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The inaugural Agudah National Action Summit, held December 1 and 2, brought together over 1,500 participants from across the broad spectrum of Torah Jewry under the banner of Agudath Israel of America. The enthusiasm and unity that filled the two-day event underscored the community's drive to strengthen themselves and the broader Klal.
The Summit featured eight specialized tracks, each led by field experts, Gedolim, and Rabbonim. Sessions addressed a wide range of pressing communal realities including Shidduchim, Chinuch, Special Needs, Mental Health, Community Growth, and complex Halachic and Legal Challenges. Attendees gained with both practical strategies and the hashkafic grounding needed to navigate these issues with clarity and purpose.
Keynote Session
On the morning of Simchas Torah 5784, Col. Yigal Singer was stationed in the Rei'im area. He saw the attacking terrorists and he directed the opening of an alternate route out of the area, a decision that in retrospect is credited with saving about 2,000 souls.
In the course of the day, Yigal was wounded in his legs near the Urim intersection, which caused him to lose a lot of blood.
"On our way to Ofakim, in armored police vehicle with several other policemen, we encountered a group of terrorists who fired an RPG at our vehicle along with fire from light weapons. This disabled our armored police vehicle. In the course of our battle, I was struck by a bullet that went through both of my legs and then exited. I saw death in front of my eyes," recalls Yigal.
As usual, there are columnists and caricaturists who exploit these days of Chanukah to bash chareidim, demanding that they perform their army obligation, like in the days of the Chashmonaim. If it weren't so sad, it could almost be funny. Isn't there a limit to ignorance and cabbage-headedness?
Therefore, in order to set historic facts straight, allow us to quote from the Book of the Maccabees, written in those very days by a Jew living in those times. These are the distinct words of Matisyohu ben Yochonon, Kohen Godol, father of the Hasmonian family and leader of the rebellion against the Greeks, this is what he said to his sons right before his death.
"We Jews find ourselves at a time of trial and travail. That is why my sons rose up to zealously defend the honor of the Torah of Hashem, our G-d. They risked their very lives to uphold His covenant, remembering the deeds of our ancestors of yore who were the pride and honor for generations to come.
R' Sender from the Warsaw ghetto; the first Jewish soldier in Washington's army' the old-timer who suffered through the bitter Communist exile, the politrok from the Stalin era; the wonderful miracle that happened somewhere in Poland. All of these have one common denominator: the Chanukah lights which burn their way through to a person's core.
Menorahs are known to have unique properties: they have the power of rousing hearts, of igniting the spark of faith, of beaming into them the light of Yiddishkeit. This is a historical voyage of menorahs that illuminated hearts that were distant and revealed the hidden spark, the pintele Yid of every Jewish heart.
Part 2
The Heart That Broke by the Candlelight
(Stalinist Russia)
This story was written with the pen of the one who experienced it.
It had been a grey and dreary day, eroded by the monotony of melancholy. Now it was slowly fading into the blackness of twilight. Gloom descended thickly like a suffocating curtain over the houses and streets. It was a hopeless night, void of festivity, spiritual elevation, or of any trace of the joy of bygone days. The future seemed to have been locked up behind bleak, black, frozen horizons. The cold bit deep, deep into one's marrow and past the bones, sinking its teeth into the heart. It was my first Soviet winter in the Kovne that had once been so vibrantly Jewish.
Pale like the moon, half winking, half flickering, a few lights glowed feebly here and there. Heavy shadows like ghostly doubts leaped crazily on the white carpets of snow, intensifying the fearsomeness of the eerie scene. The town square was deserted, but the voice of a radio announcer could be heard hollowly broadcasting the latest news, quoting numbers and statistics, enthusiastically spouting percentages and figures. The candle flames trembled, as if from fear, but valiantly showed their little lights through the convex windows of the synagogue.
*
We two strode silently through the streets, side by side. Passersby would cross our paths from time to time with muted looks and dumb expressions, their thoughts turned inward. We had only met a few moments earlier and now studied one another curiously.
Rain and Kinneret Watch by Dei'ah
Vedibur Staff
Our weekly report of the rain and the level of the Kineret
- Winter, 5786.
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Outstanding Articles From Our Archives
Opinion & Comment
The program which Yosef envisioned as a preparation for the years of famine was considered by Pharaoh and his advisors as extraordinarily brilliant. "There is none as intelligent and wise as you." Yosef himself presented his plan with the requisite that whoever was appointed to execute it be a wise and intelligent person.
The question that was raised in the beis midrash of Novardok was: wherefore the need of someone of exceptional intelligence?
The forecast was clear and simple: seven years of bounty followed by seven years of famine. Whoever made no provisions for the famine, no savings plan, would necessarily suffer the consequences. But this was common sense and apparently required no brilliance to plan and execute.
Today anyone opening a bank account is immediately advised to open a savings account as well, whether for their children's education, to marry them off, to buy a home, a car, for a trip abroad and so on. The logic behind stashing money away for a rainy or sunny day is clear to all. It is a question of thinking ahead for the future at the expense of some discomfort in the present.
In Novardok, things were not taken at face value. Instead of accepting this obvious answer, they delved into the question more deeply, and asked it again.
What? Really? Is it then so simple and obvious? Is it self evident that everyone must put aside supplies during the plenty to tide him over in the lean years? Is this normal? Must man make long range provisions in life?
Opinion & Comment
"Write on the horn of an ox that you have no part in the G-d of Israel." This was one of the demands that the Syrian Greeks made of the Jewish people in the period that led up to the Chanukah miracle, over 2,000 years ago.
Why write on the horn of an ox? Why specifically the horn?
From our perspective, we know that the horn is one of the major categories of damage. It is the symbol of a destructive agent who "intends to damage and has no pleasure or benefit from the damage." This contrasts with, for example, the tooth, which refers to an animal that eats for its own benefit, or where the animal tramples something in which case it has no real intention to destroy what it walks over. When an animal gores something or someone it fully intends to harm him, and it gains nothing from doing so.
It is hard to confront that sort of threat. One constantly seeks to find the rationale for the demands that are being made; to understand what motivates them. The most natural thing is to look for the self-interest angle.
IN-DEPTH FEATURES
Part I - FICTION
They called him Leibel'e Leibidiker.
That's what they called him, but that wasn't his name. Not only was that not his name, but his entire essence was the antitheses of the joy of life that the name expresses. A cloud of fear and worry always hung over his face. His eyes were perpetually unmoving, and it was quite possible to assume that his lips opened widely only when he took out and put in his false teeth.
That was Leibel'e Leibidiker: happy with his lot, but somewhat sad. Pleasant, but dejected. Genial, but inert and dry. None of the bnei yeshiva had ever heard Leibel'e Leibidiker raise his voice in anger or seen him scowl at someone.
Not that he didn't have enough reasons to get angry. He had more than enough. He was especially angry at the bochurim -- too spoiled for his taste -- for leaving the food he had prepared for them on the table, and going out to eat. But then, he spent most of his day in silence. He was as silent as the dry codfish or the tasteless omelets he prepared for the bochurim.
Leibel'e Leibidiker had been the yeshiva's cook nearly since its inception. Actually, behind the scenes, his wife Leitz'o and his daughter Brocho helped him in as much as he allowed them to. But the criticism wasn't thrown behind the curtains. Leibel'e was the one who personally got all of the "compliments," because he was the one who seasoned the food, in accordance with his mood. Leibel'e was the one who made certain that there wouldn't be too much food on the table, in order to avoid bal tashchis. Leibel'e was the one who reminded the boys that during the Holocaust, there had been nothing to eat and that the Jews, then, never discarded the remains of dry bread nor, needless to say, fruit or vegetables which, with a bit of good will, could be saved from total spoilage.
He loved the boys. But even more than he loved the boys, he loved the spiritual strands he managed to weave into his job as a cook. "What do you have against that bakala," Leibel'e once asked a boy who was caught glaring angrily at the dry fish stretched out on the plate before him.
"What do I have against the bakala?" the boy answered matter-of-factly. "Chas vesholom, I have nothing against the fish. It's not to blame for what they did to it. Poor thing."
But Leibel'e shot back. "Who's unfortunate? The fish? It's not the unfortunate one. It's happy that it merited to be placed on the table of a yeshiva student in Yerushalayim."
The yeshiva -- one of the most prominent ones for baalei teshuva in Jerusalem -- had often thought of replacing Leibel'e with someone worthy of being called a cook. But Leibel'e didn't let them replace him. When the Rosh Yeshiva would try to persuade him to find a job in another field, a strange fear would overtake Leibel'e and, as if pleading for his life, he would say: "Oy rachmonus. Anything but that. You can deduct from my salary, and I won't say a thing. But please, don't throw me out of the yeshiva. I have nowhere to go. I have no choice. I'll even cook for the boys for free."
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