We have not been abandoned. He is listening for our tap at His door
I was on the way to a shalom zachar, celebrating the arrival of a new Jew into the world, when I heard that an hour earlier, two young Israeli children and a 20 year-old just-married had been brutally run down and murdered at a Jerusalem bus stop by a terrorist who was taught from the womb that his entrée to heaven is through murdering Jews. Just one week before, seven praying Jews were murdered at their shul in Jerusalem. And as I write this, two brothers have been gunned down near Nablus — for which “triumph” celebratory candy is being distributed to Arab children. Fourteen Israelis have been killed by Arab murderers in one month.
The blending of tears and laughter, of shivah visits and simchah dancing, is a heavy brew to digest. To add to our distress, leftist Israelis are blustering over the “threat to democracy,” all stemming fundamentally from their lost power in a democratic election. These are times that try human comprehension — even without reckoning the 40,000 human beings recently killed in nearby earthquakes
Enter the theodicy issue. To those who do not believe that G-d and Divine Providence exist, all these are simply random events. In the case of terrorists, Israel can impose short-term measures: imprison them, eliminate them, blow up their homes. But how does one fight long-term against DNA hatred that views Jews as evil conquerors? In a world where there is no G-d, the road ahead is bleak, strewn with more pain and suffering. In such a world, where Eretz Yisrael is just another slice of geography on the Mediterranean, one understands why, and feels sorry for, tens of thousands of Israelis — mostly nonreligious — have fled Israel for what they consider less stressful regions (and from there, while avoiding mass shootings or dodging madmen on the subways, to complain that the chareidim — who, by the way, did not abandon Israel — are destroying Israel….)
As for those who know there is a G-d Who is in charge, certainly there are phenomena — human tragedies and nature’s disasters — that are unfathomable. But a believer will ask if somehow there is hidden in recent events a silent call from Above. With the intensification of terrorist attacks, and a rising tide of universal anti-Semitism, is there here an underlying message?
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