‘Under Fire’ Parashat Nitzavim – Vayelech 5784

The Portion of Nitzavim tells of a covenant into which G-d and the Jewish People enter before their entry into the Land of Israel. The covenant is concise: We will be G-d’s Nation and He will be our only G-d. The Torah segues into what will happen to one who breaches the contract and worships other gods [Devarim 29:19-27]: “G-d will never forgive him. His anger and passion will rage against him, until every sanction recorded in this book comes upon him and He blots out his name from under heaven… All its soil devastated by sulphur and salt, it will be utterly burnt, no grass growing in it, like the upheaval of Sodom and Gomorrah… G-d [will uproot] them from their soil in anger, fury, and great wrath, and cast them into another land forever”. Unpleasant stuff. But why must G-d bother with the sulphur, the salt, the fire and the brimstone? Wouldn’t it be easier if He just caused the guilty party to keel over and die of cardiac arrest?

The most straightforward answer to this question is that the preferred form of punishment should teach a lesson. Indeed, the Torah paints the scene of passers-by who see the destruction and inquire as to its cause. They conclude that this can be nothing but Divine retribution [Devarim 29:24-26]: “Because they forsook the covenant that the G-d of their ancestors made with them upon freeing them from the land of Egypt; they turned to the service of other gods and worshiped them… G-d was incensed at that land and brought upon it all [these] curses”. Overt punishment serves a twofold purpose: it penalizes the sinner and it acts as a warning to anyone who might be interested in sinning – it’s just not worth it.

Years ago, friends of ours were walking on the beach on the Gold Coast. Suddenly, Graham keeled over and went into full cardiac arrest. As luck would have it, at the moment his heart stopped, a lifeguard happened to be riding by on his quad-bike (“tracteron”), giving him enough time to ride to the station, pick up life-support equipment, to return to Graham and to administer CPR before any brain-damage occurred. Had the heart attack occurred anywhere else, Graham would surely have died. Did G-d miraculously save his life? If so, then why did He give him the heart attack in the first place[1]?

I asked a very similar question this week. I was in synagogue for morning prayers (Shacharit), when the air-raid siren went off. This had happened before. One of Hezbollah’s favourite targets is the RAFAEL Leshem facility down the street. So when a salvo is fired at Leshem, sometimes Moreshet gets caught in the crossfire. The bomb shelter in the synagogue was full so I laid on the floor with my hands over my head. A few seconds later, I heard the most massive explosion I had ever heard in my life, and given my profession, I have heard plenty of explosions over the past thirty-three years. The explosion was caused by a Hezbollah Fajr-5 rocket and its 175 kg warhead that had impacted very nearby. Someone shouted that “Shlav Aleph”, where the pioneers who built Moreshet live, was hit. I ran out of the synagogue and saw that my house was unaffected but that fires were raging and smoke was billowing out of houses only fifty metres down the street. The flames engulfed the houses. I thought that there was no way that anyone would escape alive. I was wrong. The residents of those homes were in their air-raid shelters when the Fajr hit and the fires were limited primarily to the pergolas. Everyone escaped literally without a scratch. A few hours after the attack, my wife and I took a walk outside to survey the damage. Three rockets had fallen. Two fell in town on two parallel streets and a third fell just outside the fence that surrounds the town. Cars were smashed and riddled with shrapnel. One car had been blown clear over a two-metre fence, landing upside down in a front yard. Houses had their roof tiles blown off and their windows shattered. We were lucky. Our home sustained minimal damage: A few pictures fell off the wall, one window was broken and our front door no longer closes. Had the Fajr-5 been aimed only one thousandth of a degree higher, I would be telling a very different story. It was a miracle. It was a miracle that the damage was contained. It was a miracle that nobody was harmed. It was a miracle that the rocket warhead was detonated prematurely by a large tree branch, avoiding ground impact. These kinds of things don’t just happen. And then I thought about Graham. Moreshet would have been far better off had the rockets fallen in a field two kilometres away. Now that would have been a miracle. I suggested this to my wife and she heartily disagreed. She replied that had the rockets fallen elsewhere, it would not have registered with anyone that G-d had just performed a miracle.

Her words were reminiscent of an urban legend about an Iron Dome battery in Tel Aviv. A narrator, ostensibly an officer in that battery, tells of a rocket fired from Gaza that was predicted to hit the Azrieli Centre, one of the busiest places in town. Three interceptors were fired and each one missed. A Mass Casualty Incident was imminent. And then a miracle happened. Four seconds before impact, an east wind came and blew the rocket out to sea where it fell harmlessly. The narrator tells how he punched his fist into the air and shouted “There is a G-d!”. I have told this story hundreds of times to thousands of people. The statistics are always the same: About 75% of the people believe the story actually took place and the remaining 25% are dubious[2]. As it happens, the story is rubbish. It can be shown that a wind required to blow a missile from the Azrieli Centre into the sea in only four seconds must be blowing at 3,600 kph, or about one and a half times faster than an F-15 on full afterburner. Why do so many people fall for the story? Because people want to see miracles. They want to see hard evidence that G-d exists. A powerful wind appearing just in time to prevent disaster is proof positive. These kinds of things don’t just happen. If these people only knew how complex an Iron Dome interception is. So many things must happen just right to intercept a rocket. And yet, Iron Dome has intercepted nearly 10,000 rockets at a rate of success approaching 95%. These kinds of things don’t just happen. Our problem is that without the fire and brimstone, we can’t see beyond the ends of our noses. We are unable to see miracles unless they are shoved in our faces. And so we prefer being saved by a supernatural wind than by a system that works naturally, day in and day out. My message to these people is that we must train ourselves to see G-d in our everyday lives, even when He is hidden from view, even when He works through natural means. It is no less miraculous.

The rocket barrage on Moreshet has some similarities to the fake news about the rocket on Tel Aviv. Three rockets fell meaning that, for whatever the reason, Iron Dome malfunctioned three times. People escaped with their lives when they clearly should have not. These kinds of things don’t just happen. This Shabbat, our neighbours are bending over backwards trying to figure out a way to say a communal blessing[3]: “Blessed are You, Who rewards (HaGomel) the undeserving with goodness, and Who has rewarded me with goodness.” It is fair to assume that had the rocket fallen across the street in the Bedouin town of Demaide, where one rocket fell today, we would not be blessing G-d this weekend. In the same vein, if our biblical sinner had slipped on a banana and fallen off a bridge, passer’s-by likely would not have said, “He deserved that!” and would return to reading the paper. The supernatural seems to work.

Rabbi Yisroel Rosenfeld, currently living in Pittsburgh, writes, “There are times when G-d’s hand is clearly visible within the daily functions of nature – when He orchestrates and manipulates nature to perform His will within nature’s own laws. It is then that we can discover that not only does nature not pose an obstacle to him, but nature is His tool. We understand that nature is not a force to reckon with outside of G-d. Rather, nature is G-d’s force dictating the routine operations of this world.” Every day is a miracle. My hearty advice is to embrace this fact before G-d is forced to perform a demonstration.

Ari Sacher, Moreshet, 5784

Please daven for a Refu’a Shelema for Shlomo ben Esther, Sheindel Devorah bat Rina, Esther Sharon bat Chana Raizel, and Meir ben Drora.

[1] See our shiur on Vayigash 5762.

[2] This is an average. Your mileage may vary.

[3] Public gatherings (indoor only) are currently limited to 100 people.