The search for chametz (leavened bread) is the start of many Passover rituals observed over the springtime festival. Houses are combed by their owners to ensure no chametz was overlooked during the Passover cleaning.
Yet a curious detail of the law requires that the search be conducted specifically at night and just a candle (today, many use a flashlight) for light to reveal the unnoticed chametz. The Sages explained that searches are best done at night in the dark with a focused light. The smallest light in the darkest room provides the best light for finding small and hidden objects.
The lesson of the small and focused light in the darkest rooms is a lesson often extended to other areas of life. Currently, the Jewish people and the Land of Israel sit in a dark room. We have suffered a harsh and humiliating attack by a smaller and weaker force. Over a thousand were slaughtered, thousands were wounded, and hundreds were kidnapped.
The country was forced to war where hundreds of thousands of reserve soldiers went out to fight, tens of thousands of Israelis were displaced, thousands of soldiers were injured, and hundreds of soldiers were killed. This is a dark time for the Jewish people; it is a time when we need light.
Israel has seen similar dark times in its history. The Jews were enslaved by the Egyptians for over 200 years, struck by the Amalekites as they traversed the desert, seduced by Moabite women and punished by God, and subjugated in their own land by foreign enemies.
The Babylonians and Romans sacked Jerusalem, killed millions of Jews, and exiled the rest. Arab invaders nearly completed the job, almost totally emptying the land of its Jews as they colonized Judea, which was renamed Palestine by the descendants of the Romans they defeated. In more modern times, Crusades, pogroms, and the Holocaust ravaged the Jewish people, killing tens of millions of Jews over the years.
AFTER THOUSANDS of years of agonizing torment, light shined again for the Jewish people. Over fifty years of hard work on the land and in the halls of governments worldwide bore fruit when God blessed the Jews, and they reestablished a Jewish state in its historic homeland, Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.
They were once again masters of their own destinies. Unlike their brothers and sisters in Europe who had nowhere to find refuge in their darkest hour, when 800,000 Jews in Arab lands were forced from the places they called home for over a thousand years, they found refuge in the newly established Jewish State of Israel.
In the brightest of times, there was still darkness. Unwilling to accept the rejuvenation of the Jewish people in the Jews’ native land, the Arab armies attacked the new Jewish state. Thousands of Jews – over 1% of the total population – were killed in the ensuing War of Independence (1948-49). But with God’s help, the Jewish people survived.
Over the next two decades, thousands of Jews would lose their lives to Arab and Palestinian terror attacks. In 1967, Israel’s light shined brighter with a crushing victory over their Arab neighbors in the Six Day War. Israel quadrupled in size, taking control of the Biblical heartlands it was denied at their founding in 1948.
Yet, more darkness would come when the Arab enemies desecrated the Jewish people’s most sacred day in a despicable surprise attack on Yom Kippur. In the 1973 war, Israel lost over 2,000 soldiers, and it took three weeks for the country to regain control and defeat its enemies.
Remember that Israel is still a thriving success
TODAY, ISRAEL is a thriving success. It deregulated and privatized its economy, leading to a Start-up Nation of hi-tech success paralleled by Silicon Valley. Israel’s economy has remained strong throughout many global downturns, and it tops the world in healthcare, education, and happiness.
The country’s success is coveted by leaders around the region and the world. Israel’s Democratic government is the envy of its Arab neighbors whose tyrannical dictators don’t allow their people to enjoy the freedoms the average Israeli citizen – Jew, Arab, Druze, and Bedouin – takes for granted.
While the past year and a half has been a dark time for the Jewish people, the past few months have not been completely dark. There are shining lights in the night of the Jewish tragedy that have shown through the darkness.
Israel has successfully defeated, or is on its way to doing so, seven different foes on seven different fronts. It has weakened Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, the Houthis, Iran, Iraqi militias, and Syria’s military.
It has seen the return of a hundred hostages and begun rebuilding the South and the North from the destruction suffered there. The Jewish people and the State of Israel have begun their rehabilitation. Today’s light in Israel is a thin ray, but it shines in a dark night.
Israel and the Jewish people have a bright future. God has helped them survive painful tragedies like the Simchat Torah massacre of October 7, and God will help the Jewish people survive this tragedy as well. Israel has proven itself more resilient than any other nation that has walked this land, and its resilience will lead to brighter days.
From the Jewish people’s darkest periods have come their brightest days. After the Egyptian slavery came the giving of the Torah and the conquering of the Land of Israel; after the persecution of Haman came Israel’s second commonwealth; and from the ashes of the Holocaust came today’s State of Israel.
I pray that from the darkness of the Simchat Torah massacre comes the brightest of days for the Jewish people; may God make it so for the Jewish people.
The writer is a Zionist educator at institutions around the world. He recently published his book, Zionism Today.