“...to the Land that I will show you” (12:1)
In the first week of the war, I got a phone call from a lady who said they wanted to deliver the dryer that I bought before Yom Tov. I told her I was surprised than companies were still working in highly non-essential items like drying machines in the middle of a war. “Sure, we are!” she said. Before we got off the phone she said to me in Hebrew, “Be Safe! May we hear good news soon! Hashem should guard you! May Hashem bless His People with peace!” She wouldn’t let me off the phone until she had completed a litany of blessings for me, my family and the entire Jewish People.
“Who is like your people Israel, one nation in the world!”
The feeling of unity here in Eretz Yisrael is incredible. My son-in-law got back from the South of Israel, where he and his friends were dispensing homemade food and supplies to the soldiers. He told me, “You can’t believe how happy they were to see us.” It wasn’t the homemade cakes; it wasn’t the homemade sandwiches – it was the homemade love!”
We say in the Mincha prayer on Shabbat afternoon, “You, Hashem, are one, and Your name is One, and who is like Your people Israel, one nation in the land.”
To the extent we are one nation, so too Hashem’s Name will be One. The world will see that there is a Divine Being Who runs everything, and that nothing is random. It is axiomatic that Hashem is One, and thus the unity of the Jewish People is a mystical and spiritual imperative.
If we do not unite in love and joy, Hashem will unite us in grief and war. May Hashem protect His people. May He protect the soldiers who defend His People. May He protect Klal Yisrael in all the places of our Diaspora.
