Between the Seventh of Passover and October 7th, Kishinev and Nir Oz, Bialik and Psalms, Heresy and Faith

With Hamas' announcement that Shiri Bibas and her children, Ariel and Kfir, were murdered in captivity—children who had become the ultimate symbol of the kidnapped worldwide—emotions surge, and the soul seeks solace but finds none. At this point, the power of Jewish faith to cope with pain is revealed, in contrast to the emptiness of the spiritual wasteland that those distant from God and His Torah attempt to instill in us.

Chaim Nachman Bialik studied at the Volozhin Yeshiva under the guidance of Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin. However, instead of absorbing the eternal Torah values that grant a person true meaning in life and tools to face the upheavals and hardships of the world, he gravitated toward the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), which attracted many in his time. He invested his talents in poetry and Zionist-secular activities, which ultimately earned him the title of the "National Poet" of the Zionist movement.

The most famous of all his poems, the one that cemented his unique status, was "On the Slaughter," written in response to the Kishinev pogroms that began on the seventh of Passover in 1903. In these pogroms, over fifty Jews were brutally murdered, hundreds were injured to varying degrees, and hundreds of Jewish homes and businesses were burned due to a blood libel, in line with the European tradition. This pogrom prompted many to leave the "continent of blood" and immigrate to the Land of Israel. In this poem, Bialik expressed harsh words, condemning not only the murderers but others as well. As someone who had rejected Torah and mitzvot, like his fellow maskilim (Enlightenment thinkers), Bialik protested against G-d Himself, seemingly accusing Him of silence in the face of murder and injustice:

"O heavens, seek mercy for me! If there is a God in you, and a path to Him within you— And I have not found Him— Then pray for me! My heart is dead, and there is no longer prayer on my lips, And my strength has failed—there is no more hope— How long, O Lord, how long, how long?!"

Bialik refused to accept revenge as an expression of divine justice, and in his most famous line, often quoted whenever a Jewish child is murdered, he wrote:

"Cursed be he who says: Revenge! Such revenge, the vengeance of a young child's blood, Even Satan has not yet devised."

The heresy and spiritual void that defined those who rejected the concept of a living G-d—whose ways are just and righteous—led Bialik to his barren conclusion. If there is no Creator, then there is no justice, and life is nothing more than a depressing sequence leading inevitably to oblivion. Secular Zionism, following the Kishinev pogroms, understood that the Jewish people must take their fate into their own hands to avoid further massacres. However, they failed to grasp that the God of Israel, who is good and benevolent, is not Santa Claus; the reason for the calamities that befall us is not his absence from the world but rather his very presence and his uncompromising demand that we be his people and accept his sovereignty.

120 Years After Kishinev: The Seventh of October

One hundred and twenty years have passed since that Passover, when, instead of the blood of the offering and the blood of circumcision, the blood of a small Jewish child was spilled—a child for whom Bialik found no purpose in vengeance. The Zionist state has been established and stands firm, yet we have not found respite. Instead of the barbaric Cossacks and the civilized Germans who slaughtered us in cold Europe, the hot-tempered Ishmaelites have risen and massacred our children, women, and infants whenever they found an opportunity, culminating in the horrendous Simchat Torah massacre a year ago, on what is known worldwide as "October 7." The Bibas family—the mother and children—were among the victims of these human beasts, and once again, many echo the phrase: "The vengeance of a young child's blood has not yet been devised by Satan."

However, we must remember that Bialik’s rejection of G-d stood at the foundation of this unfortunate statement. It is based on the assumption that there is no justice in the world, that there is no divine ruler overseeing and guiding His creation. In contrast, our sacred Torah is filled with powerful expressions of vengeance, and our prophets vividly describe the blood of our enemies flowing when G-d rises to avenge His people. The vengeance of the Children of Israel is described in the Torah as the vengeance of God—this is explicitly stated in the war against Midian. Vengeance stems from the root "to rise"—G-d rises and establishes the world in its proper form, rebuilding from the ruins caused by the wicked.

When we were exiled to Babylon at the end of the First Temple period, we did not write "On the Slaughter." The Jews of that time believed in G-d, and instead, they composed in divine inspiration Psalm 137, "By the Rivers of Babylon," which ends as follows:

"O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be devastated, Happy is he who repays you as you have repaid us. Happy is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rock."

Faith versus heresy, vengeance versus passivity, the good and benevolent Creator versus the despair of those who abandoned the house of study. The Bibas family was not murdered in vain; the Jewish people will avenge their blood—the vengeance of G-d. The vengeance of a young child's blood was not devised by Satan; it was devised by the Holy One, blessed be He, the King of Israel and its Redeemer, who loves us and desires our victory and the destruction of our enemies. And if we internalize this essential ideological lesson, we will already know that their deaths were not in vain.

We conclude with the psalm of the day for Wednesday: "O God of vengeance, O Lord, O God of vengeance, shine forth! Rise up, Judge of the earth, repay the proud what they deserve! How long, O Lord, how long will the wicked exult?!"