My daughter called me from Jerusalem. “You won’t believe what happened.”
“What?”
“I was on my daily walk, without my phone or my watch, just enjoying the fresh air, when suddenly the air-raid sirens sounded. But I wasn’t near my regular bomb shelter!”
She paused and then explained: “A few weeks ago, I was thinking about this exact scenario. What if the sirens go off while I’m out walking? What will I do? And today it happened.”
So what did she do? She ran to the nearest building and sat on the first staircase she could find. She waited there, alone, for six long minutes. The most chilling part? She told me the story like it was a normal, everyday occurrence.
Missiles being fired at civilians. People sprinting for cover. Strangers hiding in stairwells. There’s nothing normal about it! But when it happens day after day, week after week, we adjust. It becomes our normal.
We get used to walking around under threat, and we go about our lives without thinking about it too much. Until something comes along and shakes us out of our fog.
Something like what happened last night, when an antisemite casually walked up to a Jewish event in Washington D.C. and executed two Israelis at point-blank range in cold blood.
This didn’t happen in Tel Aviv or Sderot or even Paris. It was the US capital, Washington, D.C. The country that is supposed to be the safest in the world, with the most powerful army and most capable police force. Here, two Jews, a young couple simply attending an event, were hunted down and killed.
Make no mistake, our enemies are everywhere. Their hatred knows no borders—it’s not limited to Gaza, London, Paris, or Jerusalem. Right outside my own home here in NYC, there’s a “Free Palestine” flag flying!
We’re being battered on all sides, and it’s brutal.
But what can—and should—we actually do?
First and foremost, we remember who we are and respond accordingly. We are proud Jews—proud of our heritage, our history, our lives, and our country.
The world doesn’t need less Judaism. It needs more!
So we don’t hide and cower in fear. We hold our heads high, and walk around openly and proudly declaring our faith.
We fill the world with light. More kindness. More Torah. More mitzvot. More Shabbat. More kosher. More tefillin. More shul. More tzedakah.
This is not a time to shrink or hold back. It’s time to shine, to plant ourselves here and say: We’re not going anywhere! You can’t scare us off. We have a task. G-d wants us to elevate the world and prepare it for Moshiach’s coming. And that’s exactly what we’ll do.
May he come speedily and return all our hostages, bringing true peace to every corner of the world.