paused to tell a story he said he had heard just that morning, after a class he had taught before services had begun. The story happened, he said, to the son-in-law of one of our members.

The son-in-law is in Gaza. Like all Israeli soldiers in combat, he gets pulled out often in order to get some sleep. To get that sleep, he doesn’t go far. He goes to a tent, where he has a designated cot. It’s a folding cot, not very sturdy. Exhausted, he sat down on the cot to go to sleep. But he sat down too hard. The cot collapsed. It folded onto his body. He hurt—or cut—his back. Since he was scheduled to return to combat, he went immediately to the infirmary, to get patched up.

While he was at the infirmary, an incoming mortar shell from Gaza landed on his cot and exploded.

In Israel, this war is close—very close. But then, so is G-d.

Strong is the nation that praises the G-d of Israel.

Another war story: the wheat harvest

Some say we live in an era of open miracles. They say that if we open our eyes, we will see Divine Providence.

Here is yet another ‘miracle’ story from this current Gaza-Israel war. A reader sent it to me. It’s from a blog called, Jewishmom.com. The essay is entitled, “The Matzah Miracle that Saved the Residents of Kibbutz Sufa”. It was posted on July 30, 2014.

But first, some background information. Beginning a few weeks from now, Israel will begin a year-long celebration of Shemitta. Shemitta is a Biblically-commanded resting of the land. It derives from the name, Shabbat, to rest. The Jewish Bible tells us that, just as man is to rest every seventh day, the agricultural land of Israel is to rest every seventh year.

If we rest the land in the seventh year, two things happen. Number one, there will be no harvest during year seven to provide food for the following year. Number two, if Israel is to eat for those two years, the harvest of year six in the Shemitta cycle must provide enough food for both of those years. The harvest in year six, in other words, must be double the normal harvest.

There are a lot more details about Shemitta. But for our purposes here, the information above is sufficient to understand the story you are about to read.

One more point: Passover. Jews eat matzah (unleavened bread) on Passover. Because Passover comes in the Spring, there is, in Israel, no January-February wheat harvest available to provide the flour needed to make matzah. The wheat for a Passover in March or April must be harvested in, app, July-August of the year before, then set aside to be stored for Passover.

It has been this way whenever Jews celebrate Passover—for thousands of years.

This story is about the harvest requirements for Shemitta, the need to harvest ‘Passover’ wheat in the previous July-August, and the Gaza war.

I have done some light editing.

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Three weeks ago, a group of religious Jews came from Bnei Brak to the non-religious kibbutz, Sufa—near the border with Gaza—to harvest wheat for Pesach (Passover). They harvest the wheat every summer when the sun beats down on the fields, thoroughly drying the wheat. The wheat is then stored until the winter when they start the production and baking of matzos.

Aharon Samet, owner of the “Samet” factory producing “tzitzis” (fringes), is the Badatz [a religious food-supervision company] community supervisor for the wheat harvest. On a radio program today with Rabbi Moshe Ben Lulu, Samet told the story of a great miracle which occurred for the people of Israel thanks to this year’s wheat harvest.

“This year we are getting ready for the Shemitta agricultural sabbatical year, so this summer we harvested wheat grain for two years. We searched the whole country, looking for wheat which was sown late in the season and needed rain which, specifically, fell late. At Kibbutz Sufa, right next to the Gaza border, we found an entire field sown in mid-January, which was considered very unusual, and we found there 2000 acres of green wheat which was just right for us,“ said Samet.

“We harvested the wheat,” said Samet, “and we ran into military police, as well as undercover and regular police, who came to check out who we were.” The Gaza air campaign was already underway, and Samet and his colleagues saw the smoke clouds over Gaza, and heard the sirens while they were busy harvesting and transferring the wheat to trucks and moving them towards the cleaning plant near Masmiya for cleaning the wheat, fumigating and tithing it.

Two days later, 13 terrorists from Gaza came out from a tunnel which opened into those fields near Sufa. The terrorists had been planning a big attack, and had been counting on hiding among Sufa’s giant wheat field–which the matzah makers had just chopped down. The terrorists couldn’t understand how their camouflage had disappeared.

The empty field enabled military observers to spot and identify the terrorists, and open fire on them. Many Jewish lives were thus saved by the grace of Heaven.

--

Yes, this is just a story about a ‘coincidence’. But then, Jews know that the word, ‘coincidence’ is just another way of saying, ‘the hand of G-d’.

Happy is the nation that recognizes the G-d of Israel.

 

 

 

Who is reading America’s news?

A story popped up yesterday on Yahoo.com (“ABC Goes Inside Gaza With an Israeli Armoured Unit”, July 30, 2014). It’s about an ABC crew embedded with Israeli soldiers. It seemed to be one of very few news items which showed Israeli forces in a positive light. That seemed unusual.

Reader comment to this story, however, wasn’t exactly ‘unusual’. It was stunning. Given the press’s intensely anti-Israel slant, the comments you are about to see seem totally out of place.

Is there a gap between US leadership and the media on the one hand, and the US public? I’m not in America. All I see is the anti-Israel bias of the press and the Administration. Are these comments below a true reflection of the US news audience—or not?

Reader Comment:

--Remember when Israel blockaded concrete because they claimed it was being used for terrorism? The Palestinians claimed they needed it for construction and jobs. Still sympathetic?   

-- CBS News (the news I usually watch) has devoted its news casts to covering Gaza. They show lots of pictures of children victims and some adults as victims. They DO NOT cover Israel--and do not mention that this whole thing started after several firings of rockets from Gaza.

--It’s interesting that all of the billions of funding that Hamas gets from its sponsors has been used to build tunnels to kidnap and murder Israelis instead of building schools, roads and businesses to improve the lives of ordinary citizens living in Gaza.

-- Looks like a lot of time and effort went into building those tunnels. Wonder how that time and effort could have been used to build schools and infrastructure instead.

-- It's hard to spin these tunnels. There is only one reason these terrorist would dig tunnels and it's not for defense!

--I'm looking at pictures on google and other videos of the tunnels and I can't help but think that Israel is right with the embargo... The cement, wood, electrical wire, nails, hammers, and all they need to rebuild Gaza is going to the underground network of tunnels. The citizens are not benefiting, but the militants sure are...

--Ok, I only have one question here. How in the world is it that they [Hamas] can build these tunnels (no small accomplishment) and yet not build infrastructure to support their citizens? I spent years in the construction industry and I can tell you right now these tunnels were not built over-night. These tunnels have rails, electricity, concrete, steel, and who knows how much labour was required to accomplish such a project(s). I am not trying to be a jerk here, but if you are trying pretend to be the victim in all this it would help if you wouldn't have put so many resources into building something that can only serve one purpose…

This is what Hamas has been doing with the funds it has received from the US and other countries. This is what Hamas has been doing with the cement and building supplies Israel has allowed into Gaza. The World criticizes Israel? Israel must face an enemy which chooses to fight from behind women and children. The world will record their inevitable deaths and condemn Israel. Hamas has only one purpose: Destroy Israel and kill Jews--PERIOD. There is no difference in the goals of Hamas or Fatah and Abbas. Only in the time frame in which it is to be done. Hamas continues to fire and store their missiles in UN schools and public buildings. They continue to fire on Israelis from the midst of their civilian populations, just like Hezbollah in Lebanon. These are rabid, heartless dogs whose purpose is NOT to make peace, but only to make war to achieve their ultimate end--the Destruction of the State of Israel and the removal Jews from the land. There will be no peace. Their goal is ONE PALESTINIAN STATE from River to Sea with Jerusalem as its undivided Capital--just as Arafat expounded till the day he died. NOTHING has changed. Israel is to make peace with an entity sworn to its destruction??

--The question of how many Palestinian women and children are going to die in Gaza is not going to be decided by the Israelis — it is going to be decided by Hamas. The Jews mean to live, Hamas means to exterminate them, and there will be war until Hamas and its allies either weary of it or win it and the last Israeli Jew is dead or exiled. It is Hamas, not the Israelis, that stashes rockets and soldiers in schools and hospitals, while hiding and fighting behind their children.

--The misinformation being distributed by the Palestinians and their supporters is staggering in its breadth and acrimony. I always thought that anti-Semitism was a minority opinion and that the vast majority of people actually didn't participate in that way of thinking. I was wrong. Most of the Christian world hates the Jews. There is no other explanation for the support being given to these subhuman vermin. Go Israel.  

--

Who are these commenting readers? Are they simply a fringe who do not represent the typical American reader? Of the comments I scanned (200 of 802), I saw only two or three that were pro-Arab. Is that representative of America’s news audience?

What’s going on here? Can you tell me?

 

War stories, Israel-style

In America, war stories usually focus on individual exploits. The main point of such stories is what had happened to the soldier.

In Israel, war stories are very different. Yes, they still involve the individual soldier. But the soldier is not the main point of an Israeli war story.

The main point of an Israeli’s war story is ‘miracle’.

Here are four stories I heard this week. The first three come from a friend who stopped me as we were both leaving our synagogue after morning prayers. The fourth is from one of my daughters who, upon hearing these stories, told me she had received a text message about another war story.

My friend told me that he had recently attended a meeting about a topic that had nothing to do with the current war with Gaza. A Rosh Yeshiva (Dean of a religious Seminary) was at the meeting. My friend told me the two following stories were from the Rosh Yeshiva.

First, some background about a ‘Rosh Yeshiva’. A Rosh Yeshiva is not just a Dean or a leader; he is also a man who has developed a reputation as a Torah scholar. Young men go to a Yeshiva (religious seminary) because of the reputation of the Rosh Yeshiva. When a young man leaves a Yeshiva, perhaps at age 20-24, he doesn’t just ‘leave’. He maintains contact with his teachers and most especially with his ‘Rosh Yeshiva’, who by then has usually become that young man’s spiritual mentor and life guide. The connections a young man makes with his Rosh Yeshiva will often be life-long.

This particular Rosh Yeshiva told those at the meeting that he had just received two calls from former students who have been IDF (Israel Defence Force) soldiers fighting in Gaza. One told him that, on one occasion, he (and other soldiers) had entered a building in Gaza to search for terrorists and weapons. Seconds after clearing one room, a shell crashed into that room. It had come, they later discovered, from an Israeli tank that had been aiming at a different house. The shell did not explode. None of the IDF soldiers was injured. It was, the soldier said, a miracle no one was killed.

The second soldier told a similar story dealing with an Arab rocket. He and a number of IDF soldiers had entered another Arab house in Gaza. Carefully, they made their way through the house, looking for terrorists, weapons—and booby traps. They went slowly. They mounted a set of stairs to check out the second story. As the last soldier cleared the staircase, a rocket shot into the house and demolished the staircase. It was a miracle, the soldier said, that no soldier was killed.

The third story comes from my friend. He said his wife had received a picture of a soldier in a combat outfit ‘wearing’ (as soldiers do) a hand grenade on the front of his ‘jacket’. In the picture, the grenade clearly had a bullet piercing it. The grenade had not exploded.

To explain what this meant, my friend told me this story. There is a woman in Israel who, like too many others, had lost two sons in the IDF. Her two boys had been killed in action against the enemy. She travels around Israel speaking to audiences. She says, look at me. I have buried two of my children. I tell you I miss them every day. The pain I feel has never gone away. But I also stand here to tell you, never give up. Be strong. You must continue to fight. Fight with courage.

One of this woman’s sons had been killed, my friend said, because a grenade he had been ‘wearing’ had been struck by a bullet—and had exploded, killing him. There have been rumours, my friend said, that Israel had been trying to develop a grenade that would not explode if struck by shrapnel or a bullet. He said, I guess they succeeded.

My daughter told me the following story, from a soldier who helped to man one of the anti-missile stations called Iron Dome. It’s a story that has since appeared online. Perhaps you have seen it: recently, the Iron Dome system this soldier was working at spotted a missile heading to Tel Aviv. Their unit fired at the missile. It missed. This happened more than once. Such a thing had occurred only twice before in the entire Iron Dome network. Now, the missile seemed clearly headed not just to Tel Aviv, but to that section of Tel Aviv holding a cluster of high-rise apartment buildings.

At this point, time moved very quickly. The soldiers at the station watched, helplessly, as the missile pointed towards Tel Aviv.

The Iron Dome is a sophisticated system. It tracks missiles. But it also tracks wind direction and speed because the wind can play a role in a missile’s trajectory.

Someone at the station suddenly called out, we’ve got wind gusts. They’re really strong! Everyone watched in utter amazement as the incoming missile veered away from Tel Aviv’s high-rise buildings—and crash into the Mediterranean Sea.

Someone jumped up and cried out, ‘There is a G-d! There is a G-d! We have seen the hand of G-d push the missile away!’

Americans, including many American Jews, simply refuse to believe these stories. The stories seem too corny. That’s too bad—because the Arabs believe them.

The blog, EmunahSpeak, has posted a story many of us have heard. This post went up July 22, 2014. I have done limited editing:

Apparently, one of the top people in the Hamas leadership was interviewed by CNN. When asked by the interviewer why his missiles never seemed to hit anything of substance, he answered that all of their missiles are tested and that those who launch them are experts, but their G-d (our G-d) stops them.  Then he was asked the obvious question:

“If you understand that their G-d is protecting them why do you keep launching missiles?”

“We’re probing for a weak moment,” he answered, “when their G-d doesn’t favour them.”

--

These are the war stories Israel hears. They are not just stories of soldiers in combat. They are stories of the G-d of Israel.

Israel is a land of miracles. It is a holy land. On one level, that’s why the Arab fights for it. He wants that holiness.

That’s also why women who bury their children give speeches. They know that holiness. They don’t want us to forget it.

Happy is the nation that recognizes the G-d of Israel.

The path to Redemption: Rav Kook was right

Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook served as the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi for the British Mandate of Palestine (modern Israel) between 1921 and 1935. He is considered by many to be the founder of modern Religious Zionism in Israel.

As a Torah scholar and student of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), he wrote of Redemption. To oversimplify, he believed that Redemption was not a singular, unique event that would occur in a (probably) unexpected instant. Instead, he believed that Redemption was a process that unfolds in history.

He died in 1935 before he could realize how correct he was.

In his book, War and Peace, (Commentary by Rabbi David Samson and Tzvi Fishman, Torah Eretz Yisroel Publications, Jerusalem, 1994), Rav Kook writes that G-d directs the world in a natural, historical fashion, achieving His aims through the vehicles of nations and kings (i.e., national leaders) (p.43). He believed that the prophesied return of the Jewish people to Israel would be an historical event sure to come true (ibid, p 42).

How would that happen? Through history.

For Rav Kook, Divine Providence works through history. In history, a process unfolds. This process is similar to what man experiences: just as man develops from infancy to adolescence to maturity, so, too, history evolves, stage after stage (ibid, p 39). This process, Rav Kook said, is the blueprint that HaShem has created for the world—for man, history and for the Jewish people (ibid).

Redemption is part of that process (ibid, p 40). Look at what our Sages teach: war, our Talmud says, is (besides being a period of destruction) also the beginning of Redemption (Megilla, 17b) (see ibid, p 40). The Talmud, Rav Kook says, tells us that our Redemption comes after a period of struggle and war.

Rav Kook wrote that, when there is war, then, in accordance to the magnitude of the conflict, the Redemption of Israel moves forward faster or slower. This is precisely what has happened.

For example, World War One brought us the Balfour letter, which set into motion the re-creation of the Jewish national homeland on Biblical land. World War Two brought us the founding of the modern state of Israel. The June, 1967, Six-Day War brought us the reunification of Judea-Samaria with Israel—and the recapture of the Temple Mount.

Now, Israel fights another war. This war is against Hamas in Gaza. So far, this war has moved Israel closer to its ‘destined perfection’ (ibid, p42) by bringing Israelis together in a unity not seen for decades (“Shimon Peres: I Have Never Seen the Nation So Unified”, Arutz Sheva, July 30, 2014).

Now we see the possible beginning of yet another step forward. In this unfolding story of Israel’s Redemption-in-the-making, we see a potential separation of Israel from its secular ‘master’, the United States.

The United States has always been a friend to Israel. But that friendship has always been bitter-sweet. For example, the birth of the modern Israel could not have happened without the support of the US. But then, at almost the same instant Israel was ‘born’, the US joined Britain in an arms blockade against the new Jewish state just as that state was simultaneously invaded by Arab armies.

The US has maintained such a love-hate relationship with Israel since. For many, the US has been the master and, too often, our leaders have been nothing more than American puppets. For some, Israel’s destiny will always be stalled when it replaces G-d with such an indifferent master.

That love-hate relationship may be ending. The current US President has never really liked our Prime Minister Netanyahu. Now, he appears to reveal that he can no longer even be civil to Netanyahu.  

A tape recording has emerged. That recording might never have seen the light of day but for a US assertion that Netanyahu had asked for a new cease-fire with Hamas ("Kerry: Netanyahu Asked Me to Help Broker Gaza Ceasefire", Arutz Sheva, July 29, 2014). The recording emerged because, it would seem, that assertion was a flat-out lie.

In the short-term, both sides have chosen to deny the authenticity of the tape. That’s okay. That’s called, international politics.

But the proverbial cat is now out of the bag. We have seen the emperor with no clothes on—and what we see is ugly.

Specifically, the recording presents the US President as demanding, with great force and hostility, that Israel not only accept a cease-fire, but make that cease-fire unilateral (see “In Leaked Tape, Hostile Obama Tries to Force PM to Accept Truce”, Arutz Sheva, July 29, 2014). It presents us with a shocking show of raw power applied with an intense hostility.

We will have to wait to see how this tape influences events—and leadership decisions. Already, one result is visible: Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have gone deeper into Gaza ("IDF Launches New Offensive into North, Central Gaza", Arutz Sheva, July 30, 2014).

Rav Kook has written that history progresses with the aim of bringing the Jewish people to its destined perfection. You may not believe in this process. But you cannot deny two things: (1) the world map has indeed been rearranged to create modern Israel (ibid, p 43); and, (2), war has brought us increasingly closer to the Jewish Redemption.

Rav Kook was right.

 

 

A Jewish view of boycotts

The Arabs calling themselves ‘Palestinians’ want you to boycott Israel. They want you to do that as a way to pressure Israel. They want 'justice' from Israel. That justice requires Israel to stop calling itself a Jewish state, allow 4 million Jew-hating Arabs to flood into Israel and to surrender Jerusalem to them.

That means, of course, that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement isn’t really about helping the ‘Palestinians’ create a state; it’s about destroying Israel. Norman Finkelstein, one of the movement’s leading Jewish advocates, has concluded that this is the real goal of BDS.

Now, Jews have begun to think about this BDS concept. It’s beginning to sound good. Some Jews are thinking about boycotting Palestinians. They’ve come up with a new slogan. Perhaps you've seen it:

We want to boycott the Palestinians. But they don’t actually make anything.

 

 

Joan Rivers: politics as Jewish Judo

Jews are not known for their athletic prowess. They aren’t known for pugilistic perfection. Jews, you know, can’t fight.

But Joan Rivers can. Have you seen the video of her?

In a Youtube video, a reporter catches up to her as she was about to enter an airport. The reporter told her he was looking to collect celebrity reactions to the Gaza-Israel war. Her first response was, “Look, if New Jersey would fire rockets into New York, we’d wipe ‘em out. If we heard they were digging tunnels from Jersey into New York, we’d get rid of Jersey”.

The reporter asked, what about the civilian casualties in Gaza. She responded, “then don’t put your g-damn things into private homes! I’m sorry, but don’t you dare put weapon stashes into private homes”.

The report asked, where are civilians supposed to go? She replied immediately, “I don’t care. They started it. You [the media] are all insane: they started it! Israel didn’t fire rockets into Gaza. They started it! The BBC should be ashamed of itself. CNN should be ashamed of itself!”

Seems like Joan Rivers knows a thing or two about reality. Too bad CNN, the BBC and the rest of the anti-Israel media don’t.

Good for you, Joan Rivers.
(If you find the video, take a look at it. It's less than two minutes. But it's worth the time.)