The news is much less meaningful, sometimes meaningless without context. The news can be outright lies when the facts are delivered out of context. For this reason I have been searching for the context of this week’s news. The Trump plan, the various responses, the hostage drama, bombs on buses (under Hashem’s protective watch). The hostage release. The coffins of an elderly man, two young children and someone who was not their mother.
There are those who see the news through the lens of Islamist hate, a rise in anti-semitism, ignorance, oil money, politics of various kind and the land. Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes, these are context, but allow me to propose, these are not THE context.
The Torah is a lot of things to Jews and Judaism, as is the wisdom of our sages, and to see the news we have been living through any other lens is to miss the point.
The biblical stories, laws, rituals and holidays teach us the framework of a constructive life, about values and morality that with maturity, we come to understand is a paradigm for our lives.
The rabbinic discussions and holidays, Channukah and Purim are paradigms of both the persecutions the Jewish nation has endured through the ages and the successful survival of the tests thrust upon us by the nations that surround us. Skip the prophets and Ketuvim, the writings, at your own risk, for they describe in both jubilant and painful detail the natural results of our chosen relationships with the prescriptions of the Torah and God Who gave it to us.
Judaism has proven itself to be a teachable and transmissible framework that has passed from generation to generation. Every one of us has a family history of generations who treasured and fought for every detail of this multi-facetted jewel. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Embrace it and treasure it for your own good.
Is this a simplistic perspective of something very complex? No more simplistic than the hate and persecutions the Jewish nation has endured throughout the ages. The wars and persecutions depicted in Tanach, the persecutions of inquisitions, blood libels and genocides, a local pogrom or a continent-wide ban on our existence, all trace back to our morals and our values, and the unique relationship we have with our Creator that is coveted by others who don’t really understand it, but usurp it for their own power in a bastardized form and insist that as successors, they require the demise of the predecessor to prove their own legitimacy.
History is the living example of their desperate intent to prove it.
So if there is merit in this proposal, this is the context of the Gaza War on Israel by Iran and its proxies, and the Six-Day War, the War of Independence, the Hevron (Haifa, Jerusalem and …) massacre, as well as the Holocaust, the Farhoud, the Khmelnytsky Massacre and the Passover blood libels. How have we survived?
Many minds much greater than mine have pondered this and proposed answers, The rabbis have taught us that the answer to a good question is in the question. Our, we, us. Survival, even triumph over all these forces is in our, us and we, the necessary unity of Jewish life. The minyan, education, kashrut, eruv, the Pesach Seder and Mishloach Manot all require an extraordinary unity that can not be found outside of Judaism. The joyousness of a wedding and the sorrow of a shiva bring solidarity to our community, the unity that brings triumph to our lives.
The context of the potential of the Trump proposals, the resolve of the coalition, the phenomenal performance of the soldiers of the IDF, the returned hostages and the generosity of people all over the world who support the farmers, the displaced and the bereaved families, the context of the nation-wide pain of the Bibas family, praying that Shiri Bibas will yet return to their embrace, is the unity of the Jewish people. Our solidarity will be our victory alongside the victory of all the heroes who defend Israel from the forces that try to divide and destroy us.
May the Bibas family find comfort through God’s guidance among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
May they soon be celebrating happy occasions together with all of Israel.