5785: What Will Be?
It’s Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year – and we all would like it to be meaningful and uplifting, and a launch of a good and sweet year.
For that to happen, we don’t need to dwell on the past, but we do need to look at the past and to learn from the past, in order to assess the present and to sharpen our vision of the future.
To say that the Jewish year 5784 has been a difficult year would be a significant understatement. It would be like saying that April 14, 1865 was a difficult night for Mary Todd Lincoln.
I’m certain that nobody needs to be reminded of the series of events that have made it the most difficult year in my lifetime and likely in the lifetime of most of us.
So suffice it for me to review a few of the facts in order to underscore our shared recent history and to help calibrate our collective compass toward what we all hope and pray will be a better future.
As we know, October 7, 2023 was actually much worse than 9/11/2001. Because when 1,800 Israelis are murdered in cold blood that is per capita the equivalent to murdering 65,000 Americans — twenty times more deadly than 9/11.
When 200 Israelis are kidnaped and imprisoned in dungeons that is per capita the equivalent to kidnaping 7,000 Americans and keeping them in dungeons.
Over 700 soldiers killed in action is the equivalent to 25,000 Americans.
And yet the number of Palestinians who have died – upwards of 40,000 – falls fall short of the estimated three percent of Japanese who died as a result of World War 2.
But we all know that it was much worse than that still, because after 9/11 did we see anti-American rallies sweeping the countrysides of our allies? Did American college professors praise the attacks on New York and Washington as a “glorious” act of resistance? Have American Al Qaeda sympathizers torn down or defaced memorials to the 9/11 victims?
It was even worse than that, because in 5784 we saw the return of the Blood Libel – that was first dreamed up in England in 1144 and subsequently went viral around Europe and like many viruses is still with us today. As recently as 2014, in an interview which aired on the Al-Quds TV channel Osama Hamdan, the top representative of Hamas in Lebanon, stated, “We all remember how the Jews used to slaughter Christians, in order to mix their blood in their holy matzos. This is not a figment of imagination or something taken from a film. It is a fact, acknowledged by their own books and by historical evidence.”
I’m sure we would all like to forget the libelous New York Times headline, “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say…. At Least 500 Dead”. The Times, despite its long history of anti-Israel bias – or perhaps because of it – soon had imitators around the world. As somebody once quipped. “A lie can go halfway around the world before the Truth has a chance to get its pants on!”
Of all the anti-Semitic lies, the blood libel is particularly painful because we Jews celebrate life, not death, and we declare in our holy Talmud that destroying a life is destroying a universe. Our Midrash states that God himself stopped the angels from singing a song of praise when “my creatures” (the wicked Egyptians) were drowning in the Sea.
The eagerness with which our enemies jumped on the anti-Jewish bandwagon was Medieval, it was Cossack, it was Nazi. In the 2 weeks after October 7, anti-Semitic attacks in the US rose by 400 percent.
But even early in this chain of events our pain on Simchat Torah was exacerbated by the revelation of how much of the catastrophe was caused by simple human error. By one count, there were eighteen avoidable errors up and down the chain of command, that, had even one of them not been made, October 7 either would have been prevented or at least greatly mitigated.
Where is all this coming from? And where is it going?
We all want this movie to have a happy ending. We wonder if it will have a happy ending. We fear that it may not have a happy ending, even when we allow ourselves a tiny hesitant modicum of faith that it will have a happy ending despite the many reasons to be pessimistic.
And on top of these global Jewish events, 5784 brought us countless local challenges, tragedies and traumas of all degrees of magnitude, including the loss of precious lives.
Is it all bad news? Is there any evidence that God still cares about us?
Iran’s leaders have been talking about “wiping Israel off the map” for decades. We know that they are the funders and teachers and suppliers of the three H’s. They finally launched their own attack on April 13, 2024 — over 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones, with only one injury. They repeated the stunt on October 1, this time with zero injuries.
What are the odds?
Two weeks ago, 1,500 Hezbollah fighters were taken out of action in one minute with a stunningly tiny number of collateral casualties.
In my opinion, these events are open miracles of Biblical proportions. Open your eyes and see what amazing events are unfolding!
Moreover, despite the mainstream media’s obsession with body-counts and being “fair and balanced” even when one side is clearly on the side of morality, the entire world is not against us. See for example actressPatricia Heaton‘s MyZuzahYourZuzah project.
THREFORE:
We should not approach the High Holy Days with unbridled pessimism and grief. We should approach it like the scales of a balance.
Yes, there absolutely can be and should be and WILL be a happy ending. And it seems to me this week’s events are a demonstration of the Torah view that how and when we get there is up to us.
The Torah warns us that the privilege of living in the Land of Israel is conditional – should we revert to idolatry, we will be evicted from the Land.
Yet when this present period of exile began in 70 CE, observes the Talmud, the vast majority of Jews were NOT involved with idolatry. What, then were we doing wrong?
The reason God let those murderous Romans succeed is because of a single sin among the Jews: sinat chinam.
Sinat chinam literally means “free hatred”. Free means that you don’t have to give me anything for it. I’ll give it to you for free, no charge. You don’t have to do anything. I’ll just hate you for what you are, for how you look, for whom you voted for, for how you express your Judaism.
Do you remember what was going on in Israeli society – and by extension worldwide Jewry – prior to October 7?
As a long time witness to, and activist regarding, Jewish unity and disunity in Israel, the six months prior to October 7 appeared to me the absolute nadir of sinat chinam.
We saw myriads of Israelis demonstrating in the most creative ways – with matching outfits, they even camped out in Jerusalem in matching tents. Were these spontaneous protests, or were they highly-orchestrated (and paid for) political machinations? Either way, what motivated those people to leave their jobs and homes week in, week out?
The crazy thing is that activists on both sides admitted that they wanted the same thing – all agreed that the judicial system needed reform. But they weren’t able to talk about it. All they could do is call each other names.
Try asking this at the dinner table: who has more in common – a secular Jew and an Orthodox Jew or a secular Jew and secular Christian? Or an Orthodox Jew and an Orthodox Christian?
Before October 7, I think for many the answer would have been the latter options. But since October 7, our Jewish connection has become magnified and solidified in ways that didn’t heretofore seem possible. We saw Hasidim making camouflage tzitzit for soldiers – we even saw Hasidim enlisting in the army. And we saw secular soldiers in tanks donning tefillin. We saw Jews around the world of all flavors donating to Israel in unprecedented levels.
Not to mention the thousands of Jews around the world who responded to the pro-Hamas demonstrations with counter-demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns, and so on. Do you remember the November 14 Washington DC rally for Israel? What the media cared about was how 300,000 people from all corners of country voted with their feet by showing up. But what I personally found encouraging wasn’t their feet rather the tops of their heads – as we saw Jews of every background united in brotherhood and sisterhood.
In other words, as painful as October 7 was and continues to be, it accomplished something that we seemed unable to otherwise accomplish. We have not yet won the war on sinat chinam, but we have taken a great leap forward. Our successes in the past year and even last week are in my opinion God’s way of telling us that we’re on the right track.
Sinat chinam still lurks and each one of us should look inwardly and ask, Am I part of this problem in any of my relationships, toward any group of Jews or people, or am I part of the solution?
That should be our #1 priority for the New Year.
Rav Cook famously said that the best antidote to sinat chinam – free hatred – is ahavat chinam – free love. That means I love you even though you are not at this moment giving me anything.
It’s a lovely thought, feels good, takes us right back to 1968 San Francisco, with flowers in our hair. But how do we really put ahavah into practice?
I love you for who you are, because I recognize that at your very essence you are a Tselem Elokim – a Godly soul.
May you and yours – and all of Israel, and the entire world – be written and sealed for life, joy and peace – have a good, sweet, healthy, happy and holy 5785.