Page 37 - HaMizrachi #29 Yom HaAtzmaut 2021 USA

HOLIDAY READING

Rabbi Alex Israel Rabbanit Sally Mayer

Reaching Seventy

and Beyond

e are approaching two a family. On a mundane level, when I’ve 80 years ago when the elderly and the
amazing moments in had flat tires on the road over the years, children were sent to cruel deaths.
Wmodern Jewish History – in Israel multiple random strangers stop Now, those children put on uniforms
celebrating Israel’s 73rd birthday on and insist on helping to change the tire.
Yom Ha’atzmaut, and 54 years to the More profoundly, the IDF brings and protect their elders and their people.
Our children’s hearts pulse with hope
reunification of Jerusalem on Yom together Jews from every background, to and a desire to serve and contribute.
Yerushalayim.
serve together to protect our homeland. Living for the other. As one nation in
What does it mean to us that Israel is And when a lone soldier is being buried the Land.
now over 70 years old? That number in a small funeral on Mount Herzl, hun-
has great significance in Tanach and dreds who never knew him come to pay Israel is 73. The 70 faces of Torah are
our tradition – 70 members of Yaakov’s their respects, comforting his family by being revealed and cherished by those
learning in Israel. Those 70 children of
family descended to Egypt; there were showing that we are really all one family.
70 elders appointed to help Moshe lead Finally, 70 has significance on the Yaakov who went down to Egypt have
the Jewish people in the desert; accord- national level – those 70 years of exile become a family-nation who sticks
ing to our tradition, there are 70 nations in Babylonia that ended with the invi- together and takes care of each other.
and 70 languages, 70 “faces” or ways to tation to come home and to build the And after the 70 years of the Babylonian
interpret the Torah, and 70 years of exile second Temple. Galut is the absence exile, which stretched into two thousand
after the destruction of the first Temple. of a home and the absence of Jewish for us in the Roman exile, we are back
I’d like to use three of these directions pride, as Yechezkel says in Chapter 36: in Israel, back to a united Yerushalayim,
as prisms through which to discuss life We became a chilul Hashem, as people where those laughing children grow up
in Israel at this stage. referred to us as “G-d’s nation that was to be brave soldiers and volunteers who

The 70 elders and 70 faces of Torah exiled.” build our country and nation and take
signify the incredible Torah learning Galut can also be forgetting that we are it forward.
opportunities that we have in Israel. waiting to go home in the first place! In May G-d bless and protect the State of
Rav Ovadia Yosef zt”l in a responsum tefillat Musaf on chagim, we say that Israel, and may the coming years bring
(Yabia Omer, OH 6:41) describes with because of our sins we have been exiled, peace, health and prosperity to all its
wonder the explosion of Torah learning and then we add, “And we have become inhabitants.
that has occurred in the modern state far from our Land.” Isn’t that redundant?
of Israel. Perhaps this second phrase is referring
to an emotional distance – not only are
I’d like to add the incredible expansion we not there, but we don’t even feel like
of women’s Torah learning as well, which we’re away from home. As we say in
I am blessed to see every day in the Mid- our tefillot, the modern State of Israel
reshet Lindenbaum beit midrash. The is ּונ ֵ ת ָּ ל ֻ אְּ ג ת ַ חי ִ מ ְ צ תי ׁ ִ שא ֵ ר – the beginning
more men and women study Torah, of the sprouting of our redemption. We
the more committed they are to living are seeing prophecies fulfilled before
Torah, and to serving as leaders of the our eyes – elderly men and women with
Jewish people, enriching our families, their canes, sitting along the streets of Rabbanit Sally Mayer serves as Rosh
our communities and our nation. Yerushalayim, children laughing and Midrasha at Ohr Torah Stone’s Midreshet

The 70 members of Yaakov’s family rep- playing – these images are straight from Lindenbaum.
resent the sense of connection we feel to the prophet Zechariah Chapter 8 and A member of the Mizrachi Speakers Bureau
our fellow Jews – the sense that we are were once unthinkable, especially just mizrachi.org/speakers

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