Today while davening Shachris in Shul after Kriat Hatorah, the Gabbei shushed the crowd and recited a Mi Sheberach for the three kidnapped Bachurim. It's now day 7, and they are still not home, still held captive by yet unknown terrorists.
While he recited the Mi Sheberach, mentioning the names of these kids, so much ran through my mind, so many emotions. Here we sit and think about our own little worries, and we forget for a moment that three Jewish families are in pain, are in total agony. Who knows if they even slept tonight, who really knows their anxiety and suffering.
There is a responsibility that every Jew must accept, to feel the pain and joy respectively with each and every Jew. We are one big family, even if we wear different kinds of hats or no hat at all. In peaceful times, we can bicker and complain, criticize our own like only Jews can. And when Hashem sends us a tragedy, we suffer together, we feel as one.
Why? My question is, why do we have to wait for things like that to happen, why can't we just focus on what unites us even in good times? We share the same holy forefathers, we share the same painful past, the same hopeful future. At the end of the game, those who seek our destruction, don't care if we are Datim or Secular, for them, it's all the same. Rabbi Yisrael Mayer Lau, the previous chief Rabbi of Israel who was the youngest survivor of Buchenvald, once said "If we were able to die together, why can't we live together?".
I hope and pray for the great day, when all mankind will serve Hashem with joy, and all the Jews will come back home to their rightful land, promised by Hashem to our forefathers and their children forever and ever.
Amen! I have to say that the Amen I heard today in the morning after the Mi Sheberach was felt throughout the Shul. We meant it all the way.