emunah, tefillah, a little mussar, and a shmeck of geula

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

The Wake up Call



That’s how HaRav HaGaon Moshe Sternbuch sees the current crisis in Eretz Yisroel, so it would behoove us to give it a serious look through his eyes.

For those Rip Van Winkles amongst us who have been sleeping through the last several weeks the operative word here is miracles. From the get go Rav Sternbuch makes it very clear that everything we are seeing are miracles and nothing but miracles with nary a shmeck of teva in sight.  

And he’s not alone.  Apparently, one of the top people in the Hamas leadership sees what Rav Moshe sees.  When asked by CNN why his missiles never seemed to hit anything of substance he answered that all of their missiles are tested and that those (barbarians) who launch them are experts, but their G-d (our G-d) stops them.  Then he was asked the obvious question:

“If you understand that their G-d is protecting them why do you keep launching missiles?”

“We’re probing for a weak moment,” he answered, “when their G-d doesn’t favor them.”

From this answer we have to understand that in addition to everything else that we’re up against in relation to Hamas (may they be blotted out) both in terms of what we perceive to be teva and from what we will soon hear from Rav Moshe, we’re also eyeball to eyeball with the wickedness of Bil’am Ha Rasha.

Query:  So if even Hamas understands what’s going down in their latest attempt to destroy us why don’t we?

Hashem is talking to us and the best most of us can do is to remark that a certain missile that failed to explode in a house full of people was a nes, and we say it with the same kavana as if we were saying what a lucky break that was.

Rav Sternbuch says that we are taking the Iron Dome for granted, in that we are relying on it to protect the population from incoming missiles and if we put our trust in it, it won’t, for as we quoted HaRav HaGaon Moshe Shapiro in EmunahSpeak: There is No Other Solution,.…according to teva (natural means) we are in a problem that has no possibility of a solution, period.  He says further that a solution that is similar to the “solution,” (with as many double quotes as we can put there) that we recently experienced vis á vis the Iron Dome and the pin point surgical strikes by which the IAF took out 1500 Hamas launch sites, may last once or twice, but this is not a solution.
 
And as we said in EmunahSpeak: So Who are You Relying on… The avodah of bitachon is to train oneself to rely only on Hashem. 

Not on our rockets.

The Iron Dome rockets that shoot down the Hamas missiles, the missiles that don’t explode in shuls and houses, and those that fall into open fields are all the same nes.

Rav Moshe Sterbuch tells us that the Brisker Rav’s real gadlus was not his lomdus as great as it was.  It was his Emunah.  If we had that level of Emunah we would be going out of our minds right now. We would be higher than on Purim.

The Rav makes it clear that we are being enveloped by nissim day and night, and that we are required to take five minutes a day to intensely focus on the fact that Hashem is both knocking the missiles out of the sky and scattering the rest to the four winds.  He lets us hear that Hashem has opened all of the Sharei Rachamim of Shomayim to deflect the missiles from harming Klal Yisroel and if we don’t recognize this we are sinners.

And it’s not enough that we recognize and intensely focus on these nissim.  We are obligated to speak about them also.  They should be the tog taiglach of our daily conversation.

Truth be told, Hashem is not talking to us.  As per Rav Moshe, He is screaming, for these nissim are in actuality a Tochacha (Divine rebuke), a wake up call to show us that we really deserve to be whacked.

This is serious stuff.

If we heed the call of Rav Moshe and get with the program, then the Hamas missiles and all those that Hezbollah has waiting in the bull pen will continue to be rendered harmless because Behold the Guardian of Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.