There are no words to describe the feelings we felt this week, beginning with the preemptive Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and concluding with Iran’s direct missile hit on the Soroka Hospital emergency room, which miraculously was evacuated 24 hours earlier.
Yet, we continue to gain strength from our tradition.
It has been a week of dichotomies. We have suffered loss and heartache, with our friends and family from Sinai Temple trying to get back to Los Angeles along with Israelis stranded in the United States desperately wanting to get home with their families. At the same time, I attended two Brit milahs, welcoming our youngest boys into the covenant of the Jewish people, and a wedding of a young couple.
We sit here on the cusp of freedom, freeing the people of Iran from the Islamic regime and freeing our own people in Israel from decades of terror.
This Shabbat we read the narrative of the spies. Ten spies return to say there is no chance of victory. The people in the land are giants and will never be defeated.
Yet Joshua and Caleb return with a different response. They have the inspiration, hope and determination that this is a moment of historic consequences, a time of action to ensure the foundation for the future of our people.
We pray in this Shabbat of so much uncertainty for the healing of the wounded, for the souls of those murdered by terror and for the hope that in the Shabbatot in the weeks to come, Joshua’s vision will prosper and once again lead us to the thriving Promised Land we so deeply know and care about.
