Most Israelis feel the cease-fire was imposed on us before we finished the job. Hizbullah is not disarmed, our kidnapped soldiers have not been returned, and Iran and Syria seem to have been let off the hook.
Our leadership let us down and we lost so many wonderful young men (and one woman) in the fighting, apart from civilians who died in the north as a result of the thousands of rockets launched across the border.
Just as once a year most businesses prepare a balance sheet and a profit-and-loss account, so as the Days of Awe approach during the Hebrew month of Elul must we begin a spiritual stocktaking. We need to examine the state of our souls. The period begins with Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world, and ends with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a concentrated period of introspection.
Many Jews who do not enter a synagogue the rest of the year make an exception at this time. They want to hear the dramatic blasts of the shofar, which stir memories of beloved parents or grandparents to whom heritage and tradition were important. They wish to participate in the oral confession of transgressions, which we recite in unison to help unburden our feelings of guilt.
“You shall observe it as a day when the horn is sounded.” This commandment specifically defines a ram’s horn, linking us with the story of Isaac being sacrificed on the altar, and his replacement, a ram caught in the thicket by its horn.
The shofar has always been the ritual horn of the Jews, sounded when the Torah was given at Mt. Sinai, when the walls of Jericho fell, and in our own time, in 1967 when the late IDF Chief Chaplain Rabbi Shlomo Goren blew it in joy to announce that Jerusalem was again ours.
It has been a call to assembly, a call to alarm, a call to battle – and our people have always responded.
There is probably no other country in the world that must contend with the unexpected with such regularity as Israel. By the time you read this column, who knows if the cease-fire will have held, if our soldiers will have returned home or if, God forbid, we will still be burying our dead. Since my aliyah in 1971, I have witnessed the Yom Kippur War, the Gulf War – and even did a brief stint in Lebanon as a war correspondent in 1982.
In each operation we had hope that peace was at hand, but Israel has never been allowed to achieve even short periods of peace. The wars, the intifadas, the suicide bombings, the lynchings and the kidnappings have made normal life an ongoing trauma for Israelis.
Our 18 year olds serve their obligatory three years of army service, but even in their forties are recalled when necessary in the reserves. (My 49-year-old son-in-law, a father of five, a doctor, and formerly a tank corps commander has, at this writing, still not returned home from the north.)
Israel’s war in Lebanon was not fought to change Lebanon or even to turn it into an ally. Israel fought the war to defend its people, to ensure its survival against thousands of Katyushas launched across the border, killing at random. This is the harsh reality of life here today.
But now the New Year approaches. Let Jews around the world celebrate the miracle that Israel, despite its enemies, has survived another year. Am Yisrael Chai.
Place this on the credit side of the balance sheet, along with the opportunity to start the year anew, cleansed of our sins and with the courage to look in the mirror and like our reflection.