The Har Nof slaughter is just the latest atrocity in a history of atrocities perpetrated against Jews. The wickedness pressing in around us feels relentless. It is enough to make us seek stronger walls and wider moats to keep the world at bay.
But walling ourselves off from the world has never been an option. We are in the world. We are of the world. We must not only engage the world, but be stronger for that engagement. It is not enough to merely survive. We must thrive – physically, psychologically and spiritually.
Those who survived the physical slaughter at the Har Nof synagogue returned there to recite HaGomel. As Rav Rubin related to Rav Shteinman and Rav Kanievsky, “There have never been such HaGomels ever recited!”
To survive such a direct confrontation with the Angel of Death as they did is beyond human vocabulary. Har Nof. Treblinka. Poland, 1648-49. Hebron, 1929. In instances too numerous to list, we have been terrorized. And each time, we returned to recite HaGomel. Yet perhaps it is the profound threat of these instances, the life and death nature of them, that encourages piety. Perhaps the more difficult task is to live in the secular world, to live with Laban, and to maintain our dignity and spirituality.
