What can one say on a day such as this? Rav Zalman Melamed perhaps put it best (link):
"We must remember that we are in the midst of a struggle for our right to all of Eretz Yisrael, to Jerusalem in particular, and even more, for the Temple Mount, site of our Holy Temples."
"I request, my beloved students, that you deflect all the pain, anger and trauma to the right channels: Study more Torah, do more good deeds, adding merits that will bring our Redemption closer."
I was in the kosher supermarket with my wife on Sunday and was standing by the checkout where they have a display of little candies and things and I remember thinking (and saying to her afterwards) that Jews are being persecuted all over the world, and here our minds are on kosher Tic-Tacs.
I don't mean we should all take vows of prishus or anything like that. That's not going to happen. But we can do our best to empathize and be mishtatef b'tza'aran shel Yisrael. We can do our best to set aside more time for Torah, for tefilah, and for speaking out for the values we hold dear and for our people.
I can't find the link now, but there were two sites where you could contribute money that would go to the families of those killed. If someone has the link, pls send it to me and I can add it to this post bl"n.
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Strange. I must be misremembering, because I thought that in Tanach, the response to actions like this was war ranging up to genocide.
ReplyDeleteR' Melamed's comments (read the whole thing) are just meant as discouragment against vigilante violence, but "...we nevertheless must overcome our anger and humiliation and allow the security forces to accomplish their tasks."
DeleteOne thing is certain: calm and tolerance, as President Hussein the Jew hater called for yesterday, are absolutely the wrong response.
No it's not. 1) its not our midda to fight/fight back, thats this weeks parsha. Eisavs is, ours is hakol kol yaakov.
ReplyDelete2) we only go to war When hkbh tells us. Hkbh needs to cause he's telling us to go against our nature.
3) There's a famous meshech chochma on this in pashas maasei (matos?) That's says the geder is When the fight is against us, OK, we get chizuk and get back to torah vtfila. But When it's a war against hkbh then we fight lkvodo. We don't care about our kavod only kavod hkbh! This m'ch answers many questions.
1) Ha'ba l'horgecha hashkem l'horgo. It is absolutely a a non-Jewish midah to turn the other cheek and not defend yourself.
Delete2) You don't need to wait for a Navi's reshus to fight back when attacked.
3) Not sure how this applies here. Defending the kavod of Klal Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael is defending kvod Shamayim. Make no mistake about it -- this is a religious war. The world hates us because we are Jews. In one of Daniel Gordis' books he makes the point that the current wars Israel is fighting are like a repeat of the war for independence, not a repeat of 56, 67, or 73. I would say that the war goes back much further - its's a repeat/continuation of the war that started in the year 70. Spain's decision to recognize Palestine is just a continuation of 1492. And so on.
A war of defense is a milchemes mitzva. And even if goyim attack a border city for plunder, not to kill the inhabitants, it is a mitzva to fight them even on Shabbat, because not doing so makes the entire border meaningless and puts all of klal yisroel at risk.
DeleteThis comment highlights the danger of too much machshava at the expense of halacha. (Minu benaichem min hahigayon...)
Deletehttp://www.kedosheiharnoffund.com/
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