The War of the Jew

If the Lord will not guard a city, [its] watcher keeps his vigil in vain. (Psalms 127:1) 

Yair Golan is right. So is Avigdor Lieberman. Israeli society suffers from an inability for all communities to share the burden of responsibility for the Jewish nation.  

Our father Isaac blessed Esau that he and his descendants would live by the sword. Hashem blessed Ishmael and his descendants that his hand would be against the nations, and their hands would be against him.  

No such blessing was given to Ya’akov and his children.  

King Solomon tells us if the Lord will not guard a city, its watcher keeps vigil in vain. (Psalms 127:1).  

We win with Hashem’s blessing, which we can merit with mitzvot. When we don’t win, the 2,711 page Talmud begins with Hashem’s lamenting the tragedies that befall us when we fail to perform mitzvot.  

Recent history is living proof. 

When so much as a fox touches a border of Israel, alarms are triggered throughout IDF bases for miles away as hundreds of soldiers throw on their gear and man their posts, ready to defend the country. 

There is no way we were asleep for six hours the morning of October 7 as thousands of terrorists cut our walls and infiltrated the country. The IDF didn’t send in planes, helicopters, tanks, commando units – nothing – for six hours! 

Such a state of unreadiness is unprecedented in the history of our military. Even on the eve of the Yom Kippur War, over 100,000 troops were on alert, and most of the country knew war was imminent.  

What happened on Simchat Torah was not natural.  

Neither was the aftermath . . .  

According to the IDF, the most optimistic scenarios of a war in Gaza and South Lebanon projected thousands of rockets pummeling our infrastructure every day, thousands of our sons and daughters killed in action, and large areas along the northern border and the Golan captured.  

However, contrary to the IDF’s projection, the past year saw the obliteration of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria, with the body of Eretz Yisrael still intact. We conquered Gaza and all of Hermon and destroyed the entire Syrian military by suffering casualties that not even the most optimistic IDF projections thought possible. 

Iran fired over 350 ballistic missiles at us, and in these attacks, they took more casualties in their attack than we did. Even the Palestinians had more casualties.  

We won through God’s blessing — the only way the Jewish nation wins wars.  

Remember the Battle with Amalek Every Day 

Whenever Moses raised his arm, Israel prevailed. But whenever he lowered his arm, Amalek prevailed. (Exodus 17:11) 

Our beloved sons and daughters serve Israel in a military capacity for three years.  

We Jews serve Hashem all our life. We raise our arms, like our teacher Moshe, to merit His blessing in battle. We are on guard all of our lives.  

A soldier gets time off, extended vacations, and a discharge date. A Jew gets zero breaks. Even his rest day is in the service of our Master of Legions.  

A soldier battles a physical enemy who can be defeated. Once these enemies are defeated, the war is over, and soldiers can go home.  

A Jew battles an enemy, the Other Side – embodied as the Yetzer Hara – that can never be defeated. It’s always there. In a military war, as one side gets stronger, the other weakens. In the Jewish War, the stronger we get, the stronger the Other Side becomes.  

In physical warfare, some soldiers serve in the front, doing the most difficult and strenuous duties. Some serve in locations far from the battlefield.  

In the Jewish War, everybody is on the front lines. Every action he or she takes or doesn’t take impacts the entire battlefield. They are all on the front lines doing the most difficult work.  

Our National Responsibility  

Knowing that God determines the outcome of the Jewish War, and that the most important part of victory is His blessing, we need as many mitzvot missiles as we can get.  

Just like the 5% of the country serving in the IDF is barely enough to meet our military needs, 14% of the country serving Hashem for His blessings isn’t enough, either.  

The great advance in winning the Jewish War is encouraging the rest of our nation to merit Hashem’s blessing by increasing Torah, mitzvot, and good deeds.  

This is beyond the Israeli population because there are just as many Jews living outside the Land who can also contribute to our security by raising their hands up to God!  

The Gemara tells us that every Jew is responsible for one another. By learning more Torah, giving charity, and refining our speech, we can all take up arms against our foes. We can win the Jewish way by building up merit to beseech Hashem to bless our Land, our nation, and our beautiful Jewish sons and daughters.  

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David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his family, millions of sunflowers, and Matilda, our local camel. David‘s Israeli startup, 300 Marketing Solutions, is a lean marketing agency for startups and small businesses that creates and promotes SEO-optimized ROI-driven to the right audience on LinkedIn to make your business the star of the show.