Maybe Not the Greatest Story of Heroism You Will Ever Read

As I approached the entrance of the shul on Sunday morning, I found a man waiting to get in with his two young children. I said Hi and introduced myself, as did they. They said they were coming for the 8:00 service. As I entered the code to open the door, the man turned to his children and he said rather enthusiastically, “We are here to support Israel, right kids?!” To which they responded with equal enthusiasm, “Yeah!” Our shul has sponsored several pro-Israel activities over the past many months and I thought that maybe there was another one planned for today that I didn’t know about. I looked at the stuff they were carrying with them. No signs or posters. Each one carried a siddur.

When the service was over, I turned to the man and asked, “When you said you’re here to support Israel, what did you mean?” He explained that they belong to a shul that doesn’t have services on Sunday morning, and this particular morning as the war with Iran was getting hot, he and his children wanted to be in a place where they could be in community with other Jews and use their power of prayer to support the Jewish State and all its people. So, it turns out that the shul was sponsoring another pro-Israel event after all. Praying.

And listening to him while we unwrapped our tefillin recalled a lovely idea expressed in the Talmud (Brachot 6a) which says that God also wears tefillin (OK, God is incorporeal; just go with this for a minute). The tefillin that we wear contains scripture praising God, and so the rabbis wonder what is written inside of God’s tefillin. And they answer that this is what is written inside of God’s tefillin, “Who is like you, People of Israel? You are unique among all the nations of the world!”

We will undoubtedly hear stories of Israeli courage and sacrifice as this war continues. But right here in New Jersey are some of the people God is talking about. People who convey a love of Israel that is so sincere and so powerful that it circles the world, escapes gravity, and enwraps God.