My work as a mohel takes me all over Israel and beyond. Recently, I had an early morning brit in Tel Aviv. Events like these are challenging because of the big city realities of traffic and parking. These factors made it necessary to daven early and leave right from shul to arrive on time. These factors also made my kavanah not what I wanted it to be. I spent most of the tefillah wondering if I should finish early and head on my way. “What if I wait a few extra minutes and then I’m caught behind an accident for hours on end?” I pondered. For the betterment of my prayer track-record, I stuck it out until the end.
As a few of us made our way to our cars, we heard three large explosions in the distance. This is not the norm for Gush Etzion. Unbeknownst to us, the Iron Dome had just shot down a ballistic missile. The shrapnel had fallen on Route 1 – my intended route to the brit milah. This is what it’s like living in Israel. Something which seems like a good idea might actually be putting you on a path to oncoming rocket fire.
As I left Efrat, my anxiety kicked in. At these moments, you ask yourself questions like: should I even be leaving my house right now? Having no information on where the missile came from, I had no sense if more were on the way. But the world doesn’t come to a halt because people are trying to kill you. What’s both impossible to fathom and so regular in Israel is how life keeps moving no matter what. It’s out of pure necessity. If we stopped every time a rocket was fired, our country would have been frozen for the last twelve months. Even though I was apprehensive, I pressed on.
I can remember when I first experienced these fears. It was a week after Oct 7. Our first Shabbat after Simchat Torah was nerve-riddled. Tzahal had yet to secure our southern border and there were terrorists infiltrating town after town. As Shabbat approached, we had to decide whether or not to shut off the outside world. The week had been a constant barrage of security notifications mixed with traumatic social media images. As much as our souls longed for a quiet Shabbat, we wondered if it would be safe to be in that bubble right now. We chose to leave on the Shabbat news channel instituted for these purposes.
Shabbat dinner was exactly what we needed. All was quiet as we had hoped. After the meal, as we lay in our beds, all six of us, it sounded like someone was talking in the hall outside our front door. We took a break from our Shmishna (Mishna leaning while shmuggling in bed) to see where the noise was coming from. It was the Shabbat alert channel reporting that an intruder had broken into a community in Gush Etzion.
We went into full panic mode, closing all the shades as we’d been instructed to do. As everything was closed and we waited in silence, it became clear that something wasn’t right. There were no loudspeaker announcements being made. If there had been an intrusion in our specific town, they would have been warning the residents. We had been overzealous and now everyone, including our four children, was totally on edge. We knew the stress of the outside world was too much at that point. I did something I never do. I used my elbow to turn off the television. As much as I questioned its permissibility, it had to be done. At that time, our family’s sanity needed to come first.
As I drove to the brit milah in Tel Aviv, I worried about what I might see or encounter along the way. No other rockets fell on Route 1 that day, but there were smoldering fires along the side of the road. This wasn’t the first time I had encountered rocket fire in my travels.
One of my closest friends was called up to fight on Oct 7. His reserves unit bravely served in Gaza for the majority of the war. I visited his base a number of times and there were often rockets overhead. On one of his first visits home, a local shul asked my friend to speak about his experiences. A large number of people attended the event. Two things were made clear in that conversation. The first was that he and all of the members of his unit were completely in the dark when it came to current events. One of the questions asked was about a policy proposal President Biden had made at the time. The attendees were all concerned that, even at those early stages of the war, U.S. support was beginning to wane.
My friend had no idea what the question was in reference to. This was both shocking and comforting. All of us who were glued to the news couldn’t fathom how anyone wouldn’t know of the mounting pressure to halt the Gaza offensive. But at the same time, we were comforted by this ignorance. It meant that as much as the two governments were constantly making public statements, these political interactions had no influence on the army’s conduct.
At the beginning of this meeting, we all had to turn over our cell phones and smart watches so that they could be put in another room. This was necessary because the enemy could be listening in at any time. Not much secret information was divulged in the presentation except one thing: the plan was once we were finished in the South, we were pivoting to the North. I inquired if international pressure to withhold arms could halt the second stage of the plan. My friend assured us that as soon as the war began, all of the arms were allocated for both stages of the process. Nothing would stop us from doing what needed to be done.
When I arrived at the brit, things felt calmer. My work as a mohel requires a great deal of focus. Much like our soldiers and my family’s first Shabbat, the ceremony creates a bubble from the outside world. In my usual manner, I put all my effort into creating a memorable spiritual experience for the family and friends in attendance. While wrapping up, the sandak was giving out blessings, as the sandak and the mohel typically do. The brit milah elevates both to a high spiritual level and they can share that with others.
I’m not a fan of giving blessings. It’s a difficult balance of either giving the individual a very personalized beracha or going with the standard formulation of “May Hashem bless you with happiness, income, and good health, etc.” I never know which route to go. Most, including myself, give the standard blessing upon request. One such incident occurred at a brit milah I performed for a family in Southern Israel. The mother of the baby and her siblings numbered 14 and they all are at varying levels of religious observance. Some are black-hat, while others are secular. The grandmother approached me for a blessing and, as usual, I got nervous, not knowing exactly what she desired. “Can you please bless me that none of my children should be too far to any extreme,” she requested. It was one of the most profound blessings I’ve ever had the honor of bestowing.
At the end of the Tel Aviv brit, something unusual happened. The sandak asked if he could give me a beracha. No one had ever done that before. As he put his hands on my head, I wondered which version of the blessing I’d be getting – standard or personalized. But instead of either of those, he merely recited the priestly benediction, “May G-d bless you and protect you. May G-d make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May G-d lift His countenance upon you and grant you peace.” and then he kissed my head.
Although this is the blessing given at many different occasions, it isn’t the norm for a sandak. And just as it seemed odd to get a blessing, it also seemed odd to get this blessing. I wondered why the grandfather chose this formulation. He was from America; did he not feel up to the Hebrew? Or maybe he didn’t know the common practice in Israel. But as I cleaned up my tools, it became clear how perfect this beracha was for all of us – especially that day.
As Israel embarks on the second stage of this existential war and rockets continue to rain down upon us from all angles, there is nothing we need more than G-d’s protection and a prayer for peace. But the hope of this prayer is not to halt the war. It’s not to find a way to convince the government to leave those who seek our demise in place. As it says in Kohelet, there is “a time for war and a time for peace.” Now is a time for war. The blessing of the Sandak is that by dismantling the terror networks in the region, we can achieve peace with our neighbors and bring the hostages home without injury or loss of life to our own.
May we all soon see the day when Israel, and the entire world, is encompassed in a true, lasting peace.
