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Beit Midrash
- Jewish Laws and Thoughts
- Serving Hashem, Mitzvot and Repentance
Jewish history is a history of uncertainty. The entire experience of exile and being "the other" is the supreme example of living with uncertainty. Jews for the last two thousand years always lived at the changing whim of monarchs, governments and societies. Even though Jews and their communities made long range plans and built magnificent structures, physical and spiritual, in their locations, all of these structures eventually proved to be only temporary in nature. The maskilim - the "enlightened" ones in the nineteenth century derided Jews as being "luftmesnchen" - Jews who live in the air, who have no base and no certainty. They sought to somehow remedy that situation either through secularism, socialism, communism or Zionism. But their certainty that the Jewish situation of uncertainty could be changed to certainty with the adoption of such ideologies and programs proved to be illusory and false. Europe, apparently stable and mostly peaceful for the nineteenth century in the post-Napoleonic period, exploded in two unbelievably ruinous wars in the twentieth century, destroying empires, changing borders, establishing and dismembering nations and destroying the Jewish population in Europe. How is that for uncertainty compounded? And the ironic and fearsome point of this is that practically no one saw these events as coming. We are always blindsided by life itself. It interferes with all of our best-laid plans and aspirations. At the end of the day, we are left alone to deal with the realities of life and never with what we imagined to be its certainties.
Among the certainties that Zionism advanced was that anti-Semitism would disappear and that Jewish security would be achieved through the establishment of our national state. Well, miraculously and against all odds and with great personal sacrifice and loss, the state was established, strengthened and exists in all of its glory and achievements. Yet none of the promised certainties that the state was to achieve have really come into being. Anti-Semitism is a thriving industry everywhere in the world. The State of Israel, through no fault of its own, has to a certain degree even exacerbated this problem for the non-Jewish world (and tragically enough, even sections of the Jewish world) have the luxury of being anti-Israel while piously professing that their statements and policies are not all associated with anti-Semitism. The Lord has blessed us that over five and a half million Jews are now concentrated in the state of Israel, an area of land far smaller than was the eastern European Diaspora. Our enemies speak only of our destruction so that our security is uncertain though we believe that the Lord together with our own arms and resources will help protect us somehow. All of us now realize that we face an uncertain future. But not fooling ourselves with imagined certainties is a step in the right direction of being able to live and prosper in a very uncertain world.
Rabbis in Midrash
Lessons
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Israel and the Nations A Few Minutes & Many Innovative Ideas on Antisemitism & What to do About It
As we approach the High Holidays, this short lecture (18 minutes) deals with the unfortunate situation of how Israel and the Jewish People stand against antisemitism, analyzing its cause according to Rav Kook, and how to deal with the issue pragmatically & via our prayers.
Ha'azinu PURSUIT is PERFECTION
p. Ha'azinu, Shabbat Shuva
Rav Kook deals with the question of the seemingly hopeless nature of Tshuva. For G-d Himself knows that He created us with free will, which inevitably means we will sometimes make mistakes and choose wrong. This can easily be frustrating, freezing us into inaction and ye'ush (loss of hope). If one sins even once, does he chalila have no choice but suicide?! Moreover, our Godly conscience demands justice, righteousness and perfection, but we all know this is impossible, so what's the solution? Rav Kook's innovative thinking, strongly based on chazal (our sages), offers an inciteful and important aspect to this topic, especially this time of year!
Sukkot Bug-Free Sukkah: Essential Halachic and Practical Schach Guide
How to inspect, clean, and store bamboo mats and palm branches to protect your mitzvah and holiday meals.
