Dear Friends,
Are you also frantically scrolling through the news, waiting to hear what is happening, hoping that things don’t get any worse?
Last week, 12 beautiful children were murdered in Northern Israel. Then Israel successfully eliminated the man responsible for their deaths, and the deaths of 14 other civilians and 18 IDF soldiers: Hezbollah’s military leader, Fuad Shukr. In another surprise move that same day, Israel eliminated Ismail Haniyeh during his visit to Iran. Haniyeh was the political leader of Hamas, and the man who made the October 7th attack possible.
Now we sit on edge as Iran, Hezbollah, and other terror groups threaten to rain retaliatory fire on Israel, with a bombardment of attack drones and ballistic missiles from all sides. All this, 300 days into a traumatic war, with 115 hostages still held captive in Gaza.
We keep hearing the word “unprecedented,” everyone says that we’re living in unprecedented times--but if you take a look at Jewish history, this is not unprecedented for us. It’s difficult, it’s heartbreaking, it’s even scary, but not at all unprecedented.
Even in this week’s Torah reading, Moses leads the brand new Jewish nation in war against the Midianites, who had just attempted to annihilate them. The Torah and all our history books are filled with stories where it looked like we were at the brink, but then G-d stepped in and delivered us.
We’re in the thick of one of those stories now. The drama is at its peak; a hint of light is twinkling behind the dark stormy clouds, but we haven’t yet noticed that through the anguish and pain, G-d was holding our hand all along, walking us towards a happier day.
The peak can be the most difficult part. The coming days might have us tense, holding our breaths, perhaps shedding tears through the roaring thunder. But we were never a people to sit back and do nothing. We’ll increase in acts of kindness, we’ll pray, we’ll learn from the Torah and fill the world with more goodness, more light; enough to outweigh the dark.
And then we’ll rise up, as the eternal people that we are. We’ll talk about how they tried to destroy us, how G-d saved us, and how now it’s time to feast.
In the meantime, I hope you’ll join us in shul this Shabbat—the timing is poignant. Come at 11 o'clock for the Torah reading with some commentary. It's a beautiful experience to be together with the Chabad of Naples family on Shabbat. An action that will bring about our victory of good days for our nation, in Israel and around the world, for peace and blessings the world over.
Rabbi Fishel Zaklos