A Family Responsibility for a Nation That Dwells Alone

3/22/24

The only thing worse than an internet troll is someone who engages with one. For the most part, that is a golden rule worth abiding by, whether when scrolling social media or reading an online news site. Comments by people one disagrees with abound, but the sensible thing is just to let it pass. Nobody is convincing anyone anyway! 

But this week, I almost broke that rule when reading a Letter to the Editor in the MV Times in which a local lady suggested that folks on Martha's Vineyard should educate themselves so "they can better contextualize what happened on October 7."

Reading this was enough to shatter my commitment to any rules, no matter how golden. That an American woman, sitting in the comfort of her Martha's Vineyard home, was asking people to better contextualize the targeted murder, rape, and kidnapping of 1400 innocent Israelis greatly disturbed me.

So I sat down and penned a letter writing that "I wonder if God forbid, a Jewish family on MV were to be slain as an 'act of resistance to Israel,' would the author also ask the MV Times readership to contextualize their murders, or does her call only apply to the unlucky mom in Be'eri who--in some twisted version of liberalism-- deserved to be butchered in bed." 

Ultimately, the MV Times wrote back that they are trying to keep letters to the Editor focused on local issues and asked if I could reconsider my submission. It's likely a sensible move on their part, and I agreed, inadvertently retaining a commitment to my golden rule. 

I guess it's easy for people to forget what happened on October 7. Or perhaps for their view of a perfect world to blind them from the practicality of what needs to happen--however painful and unfortunate--to ensure such an attack won't happen again. 

If you're impartial and people in Israel are not related to you, it's easy to be washed away in the bliss of moral superiority and assert that Israel should somehow not eliminate the threat that wishes to see its destruction. But when it's your family, Israelis are no longer mere pawns in a puzzle of foreign policy but brothers and sisters with whom one must stand, no matter how unpopular the opinion. 

And boy, is standing with Israel unpopular today. Just this week, The Economist published a widely circulated cover of a lone Israeli flag struggling to stand amid stormy winds, titled: "Israel Alone."

Well, that's okay. Israel has been alone before. Israel will prevail. G-d is with Israel. Her people are with her too.

On Sunday, we celebrate Purim, commemorating the Jewish people's victory over Haman's plot in ancient Persia to "destroy, massacre, and exterminate all the Jews, young and old, children, and women, on a single day" (Esther 3:13), a narrative eerily reminiscent of October 7. 

The Jews were alone in the Purim story. They were a people "scattered and dispersed among the people of the region," a wandering nation among one hundred twenty-seven others. They were more lonely then than they are now when most Americans and people of good conscience overwhelmingly supported her.

In the Purim story, the only path to survival was a forceful defense and total handicap of the enemy. The same is true today as Hamas openly vows to repeat their massacre of October 7 "again and again."

But just as G-d ensured the survival of the Jewish people during the story of Purim, and as he has done for us myriads of times throughout our tumultuous history, we can be sure that G-d's salvation will be seen again soon in our times, bringing victory for Israel and peace for all her neighbors.

הן עם לבדד ישכון, ובגוים לא יתחשב." (במדבר כג,ט)"

"There is a people that dwells apart, not reckoned among the nations." (Numbers 23:9)