This is the first Dvar Torah I’ve ever written. My Hebrew school education afforded me no encouragement, and my bar mitzvah speech was severely plagiarized. With this in mind, I embark upon writing this dvar torah with nothing more than a Hebrew-English Chumash and strong desire to bang Torah.
In this week’s parsha, Ki Tavo, Moshe tells the B’nai Yisrael that they will fully become a nation after crossing the Jordan into Israel. This new status comes with the responsibility of intently adhering to all of Hashem’s commandments. At this point in the parshah, the torah makes known the rewards and punishments for their actions. It states that if you listen to Hashem, when your enemies attack you on one road, they will flee from you in seven directions. If you don’t listen, you will be forced to flee from your enemies. At this point it struck me how applicable this is to what is going on today in Israel. I feel Chapter 28, verse 52 couldn’t spell out the situation any clearer; “It will lay siege to you in all your settlements, until it has brought down all your high fortified walls, in which you trust, throughout your land. That nation will then persecute you in all the settlements throughout the land which G-d your Lord has given you”. One does not need to open their eyes too widely to witness the fulfillment of this verse being carried out on almost a daily basis.
But the verse also provides the antidote: we can remedy the situation in by trusting more in Hashem and following his commandments. I’m not the first person to point out that the Jewish nation as a whole needs to come together and realize that even military victories only come from above. Israel has a powerful military, but without Hashem, it cannot accomplish very much.
Now we are in the month of Elul, reflecting upon how we can improve ourselves over the next year. We should realize that to improve the situation in Israel, we need divine help, and the only way to receive that help is to dedicate ourselves a little more to Torah, for the good of the country, and also for the good of ourselves.