I get it, I really do. We become attached to our surroundings. We sink deep roots. We build families and homes. We invest time, money, sweat, blood, and even tears into the places we call home. No one willingly leaves a home unless they have a better offer, and forced evacuation is not one of them.
For decades nuclear war was a deterrent. The Cold War was in place of a hot war. The belief that there are no winners in such a catastrophic war kept superpowers at bay and limited their ambitions. Differences and fears persisted, but for the most part, peace reigned. The dangers of nuclear war and fallout were so real that nations even avoided nuclear rhetoric. It was almost as if just threatening nuclear war could accidentally lead to it. There were all kinds of threats, but not a nuclear one. It was just too big and scary.
I’ve used this analogy before, but I do not know who is reading my material for the first time. Besides, how many people remember what I have written before? Landing redemption is like landing an airplane. Sometimes it can be smooth, sometimes there is turbulence which makes it rough and scary. In geulah talk, that translates into achishenah and b’ittah, early redemption and safe passage to the Messianic Era, and last-minute redemption via the War of Gog and Magog (Sanhedrin 98a).
It is fascinating how different people gravitate to different lands. It is understandable about some places because they are just so livable. But some places make you wonder about the people living there, “If you can leave, why haven’t you?” Sometimes it’s a matter of what people are used to. They find it more appealing to put up with the lackings of a place than settling into a new and foreign place. But a lot of time it’s as if they have some kind of bond to the place that someone who does not live there cannot feel. As the Talmud says, a place has chayn for those who live there (Sotah 47a).
I was once sent a manuscript by someone who had survived the Holocaust as a boy. Being young, he was part of a work detail sent daily to a German factory to work for the Third Reich. It ended up saving his life, because some German had mercy on him, seeing he was malnourished, and left a sandwich for him everyday in an electrical box. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep him from starving to death.
Different strokes for different folks. Obviously. From purchasing to politics we differ from one another, sometimes in extreme ways. Depending on the difference of opinion, we might simply ignore one another, dislike one another, and in extreme cases, actually want to kill the other.
I have been amazed for years at the miracle of government support of yeshivos. I called it a miracle because we know that if the government could have afforded to, they would have come down hard on the Charedi population long ago for its adherence to religion in this day-and-age, and its lack of contribution to the army, income tax, etc. It was like supporting the enemy, which is not so unusual in Israel given how much money the Israeli government funnels to the Arabs, and how it looks the other way when Arabs break the law.
Torah Jews and secular Jews do not look at each other as martians, beings from another planet altogether. It’s worse than that. They look at each other as enemies.
It is so easy to lose track of history, at least when life is pleasant. It’s like watching a mesmerizing sunset: you can lose track of where you are and the time until the show is over. Likewise, as long as our personal histories are under control and nothing seems to be threatening them, we tend not to care about what happened 80 years ago, or what may happen 80 years in the future.
Recently, a well-known TV personality was heavily criticized for saying that the Holocaust was not about racism, just evil murdering good. Apparently, she thought that racism was a black-and-white issue, and did not consider Hitler’s, ysv”z, personal and illogical war against the Jewish people specifically one race against another.