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My day started with a call for help.
(Psalm 28:1-2)
To you, Lord, I call; you are my Rock,do not turn a deaf ear to me.
For if you remain silent,
I will be like those who go down to the pit.
Hear my cry for mercy as I call to you for help,
as I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place.
During the day, I felt that God was right beside me. When we walked downtown and did our shopping; when again we visited the health clinic; when we checked the mail, when we bought Challa for Shabbat, and when we stopped for coffee and a cinnamon bun.
The routine makes one feels at home and at peace. It helps to feel that God is walking with you.
But my country is not allowed that peace. During the 'Pause', yesterday, Hamas sent two terrorists from East Jerusalem to the city, (some say they were among the ones that were exchanged for the children in captivity), to shoot civilians. Four died, among them a young woman with first pregnancy, the child died with the mother.
This morning 2 rockets went between Hamas and Israel and I don't know who was first but I know that Israel did not employed the iron dome as per agreement. There are 137 hostages still in Hamas hands, most are men.
Revenge is very close to the surface. But Israel has a different spirit. I have to confess that I am not able to pray for our enemies, no matter how hard or how often I try. Each new murder takes a tole on my breathing. Each time my heart stops and I feel a huge fist hitting my middle, right under the rib cage. At time I cries out from the pain, other times I just stands there in a shock. But praying? Many prayers, only not for the killers.
Why are there any hostages at all? Innocent people of all ages, just grabbed from their homes?
As I light the Sabbath candles artileries exchanges sound from the border. It just started after a few days quiet. The agreement applies only to Gaza. So they hit in Jerusalem and now there are shots on the Northern border.
But Israel has a different spirit.
On October 6 the country was on a verge of dividing. When twins were born to Eber, (Genesis 10:25), he called one of them Peleg (division) to commemorate the division of the earth. The division, I was taught, was when the earth-plates moved and Jordan River came into being. However, some say that there was also a spiritual division. A rebellion against God was the cause and God mixed up their languges and dispersed them across the earth. (Genesis 11). On October 6 there was a build up of “pilug” (division) in the nation. It started with the government, over some judicial reform, but it continued inside the nation itself. It disappeared on October 7, 2023.
Unity and a sense of family is what backs up the IDF right now. Trying to free the hostages is a priority but also protecting Israelis and clearing Gaza without hurting its civilians. Hard task, even impossible.
But that is what Israel is made of.
Our people are thinkers, lovers, peace-wanting and farmers at heart. Those who are not in the army – and only 40 years old and younger can be in the reserve – are in the home front divisions; others volunteer in all the kibbutzim and farm areas for the harvests; others help with the families who evacuated their homes on the north and south borders, and more are volunteering in medical facilities and with the refugees after the slaughters.
Of course there is also the prayer army that seems to grow by leaps and bounds through the social media channels and by word of mouth.
It is very easy to seek revenge and to hit in the same hatred and force that they hit us. But this will only bring us down to the terrorists level and we refuse to become murderers. It is just not Israeli.
We do pray for the return of our people from exile. It is time for all Jews to make aliyah. Not because of the rising antisemitism everywhere, but because Israel is their / our home. And it is time to announce it and to accept it as it is – Israel is the land of the Jewish people given to them by God who promised and deeded to them over 4,000 years ago. We need to become united nation under God in one promised land.
It is time to come home.
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