You can tour the Western Wall tunnels, ride the light rail, and still have no idea what it means to live in Israel. And what’s the lesson for us?
The Emergency Escape
It’s a small world, the saying goes. Everyone knows someone who is stuck in Israel, who got dangerously close to a missile, or had some other war related experience. Here, too, in our community, we’ve been hearing multiple stories from people close to us about their experiences, some of which are still ongoing.
One account I heard was from a woman in our community who traveled to Israel two weeks ago. She recently retired from serving as the Dean of a nursing school in Columbus, and Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem had invited her to consult and suggest improvements for their nursing school programs.
When she arrived in Israel, she headed straight to Jerusalem, and all week she participated in meetings and classes at the university. She was looking forward to Friday, when she’d finally have a chance to get out and explore the city. Then came Friday night—the night the war began.
The next morning, Hadassah Hospital’s leadership made the decision to move all patients to the underground hospital that was prepared just for such a situation. To her amazement, the entire transfer—hundreds of patients—was completed in just four hours. The patients were in their new rooms, operating rooms up and running – a full hospital just underneath the ground. As a veteran nurse, she never imagined that would be possible.
As you can imagine, the war experience was not fun. Sirens were wailing all night. She was staying on the eighth floor of a Jerusalem hotel, and each time an alarm went off, she had to run down to the shelter. She told me amusedly that alongside her, squeezing into the crowded hotel shelter, were all the young religious couples who were dating in the hotel lounge…
Either way, all that back-and-forth through the night left her completely exhausted.
Meanwhile, she met the president of Hadassah Women’s Organization, also an American “stuck” in Israel, and they began supporting each other in this mutual “experience.” The president had good connections in Israel, so with the government’s help, she was able to arrange for them an early departure.
On Monday morning, the two women were driven to Haifa with a security guard, where they boarded a twelve-person sailboat bound for Cyprus, and the security accompanied them the entire way .
It wasn’t a field trip. The trip took 22 hours. She said it was incredibly difficult—she suffered from terrible seasickness and a lot of discomfort. But finally, they reached Cyprus, where they waited a day before boarding a flight back to the U.S. When she finally got home, as you can imagine, she was incredibly relieved.
She isn’t the only one evacuating through Cyprus. 1,500 students who had come on Birthright trips were taken to Cyprus as well, although they were transported on a cruise ship. There are still another 40,000 tourists stuck in Israel, trying to cope with the sirens and the fear that comes with them…
The Question on Moshe
This week’s Torah portion also recounts an early journey to the Land of Israel—then known as the Land of Canaan. It’s the story of the spies.
Moshe Rabbeinu personally chose twelve men to go check out the Land of Israel. But when they came back, instead of encouraging the people, they gave a frightening report. Their words filled everyone with fear and doubt, and in the end, the people refused to go into the land. And that decision came with serious consequences.
In a talk the Rebbe gave to graduating students in 1965, he focused on this story—and asked a powerful question. Moshe knew the Jewish people through and through. He lived with them in Egypt, he led them out of slavery, and he’d been guiding them through the desert ever since.
And not only that—Moshe was born to lead. The Torah even calls him a “shepherd,” and the sages explain (based on that verse) that a true leader has to understand his people deeply—their personality, their mindset, what makes them tick.
So how is it possible that Moshe chose the wrong people for such a critical mission? He knew how much was riding on their report. How could he have gotten it wrong?
The Question on the Spies
The answer lies in a four-word comment from Rashi on that verse: “At that time, they were Kosher.”
In other words, when Moshe Rabbeinu chose these men, they were truly upstanding Jews. They weren’t troublemakers. They were committed to the mission and understood that this was G-d’s will—that the Jewish people were meant to enter the Land of Israel.
But that only raises a bigger question: If they were worthy at the time, as Rashi says, what happened? What changed so quickly? As soon as they entered the land and saw what was going on there, they panicked. They came back with fear instead of confidence, and ended up discouraging the entire nation from going in. But why?
And the Rebbe says—we can’t just say they were surprised by what they saw, like the 31 kings or the fortified cities. That can’t be the explanation. Why? Because they already knew all that going in. Long before the spies were sent, back at the splitting of the sea, the Jewish people had already sung in Shirat HaYam that “all the inhabitants of Canaan were gripped with fear.” So it’s clear they were well aware of the powerful nations living there. The spies knew about the kings of Canaan. And they even had a general sense of what the land looked like—after all, Canaan had regular contact with Egypt.
What was it that turned them from people who were fully committed and “worthy,” into people who came back and talked the entire Jewish people out of going?
Hearing is not Seeing
The Rebbe explains it like this: our sages say, “Hearing is not the same as seeing.” Up until that point, the spies had only heard about the challenges they might face in the Land of Israel—especially the spiritual challenges. And they were ready. They had made a clear, strong decision not to be afraid.
But when they actually got there and saw it with their own eyes—when they saw the oversized fruit, the culture, the powerful nations living in the land, and the kind of battle that lay ahead—it hit them in a whole new way.
They saw that living there would mean fighting to stay spiritually strong in a place filled with moral corruption. That alone would be a massive challenge. That, combined with the threat of real war, shook them. That is what led them to lose their original resolve and change their minds. (Toras Menachem vol. 44, p. 20 and on.)
The Lesson
Many of those 40,000 tourists had already been in Israel before. They had come to visit thinking they’d seen and heard it all—they were practically “sabras” already. They knew the ins and outs of the Machane Yehuda shuk, they rode the light rail, just like any Israeli. But during that week of war with Iran, they discovered they hadn’t understood a thing.
To this day, most people don’t really understand what it means to live in Israel. Touring Caesarea or walking through the Western Wall tunnels doesn’t make you an expert on life in Israel.
For these tourists, those four nights of running to bomb shelters were the first time they truly felt what it means to live there. Yes, they had read about the rockets and heard the stories for years. But hearing isn’t the same as seeing. This time, they were there. And for the first time, they really understood what it means to live in the Holy Land.
I spoke to a shliach who was in Kfar Chabad this week, and he told me what it felt like. When an Iron Dome interceptor hit a missile over central Israel, the entire neighborhood shook from the blast. A second later came the roar of the missile fragments crashing down. Just this past Motzei Shabbos, the force of the explosion made the thick, concrete window of his safe room shake so hard it nearly cracked the wall. He said when those pieces slammed into the ground, it didn’t just shake the earth—it shook your heart.
There’s a lesson in this for all of us. People love to share opinions and give advice about things they’ve never actually experienced—but the truth is, only someone who’s been through something can truly understand what another person is going through. It’s a good reminder to stay humble.
And this idea applies just as much when it comes to mitzvos. I can try to explain to someone what it feels like to put on tefillin. I can talk about the meaning, the connection, the history—I could give a whole lecture about it. But it’s not the same. Because the moment he actually puts them on for the first time—that’s when it clicks. That’s when he feels it.
The same is true with the mitzvah of Mikvah – Family purity. We can learn about it, and hear from others who had wonderful experiences, but only the moment you enter the water yourself, do you really feel it. Because when it comes down to it, no matter how much you hear about something, nothing compares to experiencing it yourself.