The world is shaking. Yes, the last few months, and especially this past week, have shown us how precarious the world situation is and how small changes and surprises can upend entire countries and regions. I don’t want to scare our readers unnecessarily, but the way the chess pieces of geopolitics are lined up, we could easily stumble into World War III. It really is time to daven.
It is amazing how intertwined our world is today. Everyone has been stunned by the sudden fall of Syria. The Assad family has ruled Syria with an iron fist since 1970, for nearly 55 years. Suddenly, in a matter of a week, jihadi rebels have charged across the entire country, taking over Aleppo, Homs, and now Damascus. They have forced Assad and his family to flee Syria in the dead of night in the hope that he will escape with his life.
The Puzzling Puzzle
What happened? How did it happen that the ruthless, iron-fisted Assad, who didn’t hesitate to use chemical weapons on his own people to preserve his hold on power, folded like a cheap camera? How could it be that his army was so easily vanquished?
The answer is complex, but let us explain a few pieces of the puzzle. First, for years, the Assad regime has been propped up by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Russia wanted a foothold in the Middle East so that they would be able to have influence in the region. It was Russia that was one of the primary supporters of Assad and helped prop up his ruthless regime. At the same time, Iran was also very influential in Syria and helped Assad because its proxy, Hezbollah, was close to Syria and most of their weapons flowed through Syria.
What did Hashem do? He set up the Russian war in Ukraine, which is a quagmire and is draining Russia’s coffers and manpower. Russia can no longer afford to invest resources to prop up the Syrian dictatorship. Thus, Assad lost a tremendous amount of power and support. He was only able to ruthlessly kill and torture all opposition because he had the Russians backing him.
Second, the Shiite Iranians and the Shiite Hezbollah were lynchpins in enabling Assad to stay in power. Now that Israel has all but decimated Hezbollah, its leadership and its army, and simultaneously greatly weakened Iran by taking out much of its air defenses, the Iranians and Hezbollah—who both helped prop up the Syrian government for years—are now in no position to help Assad. They are too busy licking their own wounds and have no resources to give to Assad.
So, with his two major backers gone, Assad stood little chance of retaining his power. Clearly, his armed forces were not really loyal, but were forced to be loyal, and as soon as they saw the opposition marching on them, they abandoned their posts. Why should they put their lives on the line for the hated despot?
One Wrong Move…
That said, we should not think for a second that the new jihadists who have taken over are friends of the Jews and the State of Israel by any means. They hate us and would love to destroy and murder all the Jews in Israel and elsewhere. There are also all kinds of weaponry stockpiles that the Assad government left behind, which can now fall into the hands of jihadis who might use them against Israel.
China, too, will not sit still. They have a stake in being involved in the region, and they want Iranian oil. They will fight against the Sunni axis and against American and western influence in the region.
In addition, during this very lame-duck period in the twilight of the Biden presidency, when President Biden is wandering off in the deserts of Angola or falling asleep during ceremonies held in his honor, America and Israel’s enemies may want to take advantage of the fact that there is no sheriff in town. Until January 20, there may be attempts to do mischief that can lead to instability.
Moreover, we always have to wonder whether the long and cunning arm of the Deep State, who are slated to lose their power on January 20, may resort to nefarious ways to try to disrupt the process. Let us just say that we hope that Trump is well-protected by real loyalists…
At this point, the world is extremely unstable. We must daven that the world situation will remain stable. One wrong move by any of the players could ignite a tinderbox.
Yaakov’s Two-Pronged Preparation
Perhaps it is not coincidental that this week’s parsha, Parshas Vayishlach, is the parsha in which the Torah advises us how to deal with adversaries who seek to annihilate us.
Yaakov Avinu knew that his life and that of his family were on the line when he had no choice but to meet Eisov. He was preparing for any eventuality. He split up the camp, sent presents, and davened and davened and davened, but he didn’t just rely on davening.
How did Yaakov confront Eisov? We find that Yaakov used a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, when he actually met Eisov, Yaakov was very conciliatory, bowing repeatedly and talking to him with the utmost respect, as if he was talking to a king.
On the other hand, the night before his encounter with Eisov, the Torah teaches us that Yaakov had a battle with the sar of Eisov. In that battle, he was not conciliatory at all. That battle wasn’t just a fight. It was a fight between two diametrically opposite worldviews. Yaakov, the ultimate symbol of Torah, kedusha, and Yiddishkeit, was at war with the ultimate symbol of evil, the tumah of the yeitzer hara embodied by Eisov.
There they were: Yaakov Avinu using all his kochos to fight the battle that each of us still fights to this day, the eternal battle between good and evil, between Klal Yisroel and the nations. The sar of Eisov used every trick in the book to overcome Yaakov, but failed.
So, yes, before actually meeting Eisov, Yaakov davened, but simultaneously, he also invested all of his kochos into fighting the eternal battle against the yeitzer hara.
So too, we must emulate that battle. So much of Eisov’s world and Eisov’s culture has penetrated our world. We are inundated with the world of Eisov every time we walk outside or open our computers or phones. We need such vigilance. We must fight just like Yaakov Avinu fought until Eisov saw that he could not prevail and left.
We can’t physically intervene in the battle in Syria and other hotspots, but we can fight our own spiritual battles, both with tefillah and by strengthening ourselves in the ever-present battle against the culture of Eisov that threatens to engulf us, even in our ostensibly sheltered communities.
Now, while the world seems to be spinning out of control, we must emulate Yaakov and truly prepare for any eventuality. This is especially relevant to the component of tefillah, which has the koach to transform any gezeirah.
It’s time to fight. It’s time to daven.
