[Avodah] Sobering Thoughts as Israel's Independence Day Approaches

[Ben Waxman]

From: "Zev Sero" <zev at sero.name>
> All the more reason why He couldn't allow it to happen again.  We can't
> explain why He allowed what happened in the first half of the 1940s; but
> the fact that He did makes it even more obvious why He prevented it from
> happening again in '48.  In general, why Hashem prevented a massacre
> doesn't need explaining; it's why He *allowed* one that needs explaining,
> and that is so difficult to explain.

He "allowed" the first revolt against the Romans to be quashed, as well as
the Bar Kochba revolt, the revolt in Cyprus and the one in Egypt.

To use Rav Newman's phrase, God's playbook is bigger than ours.

[Email #2 -mi]

From: "Micha Berger" <micha at aishdas.org>
>     Having a country that works to preserve Shabbos is one thing. Having
>     one that doesn't even need to, quite something else.

>     PS: In Rav Dovid Lishitz's minyan on a year where [Monday] was both
>     an early Yom haAtzama'ut and BaHa"B, we said Tachanun, Selichos,
>     and afterward Hallel without a berakhah.

This is a very strange combo, IMO. The day is one of such joy that you can
say Hallel but you still say Tachanun? The option of not saying either
has its own logic. But why not skip Tachanun if you saying Hallel? We
skip Hallel for the most banal of reasons, days which have little or no
meaning to us (like Pesach Sheni or Purim Qatan) and yet people insist
on saying Tachanun on YA. Why?

What has to happen for those people who say Tachanun on YA to stop
saying Tachanun? Rav Lifshitz said that only half the work is done. So
when the other half is done (I am not quite sure what that means - the
state adopts Torah as its constitution, the mosiach comes, the majority
of Jews are shomer Shabbat?), then people will stop?

Ben