We Can Dispel Darkness with Our Light
The greatest and most powerful response to the terror around us is by doubling and tripling our effort in helping those around us. As much as you have done until now, go out of your way and lend your hand to another – financially, emotionally, spiritually – in whatever way possible.
Do something to save a life, and you save not just that life but the life of the entire universe.
Do not stand by as an observer on the sidelines. Act. Do your thing today to help another person. Add an additional mitzvah. Keep Shabbat and Kashrut. Light a Shabbat candle tonight before sundown. Study Torah. Pray. All people – commit to the universal Divine laws that transform this world into a holier place.
We are not victims or mere observers. Our actions matter now and forever.
Our blood boils when we hear about those that were silent during the Holocaust. When we will be asked one day: “What did you do about the tragic events happening around you?” what will your answer be?
Let us not be left with no answer, or worse yet, an answer that we did nothing. We want to know that we did everything in our power. I know we all feel the same.
Let us create a true revolution. Let us reconnect to our Divine mission. Let us move heaven and earth with our actions. We have been promised that when we do, we will save the universe – literally.
What can we do on a practical level?
We were thankfully are blessed with the Torah which teaches us what each of us can do to help our brethren in Israel.
- Wage a spiritual war against all forces of moral apathy and ignorance. As mentioned above, take a firm and unwavering stand against any atrocity.
- Strengthen the three pillars which holds up world – both personal and global: Torah, Prayer, and Kind deeds.
- Intensify your commitment to Torah study – study a new text, and designate additional time to your study.
- Say additional prayers for the safety of people facing danger, especially for the Israeli police and Defense Forces.
- Give additional amounts of charity. Charity has a special energy to counter perilous situations.
- Engage your family and friends in meaningful dialogue. Reach out to your sphere of influence and inspire them with spiritual awareness. Encourage everyone to study Torah and add a new mitzvah – a good deed. The Bible tells us that through Torah study and performance of mitzvahs G-d promises: “You will dwell securely in your land. I will provide peace in the land. You will sleep without fear” (Leviticus 26:5-6)
- Initiate a gathering in your home or office, promoting additional goodness and kindness.
- Jewish men should be encouraged to put on Tefillin each weekday morning. Tefillin has faculties that add in protection in threatening times.
- Women and girls should be encouraged to light Shabbat and Holiday candles, 18 minutes before sundown leading into Shabbat or the Holiday. It is also customary to give some charity before lighting the candles.
- Encourage children to say holy verse and prayers and add in charitable and kind deeds. Children play a particular role in time of crisis. As the verse states, “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings You have established the strength…to destroy an enemy and avenger” (Psalms 8:3).
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May our actions honor the Kedoshim (sanctified ones) that were killed in Israel. May our actions bring the hostages home safely. May our actions protect the land of Israel, the entire nation and the entire world.
SOULGYM I MASTERCLASS
Live with Rabbi Simon Jacobson
Is There Such a Thing as Absolute Good and Evil?
Wednesday, October 25, 2023 @8:30pm
Live Stream | Podcast
There is an expression in Hebrew which is translated as “the fish stinks from the head”. In the case of Hamas, we know that due to the poverty of many Arab families and their limitations to find work due to how the land and other resources are owned and controlled, the heads of these families join Hamas not out of hatred but out of economic need. Not everyone of them hates the Jews, although this hatred can become a useful “profession” for desperate and starving people.
The correct answer to this situation is not to try to eliminate the members of Hamas who are able to more easily exist by being paid and induced to fight and make trouble with Israel, but to eliminate the ideology of their leaders. That is to say, to target these leaders themselves, whilst offering more peaceful possibilities to the more regular Hamas members and their coerced human-shielding communities.
It should be noted that in the older forms of warfare, it becomes necessary to kill and eliminate most or all the opposing army, but with this present-day kind of terror and bloodshed, where the non-combatants are being murdered and civilian casualties far outnumber enemy soldiers being killed, an entirely different approach is needed. A few evil-minded and wealth-controlling leaders are far more effective in these Arab and Moslem communities than would be the case were the Western kind of mind being induced for hateful influence and revenge.
In Biblical times these evil kinds of people were called the Amalekites and the Bnei-Yisrael (before becoming Jews), were instructed by God to completely eliminate their tribe, them and their families. This situation was never fully achieved, and so the wrong-thinking and doing of the Amalekites spread and needs to be rectified, even today. As it is proclaimed in one of the prayers of the Jews. “As for our fathers and for us, in every generation there arise those who oppress us, but the Almighty One, blessed be his Name, saves us from their hand”.