Both Are True

Thursday night The Husband and I escorted our son to the chupah.  It was an experience of inutterable joy, mixed with the "fear and trembling" of awe, as we stood in the presence of kedusha, of holiness. Standing at the chupah, I thought the whole thing might just lift off at any moment; it seemed as if we rose ever so close to the gates of Shemayim (the heavens).  And then we danced.  Oh, how we danced.

On Friday we entered Shabbat.  On Saturday night we celebrated still, and on Sunday The Husband and I headed home.  I heard no news until this morning.

My mind cannot process the information; I cannot fathom how one world can encompass such great happiness and hope -- and at the same time absolute war, terror and death. I've only just found out that a family of Jews was attacked as they slept. Inside their home. In Itamar... in Samaria, the cradle of Jewish history and civilization. All but two in a family of seven monstrously murdered. Some Arab savage, no doubt a Muslim, decided to behead a three-month-old baby girl for the simple fact of her Jewishness.  Such horror is unspeakable, and yet this is what occurred... on the holy Shabbes.

It was just last week that I posted a photo of Itamar.  I recommend that you study the so-called "West Bank" at this webpage  http://www.torahalive.com/Shomron.htm, where it is explained that

Itamar stands as a pillar among settlements because of their die hard faith and courage in standing up for the Land of Israel in the face of those who hate them. Clinging to the Land of Yosef HaTzadik. The place where Yehoshua buried the bones of Yosef can be seen from here at a lookout point. Itamar is on a hill surrounded by higher hills. In this Guv HaHar Region stands the Holy Mountains of Har Gerizim and Har Eval the very mountains mentioned in the Torah. HaShem tells Moshe rabbeinu, "Now it shall be, when HaShem Your G-d has brought you into the Land which you go to possess, that you shall put the blessing on Har Gerizim and the curse on Har Eval"  

 Below on the left is Har Grizim and on the right Har Eval.

 

 

 
from Claire Berlinski. See also Rick Richman, Daled Amos and Rachel Gordon.

 

The blessing and the curse...   On the one hand, I see that these two holy mountains together illustrate this very moment that I occupy in time, but I also know that we are in the presence of something that surpasses all understanding.  

What do we do but pray to Hashem that He will continue to bless us with great blessings, that He grant us, our son and his kallah (bride) and all the nation of Israel, a good and long life.

And also pray that He should avenge the blood of Udi and Ruth Fogel, young Yoav, Eldad and little Hadas HY"D -- our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, our children and our babies... killed by antisemites in the Land of Israel.

 

 

 

 

Ruth Gordon, whose neighbors were murdered:

.... No matter how much we suffer, our faith grows ever stronger. We channel our pain into positive actions, standing solidly by our resolve never to succumb to the use of violence against the brutality that smacks us in the face again and again. For every Jew murdered, more orchards, more fields, more greenhouses will be planted; another house, another neighborhood, another village will be built, with the compassion and benevolence that we learn from the Torah and will continue to teach to our children.

Ours is the same legacy of faith that the Fogels, Ehud and Ruth and their three innocent children, have left us. Together they built a home in Netzarim, in Gush Katif, only to be cast out of their home, their lives uprooted, for our enemies to trample upon its ruins in a fantasy of peace that has never been realized. Undaunted, they relocated to the town of Ariel, and then finally to Itamar – just two short years ago. Rabbi Ehud found his place as one of the rabbis in the school here and Ruth continued to build their beautiful family in their new home. Together, they planted an olive orchard and taught their children to love the people of Israel, to love the Torah and to love the Land of Israel. Together they were snatched away from us by the brutal hands of bloodthirsty terrorists.

May the Fogels’ souls be bound in the bundle of life....

 

And we all say... Ameyn.

Comments

[Hope]

I've really been in shock since hearing of this horrible tragedy yesterday. I'm praying for the surviving children (there are 3), Tamar, Roi, and Shai. I can't fathom what they are going through. I nanny for children who lost their mother, but losing both parents and 3 siblings in such a brutal manner is incomprehensible- may G-d help and comfort them throughout their lives. Praying that the Fogel's blood will be avenged and that there may be no more victims of terror and hatred in Israel. Hugs to you, Yael. I thought of you when I heard; how crushing to go from such a simcha to hearing the news and seeing the faces of this precious family. May G-d bless, protect, and strengthen you and your family. You do not stand alone in your stand for Israel.

[Mannie Sherberg]

These jihadi ghouls are certainly equal-opportunity butchers, but they seem to especially relish murdering children. Over the years, they've killed Israeli kids in discos, kids on school buses, kids in diners, kids at seders -- and now kids in their beds. Our good friend Tom Glennon reminded me just today that the Chechen counterpart of the Itamar murderers pulled off the infamous Beslan massacre just a few years ago -- a wholesale slaughter of children. The list goes on and on. What we're seeing here is the revival of something we thought had ended in the early pages of Genesis -- child sacrifice. Indeed, it has become a central element of the jihad; wherever the jihad appears, child sacrifice follows in its wake -- including, in the case of suicide bombers and Iranian mine-sweepers, the sacrifice of Muslim children. Claire Berlinski has called this behavior "psychotic;" it is even worse than psychotic -- it is demonic. If, as Abraham Joshua Heschel insisted, the God of Israel is the God of Pathos, there must be copious weeping in the heavens these days.

[Yael]

Hope, check your email.