Three Things Everyone Can Do to Help
Cry for help, live well today, and appreciate the Land of Israel.
I live in Israel.
I don’t know why all this is happening.
There’s nothing I can do to change anything.
But I can be helpful in many ways.
Today I’ll tell you about three of them.
I hope to elaborate more in the coming weeks.
Update: The Healthy Jew’s following 3 articles expanded on these three points. I put links here at the end of each section.
1. Cry for Help
Standard Jewish prayer is an action of service to the King of all Kings. Three time a day, we stand before God for a three-part sequence: praise, asking for needs, and gratitude. Because service-prayer involves our relationship with God, the Rambam (Maimonides) codified its laws in his Book of Love together with other regularly repeated religious rituals.
But there’s another sort of prayer. When we’re in pain or danger, the Torah instructs to cry for help:
When war comes to your land, against an adversary who attacks you, cry out with trumpets, and you will be remembered before God and saved from your enemies. (Bamidbar/Numbers 10:9)
This prayer isn’t the daily audience with the King. It’s when His subjects pound on the palace gates because a ruthless enemy is hot in pursuit. Only the King can protect them behind His impenetrable walls, embracing them with His Almighty presence.
Because war and other unusual troubles don’t come every day, this cry-prayer landed in the Rambam’s Book of Times, together with the laws of Shabbos and holidays.
And yet, Maimonides added (Guide 3:36), this prayer also expresses one of the Jewish faith’s foundational principles: God’s compassionate justice is the source of everything that happens, both good and bad.
When we are being murdered, kidnapped, and terrorized, and we reach out to God for help, we’re shifting our reliance away from our own small and self-centered world - with all its tanks and fighter jets - and joining the infinite universe of our Creator, taking refuge in His care.
Read more here:
2. Live Well
In wars against terrorists, everyone is a warrior.
Many of our brothers and sisters are fighting with guns and missiles. I’m immensely grateful to them; I wouldn’t be writing this if they hadn’t stopped Hamas before they reached Bet Shemesh.
For millions of non-combatants far from the war zone, our primary enemies are fear, stress, shock, and distraction. The enemy seeks to terrorize a thousand times more victims than they ever hope to kill or kidnap.
Bullets brutally kill bodies; terror subtly kills minds and hearts. Terror teaches that the world is a bad place, that life is more pain than joy. When it’s too much to process, it morphs into permanent stress of a thousand colors and degrees. PTSD.
Even more subtly, and perhaps even more widespread now, terror distracts minds and hearts from life. Instead of tending to myself, my family, and community, the addictive drama pulls me away from today’s reality, constantly firing at me questions that I can’t possible answer, and bombarding me with emotions that I can’t begin to face.
Will the IDF finish off Hamas? When will they enter Gaza on foot? Will they get the hostages back? Will lots of our soldiers die? Will lots of innocent Gazan civilians die? What are they doing now to the poor hostages? How are the families of the thousands of dead and wounded? What about those who don’t even know yet what happened to their loved ones? Will Hezbollah join in? Will they overrun Northern Israel because the army is occupied in the south? Will violence explode in the entire country - even reaching peaceful Bet Shemesh? Will terrorists roam around our neighborhood? What if they start breaking down our door and there’s nobody to call to fight them? What if they climb up the building’s side and climb in through the unlocked porch door? Should I fight them with a knife or jump out a window?
For today, all this is drama. Negative drama, but drama nonetheless. It’s all part of the enemy’s plan. They want to stop us from living, caring, connecting, being.
The solution begins by importing the battlefield into our own minds and hearts. For the millions of us huddled in our homes, the fighting isn’t happening anywhere “out there,” but in the hundreds of little choices we make each day.
We win the war when we don’t stop life every five minutes to check the news, when we smile at strangers who have fear all over their faces, when we play with our scared children, when we’re hard at work in Torah study and prayer, when we go out for a refreshing run, and when we get a good night’s sleep.
There’s no more important time to take good care of our physical and emotional health: not only to make living possible, but because that’s where all good choices begin. Then we can expand outwards to care for and connect with other scared people, near and far.
Everyone can battle terror by shifting from distracting drama to healthy Jewish living, especially during terrible times.
Read more here:
3. Israel the Land
The word Israel means two interconnected things:
The People of Israel, known as Jews.
The Land of Israel, whose borders very roughly correspond with the modern State of Israel.
If you’ve ever read the Torah - which is basically the narrative of the Jewish people’s birth and growth - you’ll have noticed how the arc of its history bends in one direction: the People of Israel reaching, inheriting, and living in the Land of Israel.
This observation isn’t controversial, and has nothing to do with religious Jews’ differing opinions about secular political Zionism. You can believe the State of Israel’s government is the harbinger of Mashiach (Messiah), the worst desecration of God’s name in history, or anything in between, but the basic fact remains: there is no story of Israel the People that’s disconnected from Israel the Land.
Following three thousand years of turbulent Jewish history, this week’s unfolding tragedy isn’t only an attack on Israel the People, but also on Israel the Land. This is not just another pogrom in Poland on some random Jews. (In truth, those too were a direct result of our spiritual and physical distance from the Land.)
Yet the horrific stories and images coming out from Israel don’t portray the Land in which its People are suffering and dying. They only show depraved violence of people on people. Even the tales of courage and hope are about people.
To find meaning in all the madness, we must look deeply at the Land that is its People’s destination, to appreciate Natural Israel’s messages of beauty, health, and spirit. Beneath the blood and suffering of its children, Israel the Land calls out for us to appreciate, value, cherish it.
Many people, far more capable than I, are hard at work telling this week’s stories of Israel the People: the anguish, anger, fear, faith and fortitude. After consulting with my rabbi, it seems that my small contribution is to tell the stories of Israel the Land. Therefore, beginning next week, in addition to the regular Wednesday article about healthy Jewish living, The Healthy Jew will, with God’s help, publish every Sunday about Natural Israel. We are opening a second front.
If only for a few moments each week, I invite you to exchange the images of pain and fear with pictures of purpose and hope. Moshe’s (Moses) failed spies cried that Israel is a “land that eats its inhabitants”; let’s join the response of Yehoshua (Joshua) and Calev (Caleb): “the land is very, very good!”
Because of safety concerns, and sensitivity to our nation’s mourning, I won’t now be traipsing across Israel’s landscapes and posting lengthy travelogues. Expect shorter insights, images, and clips. The details will develop over time.
Clear out a little bit of space in your mind, heart, and email inbox for the Land of Israel. If you care to, share The Healthy Jew by email and social media, so that more people may join the war effort.
Read more here:
Three Suggestions: Cry to God for help. Take good care of yourself and others. Learn and tell about the virtues of Israel the Land.
This is the most on-target, sincere, wise, and important document I have read regarding ourselves, meaning those of us fighting at home, should read. I will be sure to pass this on to others. May you continue to find strength!
Thank you for this post, yes, and will do.