Never Give Up!
Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a dinner for a Jewish school in Sderot. While I have no connections to this school my wonderful “mechutan” (Yiddish word for one’s child’s father-in-law) is close with one of the gracious benefactors of the yeshiva and he invited me to attend and see what it was all about.
Like so many people, I have attended countless dinners and functions for a number of institutions. This particular dinner though struck me more than most.
Sderot is a city you may have heard of before. It is located in Israel right near Gaza and is under constant attack from Hamas rockets. Literally thousands of rockets have been launched against the innocent civilians of this city who are “guilty” of the crime of trying to lead normal lives like every one of us. In fact, its nickname is The Bomb Shelter Capital of the World.
From the moment the sirens go off indicating a missile launch the inhabitants of the city have 9 seconds, that’s right – 9 SECONDS! – to find shelter in a bunker or elsewhere. That means by the time you finish reading this paragraph you would have been out of time.
For a while the city’s population continuously dwindled as people sought safer places to live. However, a number of defiant people decided they were not going to cower to the terrorists and, not only would they stay, they would build the city and grow it. Enter the Sderot boys' school which has gone from a student body of 20 boys when it began to over 500 at present! With the help of this school the city has grown and flourished and continues to blossom. The municipality constructed a playground for the children that is the only rocket-proof playground in the world. Adorning the rooftop is a menorah made out of empty missile casings, driving home the point to our enemies that we will never be defeated. “You can shoot rockets at us but we will turn those objects of death and destruction into one of the most prominent symbols of Jewish resistance and perseverance.”
Needless to say, I was inspired by the courage, resolution and fortitude displayed by the school and the inhabitants of this city. As we said recently at the Seder table “In every generation they rose up to destroy us but Hashem saves us from their hands.” We have a guarantee from G-d that we will not be destroyed and if we suffer setbacks we pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and keep on fighting.
This Sunday we observe a minor holiday known as “Lag B’aomer.” There is a tradition that between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot a terrible tragedy occurred to our people. One of the greatest people in the entire span of Jewish history, Rabbi Akiva, had 24,000 students. Each of those students was a great rabbi and personage in his own right. Tragically, they were wiped out in a plague during a 5 week span.
As a commemoration of this great loss we observe a period of mourning in that we don’t make weddings, and joyous occasions are muted somewhat during this time. On Lag B’aomer the students stopped dying. Rabbi Akiva was left with a mere 5 students. Imagine that! In just over a month he went from having 24,000 students (enough to fill up a basketball arena and then some) to just a handful (literally). The loss must have been profound enough to break the heart and will of most people.
Most people I know, myself included, would have given up at that point. Watching decades of work being wiped out in such a short time is enough to make most people throw in the towel. But Rabbi Akiva was different. He said, “I might have suffered a tremendous blow but I will start again. From these five students I will rebuild the Torah that was lost.” And incredibly he did! While we can only imagine how much more we would have had those 24,000 students not died, a majority of the wealth of Torah that we have at our disposal today stems from those five remaining students.
The celebration on Lag B’aomer commemorates the fact that Rabbi Akiva had the strength to fight through tragedy and continue to rebuild and flourish.
Like Sderot and Rabbi Akiva, it behooves us, particularly during this time period of the year, to recognize that when we suffer obstacles and setback the main thing is to NEVER give up but to pick ourselves up off the mat and continue to do the right thing. When we show our commitment to G-d, He in turn provides us with abilities beyond what we thought we were capable of.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yosef Koval
