Unlike commenter Gary Kolb, I live here, in Jerusalem, having made aliyah from America 39 years ago. My only son was called up on Oct. 8 and served for 5 months and 11 days, and now suffers from PTSD. So I am commenting as an "insider." I have one question, Daniel: Where is God in your picture? Your negativity, your fear, comes from a perspective where God is simply absent. Can we save our current situation ourselves? Of course not! Our best aerial defense systems can protect us from only 90% of Hizbollah's missiles, and since they have 150,000, as you quote from Tablet, over 1,000 Jews could get killed. But what happened when Iran attacked us in April and 10% of their missiles did get through? Miraculously, those missiles landed in open areas (of which Israel has less than almost any country on earth) and not one Jew was killed or hurt. Even Ben Gurion said: "In Israel, if you don't believe in miracles, you're not a realist." The Second War of Independence? How did we win the first War of Independence, with 5 Arab armies attacking us and they were much better armed and trained? And the Six-Day War? And the Gulf War? Haven't we experienced enough miracles to make you have a little faith? Hashem will save us if we deserve it. And we deserve it by faith and unity, "B'yachad n'natzaeach." You are a religious person. Where is the God of Israel in your gloomy, doomy picture?
A year (or more) ago, one of my Zoom teachers (R. Menachem Leibtag) said we continue to mourn on on Tisha b'Av, not for *what* happened, but for *why* it happened.
Sorry, but the point stands. Your newsletter is invaluable. It’s also often infuriating in its negativity. “The eternal people is not afraid of a long road.” Seemingly though, the point of view of this newsletter is. It would be nice to mix in a little more Miriam Peretz and a little less Eeyore.
Btw, I have no explanation or excuse for writing 40 rather than 12 spies. No one would ever confuse me for a Torah scholar but I’ve been reading the parsha weekly for at least 25 years now and I possess some, if marginal, ability to read Biblical Hebrew.
The people who actually live here don't necessarily think or feel what you would like them to think or feel. What I'm trying to do is to reflect what people are talking about, not what people who live elsewhere wish they were talking about. This is a country at war, not a ballgame. It's about more than rooting for the team we like.
I said your newsletter is invaluable and it is. But I’ve been to Israel 10 times. The father of my best friend (who fought with Golani and lost five men under his command during the Yom Kippur war) was Jacob Liberman who brought a boatload of Jews to Israel from Harbin, China. At a memorial service for him in Herzliya I met his old friend Moshe Arens. I’ve ridden the perimeter road with a friend who’s head of security in Shaked. A friend of mine, Kay Wilson (who has now changed her name to Tal Hartuv) was stabbed and left for dead in a terrorist attack that left her friend dead. In the process of healing, she reached out to Arabs who believe in peace. With one of them, I was able to visit a Palestinian refugee camp along with my wife, two sons and my pregnant daughter-in-law.
Most inspiring though was visiting communities overlooking the Valley of Dothan and meeting the people who were founding those communities. Moshe Kaminsky who owns a bookstore in Hurva Square said a relative told him, “In Canada, you can study the Torah. In Israel, you ARE the Torah.” The people in Israel who live like they ARE the Torah are immensely inspiring. I’m an American. I have friends of all races and religions. I’ve been on all six inhabited continents. I want peace to break out for the most superficial of reasons - I want to eat my way across the Middle East, to find out if the hummus is better in Beirut or Damascus. But I also believe in the promises of God. Rabbi Sacks suggested that the whole purpose of the Torah is to get the Jews to the Land of Israel where we can attempt to create a just society under the sovereignty of the Almighty. And we can’t do that without our own land. When the rational fails, it’s not irrational to turn to the mystical. I believe in the future of the Jewish people. I understand that you’re accurately reflecting an existing strain in Israeli society. I’m just suggesting that your mosaic is incomplete. If you will it, it is no dream. Who will document the dream?
Unlike commenter Gary Kolb, I live here, in Jerusalem, having made aliyah from America 39 years ago. My only son was called up on Oct. 8 and served for 5 months and 11 days, and now suffers from PTSD. So I am commenting as an "insider." I have one question, Daniel: Where is God in your picture? Your negativity, your fear, comes from a perspective where God is simply absent. Can we save our current situation ourselves? Of course not! Our best aerial defense systems can protect us from only 90% of Hizbollah's missiles, and since they have 150,000, as you quote from Tablet, over 1,000 Jews could get killed. But what happened when Iran attacked us in April and 10% of their missiles did get through? Miraculously, those missiles landed in open areas (of which Israel has less than almost any country on earth) and not one Jew was killed or hurt. Even Ben Gurion said: "In Israel, if you don't believe in miracles, you're not a realist." The Second War of Independence? How did we win the first War of Independence, with 5 Arab armies attacking us and they were much better armed and trained? And the Six-Day War? And the Gulf War? Haven't we experienced enough miracles to make you have a little faith? Hashem will save us if we deserve it. And we deserve it by faith and unity, "B'yachad n'natzaeach." You are a religious person. Where is the God of Israel in your gloomy, doomy picture?
A year (or more) ago, one of my Zoom teachers (R. Menachem Leibtag) said we continue to mourn on on Tisha b'Av, not for *what* happened, but for *why* it happened.
to your concluding paragraphs/sentences, well put. Amen!
It would be nice if, in addition to hearing the report of the 38 spies, we also heard the report of Joshua and Caleb.
There were 12 spies, not 40.
Sorry, but the point stands. Your newsletter is invaluable. It’s also often infuriating in its negativity. “The eternal people is not afraid of a long road.” Seemingly though, the point of view of this newsletter is. It would be nice to mix in a little more Miriam Peretz and a little less Eeyore.
Btw, I have no explanation or excuse for writing 40 rather than 12 spies. No one would ever confuse me for a Torah scholar but I’ve been reading the parsha weekly for at least 25 years now and I possess some, if marginal, ability to read Biblical Hebrew.
The people who actually live here don't necessarily think or feel what you would like them to think or feel. What I'm trying to do is to reflect what people are talking about, not what people who live elsewhere wish they were talking about. This is a country at war, not a ballgame. It's about more than rooting for the team we like.
I said your newsletter is invaluable and it is. But I’ve been to Israel 10 times. The father of my best friend (who fought with Golani and lost five men under his command during the Yom Kippur war) was Jacob Liberman who brought a boatload of Jews to Israel from Harbin, China. At a memorial service for him in Herzliya I met his old friend Moshe Arens. I’ve ridden the perimeter road with a friend who’s head of security in Shaked. A friend of mine, Kay Wilson (who has now changed her name to Tal Hartuv) was stabbed and left for dead in a terrorist attack that left her friend dead. In the process of healing, she reached out to Arabs who believe in peace. With one of them, I was able to visit a Palestinian refugee camp along with my wife, two sons and my pregnant daughter-in-law.
Most inspiring though was visiting communities overlooking the Valley of Dothan and meeting the people who were founding those communities. Moshe Kaminsky who owns a bookstore in Hurva Square said a relative told him, “In Canada, you can study the Torah. In Israel, you ARE the Torah.” The people in Israel who live like they ARE the Torah are immensely inspiring. I’m an American. I have friends of all races and religions. I’ve been on all six inhabited continents. I want peace to break out for the most superficial of reasons - I want to eat my way across the Middle East, to find out if the hummus is better in Beirut or Damascus. But I also believe in the promises of God. Rabbi Sacks suggested that the whole purpose of the Torah is to get the Jews to the Land of Israel where we can attempt to create a just society under the sovereignty of the Almighty. And we can’t do that without our own land. When the rational fails, it’s not irrational to turn to the mystical. I believe in the future of the Jewish people. I understand that you’re accurately reflecting an existing strain in Israeli society. I’m just suggesting that your mosaic is incomplete. If you will it, it is no dream. Who will document the dream?