With God’s help, 7th Iyar 5774
Last week I released a statement explaining that our Holy Torah should be the moral “compass” by which our nation is run. Recent events regarding the abuse and intimidation tactics carried out on a Yitzhar couple have only strengthened this sentiment.
If such interrogation where done in America — where they were prevented from seeking out legal counsel, threatened that they would not see their children again, prevented from going to the bathroom, subject to multiple body cavity searches, etc… — one or many civil liberties organizations would stage demonstrations and begin lawsuits. But where is the oversight in these and other cases? Where was the prison sentence of the officer who mercilessly tasered Boaz Albert?
Unlike what some have inferred from my statement last week, the answer to this situation is not to say that members of the establishment — government and army — are the enemies. God forbid. This is why the statement from the sages, “We are all sons of one man,” was quoted at the beginning.
Instead, as explained further in the statement yesterday, there is a spiritual malady causing our people to turn against each other. At a time when we should be defending against the real and present enemies of the Jewish people, instead we are fighting from within.
But while the statement from last Friday clearly spoke out against acts of violence from Yitzhar residents against the army, etc… (as was reiterated yesterday) such infringement of what’s called in America “civil liberties” cannot be tolerated.
This past week the United States Supreme Court upheld the tradition of prayer to open government meetings. When even the American Supreme Court recognizes the importance of spiritual tradition, then how much more so should the Torah be the governing light for the Jewish people living in the Land of Israel.
