Crazy Jews

“What’s with these crazy Jews? It seems like the whole world is telling them to stop fighting, and they won’t.”

There are two types of craziness, one good, and one not so good.

The craziness which is not so good, is the craziness that you see on college campuses when students are taught that, depending on the context, sadistic barbaric acts of murder and torture can be virtuous.

The good kind of craziness can happen when people are crazily in love — with a child, with a parent, with a spouse, with G-d.

Everything in this world can be used for goodness or the opposite. Nuclear energy can power a city, or G-d forbid destroy it. A knife can cut food so that people can eat, or it can G-d forbid kill someone.

Craziness too. It can cause chaos and societal disfunction, or it can bring out the noblest ideals of virtue and self-sacrifice.

“These Jews are crazy.” Indeed, Israeli soldiers are so crazily in love with their fellow Jews, that they energetically and enthusiastically risk their lives to defend them.

For two thousand years, Jews have not forgotten their G-d and His Torah. Sounds crazy. But this craziness has fortified our people, and while mighty empires have disappeared, the Jews, dispersed among the nations, have miraculously survived.

Because when Jews are crazily in love with their fellow and with G-d, when they go beyond their normal limitations and cling to Him with all their might, then He reciprocates and helps His people in ways that transcend the “normal” limitations.

These are crazy times. On the one hand, much mainstream media and many obnoxiously loud antisemitic protesters condemn Israel for defending themselves. World leaders demand (in spite of what happened October 7) that Israel give away land for a Palestinian state.

And on the other hand, (based on common sense and on the Torah) Israel defiantly says no. And with the Almighty’s help, Israel will triumph.

Israel’s Redemption, a Redemption that brings peace to the entire world, is very near. A new normal, when all the nations will see that (Zechariah 14; 9) “G-d will be King over the entire world,” is very close.

May it happen very soon.