Well, for the first time in 14 months, we'll be "boom"-free. No more random explosions. No more rocket attacks. No more sirens. For now, at least.
Thankfully, UNIFIL and the Lebanese army will once again resume their positions to make sure Hezbollah does not return within 20 miles of the border fully armed, as successfully as they have in the past. And just to make sure that they do their job properly, some American general and a Cheese-Eating Surrender-Monkey French general will oversee them. Joy. The French.
Naturally, many of us living in the north are livid.
I assume it will be quiet for a bit (like 61 days), then Hezbollah will do something small, like prime a rocket launcher to fire, Israel will attack it, Lebanon will complain that the Israelis have broken the ceasefire, the world will warn Israel from "escalating" the situation, Hezbollah will fire "in defense," the world will again warn Israel from "escalating," and we'll be right back at it.
In the meantime, I have to work with my nine-year-old son and his fear of going out after sunset (he admitted to having rocket-on-the-head-phobia) and my three-year-old daughter who jumps and worries every time she hears a boom or an alarm/siren. I'm hearing more and more that these are normal now for many kids in the north. Thank G-d, that's all the "damage" we've been affected by.
How those who have had their homes and towns practically destroyed and who have been living out of their homes for over a year will return to normal … sigh.
Last year, when my oldest was in 12th grade, there was a girl in her class who did not do so well in school. From what I understood, she's a good girl, but not very strong when it comes to academics. Throughout the year, while all her friends were being accepted into schools for the upcoming year, she was being rejected from all those that she applied to.
I don't know all the details of what her parents did, but they, along with some teachers, and even some friends, put in a lot of effort to find her a place. We're talking month after month of disappointment. In the end, they finally found a place for her. Just the other night, my wife and I ran into her mother and my wife asked how she was doing (we already knew from my daughter, but she didn't know that), and she gave such a sigh, smiled, and said, "Great! She's in such a perfect place for her and she's doing so well!"
In this week's parsha, I caught something strange. When Yitzchok asks Eisav to make him a meal so he can give him his brachos, he tells Eisav to go out and trap an animal to make it. When Rivkah wanted Yaakov to receive the brachos, she told him to get two goats from their herd.
If they had a herd, why did Yitzchok ask Eisav to go out and trap an animal? Why didn't he simply ask him to take from their herd as Rivka did?
The Netziv M'vlozhin asks the same question (thankfully) and gives a very simple answer: Yitzchok wanted Eisav to do some "extra steps" in order to be more worthy of receiving the brachos. The more work he had to do to fulfill the mitzvah, the more reward he gets.
Sometimes, Hashem does the same things to us, albeit for a variety of reasons. Sometimes we have to go through multiple steps to accomplish something that could easily have been accomplished by one step.
As in the case of the parents finding a school for their daughter, we have an obligation to make sure our children get a proper Jewish education, and sometimes that comes through our money and sometimes it comes through our hard work in finding the right places for them. Perhaps the reason each of us had to go through what we went through was to give us more merit?
In the end, Hashem takes care of things, but we have to do our jobs to make it happen "naturally." But sometimes our jobs are dragged out for seemingly no good reason. We should keep in mind that while we might not understand all the calculations that Hashem has, in the end, the longer and harder we work on our mitzvos, even if they are dragged out beyond our control, we will get more and more merit for it.
Have a wonderful Shabbos!