Three years ago, just before Chanukah, a short article appeared on the INN website entitled; “Mortar Shells Filled With Chanukah Light” which told about the Menorah made from some of the spent Islamic mortal shells which were launched on Neve Dekalim over the years.
Reading about this special Menorah which was lit at one of the Jerusalem hotels which temporarily housed many former Neve Dekalim residents, took me back in time to Philadelphia, in “the “old country” and to a point made by Rav Yehoshua Kaganoff about the pit in which Yaakov was thrown. The point bears repeating.
As we learned about the Neisim (miracles) of Chanukah, the one flask of oil found in the Beit HaMikdash which seemingly had enough oil to burn for one day, yet burned continuously for 8 days, Rav Kaganoff spoke about a nace which happened when the brothers cast Yosef into the pit which contained snakes and scorpions. Although this pit was habitat to snakes and scorpions, Hashem held them back, restrained them within the pit. Therefore, when the brothers removed Yosef and sold him into bondage, he emerged unscathed from the danger within the pit.
So too, despite all of the hundreds or thousands of mortar shells and Kassams which fell on Neve Dekalim and throughout Gush Katif over many years, there were but a mere handful of casualties among the 8,000 Jews then living in Gush Katif. Despite the agony and trauma of the post-expulsion’s worriesome weekly threats of evictions made by the hotels and encampments where the refugees were placed pending completion of temporary residences, each threat passed uneventfully due to the steadfastness of Gush Katif’s leaders and due to the help of many caring Jews. And despite the reign of Kassams which have fallen in Sderot, Ashkelon and other venues in the Negev over the intervening years since the expulsion, again a mere handful of casualties — the Yad Hashem in all cases, as with Yosef’s pit.
This author recalls once hearing a vort, but cannot attribute it’s source other than that the commentators explain the basis for the brothers’ hatred for Yosef as having been their perception of acting L’Shem Shemayim against another Eisev, or Yismael in their midst.
They saw Yosef and the pronouncement of his dreams, his tale-telling — often without knowing all of the facts, their perception that he sought to rule over them and their Father’s preference for him in the light of the family history — their great grandfather’s Avraham’s reluctance to separate from his other son Yishmael and their grandfather Yitzchak’s favoritism for his son Eisev, who while being a master at kibud Av was nonetheless wicked and not connected with Shemayim.
The other brothers, while acting inappropriately out of jealousy, perceived Yosef as a threat to the future nation that was to grow from them as the offspring of Yaakov.
Therefore we can contrast the brothers’ actions regarding Yosef, according to their perceptions and understandings, as L’Shem Shemayim with modern-day Israel where regimes and major party political leaders act, totally clueless and diabolically opposed to L’Shem Shemayim, toward those who cleave to Torah and Eretz Yisrael as dire threats to themselves [their regimes and governance] in their defeatism and self-hatred of who and what they are and in their war against Torah and Yiddishkiet.
The regime leaders glibbly proclaim, after their most recent anti-Torah edict, the 10 month building freeze in Yehudah and the Shomron, that “10 months eventually pass” and a prime minister pledges “read my lips, it will not be longer than 10 months” as the terrorist murderous Islamics take heart from an Israeli regime’s weakness with more brazen acts of violence against Jews. An example of this brazen violence was the terrorist who recently stabbed and attacked 2 in a Kiryat Arba gas station. When the husband of one of the victims allegedly retaliated against the terrorist by running him over again and again, the morally bankrupt Israeli justice system proceeds to put the husband under house-arrest under investigation for suspected attempted murder. It seems that Israeli justice prefers epitaphs for Jewish graves while prosecuting live Jews for having the chutzpah to defend themselves against Islamic terror.
In retrospect, if only the evil regime which is hard at work trying to give away the store and hijacking, subverting Jewish hearts, minds and neshamot away from Derech Hashem (just as the Greeks tried in that era of Jewish history), realized what they have abandoned and abrogated. If only they; Bibi, Barak as with Olmert, Livni, Ramon before them. were spiritually equipped to recognize the extent of the miraculousness of day-to-day life in what was the Jewish Yishuv of Gush Katif. If only they realized the monumental extent of the physical, economic and spiritual assets which they (the regime) frittered away, while hiding behind the bogus cloaks of “security,” “demographics,” “American pressure,” “blackmail for graft and corruption crimes”, etc., but in retrospect, out of the folly of mindless, blind, sinat chinom (causeless hatred) of Torah and derech Hashem.
But alas, successive elitist, protexia-class, hate-blinded hellinistic evil regimes will never own up and admit to the perilous danger which they have caused to the nation that they have solemnly sworn to defend and govern.
May we, the B’nai Yisrael be zocha that our brethren — the refugee families from Gush Katif be permanently settled and be made totally whole, that our dear brother Jonathan Pollard, captive Gilad Shalit and the other MIAs be liberated alive returned to us in ways befitting Al Kiddush Hashem and that we fulfill Hashem’s blueprint of B’nai Yisrael as a Unique people — an Am Segula, not to be reckoned with as with “the nations” and may we be zocha to see the Moshiach, the Ge’ula Shlaima, as Dov Shurin sings; “Ki Karov Yom Hashem Al Kol HaGoyim”, the Ultimate Redemption, bim hay v’yameinu — speedily, in our time”, — Achshav, Chik Chuk, Miyad, Etmol!!!
Good Shabbos, Freilichen Chanukah!
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Moshe Burt, an Oleh, is a commentator on news and events in Israel and Founder and Director of The Sefer Torah Recycling Network. He lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh.
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