We just asked G-d on Yom Kippur to have ‘rachmonus’ (compassion – ‘rachamim’) for us. But the ‘spiritual laws of reciprocity’ demand that we first show ‘rachmonus’ in our everyday life before requesting it On High. This is the distinguishing hallmark of Jewish people – compassion. The Talmudic states clearly that if there is a Jew who doesn’t show compassion, you may question his/her Jewish identity!
And that includes compassion for our ‘enemy’. The Midrash shares with us that when the angels wanted to sing upon seeing the Pharaonic Egyptian army-chariots and horsemen drowning, G-d reproved them saying “My creatures are downing and you wish to sing??” The Talmud states clearly that our relief and elation at victory should never make us forget the misfortunes afflicting others (Talmud Brachot 31a).
Today we are being challenged in the same way. Israel has fended off a murderous enemy after suffering a horrific provocation that cost twelve hundred Jewish lives. This enemy that has now embedded itself in hospitals, food distribution centres, even in UN relief agencies like UNRWA. This enemy has forced us to destroy them in places and spaces where they cruelly exploited the citizenry of whole cities as human shields. The enemy doesn’t value life. Just their appetite for power and murder – even at the expense of their own people by the thousands. Of course, a hypocritical world would like us to practice collective suicide in order to live up to our reputation as compassionate Jews. But no-one has the right to passively give their life up in the face of imminent murder – an intention made crystal clear by the enemy in international forums and in their own written charter. But does that exempt us from compassion for the thousands of innocents who have had to die due to the exploitative heartlessness of the enemy?
When Yaakov was about to meet his brother, chieftain Eisav, we are told he was mighty afraid. Not because of Eisav’s massive military power. He was afraid that he would have to kill him to save the future Jewish nation. That is our fear, that despite our compassion, we must at times stand up, be strong, and destroy the enemy that seeks to wipe us off the map – from the River (Euphrates) to the Sea (Mediterranean). Little does the enemy know that these are the exact words of the Torah defining the borders of the Holy land, G-d’s land. Israel is not on the market. The UN and European Common Market can stop their pitiful attempts to re-assign Israel’s ownership.
But what should be our attitude to the thousands of innocents that the enemy has criminally exploited by embedding itself amongst them, leading to their death? By building enemy tunnels and weapons storages under houses, apartment-towers, hospitals, and relief buildings. The answer is – empathy and compassion. This is who we Jews are. Our names appear on the donor boards and buildings of hospitals, theatres, and charities, world-wide. Our contribution to the world’s welfare is legendary – and just note the disproportionate number of Jewish Nobel Prize winners. And all due to our compassionate genes – our innate ‘rachmonus’ that has tangibly assisted every society we have every lived in. What other national grouping of people can claim such generosity of spirit and tangibility?
That’s what a Jew is! Not your media driven Nazi-like portraiture that is being ‘Goebled up’ by a hungry media hunting for gory footage and stories of tragedy, real or scripted! Israel doesn’t allow journos to be embedded with their troops, for very good security reasons. The result is bad press – because world media is neither compassionate nor truthful! The alternative – the enemy propaganda. Great footage and easily tilted against Israel – the price for the journo’s permission to enter enemy space.
Nevertheless, when innocents, adults and children, die as pawns in the enemy’s callous hands, we must cry and feel their families’ pain. We must empathise with their tragedy. We must donate to and give to their relief agencies. We must free them from their cynical masters who rule over them at the end of a gun. Andt under no circumstances must our angels sing! And we ourselves must take example from the celestial beings and emulate them. No person deserves to die the way that death perforce is being inflicted on these human shields. We must demonstrate our compassion and practice it in reality, not just mouth it.
But not at the expense of committing national suicide. The enemy has made it very clear that it seeks our total destruction and eradication. We must defend ourselves. Yet we have released many hundreds of enemy murderers to bring home our hostages and dead bodies of hostages murdered by the enemy. Which country would put into play hardened repeat murderers, in exchange for a dead body? That’s also an expression of our ‘rachmonus’.
But such compassion must be extended to all the innocents who are suffering. The suffering inflicted by the enemy on its own citizens in the heartless quest for blood. We must feed, provide medicine, and help protect those rendered helpless by the enemy’s dastardly strategies and goals.
We shouldn’t expect the world to understand this. Of course they will cat-call us ‘baby murderers’. That’s what the media has ‘educated’ our nation and other nations to see us as. The big lie is the successful lie (Goebbels, again) And politicians have also said the same albeit in more sophisticated ‘goebble-digook’. But we are the oldest extant civilization in the history of the world. We carers for the world, even a world that doesn’t care for us.
Our message to the world is this week’s Torah reading, the most moving piece of prose in the whole Torah: viz. Ha’azinu (meaning, don’t just listen, but really hear). Don’t just listen to the falsetto crooning of preening ‘world leaders’ who only have their own domestic political calculations at heart. Listen to the advice of an ancient wisdom which has proven itself throughout the sands of time.
Listen!