The pride I feelin being part of a very special people has only grown and grown since October 7
Two longtime chavrusas, Yakir Hexter and David Schwartz Hashem yinkom damam, learned together and died together
The loss of any Jewish life is a loss for all of us. That is not just a platitude to which we give lip service, but a feeling that we should live with. Indeed, part of the impetus for my recently published collection, Ordinary Greatness, was to bring that point home.
But if that is true for every Jewish life lost, how much more so when that life was lost defending us from threat. As the late Mirrer rosh yeshivah Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz famously said in a shmuess during wartime, “Anyone who does not feel hakaras hatov to Israeli soldiers has no place in this beis medrash.”
That is why for the last three months I have forced myself to begin the morning by looking at the photos of the IDF soldiers whose deaths were announced since the previous day. I think that every Jew in the world should be doing the same, not just those of us who live in Israel.
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