This column goes to press before Tisha B'Av. As of this writing, the Temple has not yet been built. But you will know what will happen by the time Besheva reaches you, because in everything that concerns gratuitous hatred and the relationships between man and his fellow man – the reason for the destruction of the Second Temple and its failure to be built – we are truly improving and making significant progress. It seems that today the owner of the feast would send Bar Kamtza packages with sweets and treats and drawings by kindergarten children, and also organize delegations to come visit him and encourage him, until Bar Kamtza would thank everyone and announce that he could no longer take this hug.
We need round miracles. I don't know why it's like that. Maybe because of the memory of those founding miracles, in Egypt. Apparently, since the Holy One's earthly entrance into Pharaoh, it's been hard for us to drop the high standard. Every miracle must be heroic, with a beginning, a middle, and especially a resounding punch. Anything less than a staff turning into a snake doesn't do it for us.
And it's a shame. Because the high threshold of excitement causes us two bad things. First of all, we don't pay attention to daily miracles. And I'm not talking now about the miracle that a person wakes up in the morning and is breathing and alive and walking. Okay, maybe that's really hard to get excited about, but notice how many "simple" miracles accompany us these days, on the home front and at the front.
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All of this is not enough, as mentioned, and we must invent – and this is the second sin – or pass on, stories and anecdotes about an IDF force entering a mosque and discovering a squad of terrorists emerging from a tunnel and silently approaching our fighters!!! Then one of the terrorists hears the soldiers' call "Ten for the minyan", opens fire on his fellow squad members, killing them all!!!!! He puts down his weapon and with tearful eyes tells the soldiers that he wants to complete the minyan for them because the word "center" reminded him that he is the son of a Jewish mother who married a Gaza resident. Yes, he is Ahmed Ben Sarah. Pass it on urgently!!!!!!
What all these messages have in common is that you no longer know if they are real (i.e., invented), or a parody of those messages. Again, for me, the gist of the story is enough to make me marvel: an IDF force entered Gaza, discovered a terrorist cell there, fought bravely, and returned safely. Wow. What a divine help. Whoever rewarded them for all their good deeds will reward them and reward us for all their good deeds.
So when at the end of the week, right after the kidnapping in Rafah, the text messages started coming in asking if there was a way for me to check whether the rumor that the kidnapped soldier Hadar Goldin was the defense minister's nephew was true, I grinned. I answered everyone with disdain: "Yes, of course. Roni Daniel is also the grandson of Baba Sali, who appeared to him in a dream and told him that if he lit two hundred soul candles in every report he made on Channel 2 – and of course also passed on the message – Amnon Abramovich would admit live that the disengagement was a mistake.".
The end is known. It turned out that they were indeed close. Not nephews, not even first cousins, but still, Boogie's grandfather and Hadar Goldin's great-grandmother were siblings. The Minister of Defense even said that he had known Hadar since the day he was born. What can be done, sometimes a rumored major is really a relative of the Chief of Staff.
And now we just have to wait for the visible miracle to come true, when Abramovich will admit the failure of the disengagement.
Without us realizing it, something historic happened here. No, I'm not just talking about the unity, the mutual responsibility, the Zionism of Israeli youth that has apparently not passed away, and the waves of volunteerism that warm the heart (someone told me that these days the people of Israel are fulfilling, paragraph after paragraph, the entire explicit Mishnah: acts of charity, the morning and evening prayer of the Beit Midrash, the Knesset of guests, visiting the sick, the funeral of the dead...).
I mean something else. We don't talk about it because it's a bit unpleasant to go into details, but two Israeli families have set a completely new tariff that Israel will introduce to the Middle East from now on. The Shaul family from Puriya and the Goldin family from Kfar Saba immediately accepted the decision of Chief Military Rabbi Rafi Peretz (who I don't even want to imagine what a difficult month he is going through) - that their sons are not alive.
They didn't go against the system and didn't say that they weren't losing hope and that their son was still alive, but they bowed their heads in the face of the bitter reality and began to fast. What a difficult experience, not only losing a son but consciously deciding to lose hope. It seems to me that an entire country looked at this restraint and said thank you.
After police officer Baruch Mizrahi was murdered on Passover Eve by a terrorist released from the Shalit deal, one can imagine how many innocent civilians the two families saved by not pushing the system into similar dangerous deals in exchange for body parts.
When talking about a "kidnapped soldier," everyone remembers Gilad Shalit. But the questionable price list didn't start with the Shalit deal, but much earlier.
In exchange for the three bodies of the Har Dov hostages (Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham, and Omar Sawad), which were returned along with the living citizen Elhanan Tenenboim, Israel paid a heavy price and released many terrorists, including Dirani and Obeid.
Later, in exchange for the bodies of Udi Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, Israel again paid a heavy price, which also included the release of terrorist Samir Kuntar. This happened at the end of a long emotional campaign and after Udi's wife, Karnit Goldwasser, moved almost every Israeli to want to "bring him home.".
Even though it was clear to the army that the soldiers were no longer alive, a whole nation, and therefore also a whole negotiation, was conducted with the consciousness that the boys had to be brought home at any cost.
Without saying it out loud, Israel essentially said this week to its enemies and especially to itself: No more.
Here is Rashi that I hadn't noticed for 38 years, until last Shabbat. I probably needed the atmosphere of "Protective Edge" in the background to pay attention to this duality that exists in our national character. In Parashat Devarim, two interpretations of Rashi appear almost consecutively, which are contradictory, surprising, and relevant.
Moses, as we recall, speaks to the Israelites and tells how difficult it is to bear all this burden of leadership alone. Rashi explains what this burden was that was so heavy on Moses' shoulders: "It teaches that there were heretics. Moses was early to leave - they said: What did the son of Amram see that he was leaving? Is he not insane within his own house? He was late to leave - they said: What did the son of Amram see that he was not leaving? What do you think, he sits and counsels you with evil counsel and thinks thoughts about you.".
Amazing. Rashi writes without confusion that our ancestors, the generation of the miracles of the desert (those who could really send a WhatsApp message like: "A crazy story has been allowed to be published now!!! Must share to amplify the miracle!!! Yesterday Pharaoh opened his oven, a huge frog came out, he hit it and thousands of frogs came out! To pass on. Not to break!!!!!!!!!!!"), this generation was an apocryphal.
And what are heresies? People who look at the leader who led them through this entire miraculous journey, from slavery to freedom, and check his schedule. If he left his house early – they immediately said that he had problems with domestic peace and was simply running away from his wife who threw shoes at her employees. And if he left late – they told themselves that he was delayed because he was sitting and plotting evil plots and plans against them. What a people. Unbelievable.
But three verses later, Moses speaks of the chiefs of thousands and hundreds who were chosen to lead the people of Israel. And there Rashi writes completely differently, explaining in his commentary how Moses appoints the heads of these tribes: "They are saying, 'Blessed are you, over whom have you come to be appointed? Over the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, over men who were called brothers and neighbors, a portion and an inheritance, and every kind of affectionate language.".
That is, when Moses calls the heads of the tribes to be appointed to their positions, he explains to them what a privilege it is to lead the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are called by every term of endearment.
So I don't understand, are we heretics or brothers and sisters? Are we cynics who criticize the greatest of prophets both when he comes early and when he comes late, or holy sons of the three fathers?
""Suddenly, while eulogizing his two friends, Ahikam Amichai and David Rubin, the soldiers who were murdered on Friday in a terrorist attack near Hebron, Benya Sarel spoke with choked tears about the cultural gaps between him and his fellow settlers from Kiryat Arba, and what he defined as the 'state of the lowlands.'" Thus begins an article published seven years ago by journalist Nadav Shragai in the newspaper 'Haaretz', under the headline "The soldiers from the settlements' aristocratic families were killed on a trip.".
Of all the rabbis' and important speakers' eulogies at that funeral of the two young hikers who were murdered in Nahal Telem, Shragai chose to focus specifically on the eulogy delivered there by a young man, their friend from the Mekor Chaim yeshiva, named Benya Sarel: "'Tomorrow morning,' Sarel told the thousands who crowded into Kiryat Arba, 'an entire country that lives in the lowlands will wake up and wonder how many centimeters Ninet's hair has grown. All the jobbers and all the dodgers haven't yet woken up from their sleep in the hours that you managed to travel, travel, fight and die.'".
In the same 2007 article, Shragai describes the stark differences between the "Tel Aviv State" and the "other spirit" that blew at the funeral, and goes on to quote Bania Sarel, who said there: "This is not just a funeral, and no longer just people. They are myths. We have stopped believing in myths and heroes, but Ahikam and David were like that.".
Last Saturday night, more than ten thousand people accompanied Benya Sarel to his resting place in the cemetery in Hebron after he fell in the fierce battle against the tunnel terrorists in Rafah. A few weeks ago, he was hit by shrapnel in clashes with terrorists, was supposed to undergo surgery, but rushed back to fighting in Gaza despite the injury, and despite his upcoming wedding.
Sons, you have made yourself a myth. But this time an entire country that lives in the Shephelah has not stopped talking about you and your friends, and about millions of Israelis within missile range, and about the meaning of our existence here. Even if Ninet changes her haircut five times, it will not interest anyone now. We are the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, brothers and sisters.
The only question is what will happen the day after the war.
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva''
