By Rabbi Yosef Farhi
My father, who fought in the Yom Kippur war, is crying, as he watches the videos of the soldiers accepting on themselves the Yoke of Heaven, before entering Gaza... He told my mother that even before the Yom Kippur war, which caused a huge wave of Ba’alei Teshuva, the soldiers did not have a spiritual awakening of the magnitude of what we are seeing now!
There isn’t a soldier who wants to enter Gaza without tzitzit and a siddur. That is the bullet-proof vest they want! More than food, gear, the soldiers want Tzizit and Tefillin! Hello, Mashiach - did you hear that?
A mother asked her daughter-Chayelet-soldier to find a nice soldier Chayal guy, that maybe she can marry... The daughter texted back to her mother, Ma! I can’t know who to choose from the soldiers! Everyone looks religious, everyone is wearing tzizit! I don’t know who is religious and who is not! Eliyahu Hanavi, where are you?
There was a religious family from Kfar Aza, on that day before Simhat Torah, that went to visit their parents in Jerusalem. The grandparents said, “Why don’t you stay with us for the holiday of Simhat Torah?” But the parents said, “We are part of the Kfar Aza community and we want to celebrate with our community Simhat Torah”. The grandparents did not give up. They said, “We are making food for you; just stay with us for the holiday!” They went back and forth, and unfortunately, this family decided not to listen to their grandparents, and went back to Kfar Aza for Simhat Torah...
They got home. And this was the last time they went home. The mother asked the father if he could open the door with the key, because she had to cook for the holiday. The father put his hand in his pocket, and the key wasn’t in his pocket! He forgot his key at Saba and Savta’s! They started arguing about how this could have happened, until they decided that they should go back and spend Simhat Torah in Jerusalem... after all, they had a meal already prepared for them!
Tell me that G-d is not watching!!!
Reprinted from the Parashat Veyera 5784 email of Shabbat Shalom from Cyberspace.
