Keeping The Plot

A story from a member of our community this week. She’d gone to the dentist. A new hygienist, Ziva, was very friendly. When our member complimented her beautiful jewelry, Ziva said it was from Lebanon where her family lives. They’re close to the southern border and have even visited Rosh HaNikra (Israel). “I told her that I was Jewish, and expressed my concern for the Lebanese people. She immediately hugged me, saying that we had shared grief. She expressed intense hatred for Hezbollah and spoke of the difficulty her family is facing trying to get to the north.” Then Ziva added that she prays fervently everyday for both of our peoples. 

When I heard this story, I couldn’t help but juxtapose it with the speechmaking at the UN. It’s not that words from Heads of State don’t matter. They often do. They’re just not as raw and real as trembling in your apartment’s safe room in Northern Israel, after a deadly Iran-made missile has just shaken your building, shattered your windows, whose deafening thud has caused you hearing-loss.  

It’s easy to lose the plot. Perilously easy in today’s world that’s awash with disinformation, misinformation, and defamation. Here are a few core points worth restating for those committed to keeping the plot. 

If you want a future of promising Muslim-Jewish coexistence, you don’t want Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis in power. 

If you want to be more humane and less harmful, you rise every morning insisting on bringing the Hostages back where they belong. 

And if you have a better idea about how Israel and her allies should try to defeat those aggressively trying to maim and murder their civilians, please offer it and convince us why it will work better. 

This week’s portions of Torah include a favorite maxim: Choose Life (Deut. 30:19). It comes at the end of the only chapter in the Torah that accentuates the availability of repentance, repeating the word 7 times. If repentance were only as easy to do as it is to say. Choosing our words is easier than choosing our emotions, which is why keeping the plot can be so hard.  

But choosing life, that’s something God’s Torah implores us to do. As we all seek to right past wrongs, and affirm current and future rights, may we earn inscription in the Book of Life as we enter the New Year 5785.