You don't have to be very old to remember the kidnapping of Nachshon Waxman. The entire Jewish world participated in the prayers, the power was heard in all synagogues in Israel and around the world. These were days when we knew that war would bring prayer rallies, weeping and crying in synagogues, yeshivot, a cry that would even bring the media to pay attention to it in every edition.
The last few days, and perhaps we could even say the last few wars, have brought prayer, brought an outcry, but the voice of prayer is only heard inside, it is not expressed outwardly.
True, we pray to the God of heaven and earth, we ask the warrior of wars, we do not ask for a cry to be heard outside. However, the fact that our voice is not heard outside perhaps embodies a full bucket, but not enough to constitute a funnel.
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These days were preceded by voices of young people from our community who called for revenge, called for bloodshed, gave vent to their emotions. And although they are not partners in the security forces and military service, they express how a country should behave in such a time.
Nationalism has never been the path of Haredi Judaism. Rather, realism was the voice that came from the mouths of the great men and women of the generation, may God bless them and grant them peace. The view that accompanied most parts of Haredi Judaism is no longer heard loudly, and the young are giving free rein to their speech and sometimes even their actions.
Those people learned a wrong interpretation of the words of the teacher who wrote: "From the roots of the commandment, that a person should know and take to heart that everything that happens to him, from good to bad, is a reason that comes to him from God, blessed be He, and from the hand of a man or from the hand of his brother, nothing will be against the will of God, blessed be He. Therefore, when a person grieves or hurts him, he should know in his soul that his sins caused it and God, blessed be He, decreed it for him, and he should not set his thoughts on taking revenge on him because he is not the cause of his evil, because sin is the cause, and as David, peace be upon him, said [2 Samuel 16:11], let him alone and curse because God, blessed be He, told him, the matter depends on his sin and not on Shimei ben Gera.".
However, even those young Dorshis, if they were to read these things, might allow themselves to be taken advantage of, and give themselves advice before intervening in decisions that are not theirs to make.
Pride versus pride
But I have a belief in my heart that if we need to speak to ourselves, to stir up within the community, the Haredi community must do more to educate its students and children about what our role is in exile, what our worldview is about the state and its institutions, and how we should separate emotions and feelings from what is right and what is incumbent upon us.
The Jewish pride of the Haredi community is about those Jews during the Holocaust who were led like sheep to the slaughter and maintained their Jewishness at all costs, as opposed to Israeli pride about those Jews who did not give up and led the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Haredi Judaism can be proud that it raised 'enusim', people who quietly underground maintained their Jewishness, and gave their lives, may God be exalted, in the face of secular pride about those who studied the Gemara 'with pride' with a lit cigarette on Shabbat.
At a time when we came together, from youth to old age, women and children, to cry out against the desecration of the name of God by imposing criminal liability on yeshiva students, whose sin and crime is their desire to sit in front of the pages of the Gemara and grow in the path of the Torah, we cannot be part of the rising nationalism in our small and holy land.
We are Zionists too.
We rejoice in the privilege of living in the Holy Land. We know that preserving its holiness is what grants the privilege of living in it. We recognize that we have not earned the right to have the land run in holiness. We are Zionists in the strength of our limbs and the strength of our sinews. We await the coming of a Redeemer to Zion. Then our enemies will not be able to defeat us, then we will fight proudly for our land at the command of our priests, our presidents, our judges, and our king. At the command of the King of kings.
Perhaps we will just look with an abstract eye at two verses in this week's parsha: 'And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, "I will avenge the vengeance of the children of Israel on the Midianites," and 'And Eleazar the priest said to the men of the army who were going to war, "This is the law of the Torah which the Lord commanded Moses." Notice who determines the goals of war and its starting point. Notice also that even in the form of going to war there is a spiritual factor from which we are supposed to receive instructions.
If in the Beit Midrash we recognize more of our responsibility towards the community, if we become partners in prayers and study for our brothers in trouble. If we determine that the alarm being sounded in the cities (including ours) is also related to us, we will do more and much more for our people and to confront the enemies around us.
