Part IV: How Goeth the Battle?

During Sukkot, I spoke with two of my greatest October 6 friends, and asked them one of my most persistent questions, “How goeth the battle.”

Those who are in the military differentiate between battle and war. I am a Diaspora American Jewish rabbi, who has never been in the military, but I have been compelled by circumstance to learn about warfare, a stunning reversal of the nigun “Lo Yisa Goy.” Military men and women say that one can lose the battle and still win the war. The Jews are denied the ability to win war even though we have not lost a battle in more than eighty years. Thus, we are always embattled.

My dear 10/6 friends, giborim through-and-through, report a sense of fatigue. One, involved in K-12 education, the other operating in the bowels of Wikipedia, describe the state of the battlefield, the seemingly never-ending resources of manpower and propaganda at the hand of our worst enemies – and their enablers.

As an ish Elohim, a man of God, I am forbidden to despair, but I do not bring comfort. My 10/6 friends are all prepared. What more can I offer them? I offer them my friendship. But what I offer you, dear reader, is the reminder: be strong and courageous.

When I read the prayer book, I am struck by statements like, “in an instant, the Lord destroys the wicked.” Such statements come to be understood as follows: “an instant in the time of God”… For those who have experienced suffering and have not been rescued in (what feels like) a timely fashion, that reframe is challenging. And yet, the rabbis included such statements, especially in the High Holiday liturgy, intentionally. These were people who lived through, or were the students of people who lived through, the destruction of the Second Temple and the Roman routing of Judea in the era of Bar Kochba, 135 CE. Clearly, they did not experience God’s deliverance “in an instant” as we understand such a flash-moment.

Be strong and courageous, for while we may not complete the task, we are forbidden from ceasing our important work. Rabbi Tarfon had my two friends in mind when he declared this, and my hope is that while they live with the reality of fatigue in real-time, our deliverance will occur instantaneously such that we will feel like the suffering endured was a mere moment.