The Jewish holiday of freedom and return to the Jewish homeland that is Passover came at a perfect time. Just as we in Israel are feeling the existential threat to our lives in our homeland, surrounded by universal misunderstanding and hatred, comes the story of how the Jews were oppressed and enslaved, universally hated and exploited, and how from this bleakest of realities came an unforeseen and unexpected redemption.

I think all of us needed the Seder night, which is the most clannish, family oriented holiday in the Jewish calendar. We needed to reconnect with each other as part of a large family with a shared history of experiencing the lows of being targeted by the worst humanity has to offer, as well as the highs of a connection with a Divine overseer Who escorts us to safety through outright miracles.

We needed to say out oud to each other and to the new generation: Not only in that generation did they try to kill us, but in every generation they rise to destroy our people, and our G-d – Blessed Be He – saves us from their hands.”

I spent the holiday with my son and his family. Both my son and my daughter in-law were together with us on Seder night in 2001 when Hamas terrorists blew up the Park Hotel in Netanya. Just as we walked out of that attempt on our lives without a scratch, so now too, we are being saved despite experiencing once again the terrifying determination of Iran and its murderous proxies Hezbollah and Hamas to see the Jewish people perish, in and outside of the Land of Israel. Once more, an effort is being exerted to expunge the Jewish people from the pages of history.

Who out there, even the most rational and least connected to religious feeling or the G-d of Israel, has not felt the breath of the Divine kiss his or her face when hundreds of Hamas rockets failed to kill a single Israeli?

 We are called, in the Torah portion we read last Shabbat, “the army of G-d.” And our G-d is called: “Adonai Tsvaot”, the G-d of armies. In Kings 2, Chapter 6 the servant of Elisha goes out in the morning and sees the Syrian army encamped in full force surrounding the city. He is terrified.

“Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?” the servant asks Elisha.

“Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”

The unseen forces at play in this conflict are undeniable. Eventually, it is my belief, that the blindness afflicting mankind which prevents them from seeing those forces of good, of the Divine, working on our side, will be cured. Our of blindness will come vision.

For what else would you call it when young college students praise the savages of Hamas, and hold up signs: “By any means possible.” What does that mean? That they, the former snowflakes who were terrified of micro aggressions like being called she, when they were a she, or he, when they were a he, can now stomach cutting the head off a baby to achieve their “goals”? Perhaps they never were snowflakes, just Nazis in transition from one leader (the kings of woke) to another leader (the terrorists of Hamas), in transition from pretending to champion good, to an all out embrace of evil.

One day soon, I hope, the eyes of all the world will open to the great pit yawning before mankind into which they will all be swallowed. For the Jewish people have not, and will never, stand alone. If mankind persists in its blindness, then the consequences will be dire. “For those who are with us, are more than those who are with them.”

Also present on the first day of Passover, were the many heroes presented in the book I was reading: One Day in October by Yair Almog, published by Koren Press which is currently available in Hebrew, but will be coming out in English. Read it.

There you will connect with the kindergarten teacher who sent her soldier son into battle, and then followed him as he confronted the terrorists in their city, using her car to ferry him and dozens of others wounded, to medical facilities. You will meet the young man who hid in an old caravan with seven others at the Nova festival, and experience with him the miracle of surviving attempts by dozens of Hamas terrorists armed with machine guns and RPG’s and cans full of flammable liquids as they unsuccessfully attempt to kill everyone inside, and how all were rescued after terrifying hours trapped inside. You will watch a young soldier clutch a Hamas grenade to his chest to save his fellow soldiers; a young mother and father who make a fateful decision to save their month old-baby. It is a book of miracles; a book of heroes; the story of the army of G-d.

“For those who are with us, are more than those who are with them.”

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