On the nightmare of this past Simchat Torah my daughter and her family were spending the holiday with us. The call-up of her husband only added to the trauma. I, in a typical Jewish mother fashion, gathered up every chocolate chip cookie in the house and sent him off to war with those treats.
It's All From HaShem
Friday, March 15, 2024
Payback
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
A Purim Miracle
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Is It Possible?
At our table
this past Shabbat we discussed how so many of our historical tragedies were
followed by positive growth. Prime example is after our servitude in Egypt we
received the Torah. Also following the destruction of the Holy Temple, the
Babylonian Talmud was compiled despite the exile. Jumping ahead to modern
history we all know that the establishment of the State of Israel came on the
heels of the Holocaust. Thirty years later the Yom Kippur War was the impetus
for the settlement in Judea and Samaria.
What, we
wondered, would be the aftermath of the horrible Simchat Torah massacre and
subsequent war? We let our imaginations flow and our favorite vision was the
rebuilding of the Holy Temple.
Who knows?
As I’ve written before I often marvel during my visits to the Kotel that my
grandparents couldn’t even dream of making it to that spot and here I am. Is it
so improbable that my grandchildren will go to the Holy Temple remembering how
their grandmother once longed for the opportunity?
Anything is
possible if we work and pray hard enough.
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Did you call the White House today?
You can do something w/o leaving your home.
This was in the Jerusalem Post:
Thursday, February 29, 2024
And Another Terror Attack
I’m angry,
No, I’m furious. There was just a terror attack at the gas station between
Shilo and Eli. It’s so close I can walk there, if I want. My husband gassed up
there a couple of hours ago. My son-part of the first response team-is there
right now.
Two Israelis
are murdered, according to the news a man in his thirties and a teenage girl. Two
innocent people gassing up their car or buying something at the convenience
store or fast-food place.
And the
world wants us to reward these murderers with a Palestinian state? I beg each
and every one of you to demand from your congressmen that they take that idea
off the table unless they want the annihilation of Israel. As for a ceasefire, inform them there is
nothing to talk about until all the hostages, both dead and alive, are released
and Hamas pledges itself to stop firing rockets at us and recognize our right
to exist.
Do it for yourselves,
not for me. If Israel is destroyed no Jew’s life will be safe.
Nothing New Under the Son
Who has not read Chapter 5 in Judges, the second book of the Bible? Who does not know the song of Dvorah? Who doesn’t remember verses 28 through 31? Sisera, the Canaanite general who was set to defeat the Jewish nation, has not come home from the war in which he was routed. His mother, like most mothers, is worried about him. Her maidens try comforting her, reassuring her that her son is busy collecting spoils and ravaging women. Sisera’s mother finds comfort in their grisly words.
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Let's Try
Today, on
the 144th day of the war, I stood at the Kotel and remembered how the
place was once called the Wailing Wall. How apt that name has become again. Ever
since the war began, when I pray there my sobs join those of our ancestors throughout
the centuries. I’d wager my prayers are not all that different than theirs were.
Pleas for an end to the anti-Semitism and violence, yearning for full
redemption, longing for the Third Holy Temple. Oy!!!
Yet, today,
as I stood in front of the stones, I wondered how I can possibly ask the Almighty
to make peace for us when we are not peaceful with each other. If there was
ever a time to let go of our grudges and resentments for one another it is now.
Now is the time to give the benefit of the doubt and judge favorably. Can we do it? We can try and then maybe, just
maybe, G-d will do the same for us. It’s worth the effort. Isn’t it?