I often have "Only in Israel" moments. Most of them come from the people themselves, rather than events. Israelis are fun and interesting people. Especially those from the periphery. It seems that they are less likely to be pulled into hate politics, and are more open to things.
Once a week, we have somebody come in to help one of my younger kids with something. Just today, she said to my wife, "As you know, I'm not religious. But I have a lot of faith in Hashem. Evey time I'm under stress, I turn to Him and ask for the Shechina to rest on me … just the other day, I just pulled the car over and cried out to Hashem to help meb… I need not tell you to work on your faith in Hashem, but it's very important to teach your children the importance of doing so whenever they need help."
How many of us actually do that when we're in times of need? That we just stop everything that we're doing to just ask for help from Hashem?
In this week's parsha, the Jewish nation finally rages war against Midian, from what Midian did a few parshios ago. What exactly did they do? They sent their daughter out to seduce the Jewish men in order to cause them to sin. So, it hit me. Midian didn't throw ballistic missiles at us. Nor did they openly attack us. Nor did they even threaten to annihilate us. What did they do? Simple. They caused us to sin. And that, says Hashem, means that we need to go to war against them. Just because they attacked us spiritually, we were obligated to go against them physically. Amazing, no? That's how important it is to guard oneself spiritually.
When people, often within the nation, attempt to weaken the nation spiritually, they are saying, "Yes, I'm an enemy of the Jewish people." Of course, that doesn't mean we can go ahead and attack everybody, but it does help put a title of "right or wrong" on things, when everybody always feels that they are in the grey zone.
And even more importantly, is the other lesson to learn from this.
If Hashem declares war on you for attempting to weaken the spiritual sense of the Jewish nation, how much more does He praise you for strengthening the spiritual sense of the Jewish nation? What is the reward for somebody who encourages, knowingly or unknowingly, another Jew to gain higher spiritual goals?
Something to think about.
Have a wonderful and missile-free Shabbos!