This past Shabbos marked the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most important days in my life. I was then living in Israel, after law school, and studying Hebrew at Ulpan Etzion.
When I got on the bus that morning, my thoughts were primarily on meeting two of my brothers that afternoon at Bloomfield Stadium for an American bicentennial celebration. But those thoughts were quickly pushed away by the pandemonium that greeted me on the bus: People were hugging one another exuberantly everywhere I looked.
My command of Hebrew was still weak. So, it took me a while before I understood that Israel had successfully rescued over 100 hostages from Entebbe. As I looked around the bus, I wondered why I felt such a profound sense of connection with everyone on the bus. What, after all, did I have in common with a dark-skinned Yemenite Jew, whose ancestors had been on the Saudi peninsula since well before the destruction of the Second Beis Hamikdash?
As I pondered that question, it occurred to me that each of us was the product of an unbroken chain of ancestors who had, until very recently, remained faithful to G-d, despite the ever-present rod of persecution that accompanied them in all their wanderings, and who had resisted all the blandishments to go over to the other side that were offered them as the most literate members of whatever society in which they lived.
And that was true of every Jewish community around the globe, and no matter what social class they came from, from hardworking peasant farmers to well-placed moneylenders close to the royal courts.
Having identified our point of commonality, I wondered whether the power my ancestors and those of every other Jew on the bus had found in their relationship to Hashem might still be accessible to an identified but almost entirely secularly educated Jew — i.e., me — in the last quarter of the 20th century. That was, in many ways, the beginning of my religious journey.
LOOKING BACK on that day, I'm struck by my initial assumption that I was bound in some deep way to every other Jew on that bus. On a New York subway, for instance, I was never tempted before or since to throw open my arms and proclaim, "We are all Americans." Yet on the bus taking me to ulpan, the beginning point of my thoughts was, "We are all Jews, and that means something."
That feeling of sharing something profound with all other Jews is easier to maintain in Israel than in the Diaspora. Not only do we share a common history going back well over 3,000 years, but a common destiny. At the most obvious level, an Iranian nuclear bomb would wipe us all out, whatever the different ways in which we define ourselves.
To be sure, one sometimes hears an odd remark about how the Arabs would be happy to allow Torah Jews to live freely as such, if only it weren't for the Zionists. But whoever says such things seems to have forgotten that the 1929 Chevron Massacre took place nearly 20 years before the modern state of Israel, and that 24 of the 69 Jews murdered were yeshivah bochurim. Indeed, when the Arab mob asked community leader Eliezer Dan Slonim to turn over the yeshivah students sheltering in his house, he refused, and told the Arabs, "We are all one people." Nor, it would seem, have they read the Hamas Charter, which calls for the death of all Jews, wherever they are to be found. And one thing is for sure, there would be no generous stipends for yeshivos from the Arab Wakf.
Preserving awareness of the common bond among all Jews, argues Rabbi BenTzion Kokis, a senior mashgiach in Beis Medrash Govoha, in an important new work, Earning Eretz Yisroel, is a crucial component of any successful recognition of the value of Torah learning by the larger Israeli public. Such a campaign is not advanced with imprecations against anyone who does not view the matter as we do as a descendant of the Eirev Rav, if not Amalek. (I am not aware of precisely what percentage of those who left Mitzrayim were from the Eirev Rav, but I suspect it was not large, as there was no provision for their settlement in Eretz Yisrael in last week's parshah, Pinchas.)
If we frame the issue as a demand for our rights, Rabbi Kokis writes, we will only "reinforce the perception that we are a selfish and self-centered community, oblivious to the sacrifices that others are making for us." Rather, "we are struggling to protect the tzibbur of Yidden, Hashemyishmereim, from the threats that loom on the horizon."
He cites his great teacher, Rav Shlomo Wolbe ztz"l, quoting the Midrash that if the nations of the world had known how much the Beis Hamikdash accomplished for them, they would have surrounded it with soldiers to protect it. Similarly, said the Mashgiach, if the larger Jewish community in Eretz Yisrael understood how much protection lomdei Torah provide, they would post soldiers in every yeshivah to ensure that the talmidim are learning well.
But as I have written in the past, the argument that our learning protects the entirety of Klal Yisrael is conditional. It can only be valid to the extent that the lomdei Torah truly see themselves as bound to their fellow Jews as part of Klal Yisrael and learn accordingly. I recently heard of a young bochur in Hebron Yeshivah who fasted every Monday and Thursday after October 7, for a long period of time. And it is a direct outgrowth of that bochur's deep connection to the entirety of Klal Yisrael that he has been mesayeim Bavli twice and Yerushalmi once over the past three years.
The great Mirrer Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz ztz"l, exemplified the degree to which we must view our learning, prayers, and mitzvos as benefiting every Jew. Whenever Israel was at war, he was relentless in his demands on the talmidei hayeshivah to increase their learning in both quantity and intensity.
During one of those wars, an American bochur asked Rav Chaim whether he could return home for the duration of the war. Rav Chaim denied his request, as his davening in the yeshivah was needed. When the bochur pointed out that he could also daven for success in the war back home in America, Rav Chaim told him that he was wrong: There is no comparison between davening when the object of one's tefillos is before one, as would be the case if he was still in close proximity to the battlefield, and when one is distant.
That is why, Rav Chaim added, Rochel Imeinu had to be buried on the way, where her weeping would accompany the exiles from Eretz Yisrael as they passed by on their way to Bavel.
RABBI KOKIS URGES us not to despair of making the argument for faith in the protective power of Torah learning. For one thing, there is a widespread sense in Israel that the survival of the Jewish People through the generations and the manner in which Israel has thrived cannot be explained in purely naturalistic terms. That is axiomatic for Torah-observant Jews, but that view is not limited to them.
It is frequently manifested in times of war — e.g., in the thousands of baalei teshuvah in the wake of the Six Day War; in the more than 10,000 previously nonobservant soldiers who accepted upon themselves the mitzvah of tefillin in the current war; and the many more who went into battle wearing tzitzis and proclaiming "Shema Yisrael."
Rabbi Kokis quotes his own rosh yeshivah, Rav Moshe Shmuel Shapiro ztz"l, describing Moshe Dayan as the most ardent defender of the draft exemption for yeshivah students in earlier negotiations between the government and the roshei yeshivah.
For those like Dayan, intimately familiar with the military history of Israel, it is not hard to make the case for Israel's survival as being above the realm of nature. Why, for instance, did a Syrian general commanding an overwhelming number of tanks against Israeli forces on the Golan in 1973 suddenly stop and not push his advantage with victory seemingly assured — a decision for which he was subsequently executed in Damascus?
Why did Hezbollah not join from the north in any meaningful way on October 7, along with Hamas forces breaking through the southern border? A recently published set of internal documents analyzed by researchers at the Amit Institute for Terrorism and Intelligence Research show that Nasrallah had previously given his approval to Hamas leader Sinwar's plans for a multifront attack on Israel — an invasion for which Hezbollah had planned and trained. It was Nasrallah's hesitation on October 7 — emphatically not Israel's preparedness, writes Amit Segal — that prevented the Galilee from suffering a fate similar to that of the Gaza Envelope.
Ultimately, the belief of the larger Israeli population in the protective power of Torah learning, writes Rabbi Kokis, in the name of Rav Wolbe, will depend on the degree to which the lomdei Torah themselves believe in the power of their learning and act accordingly. (To be clear, I am not suggesting, nor do I believe, that Torah learning alone, without the bravery and skill of our military, is sufficient.)
That belief on the part of lomdei Torah will be manifest in the beis medrash, not in demonstrations stopping traffic and trains, not in denigration of army service, not in wild and false claims that no one who serves in the IDF remains observant. And it will depend — to return to where we began — on believing in and strengthening the essential unity of the Jewish People, which is always at the center of our avodah during the Three Weeks of mourning for the Beis Hamikdash, which was destroyed by sinas chinam.
That avodah will be our subject next week, when we will draw on Rabbi Immanuel Bernstein's treatment of the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza in his recently published From Ruins to Redemption, the seventh and final volume of his works on the Jewish calendar (along with five volumes on Chumash, and separate volumes on aggadeta and sugyas in Shas).