Week 4 of War

Been awhile, this one's a little long.

We're grinding along. One soldier was rescued last night from Hamas captivity, another died in service defending our North. 

A friend's nephew was murdered on October 7. A grad school classmate/colleague in elder care's aunt and uncle, themselves older adults, were as well. 

We mourn and pray for the return of all the rest of our captives and do our best to keep on truckin.

What to Pray For - Part 2:

• Pray for the mental health professionals (including my lovely wife). Those providing care are themselves mourning, anxious, fearful - experiencing the whole gamut of emotions. May G-d help them to help their clients, supervisees, etc. 
• Pray that my people of Israel never undergo this terror again.
• Pray that G-d perform miracles enabling those who are risking their lives to ensure this never happens again to completely succeed in their mission.

Our entire nation is one big miracle, all the way back to Abraham and Sarah (in this week's Torah portion, VaYeira) miraculously giving birth to Isaac in their ripe old age. Please keep the miracles coming!

From the Artscroll commentary on last week's Torah portion, Lech Lecha:

As the story of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs unfolds, we see that infertility was common among them, but that prayer and Divine intervention resulted in the emergence of the nation. This was G-d's way of proving that the Jewish people are not a natural phenomenon; without miracles we could not have existed, nor could we continue to exist. 

Ain't that the truth.

Please of course keep up the prayers I asked for in my last post. About that post, Yossi Klein Halevi (link to his TOI piece below) wrote a book "Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor." So along those lines, with my high school friend Lauren's permission (she also quoted me in her blog back in the day!), I bring you the first installment of:

"Emails with my Presbyterian High School Friend." 

Sammy -
Just wanted to write and tell you that we are continuing to pray and remember and cry out to God on your behalf. Goodness, the words in your blog, "Our Father, Our King, accept - with compassion and favor - our prayer." What beautiful words.

I’m doing a bible study on some of the Psalms right now, and this week we read Psalm 5 which starts like this:

“Give ear to my words, O LORD;
consider my groaning.
Give attention to the sound of my cry,
my King and my God,
for to you do I pray.
O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice…”

The assurance of: “You hear my voice” is so powerful.

So we are praying and trusting that Our Father and Our King hears our voices as we cry out to Him.

There are lots of conversations happening that are making me reconsider the privilege I have - as someone who does not feel persecuted (at least here in Dallas, TX) for my faith. It breaks my heart to see my friend write the words, “The world hates Jews.” I cannot comprehend what it feels like to type those words, so I want to make sure you know without a doubt that you (and your beautiful family!) are loved and worthy and valued, and that the world is a better place - my life is more full - to have a friend like you. I am so grateful for years of friendship and conversations about how we both walk out our faiths. You are a gift to me, Sammy.

Praying for light to shine in the darkness.  For love to have the final word.  And for the Rangers to win.

Lauren - as I wrote "the world hates Jews," I thought of you. I knew that would be painful for you to read. Your reply was just so thoughtful and gorgeous and so appreciated.

But, alas, after all these years watching the world do its anti-Semitic thing time after time, knowing what was coming this time... shoot, I honestly felt numb when I typed that. I'm gonna even make it into TWHJ to tighten it up in future reference here. There is no other explanation.

But here's to that light and love winning out, and yes the RANGERS BABY!!!

--

Why did I lose it a few weeks ago upon reading "Our Father, Our King, accept - with compassion and favor - our prayer"? Let's look at some of these requests to our King. Nobody had any illusions that our haters' designs needed nullifying, that our enemies' counsel needed thwarting (heck, the day I moved here, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made one of his infinite statements about how Iran would destroy us). But these (full prayer book text at bottom)?

• Exterminate captivity, destruction, iniquity and eradication (aka the Holocaust) from the members of Your covenant.
• Take pity upon us, and upon our children and our infants.
• Act for the sake of those who were murdered for Your Holy Name.
• Act for the sake of those who were slaughtered for your Oneness.
• Act for the sake of those who went into fire and water for the sanctification of Your Name.
• Avenge before our eyes the spilled blood of Your servants.

Israel was founded to render these requests irrelevant (certainly at the kind of scale of October 7, at the bare minimum), first as recent history from the Holocaust. As the 7.5+ decades passed, harking back to Sukkot, just 5 weeks ago, before this war, it felt like these things were only relics out of the history books, things that could never happen to us again. But they did.

And as our citizens mourn... our soldiers are out there, spread all across our beloved, beautiful, holy land, looking clearheadedly into the future and giving everything they've got to make it a glorious one.

That brings me back to a 2006 Birthright trip that I staffed. These groups, bringing young Jewish adults from around the world to Israel, always include about a handful of Israeli soldiers.

I'll never forget what my Israel Defense Forces soldier roommate, his emotions riled up as he experienced seeing Israel "for the first time" again along with the American bus-mates, said to me as we watched my Mavs' lose in the NBA Finals - "I LOVE this land! I would die for this land." He said that to me in the very corner of this beautiful land that was scorched by Hamas terrorists on October 7.

Some 200,000 Israelis have flown back here, with that love of land and nation etched all over their hearts and souls. Each one of them is our answer to Hamas, who believed they were on the cusp of either murdering us all, or watching the rest of us run away screaming and crying. This is our land, world. We're staying here, more than that - we're coming back. Don't mess.

--

Times like these, so very trying for us, help clarify the importance of emotional intelligence when reaching out to loved ones who are suffering. 

From Rabbi Zelig Pliskin's "Growth through Torah", about last week's Torah portion:
The Almighty told Abraham to travel away from his father's home, his birthplace, and his land. Only now when he personally experiences being a stranger in a foreign place will he know firsthand what it is like. This will give him a greater appreciation of what he can do to help his guests...

Whenever you personally suffer any kind of pain or sorrow, remember carefully every aspect of your experience. When other people are in similar situations, you will know with greater depth what they are experiencing. This will help you to help them with greater sensitivity and kindness. Moreover, it will make your own suffering easier to cope with. You will view it as a meaningful learning experience that will assist you in becoming more effective in helping others

I so appreciate all of you checking in.

My brother from another mother and former roommate, Rabbi David Fain, struck a chord when he checked back in with me this week with this message: "prayers are with you my brother! Stay strong"

That's an emotionally intelligent man telling me - "This is Week 4. I know this is hard for you. I got ya." Love you too Dave!

--

A few words about my family's part in the war effort:

• Over the last 3 Shabbats, we've hosted for meals 3 families with a combined 3 husbands and 3 sons called up to reserve duty and out defending our land.
• When we're cooking for said meals (that's me grilling), we make a little extra as a nice treat and deliver to a celiac soldier whose gluten-free army grub is less than ideal.
  
  
• In wartime, the most trivial things turn into defiant acts of Zionism. Our economy is hurting. Just going to the supermarket or the fruit stand is our small part in keeping our beloved country going. 
• Last week I celebrated at my friend's son's Bar Mitzvah, which didn't go as planned, but was nonetheless a raucous celebration of his coming of age, of our tradition, of our land.
• Focus on family and supporting the wife and kids is always my main thing, even more so now. That's my role here in a nutshell.

We are so blessed. I am here, getting amazing quality time with my family, all sorts of extra hugs and cuddles. So so so many of our brothers and sisters are not - either tragically never will again, or will be missing husbands/dads/sons (mostly men; we do have one female friend who volunteered to serve) for probably many months. My last post was on the 20th anniversary of my 3:43 performance in the Chicago Marathon! We're running, as my kids would say, a super-muper marathon. 

Our evil incarnate enemy that we seek to destroy doesn't have to worry about scaling their startups, or developing their social services. They have an economy of death and destruction that's given a blank check by the likes of Iran and Qatar.

Our effort to destroy them means so many of our software engineers, teachers, you name it have to hit pause on all that to focus their skills, talents and genius against the evil.

Hey enemies - we're not only smarter than you, better than you, we're also WAY better at multi-tasking than you. Those loving fathers and husbands spread love to their families, students, coworkers. And yea, kick tuchus (to quote my wife) on the battlefield.

--

Recommended reading:

Aforementioned Halevi piece on how he frames the war, also oh boy TWHJ - blaming us for our own massacre.

Yedidia Stern's suggestion to call this the Genesis War.

My friend Sara Hirschhorn on the rotten state of affairs on campuses. About that, 20+ years ago at Michigan, I got treated to a weekly diatribe against Israel disguised as an "Op-ed" in the student paper, hateful anti-Israel protests, and the big winner: someone took a key to Israel on the globe at the Ugli (undergrad library) and wiped it out, then did the same with a marker in the atlas.

My classmates back then probably have their own kids now in the same dorms and classrooms, with a decades-long heaping of anti-Semitism surely leading them to celebrate evil incarnate.

As for the Samantha Woll (we overlapped at U of M) murder investigation, it seems WAY too convenient for that to be coincidental in a metro area awash with Hamas celebrations. I hope I'm wrong (how awful is that to hope for a random murder), but I highly doubt it.

So much attention has justly been placed on our murdered and kidnapped babies and children. University of Haifa professor Issi Doron, a huge leader in Israel's gerontology world and an elder law expert, has started Older Lives Matter, an initiative to shine light on the older adult victims of Hamas crimes.

Along with the prior running recommendation to read David Horovitz pieces on Times of Israel, I recommend everything by: 

• Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh
• Friend from Chicago Eugene Kontorovich

If you do take my recommendation and financially support Times of Israel, I'd love to hear that you did. They are doing such crucial wartime work and, again, really deserve it. 

In addition to the many pieces I already mentioned, of note are their ongoing special sections:
Those we are missing, Those we have lost, and Those we call heroes.

I'll wrap up with a very timely Israeli love song, from Danny Sanderson - in my eyes Israel's Paul McCartney, the brainchild behind Kaveret, the closest thing we had to The Beatles. This one goes out to the love of my life:

לא יפריד דבר בינינו לעד
גם אם העולם ייפסק ביום אחד
מקומי תמיד יהיה לצידך
לאורך כל הדרך אני אהובך

את תמיד היית הכל בשבילי
בזכותך למדתי מה ומי אני
מתנה כזאת של פעם בחיים
צריך לשמור עליה עולמי עולמים

הנהר סוחף אותנו ישא
אין לדעת לאן
או את אורכו של המסע
וכשנגיע אומר בוודאי
זו הנסיעה של חיי

גשר מזהב סלול אל ליבך
מחבר את שנינו
בכל אשר נלך
ברוחות הקור סופות וגשמים
אני צמוד אלייך עולמי עולמים

הנהר סוחף אותנו ישא...

לא יפריד דבר בינינו לעד...

Nothing will ever keep us apart

Even if the world ends in one day (it certainly has felt like the world is ending twice now in our last few years together - Covid and now this war)

My place will always be next to you

All along the way I'm your love

You were always everything to me

Thanks to you, I learned what and who I am

A gift like that that's once in a lifetime

You gotta hold onto, forever and ever

The river will carry us away

There's no way to know where

Or the length of the journey

And when we arrive, I'll say, of course

This is the ride of my life

A golden bridge is paved to your heart

Connecting us both

Wherever we go

In the cold wind, storms and rain

I am by your side forever and ever

GO RANGERS - SUPPORT ISRAEL

 

What to pray for

Thank you again so much for the incredible waves upon waves of support, far and wide. That includes everyone who's calling my mom to check in. It means so much to me and my family.

My wife mentioned yesterday that an Israeli Rabbi had suggested including the Avinu Malkeinu (Our Father, Our King) prayer during this war. Anyone who's been to services for the High Holy Days (Rosh Hashana - the new year, and Yom Kippur - the day of atonement), knows - and feels - the famous, melancholy minor melody.

At Rosh HaShana the year I made aliyah (emigrated) to Israel, hosted by my friend Mordechai McKenney at his Jerusalem yeshiva (Jewish academy of learning), I adopted my first-ever favorite verse:
אבינו מלכנו, הרם קרן ישראל עמך - Our Father, Our King, raise high the pride of Israel, Your people.

As I met the love of my life, the most incredible person I've ever met, and we subsequently created our beautiful family with the addition of our native Israeli kids, I changed that to:
אבינו מלכנו, מלא ידינו מברכותיך - Our Father, Our King, fill our hands from Your blessings.

Reading these prayers yesterday, I totally lost it. Especially this one:
אבינו מלכנו, קבל ברחמים וברצון את תפילתנו - Our Father, Our King, accept - with compassion and favor - our prayer. 

I lift my head to Hashem, G-d, please, accept these prayers with compassion and favor.

--

Thank G-d we're doing fine.

The soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces need your prayers.

I know many of these guys quite closely. I know of no one in the world who I would rather have to fight this war, to defeat this evil incarnate, rearing its ugly head - again - in 2023.

Hamas won the first day, one of the most mind-boggling series of failures any government and military command have ever made. There were inspirational stories of heroism among the endless stories of horrors of horrors. 

But as one man who successfully defended his small town said - in the Middle East, you can't rely on good defense. This ain't the San Antonio Spurs with a "defense wins championship" motto. So we will come after you now and win this war.

In every prior conflict with Hamas in Gaza, we have been too surgical. We let this cancer fester for too long.

--

Back to that failure of our leadership. 

In early 2021, the Economist ran a special podcast dubbed The Jab, about the COVID-19 vaccine release. Every week, I took so much pride when their musical chart sounding out who had most swiftly vaccinated their populations had my little Israel at #1, every week. We protected our older adults, our women and then our children, like no other country in the world.

2 and a half years later, this happened to our women, our children, and our older adults.

But again back to those IDF soldiers. That's where my trust is when the leaders failed us.

But now Bibi, and Yoav Gallant must redeem themselves and win this war. Thank G-d they brought on another experienced voice of reason from the opposition in Benny Gantz.

--

Allow me to frame this war for you.
This is the continuation of the War of Independence from 75+ years ago. We came here to create the reborn state for the Jewish people in our eternal homeland. And we're still fighting to keep it.

Hamas truly believes that they are on the cusp of killing us all, or if that fails, of driving whoever's left out of our homeland crying and screaming. They are dead wrong.

As for the perfectly blessed distraction of my remarkable Texas Rangers, dominating their way into their third ever ALCS (semifinals for the non-baseball types),
I have been waiting four and a half decades to see my favorite team bring home their first ever title.
Hamas thinks I won't make it that long. (Don't have any illusions though, anywhere I would be in the world, they'd want me dead there too. Let's all put up another prayer to keep my people safe worldwide).

Now go put up your prayers and we'll all prove this pure evil wrong together. (And no, I have no illusions - as amazing as Texas has been, this still may not be their year).
But they're giving me a dang good ride! Adolis kept providing my kids with great material in Game 3 - the Rolling Stones tongue and the finger shimmy!!!

And back to reality... since the last post, my friend's brother-in-law fell in battle, valiantly defending Sderot.

--

Now, a word for anyone who's confused, doesn't know who to believe, etc.

This is a battle between good and evil incarnate (big surprise - those are the ones who lie). There's nothing to equivocate about. You wanna equivocate? Go do that in your own little Equivocating about Israel club and please get out of my way.

I am nauseated to even have to waste my energy typing this, but, well, the world hates Jews, so here goes:
We have a friend who's a nurse in the pediatric ER of a hospital in the south. She saw the most unthinkable, unimaginable horrors there since Saturday.
We're telling the truth, they're lying murderers. Simple as that.

--

So now we brace for what's not gonna be a short war. We pray for miracles of a swift defeat. But today is already the symbolic-around-here day 6 (ala the miraculous victory in 1967), and this war hasn't started yet.

Please keep writing! If I don't respond, know that I feel your love and appreciate it so much.

Dark days

Israel's national worst nightmare has come to pass. There are no words to describe it.

The support of friends and family has brought me to the verge of tears. We feel your love and really need it right now.

I don't have a ton to say other than thank you!
And thanks also to my Texas Rangers, whose futility as a franchise has been a big part of my life for most of the life of the franchise. They and my family are about the only thing keeping me sane, with two HUGE wins in Baltimore, the first interspersed with the worst day of my dear country's history.

I've been using my sports teams as a distraction from geopolitical tension for decades, and it's given me some amazing excitement to share with the kids (we watch the highlights together the next day - lots of Rangers highlights these days, as well as Michigan football this season). 

Watching the highlights (the games I just listen to on the radio feed, especially enjoying the local legend Eric Nadel, calling Rangers games since I was born) takes me to this surreal parallel universe, where life is normal right now. 

And then I go back to following what's happening (all you really need to read is David Horovitz's columns on Times of Israel - he is an amazing man (was lucky to meet him twice) and journalist. If you're able to support the website financially, they deserve it in a big way). So far I've heard of the nephew of someone who goes to my synagogue being killed in battle. And a friend's colleague's family of 5, all murdered. And a former colleague's husband recovering in the hospital after being wounded and undergoing surgery.

And I dread when I'll (probably) hear of someone I know first-hand...

Anyway, my son is calling me to go watch the Game 2 highlights! It's been a busy day - I still haven't seen Mitch Garver's grand slam!!!

Lots of love and here's to the win that actually matters: a swift victory by my brothers and sisters in the Israel Defense Forces over Hamas and their evil brethren. Amen

P.S. My son's favorite part was Adolis's chest bump and fist kiss (cued up here) after his RBI hit in the 2nd

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