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HOLIDAY READING

Rabbanit Sally Mayer

Reaching Seventy

and Beyond

e are approaching two I’ve had flat tires on the road over the 80 years ago when the elderly and the
amazing moments in years, in Israel multiple random strang- children were sent to cruel deaths.
Wmodern Jewish History – ers stop and insist on helping to change Now, those children put on uniforms
celebrating Israel’s 73rd birthday on the tire. and protect their elders and their
Yom Ha’atzmaut, and 54 years to the More profoundly, the IDF brings people. Our children’s hearts pulse with
reunification of Jerusalem on Yom together Jews from every background, hope and a desire to serve and contrib-
Yerushalayim.
to serve together to protect our home- ute. Living for the other. As one nation
What does it mean to us that Israel is land. And when a lone soldier is being in the Land.
now over 70 years old? That number buried in a small funeral on Mount Israel is 73. The 70 faces of Torah are
has great significance in Tanach and Herzl, hundreds who never knew him being revealed and cherished by those
our tradition – 70 members of Yaakov’s come to pay their respects, comforting learning in Israel. Those 70 children of
family descended to Egypt; there were his family by showing that we are really Yaakov who went down to Egypt have
70 elders appointed to help Moshe lead all one family. become a family-nation who sticks
the Jewish people in the desert; accord- Finally, 70 has significance on the together and takes care of each other.
ing to our tradition, there are 70 nations national level – those 70 years of exile
and 70 languages, 70 “faces” or ways in Babylonia that ended with the invi- And after the 70 years of the Babylo-
to interpret the Torah, and 70 years of tation to come home and to build the nian exile, which stretched into two
exile after the destruction of the first second Temple. Galut is the absence thousand for us in the Roman exile,
Temple. I’d like to use three of these of a home and the absence of Jewish we are back in Israel, back to a united
directions as prisms through which to pride, as Yechezkel says in Chapter 36: Yerushalayim, where those laughing
discuss life in Israel at this stage. We became a chilul Hashem, as people children grow up to be brave soldiers
and volunteers who build our country
The 70 elders and 70 faces of Torah referred to us as “G-d’s nation that was and nation and take it forward.
signify the incredible Torah learning exiled.”
opportunities that we have in Israel. Galut can also be forgetting that we are May G-d bless and protect the State of
Israel, and may the coming years bring
Rav Ovadia Yosef zt”l in a responsum waiting to go home in the first place! In peace, health and prosperity to all its
(Yabia Omer, OH 6:41) describes with tefillat Musaf on chagim, we say that inhabitants.
wonder the explosion of Torah learning because of our sins we have been exiled,
that has occurred in the modern state and then we add, “And we have become
of Israel. far from our Land.” Isn’t that redundant?
Perhaps this second phrase is referring
I’d like to add the incredible expansion to an emotional distance – not only are
of women’s Torah learning as well, we not there, but we don’t even feel like
which I am blessed to see every day in we’re away from home. As we say in
the Midreshet Lindenbaum beit mid- our tefillot, the modern State of Israel
rash. The more men and women study is ּונ ֵ ת ָּ ל ֻ אְּ ג ת ַ חי ִ מ ְ צ תי ׁ ִ שא ֵ ר – the beginning
Torah, the more committed they are to of the sprouting of our redemption. We
living Torah, and to serving as leaders of are seeing prophecies fulfilled before
the Jewish people, enriching our fam- our eyes – elderly men and women with
ilies, our communities and our nation. Rabbanit Sally Mayer serves as Rosh
their canes, sitting along the streets of
The 70 members of Yaakov’s family rep- Yerushalayim, children laughing and Midrasha at Ohr Torah Stone’s Midreshet
Lindenbaum.
resent the sense of connection we feel playing – these images are straight from
to our fellow Jews – the sense that we the prophet Zechariah Chapter 8 and A member of the Mizrachi Speakers Bureau
are a family. On a mundane level, when were once unthinkable, especially just mizrachi.org/speakers

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