Awake and Tremble, Israel
(This is an expanded version of an article published in The Jewish Press on May 15, 2020.)
Last month in Yerushalayim, Rav Aaron Rakeffet reflected on the pandemic and the state of the world:
“Abortions. Today you have places where the baby can be eight, nine months old, and abortion is permitted by law…There’s no concept that there’s a code of law from above that has to govern us…And then you go further. Who would ever dream a time would come when you speak about two men, two women, getting married?…Why was there a flood? Why was God so angry? Look at Chazal. Look at the sources. Look what mishkavei zachar brought about. But this is the whole breakdown of the family unit.”
Rav Rakeffet added:
“On every level — murder, euthanasia, abortion, proper sexual behavior — we’re talking about the Sheva Mitzvot, mishkavei zachar and all that goes with it. And it could very well be that this terrible shock that has come and hit all of us, could very well be is the Ribbono Shel Olam is saying to us: There’s a God in the world. Man is not the sovereign ruler of His universe. Wake up. Come back. Learn…Man is not alone. There is a Ribbono Shel Olam.”
The Jewish nation is commanded to be a mamlechet kohanim v’goy kadosh, modeling righteousness for the world to advance global recognition of the Ribbono Shel Olam. As Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch observes in his perush to Tehillim 89:37:
“What the sun does for all of nature — that is the function of the kingdom of David for humanity. It is to bring enlightenment and to reawaken moral life in the midst of mankind.”
Concerning Rav Rakeffet’s reference to the Sheva Mitzvot Bnei Noach, his rebbe Rav Joseph Soloveitchik wrote:
“Our task was and still is to teach the Torah to mankind, to influence the non-Jewish world…In a word, we are to teach the world the seven mitzvot that are binding on every human being.”
Yet where are the phenomena highlighted by Rav Rakeffet found to an extreme extent?
The state of Israel.
One of the world’s largest pride events is in Tel Aviv. The Israeli government promotes similar counter-Noahide activities domestically and abroad, from America and Argentina to Denmark and the United Kingdom.
The embassy in Washington has held pride receptions for the past four years and tweeted in 2019 about “the first openly transgender officer in the IDF, who paid for his medical treatments.” A report from that year on expanded Israeli integration of transgender soldiers noted, “The shift has even led foreign military officers to consult their IDF counterparts at NATO conferences about dealing with transgender soldiers.”
Along those lines, Vered Lee writes this month on transgender Israeli children:
“Although no official data exist about the number of transgender children and adolescents in Israel, people involved in the field speak of a dramatic increase in recent years. In 2013, when the Clinic for Gender-variant Children and Youth at the Dana-Dwek Children’s Hospital (part of Ichilov Hospital) in Tel Aviv, the largest clinic of its kind in Israel, started out, it had three trans children as patients. Now there are an average of 85 new patients a year: All told there are 200 children and teenagers under the clinic’s care, the youngest a boy of 4 and a half.
‘It’s part of a world trend,’ says the clinic’s director, Dr. Asaf Oren, a pediatric endocrinologist.
‘There is a flood of applications,’ says Dr. Ilana Berger, a psychotherapist, social worker and jurist, who was one of the pioneers in treating trans people in Israel. When she started out, in 1996, she treated only adults, ‘but since 2015, all my new patients are children and teens.’ ”
The next unity government may subsidize surrogacy for homosexual couples. (The Israel Electric Corporation began doing so in February.) Last month, a court fined a Be’er Sheva print shop over $14,000 for refusing to print materials for an LGBT group.
And during the week whose parasha included “Kedoshim tihiyu” (Vayikra 19:2) and “Veheyitem li kedoshim” (Vayikra 20:26), the consulate in New York tweeted:
“The #Israeli [drag] queens and kings come together to make their voices heard and show support and empathy for the difficult reality we live in these days, stage artists shout out GO FREE! #YomHaatzmaut #Israel72”
Regarding abortion — which is subsidized — political scientist Rebecca Steinfeld notes that “Israel has one of the highest late-term abortion rates globally.” In an article last year titled “I Found the Outer Limits of My Pro-choice Beliefs,” Dr. Chavi Karkowsky recounts about practicing medicine in Israel:
“In most states in my native country, third-trimester abortions are illegal or nearly inaccessible. In practice, only a handful of facilities in the entire United States perform abortions after 26 weeks for nonlethal anomalies. But here in Israel, abortion is widely available and can be offered until delivery. A subtle abnormality, such as the one I saw in that ultrasound room outside Tel Aviv, can prompt a discussion of pregnancy termination. Even at 35 weeks.”
A related analysis last year by Shany Littman pointed out:
“The number of abortions performed in Israel at an advanced stage of pregnancy is on the rise. According to Health Ministry data, the number of terminations after week 23 due to birth defects rose from 175 in 2000 to 302 in 2017…In other words, the proportion of late-term abortions out of the total number of abortions rose from 1.1 percent, in 2000, to 1.8 percent in 2017. In England, by comparison, only 0.1 percent of the abortions in 2017 were performed after week 24…’You go to international conferences and say that we abort fetuses with Down syndrome and people think you’re insane,’ says gynecologist and geneticist Dr. Adi Reches, from Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.”
Compare the above with Rav Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog in 1942 on abortion in Israel, vis-a-vis the slaughter of children in the Holocaust:
“It is a hideous sin, a double sin, against the laws of our holy Torah and against the future of our Jewish nation. It is a grave sin against the laws of our sacred Torah, which is a Torah of life, which desires life and the multiplication of life…And here divine justice has struck us, saying: You have learned the ways of the modern nations, to shed the ‘burden’ of large families, [and now] the evil people of the gentile nations are casting Jewish children into the water!”
In remarks for Yom Ha’atzmaut this year, Rabbi Daniel Fridman stated:
“What goes on in Israel doesn’t only impact Jews in Israel. It impacts Jews all over the world…Israel impacts Jews outside of Israel.”
Does one think the preceding practices have a positive impact on Klal Yisrael?
But instead of increased introspection and focus on national teshuva, the pandemic has increased arrogance among too many Israelis. An advocate of aliya recently mocked “Diasporinians who decide to cling to the Galut and go down with the ship.” Likewise:
Given the above, along with recent earthquakes and hail in Israel, it would be more advisable to reflect upon the source of pur’anut in the world (Yevamot 63a) and the Ramchal in Derech Hashem:
“God thus made the rectification and elevation of all creation totally dependent on the Jews…Through their deeds, they can cause [His Light] to shine forth and have influence, or, on the other hand, hold it back and conceal it.”
It would be more advisable to reflect upon Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook in Midbar Shur:
“A kingdom of priests ministers to the other nations in order to morally perfect them…However, if Israel will desert the good, which is the holy Torah, then its nationhood and its territorialism are an abomination before God…Therefore, several times over, the Torah links the giving of the land to the observance of Torah.”
And it would be more advisable to reflect upon the Rambam in Hilchot Avel (13:12), cited by Rabbi Yoni Sacks in a recent discussion of the pandemic:
“If one member of a group dies, the entire group should worry. For the first three days, one should see himself as if a sword is drawn over his neck. From the third day until the seventh, he should consider it as if it is in the corner. From that time onward, as if it is passing before him in the market place. All of this is so that a person should prepare himself and repent and awake from his sleep. Behold it is written Yirmiyahu 5:3: ‘You have stricken them, but they have not trembled.’ Implied is that one should awake and tremble.”
Awake, Israel. Awake and tremble.
