According to Tanchuma, Nitzavim, section 1: Israel will not be redeemed until they will all form one group.
The good news is that it can be credibly said that we have finally become one group. The bad news is that the group consensus is that we are not particularly interested in achdus.
There are exceptions, of course, such as Chabad and Breslov, but everyone knows what we think about them.
The inner challenge of Golus is to mevatal the sinas chinom that placed us here to begin with. And the only antidote is ahavas chinom. But that little bit of unpleasantness that goes by the name of truth has it that on only the rarest of occasions does real achdus make a cameo appearance amidst the terminal dissensions of the Golus as if it were role playing in a heimishe version of Where’s Waldo(?).
And what’s real achdus anyway?
As we noted in EmunahSpeak: The Satan’s Achdus, When our Rabbis admonish us as regards our lack of achdus they are… talking about an achdus that can only be achieved by first withstanding a firestorm of vitriol emanating from the Yetzer Hora. The existence of such an achdus draws a bull’s-eye around the Satan and then proceeds to hit it. This is the "Satan's achdus (real achdus)."
The seeds of what could grow into the “Satan’s achdus” are not scattered to the four winds. They are selectively sown. In any situation in which you wouldn’t reflexively demonstrate a feeling of achdus the Yetzer Hora is all over you relentlessly justifying your hesitation. Any attempt at real achdus has to have the staying power to weather the long march through our worst instincts.
Such an achdus has no connection to the comfort zone. And it’s more closely manifested in bailing your worst enemy out of jail than in inviting your best friend for Shabbos, and it has a striking affinity to work as opposed to play.
And as we said in EmunahSpeak: Nu?: The path to Moshiach, which is in no small measure the path of achdus, will only be trod by transforming the grief, emoted in the comfort zone of our chevra, from a proprietary emotion to one that encompasses the entire Klal without dulling that emotional edge.
In the way we deal with others Hashem deals with us. When we ask Hashem to send us Moshiach when we don’t deserve it are we not asking for the ultimate chesed that He could do for us? And isn’t the ultimate chesed on our part a chesed shel emes?
And yet, when a family of Torah Jews is slaughtered in their beds or eight Yeshiva bochurim are gunned down in their Yeshiva we seem to be incapable of stepping outside of our label saturated existence long enough to attend the funeral. It matters not a whit how many people show up because it’s not a numbers game.
It’s all about the mosaic of Torah Jewry.
In Shomayim, three hundred of EVERYBODY at a levaya will trump thirty thousand of only a certain SOMEBODY every time.
I thought that we had pretty much reached bottom with the funeral shtick, but apparently we’re not quite there yet.
There’s something worse.
It appears that our distant cousins have been doing their thing on Har HaZeisim by desecrating graves and stoning both funeral processions and visitors to the graves.
Nice people, these cousins of ours.
And this is not as of late. Mohamed and Co. have been on the attack since Har HaZeisim was liberated in 1967 with next to zero push back from the Israeli authorities.
This is not about settlements. We’re talking graves here. This is about our ancestors, and therefore about us. Every type of Jew is buried here regardless of which camp, sector, or ideology one identified with.
And yet there’s nothing in the way of a public response aside from the tumult being created by the International Committee to Preserve Har HaZeisim, which was founded in 2010 by the Lubinsky brothers, Menachem and Avraham. Through the Committee’s efforts, a large number of security cameras have been installed, a private security force has been engaged, and a new police station has been announced for Har HaZeisim.
But aside from the small handful of dedicated people who, with mesiras nefesh, are working on behalf of the Committee against all odds, the only Jewish response to the chillul Hashem that has become the leitmotif of Har HaZeisim is the silence of the dead who are buried there.
As we pointed out above, Israel will not be redeemed until they will all form one group, and yet no one makes even the slightest effort to come together on this. Not the Chassidim, not the bnei yeshiva, not the Merkaz HaRav people, and not the Sephardim. And there are no conflicting interests and no ideological compromises required, and yet we still can’t manage to get it on, even for what can be termed an achdus shel emes.
We’re satisfied talking the talk of achdus rather than walking the walk. Anything but achdus it seems, no matter the price we pay or the indignity we suffer.
And as we also pointed out in EmunahSpeak: Nu?, Moshiach doesn’t do Hollywood so he is not waiting for Egypt to rip up the treaty and attack Israel, nor is he waiting for Hezbollah to devastate Israel’s heartland with its 50,000 rockets. And he most certainly isn’t playing peek-a-boo with Iran’s nukes-to-be, chas v’shalom.
So what then?
He’s waiting for us.
He's waiting for us to look into the mirror, and see everyone instead of seeing what we think is the only one.
Then and only then will we be able to get our collective act together, and push the envelope on the achdus that will precipitate his appearance speedily in our days.
