Insights from Reverend Hazan Benlolo

Dear Chevra Shaas/Spanish (Shearith Israel)

THE SHABBAT OF COMFORT

I have written before of how scared I was when I visited Israel in the September before the Oct 7 attack: I wasn’t scared of anyone in particular, but rather by the sharp divisions of Israeli politics. And sadly, Hamas, which has its eyes and ears attuned to Israel, must have felt that the lack of unity meant that the time was ripe for attack.

I was by far not the first to have made the observation that disunity is destructive. This past Sunday was the 9th of Av, commemorating the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem. As the historian Josephus, who was contemporary with the destruction of the 2nd Temple, described in his “milhemet ha-yehudim,” the Roman general Vespasian [later to become emperor] advised his subordinates to wait before attacking, in order to allow the Jews to destroy “each other with their own hands...by their civil wars.”

Sadly, Yahya Sinwar must have seen these divisions among our people, and chose to take advantage of the disunity by attacking. On the other hand, according to Rabbi Daniel Perez, writing in the latest edition of the magazine “HaMizrachi,” Sinwar at least made the same mistake that Vespasian had warned against: as a result of the attack, he succeeded in uniting the people of Israel: this led to the motto that was prevalent throughout Israel after Oct 7: “yahad nenatseach,” i.e., TOGETHER, we shall win.

And again, sadly, according to news reports, this unity might be weakening.

And so, on Shabbat Nahamu, we pray for a complete Nehama, comforting, for our people and for the world.

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This past motsa’ei Shabbat, after the fast of the 9th of Av, here in Teaneck, we were blessed with a beautiful moon upon which to say kiddush levana. Did the moon make its way to Montreal, or was it stopped at the border for tariffs?

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This Shabbat, besides being Shabbat Nahamu, is also tu b’av, which was, I imagine, the original way of solving the “shidduch crisis.” The first reference to this semi-holiday is in Mishna Tractate Ta`anit, which relates that on this date, (and on Yom Kippur!) girls would dress in white and dance in the vineyards, and they would tell the single boys not to pay attention to beauty in selecting a wife, as it says in Mishlei, “sheqer ha-chen ve-hevel ha-yofi,” but rather “a woman who fears HaShem is the one to be praised. ”

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Pay extra close attention to the Torah reading this week, as it contains probably the two most famous passages in the Torah: the Shema’, and the 10 commandments (known in English as the decalogue, from the Greek “deka” = 10, and “logos” = word.) We also have here the prohibition against intermarriage.

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This week’s kiddush is co-sponsored by Simcha and Shulamit Foxman, in honour of the yahrzeit of her mother, Rebbetzin Aliza Singer z”l; and the yahrzeit of his father, Yehudah Foxman z”l. This shabbat, Tu be’av, is also the wedding anniversary of Simcha and Shulamit. That was the last wedding we celebrated in our old building on Bourret.

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Mazal tov to Dr. Yehoshua and Chana Haimovici, on the birth of their granddaughter in NJ. Tizku le-gaddelah le-Torah, le-Chuppah, u-le-ma`asim tovim; le-`ahavat ha`am ve-ha-`arets

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Refu’ah sheleimah to Avraham ben Udil HaKohen

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Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Menahem White, Chevra Shaas