As a Kiryat Arba resident, every Shabbos morning I try to walk down to Me’arat HaMachpela for vatikin/Daf Yomi followed by Sfat Emet study in the Beit Schneerson neighborhood of Hebron. February 28, Shabbos, was different. My childhood friend was visiting me, a 70-year-old widower, with his fiancée, and neither were vatikin people. Normally, I would take such guests to Friday night davening in the Me’ara. That davening has a magical feel, and Shabbos guests always enjoy it, whether they go with the lively Carlebach minyan or choose a more sedate minyan. But this being Ramadan, the Me’ara is closed to Jews for five Fridays. (On those five Friday mornings my Daf Yomi minyan davens in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood.) So instead, we davened at 8:00 a.m. in the Me’ara.
For two months, since the start of
January, we had been fretting with uncertainty over what was going on between
Iran and the United States. It seemed like Donald Trump was doing everything
possible to get the Iranians to sign a negotiated treaty regarding their
nuclear power program. We found this mind-boggling as well as off-putting.
During December, the Iranian regime had just put down popular protests by
ordinary Iranian citizens, killing over 40,000 in cold blood. We asked: Why
reward these murderers with negotiations about their nuclear program? Why even
talk to them?
Yet there were constant rumors that
Israel was about to attack Iran and that the negotiations were just a ruse.
After Israel weakened Iran in Operation Rising Lion, in June of 2025, now was
the time to finish the job, taking the steps necessary to create a regime
change in Iran. Still, it was unclear whether Israel was really planning this
and whether they had synchronized with the United States. Moreover, was such
synchronization even possible?
* * *
On Friday, February 27, our town rabbi, Rabbi
Avraham Yitzchak Schwarz, gave his regular online Friday dvar Torah. Yet
at the end, he added a comment which eluded most listeners. He said, “This
Shabbos, the home command recommends that you remain near bomb shelters.” Hmmm.
Shabbos morning, at 7:45, I walked
down to Hebron with my friend and his fiancée, for the 8:00 a.m. Ashkenazi
minyan. At 8:20, in the middle of Psukei D’zimra, there was a sudden
air-raid siren, such as we hadn’t heard in eight months, since the 12-day war
of last June. I immediately understood. Israel had begun an attack on Iran, and
Iran was retaliating! I didn’t need to hear any report or read any article. It
was obvious! Previously air-raid sirens had made me nervous and worried. This
time, I was relieved and happy, almost ecstatic.
Inside Me’arat HaMachpela, there is
no bomb shelter, but the magnificent edifice built by Herod 2,000 years ago,
sitting over the original graves of the Patriarchs, is surrounded on four sides
by enormous thick walls that have withstood Middle Eastern earthquakes for 2,000
years, and it has thick sloped ceilings built 1,500 years ago by the Moslem
conquerors, or 750 years ago by the Mamluks. Just to be safe, we moved into the
Mamlukian “Abraham Hall” and continued Psukei D’zimra. The fact is that
almost all the missiles sent from Iran are aimed at Tel Aviv. Bli ayin hara,
not a single bomb has fallen on Kiryat Arba or Jewish Hebron during the past 58
years.
There were more sirens in the
middle of our walk back up the hill to Kiryat Arba. In Kiryat Arba, at 11:30 a.m.,
I was getting ready to make Kiddush. My wife was making salad, and another
air-raid siren went off. This time we were home, and we descended with our
guests to our building’s bomb shelter. When the women of the building declared
it permissible to leave, we went upstairs, and my wife went back to her salad
making. Yet, still another air-raid siren sounded, and we descended once more.
Finally, at 12:10, back in our apartment, I said, “Let’s make Kiddush and Motzi
quickly, and then we’ll finish the salad making.” That day, the first
day of Roaring Lion, 80 missiles were fired at Israel.
* * *
Within hours, we knew that Israel
had eliminated Ali Khamenei, the supreme spiritual leader of Iran since 1989,
and much of the country’s political and military leadership. We also knew that
both Israel and the Americans had jointly wrought enormous destruction on
ships, warplanes, and weaponry. For the first time in history, Israel and
America were fighting a war together, side by side as equals.
How did we know all of that in the
middle of Shabbos? Non-Jewish soldiers in Hebron heard the news and told their
Jewish comrades, and the word spread. I remembered sitting in Shearith Israel 60
years ago on Yom Kippur. How did we know at 2:30 in the afternoon that the
Orioles were beating the Yankies 3-2 in the World Series? I still don’t know. I’ve
never figured that one out.
What we didn’t know until the end
of Shabbos was that our older son Ze’ev, who works as a kashrut mashgiach
both in civilian life and in his reserve duty, was now heading back to the army
to oversee food preparations for many hundreds of soldiers.
All this was three days before
Purim, and there was a blissful feeling of Israel having wiped out a modern-day
Haman. The next day, Sunday, I got an email from Where What When, asking
if I was interested in writing about the war, and I responded positively. The
prevailing mood in my town was “Ding Dong, the witch is dead,” and in that
mood, I was very happy to write an article.
* * *
Monday morning, Ta’anis Esther, the
Iranians bombed Israel 60 times. Me’arat HaMachpela had been closed to all, and
my Daf Yomi minyan had moved to the Avraham Avinu synagogue, a two-minute walk
from the Me’ara. At the end of our shiur, my friend Yisrael Ze’ev, my
Sfat Emet teacher, invited me to his nearby home to learn with him the Sefat
Emet readings that I had missed on Shabbos morning. We learned three of them,
but the most startling one was just seven lines long. It was the second reading
from the section about Purim, from 5674 (1914) at the start of the First World
War:
It
seems like the Purim miracle was a preparation for the Second Temple, because
the Jews needed strength and fortitude. By way of that miracle, they were
spiritually elevated and thus enabled to return to the Temple. It is
likewise possible that in the future there will be such a miracle before the Redemption.
As the Talmud states, our sages said (Sanhedrin 97b), “He will confront them
with a king such as Haman, and the people will repent…” That miracle will be a
preparation for the Redemption.
I went home marveling over that
Sfat Emet. I thought about all the young people who were becoming closer to G-d,
precisely in response to all the attacks on Israel over the preceding two
years. I thought about the secular young people taken captive from the Nova
party and held in Hamas tunnels for hundreds of days, who, after they were
finally released, turned to Hashem and began giving inspiring talks all over
the world, advocating Jewish spirituality.
That night, we celebrated the first
day of Purim in Kiryat Arba, while our son Ze’ev read the Megillah a number of
times for various groups of soldiers completing guard-duty stints.
Wednesday was Shushan Purim in
Jerusalem, observed here in Kiryat Arba as a second day of Purim because of
uncertainty about the wall surrounding Biblical Hebron. Late Wednesday my
soldier son visited us in uniform with his 16-year-old daughter, an eleventh
grader in Ulpanat Baharan, a fine girls high school. I pulled out the Sfat Emet
I had enjoyed so much and taught it to my family. But then my granddaughter
said, “Saba, my friends and I have all heard this Sfat Emet already! It’s been
viral on the web….”
* * *
Almost two weeks later, it looks
like we’re in this conflict for the long haul. We want an Iranian regime change
that will remove the 45-year-old existential threat to the Jewish people, but
it isn’t going to happen in a single day. True, “the witch is dead,” but he has
been replaced by his son, who is worse. And who is to know if there are not
another 99 “witches” waiting in the wings for the moment that the son is taken
out as well?
I also realize that American public
opinion is divided over this war. We have to pray that Donald Trump will hold
firm on his commitment, shared by Netanyahu, to continue the struggle until the
regime change occurs. Iranian activists promise that there is a moderate
Iranian majority waiting for the right moment to fight. Thousands of Kurdish
fighters are preparing to enter battle as well against the Iranians. U.S.
aircraft carriers are sitting in the Middle East. All of these things point to
a serious commitment to see this through. I have reason to believe that we will
see the regime change happen, even if we undergo some hard times first. Even if
daily Iranian attacks are down from 80 ballistic missiles to 20, Jews are being
hurt.
We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. In some ways, with Hezbollah bombing Israel, and with Iran’s desperate acts of bombing all the nations around it, it looks like this war may wax larger before it becomes smaller. Rava said (Sanhedrin 98b), “Let the Mashiach come and let me not see him.” The tumultuous events leading to the Redemption may involve much pain, but we pray for those times all the same. We only pray that they will be accompanied by mercy and
