The Heroes of Three Years Ago
This Dvar Torah is dedicated to the memory of all those killed on Simchat Torah, 22 Tishrei 5784, October 7, 2023: the soldiers, police officers, security teams and civilians who fell defending the Jewish people, and everyone murdered on that terrible day. Yehi zichram baruch.
Over the past few months I have written weekly about role models through the lens of the parsha: Aharon, Pinchas, King David and Rabbi Sacks zt”l.
Tomorrow we finish the Torah and immediately begin it again, and I still admire every one of them. But for this week, and perhaps only for this week, my role models will not come from three thousand years ago.
They come from three years ago.
Tomorrow is the third yahrzeit of October 7 and, for the first time since that day, Simchat Torah falls on Shabbat again, exactly as it did then.
Today is Hoshana Rabbah, the day when, according to the Zohar, the judgment written on Rosh Hashanah and sealed on Yom Kippur is handed over for delivery.
This morning we circled the bimah seven times and cried out the same plea again and again: hosha na. Please save.
Then we put down the lulav and etrog and picked up the plainest thing in the festival, the willow branches. It is almost the prayer of people who have run out of clever arguments and are left with nothing except the plea itself.
One line from the Hoshanot has not left me:
אום אני חומה
“A nation that says: I am a wall.”
A few lines later, the same piyyut describes that nation as:
ההרוגה עליך ונחשבת כצאן טבחה
“Slain for Your sake, counted as sheep for the slaughter.”
On October 7, both lines came true on the same morning. Around 1,200 people were murdered, and there were people who became the wall.
We asked G-d to save us and I believe He heard. I have come to believe that part of His answer arrived in human form, some in uniform and some in whatever they happened to be wearing when the sirens began.
It was not the whole answer we prayed for. Too many were murdered, including friends and others I knew personally, but without those who ran towards the danger, the devastation would have been immeasurably greater.
Tomorrow’s parsha, Vezot Haberakha, contains Moshe’s final blessings to the tribes of Israel and, again and again, those blessings return to the people who guard the land.
Of Gad, Moshe says:
ולגד אמר ברוך מרחיב גד כלביא שכן
“And of Gad he said: Blessed is He who enlarges Gad; he dwells like a lion”
(Devarim 33:20).
Why a lion? Rashi answers:
לפי שהיה סמוך לספר, לפיכך נמשל באריות, שכל הסמוכים לספר צריכים להיות גבורים
“Because he lived close to the border, he was compared to lions, for all those who live close to the border need to be mighty.”
Read that Rashi and think of Nahal Oz, Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz and Sderot, people who built homes, raised families and planted fields at the edge of the country, living where, as Rashi understood thousands of years ago, courage is not theoretical.
Moshe then says something else about Gad:
צדקת ה’ עשה ומשפטיו עם ישראל
“He carried out the righteousness of Hashem and His judgments with Israel.”
Gad’s own inheritance had already been secured on the eastern side of the Jordan and they could have stayed home, but instead they crossed the river and fought alongside the rest of the Jewish people until the other tribes had their homes too.
That is the part that moves me most.
My son did not live in Be’eri. Daniel Perez did not live in Nahal Oz. Most of those who fought that day were not defending their own homes.
They were defending someone else’s children. The Torah calls that צדקת ה’.
A few verses later Moshe blesses Asher:
ברזל ונחשת מנעלך וכימיך דבאך
“Iron and copper are your bolts, and as your days, so shall your strength be”
(Devarim 33:25).
Rashi explains that these were the communities on the borders of the Land, strong enough to prevent enemies from entering.
But the locks of Israel were never really made of metal. On October 7, the fence, with all its iron, concrete and technology, failed within minutes, and what held, where anything held, was people.
When a border town is attacked, Jewish law does not merely permit its defence on Shabbat, it demands it. October 7 was Shabbat and Yom Tov, and thousands answered that call.
They were living the call of the Torah
Role models need faces, and I can only offer the ones I know and offer them on behalf of thousands I do not.
One is my son. I love him as a father loves a son, but on that day, and every day since, he also became one of my heroes.
He fought and lost five members of his team, and I cannot write those words without thinking about the five and about their parents and families.
They gave everything so that others could live, and those who came home carry that knowledge too. It is a burden some may spend the rest of their lives trying to understand.
Another is Captain Daniel Perez z”l, the son of our dear friends and neighbours here in Yad Binyamin.
Daniel was twenty-two, a tank commander at Nahal Oz, and together with his crew, Itay Chen z”l, Tomer Leibovitz z”l and Matan Angrest, he fought for more than two hours against wave after wave of terrorists.
Their stand saved lives.
Daniel fell that day and was taken into Gaza. For two years his family waited.
Daniel was a Liverpool supporter, and their anthem promises that you’ll never walk alone. On that morning, he made sure others didn’t.
The older I get, the more I realise that love flows downhill. We worry about our children more than ourselves, pray for them more than ourselves and would give almost anything for them.
On October 7, thousands of Israelis did exactly that. Some were protecting their own families, but many were protecting families they had never met.
They saved children they did not know and grandchildren they would never meet.
And then there were the many I never knew.
Fifty-three soldiers fell at the Nahal Oz base alone. Sixteen were young women from the lookout unit, the very unit responsible for watching the Gaza border and warning of threats.
Warrant Officer Ibrahim Kharuba z”l, a Bedouin tracker, stayed behind and fought to defend others until he was killed.
Not everyone who saved the Jewish people that day was Jewish.
All of them are ours.
Then add the police officers, the kibbutz security teams, the reservists and the civilians who simply drove towards the smoke.
The Gemara speaks of the martyrs of Lod, men who gave their lives to save their community, and says that no creature can stand in their place in the World to Come. I think about that teaching when I think of the men and women who fell protecting others on October 7.
The final words of Moshe’s blessing are:
אשריך ישראל מי כמוך עם נושע בה’ מגן עזרך ואשר חרב גאותך
“Happy are you, Israel! Who is like you, a people delivered by Hashem, your protecting Shield and your triumphant Sword”
(Devarim 33:29).
Look carefully at the Hebrew. This morning we cried hosha na, save us, and tomorrow Moshe calls us עם נושע, a people saved.
The Torah’s final blessing becomes an answer to Hoshana Rabbah’s final plea.
And look at how that salvation appears: a shield and a sword. Moshe does not choose between faith and defence. He places them in the same sentence.
I admit I am more comfortable with the shield than the sword. I am not a triumphalist, we love life and we want peace, but three years ago I learned again what happens when people who wish to murder us believe they can do so without resistance.
So today I pray, without embarrassment, that those who seek to destroy us fail.
Moshe speaks these final words knowing that he is about to die. He sees the Land of Israel but does not enter it, and he sees a future that others will inherit.
Those who fell on October 7 gave everything for a tomorrow they would never live to see.
We are living in that tomorrow.
Over the past few months I have written about role models: Aharon, Pinchas, King David and Rabbi Sacks. They remain role models to me.
But as we stand between hosha na and am nosha, between Hoshana Rabbah and Simchat Torah, I find myself looking elsewhere.
I think about the tank commanders, the soldiers, the police officers, the security volunteers, the Bedouin trackers, the reservists and the civilians who ran towards danger while others were running away from it.
Some came home and some did not, but they were frightened and went anyway. They stood between our people and those who came to destroy us, and they saved lives they would never know, families they would never meet and generations they would never live to see.
If role models are people who show us who we should aspire to be, then for this week my role models do not come from three thousand years ago.
They come from three years ago.
Yehi zichram baruch.
