Beep Beep
The beeper miracle
As you might have already heard, thousands of Hezbollah terrorists were just attacked by their own pagers, which all simultaneously blew up!
The media is reporting that “Lebanon’s Information Minister is the first to point a finger at Israel.” He’s lucky he still has one to point. The numbers are constantly climbing, but it’s looking like several were killed, hundreds very seriously injured, and thousands moderately injured.
This is simply an extraordinary event. Never in the history of the world have so many terrorists embedded among civilians been so successfully attacked in such a targeted way with so little collateral damage.
With morale in Israel having previously been at almost an all-time low, the mood here now is jubilant. We were inside Haniyeh’s bedroom, and now we’re inside Hezbollah’s pants. The memes are hilarious. People are laughing so much, their sides are splitting. As someone pointed out regarding Hezbollah, so are theirs.
And nobody can even figure out how it was done. Until now, pagers were considered less dangerous to bring on a plane than a bottle of water. Were they somehow all tampered with at the source, months ago? Or was there a way to hack into them and cause the battery to overheat and explode? It’s a mystery. The really ironic aspect is that Nasrallah was so concerned about cellphones being hacked by Israel to locate targets that he had insisted on Hezbollah members switching to obsolete beepers.
But let’s turn to a “Rationalist Judaism” discussion. I wonder if our charedi quasi-brethren will be pointing to this as a divine miracle? Certainly that was the claim being advanced when 99% of the hundreds of missiles launched by Iran failed to cause any damage. This in turn was claimed to be by merit of the Torah being learned in charedi yeshivos. (Interestingly, though, I saw a video of charedi draft-dodgers happily watching the missiles being shot down instead of learning Torah.)
Yet let’s recall the response to the terrible events of October 7th. Many charedim claimed that this was a Divine rebuke for the arrogance of Israel having too much regard for the strength of the IDF. “Kochi v’otzem yadi!”
Can they make up their minds and stop the inconsistency? If the IDF is responsible for its failures on October 7th, surely they are also responsible for their successes with the Iran missile attack and with the Hezbollah beepers. Conversely, if the charedi yeshiva world deserves the credit for the latter, then surely they should be held guilty for the former.
Of course, the real significance of events is as follows. The Torah does not say that we should not take credit for our physical power - the verse continues to state that we should simply remember that while we do have physical power, we should be grateful to God for it. Ki tetze lemilchama - when we have enemies, the Torah does not tell us to go to yeshiva, it tells us to go and fight. Our spiritual merits do count, but such spiritual endeavours are never a replacement for material endeavors (and if they are performed in lieu of such obligations, they presumably aren’t of any spiritual merit anyway).
October 7th revealed some very specific types of mistaken beliefs - a mistaken belief that a hi-tech fence would be sufficient to repel attacks, and a mistaken belief that Hamas were interested in survival rather than suicide. But it also revealed a mistaken belief that the IDF has enough soldiers to successfully defend Israel from all its enemies. God has sent a clear message that this is not the case - that every community in Israel must do its part to defend everyone else. The technological geniuses at the IDF are not always going to be able to save the day.
A full list of my posts on the topic of IDF service is at Torah and Army: The Big Index
Why can't we just celebrate this ingenious attack andnminor victory without always focusing on the chareidim?
I will unfortunately, very unfortunately, have to leave and stop supporting this blog. Definitely something broke in Slifkins brain. He became like those he mocks, advancing illogical thinking to support his own bias. The Charedi take on this wonderful event is entirely not contradictory. Meeting mortal goals is always dependent on God. When man fails it was because God had a reason for that failure. When he succeeds, the same. While we don't know with certainty, it certainly fits in to basic Jewish theology that that success or failure can be reward or punishment and/or demonstration of approval/disapproval of our behavior. Charedim are consistent in that belief, despite gaslight attempt of Slifkin to paint it otherwise. And if Slifkin denies that God is the ultimate Source of success and failure then he has truly left authentic Torah doctrine.
However, the far greater problem is that EVERYTHING now comes back to the same topic. It's definitely a sign of severe OCD or PTSD. It's not a mentally healthy place to be. It also demonstrates his own lack of trust in Hashem. If he believes the only waybto success is if the Charedim join the military then he's a fool. Even if he's entirely correct that it is critical AND that Charedim are terrible for not joining Hashem has more than enough ways to bring victory - like allowing a well planned, super smart plan of blowing up beepers go off without a hitch. That certainly is never a guarantee. So, kol hakovod to those in the military for thinking and planning such a great plan. Thank you Hashem for allowing someone or group to even conceive of such and idea AND to allow it to come to fruition.
And with that I make my exit from these boards. I was hoping for unique and exotic Torah thinking but ended up listening to a broken record using typical irrational arguments to push a highly bias opinion ad nauseum. Get well soon. I wish you all the best.