Erev Shabbat Thoughts From Jerusalem As the World Turns Against Us
It's been a devastating week, five soldiers lost, Hezbollah's relentless fire, a world turning away. Here's what to do where there is nowhere left to look.
This has been a week that felt, for many of us, like the ground shifting beneath our feet.
The Trump administration, the one so many American Jews and Israelis had placed extraordinary hope in, has in the space of days made moves that feel like a betrayal. Not a gentle pivot. A shock. The kind that leaves you staring at your phone at midnight wondering what world your children are inheriting.
I've spoken to friends in Israel and in the U.S. this week, thoughtful people, informed people, and the word I keep hearing is the same: devastated. Alarmed. Hopeless.
So as the sun starts its descent on another impossible week, here are a few thoughts from a religious Jew who is also, like you, just trying to make sense of this.
Hashem has a plan. We don't know what it is.
I know that sounds simple. Maybe it sounds dismissive. It isn't. It's actually the hardest thing in the world to hold onto, because emunah doesn't mean believing when things look fine. Anyone can do that. Emunah means believing precisely when it looks bad. When the math doesn't add up. When the allies aren't there. When the news keeps coming and none of it is good.
It might not look good. It might not feel good. That's part of the deal.
Today we lost four soldiers. Four. While the diplomatic world debated memorandums and frameworks and signing ceremonies, Hezbollah fired drones, UAVs, missiles and rockets at our people, and our soldiers were out there, as they are every single day, standing between those weapons and the rest of us. Their families will not have a normal Shabbat tonight. There are no words for that.
We say Baruch Dayan HaEmet when the worst comes to bear, we bless the True Judge even then. Not because we understand. Not because we're not in pain. But because we recognize that the story isn't over, and the Author isn't lost, even when we are.
And so we do what our ancestors did thousands of years ago when they too faced enemies they could not defeat alone, when the walls were closing in and the nations turned away. We turn our eyes heavenward. We daven. We ask Hashem for mercy and for peace.
ה' עֹז לְעַמּוֹ יִתֵּן, ה' יְבָרֵךְ אֶת עַמּוֹ בַשָּׁלוֹם.
Hashem will give strength to His people. Hashem will bless His people with peace.
Am Yisrael has survived things that should have ended us. It didn't. It won't.
Shabbat shalom.