Did you know that Shmuel Sackett went to jail in Israel, for her sake, decades ago? Neither did I, until I watched this video and couldn't stop watching until the end — which I rarely experience with something this long.
I admit, it helps that there's a lot more about what Shmuel has been doing since then, to where he is today.
Watch, and let me know what you think in the comments!
-HDG
***
P.S. A while back Shmuel wrote us (the mailing list), blowing away the notion that all our soldiers, alive and dead, are back in Israel. Three people still need to be returned, from times before "October 7th":
Ron ben Batya (Ron Arad - he may still be alive)
Eliyahu haKohen ben Sophia (Eli Cohen)
Yekutiel Yehuda Nachman haKohen ben Sarah (Yehuda Katz)
The klipa, the callus, that slowly and imperceptibly
covers the burgeoning adult, immutably desensitizes us and forever loses for us
the emotion and value that is the heart and nucleus of the mitzvah cell or
ritual. And so, as if suddenly – but
really as part of the slow and ongoing process – there is created a human
being, a community, almost a people that elevates the ritual to the heights
reserved for the concept, and we become practitioners of Jewish ritual, rather
than emotional and living embracers of the concept.
So it is with Tisha B’Av and the three weeks that precede
it. Not a few can emote all the laws and
customs emanating from them. Not an
Orthodox Jew will violate the rituals that make up the three weeks and
certainly not the nine days. And yet, as
with too many Jewish concepts that were meant to be living, thriving, real
things that grip the heart and soul – ha’ikarchaser min hasefer. [Editor's note: A Hebrew idiom, literally meaning, “the
principle is lacking from the book,” referring to the fact that the main
concept has been forgotten.]
For I put it to all honest people that, of all who practice
the rituals of the three weeks and Tisha B’Av, few – all too few – mourn for
Jerusalem and the Land. I put it that
most find the three weeks an excruciating thing that prevents them from
enjoying the summer; that most look forward to its passing as quickly as
possible so that vacation and enjoyment can continue in the Catskills and all
the other places that make up the Galut enjoyment; that few, all too few, feel the
stab of pain in their heart for the Temple that is not there; for the Moslem
jackals who walk and control the Mount; for the lack of holiness and sanctity
that Jerusalem and the Temple mean.
What happens because of this is a shallow and terrible
corrosion of Judaism and a slow and terrible corruption of the Jewish
soul. Mitzvot become things to be done
with and finished; the soul becomes a hard and callous thing feeling nothing,
and, worse, mitzvot become meaningless and fraudulent as we weep for a land we
could be living in – if we wish to; as we speak of a return to a land of which
we do not wish, as we grab ourselves in emotions we do not feel.
We do not wish to leave America; we do not feel any pain in
an “exile” that the ritual has us mouthing as a thing of tragedy and pain. We enjoy the luxury of Galut and mouth
quickly the kinot, the lamentations, most of whose words we do not understand
anyhow. We sit on the floor in the Ninth
of Av and look forward to the 10th.
And enjoyment.
That is the death of Judaism, no matter how many synagogues
and shtiblech have grown. This is the
destruction of Torah as a real and vibrant “thing,” no matter how many yeshivas
have sprung up. For all of them will
produce scholars of callous soul unable to feel the pain and joy and honesty of
a mitzvah as it was meant when given by G-d at Sinai.
***
Of course, this applies to all the nations of galut/golus, not just America.
Here are a few videos that I hope will point the way forward:
R' David Bar-Hayim: To Fast or Not to Fast on Tish"a b'Av
Zimmerman Farm: Experimenting with hydroponics, part 1
Zimmerman Farm: Experimenting with hydroponics, part 2
R' Ephraim Sprecher: T"U b'Av: A Tikun for Tish"a b'Av
