Miracles Then and Now
Chanukah is a time of miracles, and this week, we were given a glimpse into the miracles that Hashem is still performing for us today.
On Thursday morning, a missile hit a school in Ramat Gan. The building was completely destroyed, but there were no fatalities, since the students weren’t in the school at that time.
On Thursday night, Israel attacked terror targets associated with the Houthi terror group in Yemen. The Houthis have been firing missiles in Israel, but while the Israeli strike was in response to their hostilities in general, it actually had nothing to do with the specific incident in Ramat Gan; the plan for this strike had been prepared long before. The air strike involved dozens of fighter jets, refueling planes, and surveillance planes; an operation on that large a scale cannot possibly be planned in half a day. Netanyahu also announced at the beginning of this week that Israel will continue attacking Yemen. For now, it is known that the Americans and the British are carrying out air strikes there.
A couple of days later, early on Shabbos morning, a missile fell in Yaffo. A huge crater formed at the site of the missile strike, and 16 people were lightly injured by the missile, while 21 were injured while running to bomb shelters or suffered from hysteria. Both of these incidents triggered air raid sirens throughout the Gush Dan region, and in each case, the interception system failed to bring down the missiles. This was a clear reminder of the posuk’s warning, “If Hashem does not protect a city, the guard stands watch in vain.”
What lesson did we learn this week? It’s very simple: If two missiles could cause so much damage and so many injuries when the Israeli defense systems failed to intercept them, then how much more destruction and mayhem could have been caused by the 37,000 missiles and drones that have been launched at Israel since Simchas Torah of 5784? The reason that we were spared from that horrifying scenario is that many of the missiles landed in open areas, and many more were intercepted. Very few of the missiles actually hit inhabited areas and caused damage. In short, about 37,000 missiles were fired, and almost no damage was caused. The only way to describe this is pure Divine chessed and an overt miracle. Just as our forefathers were miraculously saved at the time of the Chanukah miracles, we are benefiting from Hashem’s Providence and protection today.
Davening for Salvation
We are all davening fervently for salvation to come to the hostages in Gaza very soon. We are constantly being told that a new deal is in the works and should be signed very soon. We already know that General Shlomi Binder of the Military Intelligence Directorate recently traveled to Cairo for the negotiations. There is a general sense that something big is about to happen. Some of the details are still in dispute, especially regarding which security prisoners will be released and how many hostages will be freed. Of course, the Israelis want all the hostages to be released immediately, whether they are alive or dead, but Hamas is continuing to play its cruel games. America is playing a key role in the process—both the Biden administration, which is drawing to a close and is interested in accomplishing something before it fades away, and the incoming Trump administration, which is already putting pressure on Hamas and its allies.
The Israelis are also standing firm on a different point: the specific security prisoners to be freed. The terrorists are insisting on the release of Marwan Barghouti, who was convicted of five acts of terror in which five Jews were killed and many more wounded. Barghouti is also a terrorist leader with much blood on his hands. At the age of 65, he is considered highly valuable to the Palestinians and is believed to be the intended successor of Palestinian Authority leader Abu Mazen. He is an iconic figure for them, and they are demanding his release. For Hamas, it would be an enormous accomplishment to secure his freedmo. In previous agreements, such as the deal for the release of Gilad Shalit, Israel refused to include Barghouti in the list of prisoners to be freed.
The bottom line: We are davening for a miracle.
There is a major ethical question at play in these discussions. For example, there is a school of thought in Israel that favors accepting an agreement that would see the release of the elderly and ill hostages before others. Many people fear that those hostages will not survive the winter. On the other hand, accepting a partial deal might seal the death sentences of the remaining hostages, since there is no telling when there will be an opportunity for another agreement. Many fears were also stoked by Netanyahu’s declaration this week that he will not accept a deal requiring Israel to end the fighting in Gaza, and that he will insist on continuing the battle until Hamas is completely defeated. This terrified some of the hostages’ families, who feel that a deal with Hamas is the only option if they wish to see their loved ones again. As I have mentioned in the past, the officials who are in charge of making these decisions are in a completely unenviable position.
A Hostage Began Keeping Shabbos in Gaza
Last weekend, an organization known as Nefesh Yehudi organized a communal Shabbos for the families of the hostages in Gaza. This happens almost every week; Yaffa Deri has arranged several such Shabbosos, and the organization Ayeles Hashachar has organized others. At this particular event, there was a speech delivered by Mrs. Shelley Shem-Tov, the mother of Omer Shem-Tov, who is a hostage in Gaza. Mrs. Shem-Tov revealed that she had been told by a released hostage that her son began keeping Shabbos in Hamas captivity. “He observes Shabbos there; he remembers Kiddush by heart, and he places a piece of toilet paper on his head as a yarmulke,” she said. “When there was a power outage, he chose not to turn on a flashlight. I am proud of my son. They have taken his freedom from him, but they haven’t succeeded in taking away his Judaism.”
Mrs. Shem-Tov also revealed that she was inspired to begin observing Shabbos as well. Her comments on Shabbos led to a radio interview, in which she said, “We have discovered a world that we never knew about before. As a society, we tend to label other sectors, but this has brought down the walls between us. Our values are truly the same. One of the beautiful things that is happening in this country is that the various sectors are uniting. The love that we are receiving from many people is giving us the strength to keep going.”
The hostages and their families aren’t the only ones to have experienced a surge of ruchniyus; the general public has been affected as well. Last week, the results of a study were published that showed that the war has strengthened the Israeli people’s connection to religion. Professor Asif Efrat of Reichman University revealed some details: “The findings of this study clearly point to an increase in religious faith among Israelis due to the effects of the war…. A total of 37 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 35 reported that their belief in G-d had increased since the war began and that they have drawn significantly closer to religious tradition.”
Then again, anyone with a modicum of exposure to the world of kiruv could have confirmed this hypothesis without conducting a study. The activists of Lev L’Achim, who have their collective finger on the nation’s pulse, have been telling us that we are looking at a golden opportunity for kiruv. This generation is ready for the Torah’s influence, and we cannot afford to let the opportunity go to waste.
A Plea from Lev L’Achim
Two weeks ago, Lev L’Achim held a dinner in Lakewood for the former talmidim of the Mesivta of Long Beach. The late rosh yeshiva, Rav Yitzchok Feigelstock, greatly admired the work of Lev L’Achim and encouraged his talmidim to volunteer on their behalf. The dais at the dinner was occupied by the current roshei yeshiva, Rav Mordechai Respler and Rav Chaim Yehoshua Hoberman, as well as Rav Yechiel Gibber, Rav Eliezer Herzka, and Rav Nochum Barnetsky of Lev L’Achim. The guest speaker was Rav Avrohom Zaivald, the director of Lev L’Achim, who capture his audience’s hearts.
Rav Avrohom quoted Rav Uri Zohar in his message: “Rav Uri Zohar used to tearfully tell us that after the Six Day War, there was a tremendous spiritual awakening in Israel. At that time, many people were growing closer to Hashem. Many secular Israelis recognized that something incredible had happened and the country had benefited from enormous miracles, but the chareidi community wasn’t ready yet to absorb them. Because of our lack of preparation, very few of those people remained religious, despite the inspiration that had swept through the country. Two or three months after the war, the mood dissipated. Rav Uri said, ‘If only Lev L’Achim had existed at that time, we could have saved tens of thousands of people!’
“Today,” Rav Zaivald continued, “we have Lev L’Achim. There are thousands of yungeleit who make themselves available to learn with other Jews who are thirsting for the word of Hashem, and there is a golden opportunity facing us now. There are thousands more yungeleit who are ready and willing to join the chavrusa program and change the lives of innumerable secular Israelis, but it will require a fortune to cover the associated costs. If the community remains apathetic, we will lose this opportunity as well, chas v’sholom, and no one can know when and if a third opportunity will arise.”
Chief of Staff May Face the Music
This week has brought us many stories of interest. For instance, Prime Minister Netanyahu will not travel to Poland to attend a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The event is scheduled to be held this Friday, December 27, and Netanyahu was supposed to be a guest of honor. However, due to the arrest warrants issued in the Hague, he has reconsidered his decision to attend.
In other news, there is a conflict brewing between the new minister of defense, Yisroel Katz, and the chief of staff of the IDF, Herzi Halevi. Katz informed Halevi that he wants to see the results of the army’s inquiries concerning the events leading up to the massacre on October 7. Not only did Katz give the chief of staff an immediate deadline to fork over the information (this week), he also notified him that he would not approve any appointments in the IDF until he has seen the files. Merely facing an ultimatum from the defense minister puts the chief of staff in a tense position, but the repercussions are likely to be far more devastating to him than simply being forced to subordinate himself to the minister of defense. Rumor has it that the army’s inquiries uncovered some very unfavorable information about the chief of staff, and that it is inevitable that he will be fired as soon as the information comes to light.
Second Defendant Named in Document Leak Case
The next story may sound like a fairly trivial development, but it is actually a momentous turn of events. Last week, it finally rained. The farmers in Israel had been desperate for rain, and the chief rabbis called on the public to daven and published the text of a tefillah to be recited. The rainfall arrived amid mounting fears that this year will turn into a year of drought. And while those concerns haven’t been completely allayed—since there will need to be much more rain to avoid a drought—the initial precipitation was somewhat reassuring.
This type of situation always reminds me of the story that I have told you in the past about Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s attitude to a national drought. The story has it that Eshkol was once told that government officials feared that a drought was beginning. Alarmed, the prime minister asked tensely, “Where?”
“Here in Israel,” his advisor replied.
Upon hearing that response, Eshkol smiled. “That is good news,” he said with a sigh of relief. “I was afraid that you were going to tell me that it was in America!”
The next development that deserves to be mentioned is the latest turn of events in the court case concerning the document leaked to Netanyahu and to the German newspaper Bild. The name of the first defendant, Eli Feldstein, was released weeks ago, and the second defendant’s identity has now been revealed. The second defendant, the IDF reservist who leaked the document to Feldstein, is still being held in detention and is slated to remain there until the conclusion of the case, in what is universally viewed as a terrible injustice. No one can understand why Supreme Court Justice Alex Stein sided with the prosecution on that issue, overturning the rulings passed by the Magistrates’ Court and the District Court, which ordered both suspects released to house arrest. Stein accepted Feldstein’s release but insisted that the second defendant remain behind bars. His name is Ari Rosenfeld, and he, like Feldstein, was brought up in a chareidi home. An initiative is currently underway to seek a pardon for him. Rosenfeld has requested clemency, and the request has been echoed by numerous politicians and even the two chief rabbis. Next week, bli neder, I plan to write about this story at much greater length.
Sweet Beverages and Bitter Ministers
Sometimes, a controversy must be reexamined in hindsight in order to determine which parties to the conflict were justified. Sometimes, it simply takes time for the facts in a particular conflict to become clear and for the disingenuous party to be identified.
One example of this truism is Israel’s short-lived tax on sweetened beverages. At the time that it was passed into law, then-Finance Minister Yvette Lieberman claimed innocently (if he is indeed capable of innocence) that his only objective was to preserve the health of the chareidi community. Lieberman insisted that his goal was to save chareidi consumers from obesity, diabetes, and other health conditions by raising the price point of sweetened beverages and thus ensuring that their consumption would be reduced. No one denied that the beverages were unhealthy, but many insisted that Lieberman’s goals were far more nefarious: Rather than looking out for the physical health of chareidi consumers, his goal was to weigh them down with a heavy financial burden, which also happened to serve the interests of the Treasury. Lieberman argued that the chareidim would simply reduce their consumption of sugary beverages and would not actually spend more on the products; the chareidim replied that without a public relations campaign aiming to explain the harm caused by sugary drinks, the consumption of those beverages would remain unchanged, and the only impact would be that chareidi consumers would be forced to shell out more money for the same products.
At the time, it was impossible to determine who was correct in this dispute. No one could be certain if Lieberman was truly championing a healthy economic policy or if he was simply plotting to harm the chareidi community. Treasury representatives informed the Knesset Finance Committee that they expected government revenues from the beverage tax to reach the “small” sum of 380 million shekels per year, based on the assumption that the tax would indeed reduce the consumption of sugary beverages. But the facts are now in, and it has become clear that their assertions were incorrect. The revenues from the tax reached a staggering billion shekels, and consumption of sweetened drinks was not reduced despite the spike in their prices. If there was any decrease in the purchase of these beverages at all, it happened before Lieberman’s tax and should be credited to Yaakov Litzman’s red labels. (During his tenure as minister of health, Litzman enacted a regulation requiring all food products containing high quantities of sugar, sodium, or saturated fats to be clearly labeled as such, thus ensuring that consumers would be aware of what they are consuming.) Lieberman’s tax accomplished nothing other than creating an onerous financial burden for an already poor sector of society.
Incidentally, further evidence of the unsavory motivations of the tax’s proponents is the fact that it was imposed on diet beverages as well. This shows that they were never really interested in public health; their true goal was to burden the chareidim.
Lieberman’s tax is now officially dead. The tax was scrapped by Betzalel Smotrich as soon as he took office as minister of finance. An appeal was submitted to the Supreme Court for the tax to be reinstated, but the court rejected the petition this week.
Modiin Illit, the Poorest City in Israel
Last week, the annual poverty report was released by the National Insurance Institute in Israel. The NII (known as Bituach Leumi to Israelis) is responsible for providing stipends and aid to the weak or disadvantaged sectors of society, and therefore naturally possesses the information needed to create a clear picture of the state of poverty in Israeli society. The poverty report is released once a year, based on information in the institute’s databases.
It came as no surprise to anyone that this past year saw a major increase in poverty in Israel. At the same time, the National Insurance Institute managed to reduce the impact of poverty to a certain degree. The institute is at the forefront of the fight for socioeconomic stability in this country, and Yoav Ben-Tzur—the current minister of labor, whose purview includes the National Insurance Institute—has been widely hailed for his work during this time of crisis. There is a widespread sentiment that Ben-Tzur was placed in his position by Heavenly hashgocha to ensure that the right man would be in the right place to provide sorely needed assistance to innumerable Israeli citizens. Ben-Tzur has been hard at work in this capacity since the war began on Simchas Torah 5784, and the institute’s staff members have surpassed all expectations in providing aid to wounded terror victims, evacuees, and, perhaps above all, people suffering from psychological hardships in the wake of recent traumatic events.
The figures are very interesting. For instance, poverty rates are highest in the chareidi and Arab communities; however, the poverty rates in both communities dropped in the year 2023 in contrast to the previous year. It is also very clear that without government intervention in the form of stipends and grants, the per capita poverty rate would be much higher. The National Insurance Institute stipends have the greatest impact on reducing poverty through the senior citizens’ and survivors’ stipends, disability stipends, and unemployment payments, which have the greatest impact on the recipients’ financial well-being. In my view, the most surprising finding in the report was the fact that the monstrous phenomenon of poverty has actually been reduced. In the year 2023, 26.5 percent of Israeli households were unable to cover their monthly expenses, a figure that was down from 30.5 percent in the year 2022. This was an astounding revelation.
I examined the poverty rates in different geographic areas, and the results were to be expected: The residents of the north, the south, and Yerushalayim tend to be the poorest. In Yerushalayim, 36.2 percent of families are living below the poverty line; in the north, the figure stands at 22.5 percent, and in the south it is 22.6 percent. In Tel Aviv and the center of the country, meanwhile, poverty rates are much lower than the average. But that was only to be expected; we all know where the poorer families tend to reside: in the periphery (the north and south) and in Yerushalayim (in the chareidi and Arab communities). I was also not surprised to discover that the report found Modiin Illit to be the poorest city in the country, followed by Yerushalayim, Beit Shemesh, Bnei Brak, Lod, Netanya, Ashdod, Beer Sheva, Yaffo, and Bat Yam.
The report also contained another interesting fact about the chareidi and Arab sectors, which are considered the weakest sectors in the country: “The poverty rate in Israel is among the highest in all developed countries. According to the report, the poverty rate has decreased among chareidi and Arab families, but it is still higher in those sectors than in the general population. The per capita poverty rate reached 42.4 percent among Arab families in the year 2023, and 22.5 percent among chareidi families, which is double their representation in the country’s population. The poverty rate among non-chareidi Jews stands at 14 percent.”
Chareidi Nonprofits Excel at Helping the Poor
I have a few comments to make about the poverty report.
First of all, anyone who makes any contribution to reducing the phenomenon of poverty in Israel is deserving of praise, even if that contribution was minute. If someone’s efforts made it possible for even one family to climb above the poverty line and escape from the morass of destitution, that alone is a great mitzvah and a wonderful accomplishment. The declining poverty rate also suggests that dozens, or hundreds, or even thousands of children were rescued from the grip of poverty; anyone who was responsible for that is deserving of every praise imaginable. At the same time, even if the scope of poverty has been reduced, one should still be deeply saddened by any family in Yerushalayim, Ashkelon, Yeruchom, Nahariya, or anywhere else in the country that is living below the poverty line. It should be even more saddening to think about the innumerable children who do not even have sandwiches to bring to them to school in the mornings. The war on poverty should truly be fought with every weapon at our disposal.
This leads me to my next point: How is it even conceivable that the economists in the Treasury, the other finance experts in the government, the legislators in the Knesset, and, of course, the judges in the courts are lending their hands to measures that will take the very bread out of the mouths of the Torah learners in Israeli society and their families? Despite the rampant poverty in the country, government officials are busy trying to tighten the proverbial noose around the necks of the country’s bnei Torah. This is a travesty that has been perpetrated by the judges who decided to label all bnei yeshivos and kollel yungeleit as criminals, the attorney general who decide to revoke funding for subsidized day care from kollel yungeleit with small children, and the many cruel agitators who bombard the courts with petitions against every form of aid that the government might provide to the people whose Torah learning is sustaining the world.
I should also point out that there are people who live in poverty by choice, and they deserve to be admired for their decisions. Many chareidi families have chosen a lifestyle in which their expenditures are kept to a bare minimum, for idealistic reasons. These families will not withhold food from their children, but they will eschew anything that even remotely smacks of luxury. Unlike the average Israeli family, these families dedicate only a tiny portion of their household budgets to clothing, and they spend barely any money at all on technology or entertainment. Their children wear clothes that have been passed down from one sibling to the next, and the parents use simple cell phones that cost a couple of hundred shekels rather than expensive, sophisticated devices that sell for over 4000 shekels. The families who are poor by no choice of their own deserve compassion and assistance; the families who have chosen a frugal lifestyle deserve to be saluted—and aided as well.
At the same time that the NII released its poverty report, the charitable organization Latet released a report of its own. What is especially significant about this report is that it includes glowing praise for a number of nonprofit organizations that provide food to the poor. “These organizations assist a broad range of poorer populations within Israeli society,” Latet’s report notes. “About two fifths of the recipients are families with many children. The other recipients are elderly people, Holocaust survivors, immigrants, and the disabled.”
According to Latet, the majority of senior citizens in Israel require financial aid.
Now that Latet has chosen to single out these organizations for special attention, there is one fact that bears mentioning: Most of those organizations were founded and are still operated by religious Jews. Israel’s religious populace is overwhelmingly responsible for most of the country’s charity.
This week, I visited the storehouses of Ohr Leah in Yerushalayim, which are located near the Avichayil bakery and next door to Ohr Leah’s kollel. I watched the Chanukah distribution in progress, and I observed how the organization’s director, Rav Eliyohu Cohen, has chosen to shoulder the burden of Yerushalayim’s poor, and I was speechless. I also observed that these organizations distribute food baskets with great respect and dignity even to irreligious recipients. It is astounding that the secular community feels justified in speaking against chareidim even while some of them are benefiting from chareidi largesse. But we live in a world of falsehood.
A Lifesaving Brocha in Satmar
Rav Chananya Yom Tov Lipa Schwartz was one of the principals of the Satmar institutions in Yerushalayim and a highly accomplished individual. As a young man, he learned in the yeshiva of the Satmar Rebbe, Rav Yoel Teitelbaum, and davened in his bais medrash. He was a young married man when the Second World War erupted, and he faced the threat of forced conscription into the Hungarian army, which would have endangered his life and certainly jeopardized his soul. Many Jews tried all sorts of strategies to avoid the Hungarian draft; one common trick was showing up for the draft with forged papers indicating that the bearer was much more advanced in age. Rav Lipa had an older brother named Moshe, and he considered bringing his brother’s identity papers to the draft office. He knew that he bore a resemblance to his brother and it was possible that he would get away with the ploy; on the other hand, they were 19 years apart, and he feared that the authorities would not be fooled. At that time, Rav Lipa was 28 years old, while his brother was 47. Unable to reach a conclusion on his own, he asked his father to beg the Satmar Rebbe to make the decision for him and to grant him a brocha. The Rebbe replied, “Tell him to come to Satmar.”
Rav Lipa arrived in Satmar shortly before Shabbos Chanukah. After davening on Friday night, he approached the Rebbe to greet him. “I felt that he was examining my face from every angle,” he later recalled. “After Shabbos, I returned to the Rebbe again to ask for his decision, and he told me to go to the office with my brother’s papers, since the goyim could not distinguish between Jews, especially when both Jews were bearded.”
Fortified with the Rebbe’s brocha, Lipa returned home and prepared for his meeting with the draft officers, confident that he would receive an exemption. As he waited on a long line, Lipa was present when another man was caught with falsified papers in an effort to pose as an older man. Based on the screams that echoed from the office, it was clear that the would-be draft evader would face a bitter fate. Lipa began trembling with apprehension; after all, someone else had just been caught carrying out the exact scheme that he intended to perpetrate. “When my turn arrived, I presented my papers,” Lipa related years later. “The officers looked at me exactly as the Rebbe had scrutinized me on Shabbos Chanukah. But they believed me and sent me on my way.”
The Rebbe’s brocha remained with Lipa during his journey back home as well; on the train, he was accosted by several army officers who demanded to see his identification papers. Since he had only his brother Moshe’s papers with him, Lipa was forced to present the documents once again, and the officers grew suspicious, insisting that he was not the man who appeared in the picture. At that moment, however, a commotion erupted somewhere, and the officers were summoned urgently and left the train, although one of them managed to deliver a ringing slap to Lipa on his way out. In the end, Lipa managed to return home in peace, although the horrors of the war still lay ahead of him.
There is an amusing postscript to this story. Rav Lipa Schwartz was a shochet in the town of Bator, and the Satmar Rebbe once arrived there to attend a wedding. When Rav Lipa approached him to greet him, the Rebbe smiled broadly and said, “Moishe, how are you?”
The Rebbe’s son-in-law, who was sitting beside him, whispered, “Rebbe, this is Lipa.”
The Satmar Rebbe’s smile turned into a laugh. “Are you really telling me what to call him?” he asked.
Lipa, whose life had been saved when he posed as his older brother Moshe, bowed before the Rebbe and thanked him profusely.
