Esther Yocheved's Three Questions...a few thoughts

30 Adar Alef 5782 | ל' אדר א' ה''תשפ''ב

 Happy End of the Month | סוף החודש שמח

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With more and more truth coming out about more and more people, places, things and events, wouldn't being able to distinguish real Jewish values from the false ones that have been going around, be part of this all-important pre-redemption process?

I have really taken what I hope is a more precise view of this important question, having heard Esther Pollard a"h's explanation to her husband, Jonathan, just before she went to her place in Olam haBa. It was about questions she used all her life to find out what kind of individual she was dealing with, as appropriate. (Video below, just in case you haven't seen it yet, or just want to review it.)

I wrote down the three questions that Jonathan gave his fellow mourners so that I could put them here and, using them as a guide, make a list of things we should try to accomplish regarding the Land before Mashiah arrives. (All right, so we aren't allowed to rely on miracles...but they do happen all the time! Thank G-d.) 

It seems to me she came up with a very simple test, which others, including me, might have, or should have, come up with before. It might have been one of those tasks that was saved for her to express as needed. A lot of it has to do with the Jewish heart and its connection with fellow Jews, or expressions of the lack thereof, such as when someone is defending the presence and claim of ownership that Arabs might have against us here in Israel. 

We (and especially I!) need to apply them in such a way as to form a closed circle around ourselves — the wall Yehonatan told his audience about in the video below, to sustain purity of spirit and heart, the purity that is expected of real Jews in the face of the worst adversity. 

Jonathan gave a specific example of an event he and Esther went to in New York before they came here, somewhere in the middle of the video. A man who calls himself a rabbi was defending the Arab presence in Israel, and Mrs. Pollard called him out on it, using specific examples.

The line of questioning was as follows:

1. Do you feel the pain of your brothers? Do you really feel it? 

Note: Jonathan mentions that in her thoughts Esther includes our sisters too; but the question is about the Jewish People as a whole.

If you are a Jew and have no skin in the game — not living in Israel — you have no right to criticize Jews in Israel. 

If you live here and still act like you have no skin in the game and want to hand over your people's lives for the sake of political correctness or anything else, in the end it will be all the worse for you.

And no, I'm not asking whether you put your time in the army here, because until now it serves to preserve an Israel that holds nothing special for — or sacred to — the Jewish nation and that does not take into account our myriads of sufferings of many different types, over millennia. A "state for all its citizens" here actually cheats the Jews because our government favors certain non-Jews here. Why would a Jew serving as a spiritual or a governing leader do such a thing to his people? Everyone else has somewhere else to go, except us.

We don't want to be "governed" in this manner. We just want our own sovereign homeland, without enemies living among us whose only goal is to plague us and preferably rid the world of us.

The portion of the list applicable to this question contains at least these action items. There may be more that readers may post in the comments:

1. Putting others' values, whether real or pretend, ahead of our own is disastrous. Let us look around and see what happens when countries have no clear understanding of the reason for their existence. We have a clear mandate from the Holy Torah to be here in the Land of Israel, from which we must draw the courage of our convictions. 

Everyone who has a bible and reads it knows that, too.

People who oppose our Biblical mandate to be in the Holy Land ought to take their bibles out from their homes and burn them in the nearest public square. Let 'em show us their hatred in burning flames! Then let's see what happens to them. 

The people, not the bibles.

2. Letting our government punish our brethren over those who would actually throw us out on our ear if they had the chance...is simply wrong. We must protest this policy every chance we get.

Take the Negev Bedouin, for example, who are allowed to run wild while Jews cringe in fear because our so-called GOVERNMENT rendered itself powerless to stop it...

And the constant "shooting ourselves in the foot" phenomenon. For decades, Israel's foreign policy has been to give in to those in our land who are backed up financially by rich nations and organizations around the world, such as the EU, the UN and the New Israel Fund), legitimizing him and delegitimizing us. 

This also relates to how our government has handled our public relations from our earliest days as a renewed state until now. It is all due to false values, labeled Jewish by people who seek to sway us toward self-destruction. A great summary of this can be found here.

(But the one outstanding exception I am aware of is Daniel Seaman, former director of the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) among other positions. He gave everything he could to defend us through the written and spoken word. Search | Wikipedia | Tablet | A7)

Do we seek to relieve our brothers' pain by acting appropriately against these things, or do we seek to destroy their presence, or allow them to face unnecessary destruction, in our mutual homeland without protest? 

Do we seek to hurt our fellow Jews in Israel by keeping them constantly in danger, constantly fighting issues that would have been solved long ago if they had been dealt with properly, as any other nation would do and not be chastised for their actions???

The loyal, faithful Jew does not seek to destroy our presence here, whether he lives here or not, even despite our government. He (and his Jewish wife — this includes genuine converts to Judaism) seek to support our return to the land to which G-d promised us He would return us, and even return themselves. Which brings us to our next question...

2. Do you feel the pain of the Land of Israel? Do you know that the Land is alive, that it's Eretz haKodesh?" 

The portion of the list applicable to this question contains at least these action items. There may be more that readers may post in the comments:

 1. Realize why the land was as good as empty for many hundreds of years before Jews began coming back en masse. We still have pictures of those days until relatively recently. Mark Twain gave excellent testimony to that face when he was there in 1867.

2. Make the inclusion of lands that were won in the Six Day War and that the world still doesn't consider legitimate (Judea/Yehuda, Samaria/Shomron and other lands as they come to us) as a part of Israel Proper a prime priority. Extend sovereignty, already! We don't need to wait for the president of the USA or any other country to do it for us.

3. Do you feel the fear of our children when they're running to the bomb shelters? And they're told they have 10 seconds?

The portion of the list applicable to this question contains at least this action item. There may be more that readers may post in the comments:

1. We must make Jewish children our top priority. No other country would allow their children to be subjected to the kinds of danger and violence that ours are exposed to on a daily basis. No other country's children associate BALLOONS and KITES with bombs and other violence. No other nation's children must go through sirens and strictly timed reactions on a regular basis...and they're not fire drills.

Not to mention having their parents murdered in front of them, or other atrocious things. 

2. We citizens need to stop considering what we have been going through a normal way of life, especially if we're not going through it directly ourselves (I'm looking at you, government leaders!). 

I don't think that people living near the Gaza border think it's normal for their homes to be shot at all the time; neither should those of us who have the power to change things.

There are plenty of news items and blogs that have more of this information, with links.

These questions can be adapted to any kind of situation our child is confronted with. Another way of demanding an explanation is as Esther said it, putting the onus on us adults: 

"Do you feel the fear for our future, because our children are our future?!"

When it comes to our children, we need to be responsible and demand explanations that these purveyors of un-Jewish values would be uncomfortable giving. People with Jewish mothers, who say 'no' to all three, are not true Jews; they are not loyal to their own. 

(It's like that other test that we hear about a lot: Does a person show mercy and compassion (rahmanut רחמנות), shyness and humility (bayshanut ), and display lovingkindness and sharing from what they have (g'milut hasadim)? These are qualities associated with Jews with true Jewish values.

I got this from HERE.)

 As Esther did, and showed us: If they don't display the signs, or feel the pain of their people from over the centuries of persecution, exile and murder, we must doubt their loyalties and even their lineage, no matter how high their stature or important their title. It's crucial and even consequential for the next war that is coming up. 

My hope is that even those of us who don't feel comfortable asking such questions will be able to stand on our ground better and more accurately. 

After all, we do need to know whether we are confronting a real problem precisely, or falsely accusing someone of being a danger to themself* and others through their values.

And finally, we need to solve the problems that have stood in the way of our redemption for thousands of years. May Mashiah be revealed quickly, with mercy and lovingkindness.

 

*Thanks to R' Pinchas Winston for introducing me and my family to this Canadian term through his writings.