I chose to open my column this week with an article by my friend Rabbi Yaakov Eichler, a veteran Haredi journalist, whose words touched my heart and moved me so much, that I thought it appropriate to bring them to you.
""Haniyy Yossi, please hurry up," Mom called softly but firmly from the kitchen into the house, while making sandwiches. "Although it's not raining today, Dad will return from morning prayers right away and pick you up at school, because these are not easy days for Jerusalem.".
Not her. Not Hani, not Yossi, not the rest of the brothers and sisters, nor Hani and Yossi in three nearby houses, never dreamed that one of the difficult days would knock on their door.
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Wait a minute, what are those noises, Yossi asks, thunder? Noooooo, Mom replies in horror. It sounds like gunshots, and not the kind Dan says are coming from the nearby range valley.
Loud cries began to be heard through the closed windows. Massacre, there's a massacre. Call for help, they and she hadn't yet had time to understand the difference between giving praise and a massacre in progress, and the sirens began to echo throughout the area.
No one had to explain it to them. They understood, but they didn't internalize it. It's sooooo.
It took the police seven minutes to reach the synagogue that had become a slaughterhouse, and that's more or less the time it took the mother to recover from the blow that was dealt to her mind. Hani and Yossi are too young to go out and check what's going on, while she's too old to leave the children alone at home, especially when the emergency vehicles rush down the street with sounds that sound like music to the injured, and like a mournful melody to others.
She picks up the phone, struggles to press the speed dial button, and when she finally succeeds, she is met with the voice response that is so unwelcome at this moment. "The subscriber cannot answer your call - try again later." And she tried later, and later, and later again, but the subscriber cannot answer.
At that moment, he lies on the synagogue floor, wrapped in a tallit, adorned with tefillin, and with a prayer book in his hands. It is difficult to know whether at that moment he was already in a world where all was well, or whether he was still bleeding to death waiting for the rescue forces, waiting for the security forces, waiting for the murderers to leave, waiting for the worshippers, waiting for the sunrise so that they could pray to the Creator.
As many words as there are versions in the siddur. But it doesn't matter whether the shot was fired in the verse of great compassion, or the butcher's knife was placed on his shoulder in 'Look upon his case.'.
Minute by minute, neighbor by neighbor, news by news, and they internalize with heartbreaking and building tears. Dad has gone to be with Dad in heaven. He will no longer come to Hani, Yossi and the others. They are the ones who will come to him a few hours later, to say goodbye to him without seeing his face, without shaking his hands.
Which picture to choose?
May Solomon be great from heaven – and may life be good to us...
Ishmael slaughtered Isaac on the altar without binding him.
There were many there, but four were tied up and slaughtered.
Four were taken, four were left to deal alone with twenty-four.
All the colors were there, but black and white gave way to red.
There were all ages there, but reality turned a child into an adult.
It was the adults who cried, and the children were silent.
There was day, but darkness overcame the light.
There were lots of stories, but more than that, miracles.
There were many questions, but one answer. God gave and God took away.
All the physical forces were there, but reality overtook them.
These chose the image of a hand adorned with tefillin.
They chose the image of the four blue vehicles,
These chose the crowd photos.
I chose two.
The picture of the mother and daughter in the doorway of the blue car into which the man who until an hour ago lived as a father and husband was put.
The image of the young man who joined the orphans' society, and the amount of tears he shed, even passed through his glasses.
"The blood of his servants will be avenged. And he will take vengeance on his enemies.".
Fighting for the capital – fighting for the house
The latest massacre opens the door to new terrorist activity. Until then, these were suicide attacks, where the terrorist knew that the moment he activated the bomb, he would be killed on the spot. Recently, they have begun to change direction. The terrorists are out to kill and massacre, not to be killed. Their actions are more in line with the actions of the murderous organization ISIS, the Islamic State organization.
The patterns of action are increasingly reminiscent of the patterns of action of that murderous organization. That is how those human animals - vile murderers - acted. They came with firearms, that is, guns, but slaughtered the saints with knives. Just like those bloodthirsty cannibals of ISIS. They claim that the Jews are 'infidels' and their punishment is death.
The State of Israel must take action. It is true that the call to eradicate terrorism is a kind of hollow cliché, because in every attack and every military conflict, calls to eradicate terrorism are part of the public discourse. The fight against terrorism is something like a 'build-in' that we received with the establishment of the state. MK Eliezer Mozes told me that the images of the massacre from Mount Nof brought him back to the massacre 'at the hand of the five' in Kfar Chabad, where terrorists also entered a school and massacred boys who were standing in prayer.
The difficult question is how to provoke terrorism, how to do it. No one had a magic formula. Over the 67 years of the state's existence, there have been better security experts and those who were a little less so, but no one has been able to arrive at the desired formula. Perhaps because there is none, or perhaps because between one terrorist attack and another we enjoy a temporary calm, a calm before the storm.
The 33rd government of the State of Israel is 'ostensibly' the most right-wing government there is. Our prime minister is an expert in eradicating terrorism, the number of books Netanyahu has written has turned him into a war admiral. His ministers Bennett and Ariel are pulling to the right, but that doesn't really stop them from sitting in a government that releases terrorists, that freezes construction in Judea and Samaria, and that freezes on the road to restoring peace to the streets of Jerusalem.
What else needs to happen for the right-wing government to say enough is enough, to take the initiative and not dismiss his voters by claiming that change comes from the coalition and not the opposition. It seems that there is no change between Uri Ariel's being in the government and his being outside, either way the situation is a mess.
