Be A Light: On International Support

 A few weeks ago, France announced they will recognize a Palestinian state this September at the UN General Assembly. Canada soon followed, along with the UK.  Meanwhile here at home, a majority of Senate Democrats voted to halt arms sales to Israel, a measure introduced by a Jewish member.  It was all eerily similar to the words we would read just days later in Eicha, where the prophet Yermiyahu compares the treatment of Israel to an abandoned widow, completely vulnerable and kicked when she’s at her lowest point.

The pain, and the shock, feels like being punched in the stomach.  And in the immediate aftermath, there was a sense of disorientation.  Most of us have never known a world where Israel doesn’t exist.  Many of us never imagined such a world, until the people we thought of as allies started imagining it for us. 

But as new as this experience is for our generation, it’s not new for our people.   Two thousand years ago Pirkei Avot advised us (Chapter 2, Mishna 3): ‘Be cautious with the government…  they do not stand by a person in his time of difficulty”.  That section of Pirkei Avot was in the scheduled Shabbat study for July 26, which fell between the French declaration and the Senate vote.  There is, as the saying goes, no such thing as coincidence.

While we appreciate the international support Israel has had for the last 70+ years, we also must always remember that the actual aid comes not from these countries or from individual leaders but from The Almighty.  In Tehillim 121 David Hamelech writes about the feeling of looking around, wondering where help will come from --- and his despair is calmed when he remembers his help comes from G-d, who created the Heavens and the Earth. 

We don’t know exactly what will happen with Israel.  And in the short term it can be scary. 

We know there have been times in our history, from Ancient Rome to 20^th Century Europe, where it seemed we were forsaken. But we weren’t. In the long term we have an unbroken bond with Hashem, and we’re ultimately protected, flourishing more than before.

The Haggadah tells us in Vehi Sheamda that in every generation some nation rises up to try and destroy us. If it keeps happening in every generation, that means they are B”H never successful. Let’s keep that in mind.