What to do

Sometimes, it feels like there’s no way out.

Take what’s happening now. Israel has internal division regarding what to do about the hostages, what to do about judicial reform, what to do about the draft for the Charedim.

There is the issue of Hamas, with Israel fighting them for over a year, and they still seem to be in power.

There are the Houthis who keep attacking. There is the West Bank terror, supported by Iran. There is Iran wanting to develop a nuke.

There are so many things happening, and sometimes people just might look at all these apparent obstacles and ask themselves, “Is there a way out of all this?”

Sometimes when there seems to be no way out, when things seem somewhat insurmountable, we need only to look at our past in order to give ourselves renewed encouragement and optimism.

In our recent past we’ve seen many miracles. When Hamas attacked on October 7, they expected Iran and Hezbollah to join them in a full scale attack, but that didn’t happen. By the grace of G-d, Iran and Hezbollah chickened out. Had they gone ahead the results would have been horrific G-d forbid. But they didn’t attack, giving Israel time to focus on Hamas, and afterwards to miraculously decimate Hezbollah. And the evil Syrian regime fell miraculously in just twelve days.

So there is reason for optimism. With G-d‘s help, we trust that Iran will also be defeated, as well as the Houthis, as well as terrorists in the West Bank, as well as Hamas.

If we look further back in history, we can see how G-d miraculously kept the Jewish nation surviving throughout all the centuries of persecution. Mighty empires such as Babylon, Persia, the Roman Empire, and so on, all disappeared, while the Jewish nation — dispersed among countries that often persecuted them — have survived. This is a tremendous miracle which gives us confidence that by trusting in G-d, the Jewish people will again miraculously survive and overcome all challenges.

And we can look further back in history, to our exodus from Egypt. First, G-d (via Moses and Aaron) inflicted ten plagues on the Egyptians.

(It’s interesting how those plagues bear a certain resemblance to the pager attack on Hezbollah — they share the common characteristic that only those who needed to be punished were punished, while the rest survived. The plagues hit the Egyptians, but not the Jews. Similarly pagers exploded among Hezbollah operatives, but not other people who were standing right nearby.)

And then came the amazing episode at the splitting of the sea, when Israel was facing the sea, and the Egyptians were threatening to attack from behind. It seemed that the Jews were cornered between a rock and a hard place, there was nowhere to go. What were they going to do?

G-d told Moses to tell the people to travel forward, and miraculously (after Nachshon the son of Aminodov, from the tribe of Judah, jumped into the sea) the sea split. Israel walked through on dry land, with the walls of the sea, on both sides, being held back by strong winds. Right after the Jews walked onto the shore, the Egyptians, who had pursued Israel through the sea, were drowned, as G-d told Moses to lift his staff, and the walls of water came crashing down on the Egyptians.

Now too, when we see obstacles and challenges, we look back at the recent past, and at our history over thousands of years. It reinforces our conviction that G-d is watching over us.

And just as G-d revealed himself at Mount Sinai, gave us the Torah, told Moses the seven Noahide laws for all the nations of the world to keep, and then eventually brought us to the promised land, where (via Joshua) G-d again performed many miracles (as Israel conquered the land that G-d had given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants), now too we look forward to the time of Redemption, when very soon G-d will gather the Jewish nation from all over the world and bring them to Israel, where we will build the third and eternal Temple — the Beis Hamikdosh.

It will be a time of peace and prosperity throughout the world, as all the nations will acknowledge G-d‘s presence and rulership, as the prophet says: The world will be filled with knowledge of G-d, just as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11; 9)

May we see it very soon.