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.