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.
Before confronting Esau face to face, Jacob sent emissaries to transmit a message that begins, “Im Laban garti” – “I have sojourned with Laban and I have lingered until now.”
Jacob lived (garti) around Laban but he always remained a stranger, a ger. He left his childhood home years before and then, as Rabbi Soloveitchik explains, lived “a long night of darkness, misery and distress.”
It is no easy task to survive an environment that is antithetical to one’s upbringing, though Jacob emphasizes that he had not “gone off the derech.” As Rashi declares, “I have sojourned with Laban, yet I observed the 613 mitzvos.”
Certainly his twenty-plus years with Laban was more than enough time for Jacob to lose his identity and traditions, to learn and embrace the ways of Laban. But Jacob asserts he did not. “He had not assimilated,” notes Rav Soloveitchik, “he had not integrated himself into Laban’s society and community, he had not accepted their morals, their code of ethics, or their lifestyle.”
With Chanukah approaching, we are reminded of how difficult it is to remain faithful in galut. Indeed, galut is the ultimate Rorschach test for all Jewish generations. How we understand and react to this reality defines us. We cannot avoid it. Galut is our reality. There are no walls tall enough nor moats wide enough to hold it at bay. As frightening as that is, the truth is there can be no geulah, no redemption, without galut.
The question for each generation and for each of us is whether we have what it takes to live through galus, to be able to declare, as Jacob did to Esau, “I have made it through Laban!”
To be fully Jewish has nothing to do with time or place. Jacob sojourned with Laban and maintained his commitment. He tells us so himself. Which raises an interesting question: Is it appropriate for someone of Jacob’s religious and spiritual stature to “sing his own praise”?
While it seems that is exactly what Jacob was doing, Rav Meir Shapiro of Lublin suggests another perspective, one that offers a way for us to engage our galus. I observed the Taryag mitzvot in Laban’s environment, says Jacob, but I did not absorb any lessons from Laban’s approach (Lo lamadeti mi’maasav ha’rayim).
Rav Shapiro teaches that inasmuch as a person is obligated to serve God with every facet of his life, one must constantly be alert to new ways to achieve those goals. Just as one who seeks wealth is always on the lookout for new opportunities to increase his wealth, so too must we be looking for ways to increase our spiritual well-being. When I see the lengths people go to in order to fulfill their carnal desires, how much more should I be willing to go to achieve my spiritual goals?