They didn’t weaken us, they made us stronger

We will do our best to hand our enemies a great defeat, by becoming even more united.

Three boys. Three worlds. Three families. Three mothers broken. Three empty chairs. So many dreams lost. Forever.

There are simply no words to describe the depths of our pain and sense of loss.

Our enemies are smiling today because they think they have won a battle, on the way to winning the war they have been fighting for so many years. A war we never wanted and for which we would give so much to end. But our enemies are mistaken; they do not know the secret of the Jewish people. How many great empires over thousands of years thought they could cut off our future by killing the best and brightest of our children, and where are those empires now?

We’ve outlived ancient Egypt and the Canaanite nations, the Assyrians and Arameans, the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans, the Byzantines and Medieval Crusaders, the Spanish Inquisition and Chmelnitzki’s Cossacks, the Mamelukes and Ottomans, and the final unspeakable horror, the Nazis. Like the broken pieces of Roman glass scattered all over Israel, they are long gone, dust in the wind. And we are still here.

With today’s news, this week’s portion of Balak is an appropriate one indeed.

“Vayagar Moav me’od mipnei ha’am ki rav hu.” (“And [the nation of] Moav was very afraid of the nation [of Israel] for they were great.”) Why were the Moabites so afraid? What were they scared of? And why is this detail important? Is there is a value to the fact that our enemies fear us?

Living in Gush Etzion, these past few weeks have been more than intense, as thousands of Israeli soldiers, joined by thousands of local volunteers, worked day and night to find our three missing boys. At the same time, Jews all over the world responded with an incredible outpouring of prayer, spirituality and acts of loving-kindness.