We feel both the trust and the pain simultaneously, and that’s what Hallel is all about
This Succos, we rejoiced with Hashem and felt that sense of safety and bitachon. We wished one another a good year with confidence. Then, at the finale — on Simchas Torah — we learned that we did not merit Divine protection.
We learned that there had been a massive invasion by terrorists, with hundreds of casualties, and so many taken hostage. What happened to our tefillos?
If this question bothers us, we may have been a little bit too simplistic in the way we view bitachon, perhaps even in the way we daven.
The skeptics talk about religion as the “opiate of the masses,” some movement that provides simplistic answers to the most complicated questions and lends its adherents a false sense of security when there’s in fact real danger. That’s true of conventional religion — but it’s not what Judaism is about.
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