English Blog

Their Joy Is Our Joy

Thursday, November 30, 2023 - 2:02 PM

My heart overflowed this pure joy this week, as I watched video after video of the hostages returning home.

I cried when I saw little Abigail Edan coming home. Hamas murdered both her parents and took her hostage alone—a 3-year-old! She turned 4 in captivity.

I cried as I watched 13-year-old Gali Tarshansky running into her mother’s arms after 54 days in captivity, her mother’s relief tangible.

I cried when I saw Yaffa Adar, 85, the oldest person taken hostage, safely back in Israel.

I cried when I caught that first glimpse of Doron Katz Asher and her children, 2-year-old Raz and 4-year-old Aviv finally coming home.

I cried seeing Emily Hand—who lost her mother to cancer several years ago—reunited with her father and siblings, who initially thought she had been killed by Hamas on October 7.

I feel it as if it’s my joy; I cry as if they’re my children.

And I know I’m not alone. In Sydney, London, Cape Town, Thailand, Panama, Honolulu, Paris, Miami … across the entire globe Jews are glued to the news, feeling the same joy and relief I did.

Watching those long-awaited hugs and kisses … their joy is not an individual joy, it’s our joy!

This is what makes us unique—the true strength of our nation.

We are dispersed across the world, but our hearts remain united. It doesn’t matter which language we speak or which clothes we wear; we are one nation with one heart.

Which other nation can say the same? Where else do you find a nation who feels the joy of those mothers as their own? Who cares about a 4-year-old child as if she were their own?

Gali’s mom’s joy is the joy of every single Jew in the entire world. Emily is our child and Abigail is our child!

This is what makes the nation of Israel so unique.

But it doesn’t only apply in times of crisis. This is how we should be living every day!

When Jack makes a bar mitzvah, it’s my joy too, because we are all family. When Dina struggles, it’s my problem too. When Yankel marries off his child, it’s my simcha too!

This is the long-term lesson we need to take with us from this week: Let’s take the intense love and unity we feel this week, and infuse it into our daily lives—every thought, speech, and action.

Thank you, Hashem, for bringing home our brothers and sisters. Let’s continue praying for the release of all the remaining hostages, and for the IDF to continue its holy work.

I Was Accosted Outside My House

Thursday, November 9, 2023 - 11:59 AM

On my way home from Shacharit this week, a woman screamed at me with intense animosity, “Free Palestine!”

“Do you even know what that means?” I yelled back.

“Free Palestine” is anti-Semitism in its truest form. It’s a call for genocide—getting rid of every Jew in Israel.

And we see clearly that what happens in Israel spills out into the rest of the world. In every major city across the globe, on the streets, in schools, colleges, coffee shops and restaurants, Jews are being targeted.

I couldn’t drive my 11-year-old to his school on the Upper West Side this weekend because of the NY marathon, so I allowed him to ride his bicycle. But I was afraid. I reconsidered 1,000 times. I insisted he let me know as soon as he arrived.

I have a daughter who takes the subway to school every day. Like every parent, I wonder, “Will my children be safe?” They’re city kids; they’re used to having a certain amount of independence and free rein. I’ve been teaching them Krav Maga so they can learn to defend themselves.

Everything we encounter, everything that happens around us—yes, even anti-Semitism—contains a lesson for us.

It was early in the morning when I was accosted by that Jew-hating woman. She was still holding her coffee as she spewed her hatred and animosity at me.

We need to do the same thing, but with kindness. When our eyes are still blurry and we’re still waiting for our caffeine fix to set in, reach out to someone with effusive kindness!

Hamas hunted us down in the most barbaric way possible. It wasn’t just hatred, it was hatred on steroids.

We need to do the same thing with kindness. We can’t be satisfied with regular acts of kindness. That won’t suffice now. In the face of such deep darkness, we need kindness on steroids.

We need to wake up every day with a mission in mind, determined to ignite a spiritual fire. How? By doing one mitzvah, then another, and another, with no end. There is a fire raging and the only way to combat it is to stoke our own spiritual fire.

Put on tefillin, study more Torah, keep Shabbat, go to shul, pray, light Shabbat candles … do it all on steroids. Add light. Add warmth. Illuminate the world with the fire of love of Hashem and love of each other.

That’s our secret weapon—our unity and our loving Father Who will never abandon us. We will get through this as a stronger nation with a stronger connection to G-d.

Dear World

Thursday, November 2, 2023 - 11:39 AM

Dear World,

Listen closely: You will never break us!

When my grandfather was deported to Auschwitz, and his wife and children were murdered by the Germans in the gas chambers, he was traumatized and deeply and permanently scarred, but not broken.

When my other grandfather grew up an orphan in Israel in the 1940s, after seeing the Turkish police beat his father to death and watching his mother die from starvation a few weeks later, he suffered tremendously, but he wasn’t broken.

When our nation fought for its very survival in 1948, ‘56, ‘67 and ‘73 it was rough. We lost tens of thousands of our soldiers, with many more severely wounded and deeply traumatized, but we didn’t break.

Now, in 2023, Hamas has murdered, burnt and beheaded 1,400 Jews. Peace-loving civilians. Children. Babies. Thousands more are injured, hundreds of thousands are displaced, and 250 are in captivity, including babies, toddlers, and the elderly.

And no one cares. The world is silent.

Where’s the outrage? Where’s the noise? Where are all the human rights activists? How is it that when it’s Jews being massacred—in the worst attack against our people since the Holocaust—we are met with silence?

“How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and the world kept silent?” Elie Wiesel wondered in his Holocaust memoir, Night.

Yet here we are, almost 90 years later, wondering the very same.

And more than silence, the world marches and demonstrates for Hamas. How can anyone witness the Hamas atrocities and then go out and support them? But they do. They tear down posters of innocent hostages—Babies! Children!—and chant for death to the Jews.

It is absolutely astounding.

And yet, we are not broken. Horrified, yes. But broken? No.

How do we do it?

We have a secret weapon that we received 3,335 years ago along with the Torah: faith. A firm belief in G-d’s protection.

A Jew never breaks, and a Jew never gives up. We have G-d on our side. We have incredible soldiers who are sacrificing their lives for us. We have a nation united like never before. These are the things that will protect us.

That is our response to the haters who rip down posters and spew their hatred in the streets. We will not be broken by your lies! We will not be shattered by your silence! We will not be crushed by your hypocrisy!

No country in the world would tolerate the butchering of their children like Israel is expected to. We are allowed to defend ourselves!

Your threats and hatred only further unite us and cement our commitment to one another and to G-d.

No matter how bad things get, you will never break us.

Our response has to be to stand taller and prouder. We will display our Judaism with pride and joy. We will walk with our kippot on our heads. We will pray more, study more Torah. We will walk around with our tzitzit visible. We refuse to cower and hide or try to blend in.

The mother of Ori Megidish, who was rescued from Hamas captivity this week, was praying for her safe return. Even in the depths of her pain, while her daughter was still a hostage, she said, “I love you, G-d.”

And that’s what we say now, too. “I love you G-d and I love you all my fellow Jews!” We are alone, we have nobody to rely on besides for G-d and each other.

May we see the safe return of all the remaining hostages imminently.

Rabbi Uriel Vigler

An Unbroken Jew