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Beit Midrash
- Jewish Laws and Thoughts
- Serving Hashem, Mitzvot and Repentance
So why do I burden you with all of this story? I am not the only person in the world who has suffered from the lost luggage syndrome. But as I was engaged in this entire exercise of futility and frustration, I realized that the Jewish people as a whole are involved in a national lost luggage syndrome. Hence our continuing angst and frustration over our current situation and our clouded future. The forces of secularism, Marxism, and pure nationalism lost the luggage that Israel carried with it through its long exile. Torah and religion were nowhere to be found on our luggage carousel. For a number of generations, many Jews did not seem to mind or even notice that their luggage was lost. But eventually, circumstances and events have forced us to notice that we are missing an important piece of luggage. That bag contained faith, stability, hope, tradition, purpose, history and life purpose. It contained those items that sustained us for millennia and kept Israel vibrant and strong in spirit and mind. And in the dark times that we find ourselves in now, we realize that our bag is missing, waiting to be retrieved from the lost luggage area of our national conscience and acquired memory.
But no outside attendant can find that bag and return it to us. For only we recognize the bag that belongs to us. The rabbis of the Talmud taught us that a wise person can identify an item that one lost by seeing and recognizing it even if it does not have any distinguishing markings. We know instinctively that that bag is ours simply by looking at it. The recent trends in Jewish society the world over and here in Israel indicate the beginning of a slow but meaningful return to tradition by Jewish groups that were opposed to it for centuries. This is indicative of this sighting of lost luggage. But again only we can find and retrieve our lost luggage. The process of retrieval will be long and painful, filled with frustration and wrong turns, but it is an inevitable course in the story of the Jewish people.
Rabbis in Midrash
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Moreshet Shaul Hashem Is your Shadow – part I
Based on Siach Shaul, Pirkei Machshava V’Hadracha p. 420 – an address from 1941
P'ninat Mishpat A Non-Contractor in Changing Times – part I
(based on ruling 85128 of the Eretz Hemdah-Gazit Rabbinical Courts)
Moreshet Shaul Our King on Rosh Hashana, Our Father on Yom Kippur.
Based on Aroch Siach, p. 221 (Rav Shaul Yisraeli)
P'ninat Mishpat A Non-Contractor in Changing Times – part II
(based on ruling 85128 of the Eretz Hemdah-Gazit Rabbinical Courts)
Moreshet Shaul Hashem Is your Shadow – part II
Based on Siach Shaul, Pirkei Machshava V’Hadracha p. 420 – an address from 1941
Parashat Hashavua Happiness for the Right Reasons
[With painful longing, we share these divrei Torah from our co-Rosh Kollel for close to 40 years, Harav Moshe Ehrenreich zt”l.]
