Playing It Safe

The only truly effective means to help keep the Jews of Eretz Yisrael safe is by turning to the Shomer Yisrael in tefillah and generating increased merits through learning Torah and doing mitzvos. But as in other areas of life, there is also an obligation of hishtadlus, going through the motions to employ the system of material cause-and-effect.

This is easy enough to implement when it comes to things like pursuing a livelihood and seeking medical care; indeed, if anything, the challenge in those areas is to make sure we don’t go overboard with reliance on our efforts and instead remember that the true Provider and Healer is the One Above. But when it comes to the security of our brethren in the Holy Land, what can the individual do?

The answer is: very little on his own, but perhaps quite a bit more in coordinated partnership with other Jews. I have long wondered why our major communal organizations don’t have dedicated “departments of public comment,” staffed by people whose job is to marshal the koach hatzibbur through campaigns to communicate to public officials, and perhaps media organizations too, our positions on the issues important to us.

Of course, such efforts arise from time to time when the community as a whole perceives a potential calamity, but they’re usually spur-of-the-moment and weakly run, and thus, unsurprisingly, bring tepid response (the campaign that solicited comments on proposed changes in yeshivah curriculum by the New York State Education Department was a very successful exception to the rule). Imagine the benefits of running muscular campaigns of this sort on an ongoing basis, before a moment of crisis arises.