Zhou Enlai, the Foreign Minister of China, was reportedly once asked his opinion about the French Revolution, which had taken place two centuries earlier. “It’s too soon to tell”, he responded. We sit now more than two years after October 7th, with the war ostensibly over. It may very well be “too soon to tell” how the outcome will affect Israel in the coming years. And yet, we live in the present moment, and can’t predict the future. We have to try and assess as best we can with the facts that we have now. Let’s begin by rewinding two years, to when that terrible dark day took place.

On Shemini Atzeret, the holiday on which the October 7th massacre took place, Jews around the world begin to insert the line “Mashiv Ha’Ruach U’Morid Ha’Geshem” into the second blessing of the daily Amida prayer. This phrase praises God as He who “Causes the Wind to Blow and Brings Down the Rain”. Contrary to popular belief, this is not an actual prayer for rain. The petition for rain is inserted into the eighth blessing of the Amida (V’Ten Tal U’Matar L’Vracha – “and cause dew and rain to come for blessing”), and is recited at different times in the Land of Israel vs. the Diaspora, depending on when each locale is seen as requiring rain.

Mashiv Ha’Ruach, on the other hand, is recited by Jews in both Israel and the diaspora at the same times, between Shemini Atzeret and Pesach, and is linked to when the rainy season begins in Israel specifically. For this piece of our liturgy, even diaspora Jews praise God based on what is happening in Israel. This line is inserted into the blessing in which we praise God for having the power to revive the dead. The power to bring wind and rain are akin to the power to revive the dead. Wind and rain represent transformative power: the storm, the whirlwind, the deluge; like the Flood of Noah.

The Talmud (Berakhot 58b) records that someone who hasn’t seen a loved one in more than twelve months should also recite the blessing of mechayeh meitim, in abridged form: “Blessed are You Lord our God King of the Universe Who Revives the Dead”. R. Yosef Zvi Rimon, the leading Modern Orthodox/Religious Zionist halachic authority in Israel today (to my mind, at least), has ruled that the relatives of released Israeli hostages should not actually make this blessing, because it is only to be recited when one was unsure if their loved one was still alive. But Israeli intelligence has known all along which hostages were still alive. Instead, he ruled, the loved ones should make the blessing of Shehechyanu, thanking God for keeping us alive and sustaining us to be able to reach this special moment. And indeed, there are beautiful videos of the relatives of freed hostages reciting the Shehecheyanu blessing.

The future and literal revival of the dead will be centered in the Land of Israel. Jewish tradition teaches that Jews buried in the Land of Israel will only have to wake up out of their coffin, “stretch their arms and legs”, so to speak, and watch the End of Days unfold from their front row seat. For Jews buried outside of the Land, on the other hand, their bodies will have to roll hundreds and thousands of miles under the earth, and under the ocean bed, before arriving and being resurrected in the Land of Israel! The power of rain and the power to revive the dead are each centered in Eretz Yisrael.

And so, Shemini Atzeret is the day that Jews around the world recognize the power of God in the Land of Israel. I only realized this terrible irony this past Shemini Atzeret.

Isn’t that cruelly ironic? This was, after all, the day on which God appeared silent and or powerless to stop the greatest single massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. But that is just a temporal, if altogether understandable, human perspective. God exists outside of time. On that day, God might well have said to us: I might seem powerless today. But watch what will unfold over the next two years.

My ancestor the Bnei Yissaschar points out that the commandment in the Torah to light the menorah comes immediately after the commandment to celebrate Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret for eight days. This is a divine hint that Channukah would also last for eight days. Perhaps we can add that only a few weeks after Shemini Atzeret, when Channukah commences, can we look back and understand the events of the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)