The purpose of this blog is to Jew-up the Friday night dinner table. Please print and share.
As you know, this weekly space generally avoids current events.
But sometimes they are unavoidable.
And as you know, this email tries to be more about questions than answers.
So.... I would like to suggest four related questions for your table:
Question 1 - What's more shocking:
That there are such hardboiled antisemites among us, or that one of them decided to act on his hatred?
Question #2 - What about you:
Would you call yourself a Jewish American or an American Jew?
[substitute other nationalities as needed, including Israeli]
Question #3 - What's the ideal:
Should we be striving to live as Jewish Americans or American Jews?
Question #4 - What about now:
When an American Amalek
hunts down Jewish people with the mindset of an exterminator trying to
clear his world of vermin, how does that impact your answer to Q2 and
Q3?
Anyone who has even the slightest connection to the Jewish People and the faintest concept of karma should be given great pause when students are gunned down inside the oldest yeshiva in the land of Israel, founded by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, before the creation of the state.
The Ismaelite fired more than 500 bullets before being stopped. He shot students as they studied. Others he chased down, shooting them in the back.
As reported by Israel Insider, Yehuda Meshi Zahav, head of the Zaka rescue service, entered the library after the attack. "The whole building looked like a slaughterhouse. The floor was covered in blood. The students were in class at the time of the attack," he said. "The floors are littered with holy books covered in blood."
"There were horrendous screams of 'Help us! Help us!'" recounted Avrahami Sheinberger of the ZAKA emergency rescue service, one of the first to respond to the scene. "There were bodies strewn all over the floor, at the entrance to the yeshiva, in various rooms and in the library."
The Talmud states (Taanis 19a) that when a Jewish city is attacked by an enemy (or even wild animals), all other cities should hold a public fast day. If the threat is “hostile troops”, then the call to fast should be made even on Shabbat.
What’s the point?
The point is, when my tribesmen are attacked, it’s a wakeup call to me. Sderot and Ashkelon have been under near-daily attack for many months.
This weeks question for your table is: Why does it take a massacre in Jerusalem to wake us up (if then)? And more important, now that we’ve been slightly stirred from our slumber, what should we do?
“God picks the most beautiful flowers for his garden,” the mother of 16-year-old Avraham David Moses told Ynet. “He (God) sees him as an angel, and we should thank him for the privilege of raising him for 16 years. Sixteen years of purity and integrity and kindness.”
