What often gets lost in the constant news and statistics of the ongoing war in eretz yisroel is the singular plight of each family, each soldier, each individual.
The Midrash relates:During the war against Midyon, for each person who went out to war there was a person designated to pray and learn for him.
The Bostoner Rebbe and HaRav Kook of Rechvot have started a program where they are asking individuals who find themselves in danger and all soldiers who wish to have someone designated to learn and daven for them to submit their names. Those wishing to receive a name of a “partner” to learn and daven for should email maortlmo@bezeqint.net.
May all of the efforts of our brethren in Eretz Yisrael and our prayers merit a speedy and succesful end to this trial and the safe return of all of our soldiers.
The Bostoner Gabbai in Har Nof, Yerushalayim is also supplying names of Israeli soldiers as partners to study and daven for.
You may contact the Gabbai, Nesanel Peterman, at
gabbai@gmail.com
Chaim-in the new book of RYBs’s shiurim on kinos. RYBS pointed out that the kinah about the son and daughter of R Yishmael the koehn Gadol is included after all of the kinos that deal with the Churban and Asarah Harugei Malchus. That is because we commemmorate individual tragedies as well as communal disasters on Tisha Bav-even and especially those involving children, especially the children of the Kohen Gadol because (1) they had seen the Beis Hamkikdash in its glory and (2) because the death of an individual requires us to mourn their loss even in the course of a national tragedy- a factor that is unique to Judaism ( pp267-270).
I really appreciate this concept. Often I find that davening for some amorphous “Klal” depersonalizes the process.
I also think that as we head into Tisha B’av and say (or at least have in mind) Holocaust kinnos we ought to study the life and death of 1-3 victims. The Nazis YM”S did not kill six million. They killed one individual with families, jobs, challenges triumphs, loves, dreams and aspirations and then they killed another such individual and then repeated the process a mind/heart numbing number of times (6,000,000!). Mass murder robs individual murder of it’s horror.
If nothing else this war is accomplishing one thing. ACHDUS in behavior and in tefilla. We know that we have to stick together, and we appreciate one another, we respect one another. Can this not be done without a war? Maybe then we will not have such wars….