Wednesday, February 26, 2025
We’ve all heard of people spurning God when tragedy strikes.
They say things like, “God didn’t help me when I needed help. Therefore he
doesn’t exist,” or, “If there were a God, He wouldn’t have made the Holocaust,”
or, “If there is a God, He’s not a loving God but a cruel God and I refuse to
worship him.”
But the Israeli Jews taken captive on October 7 experienced
no such crisis of faith. They turned to, rather than away from God, embracing Jewish
law as best they could. The hostages
understood that their persecution was due to the fact that they were Jews. So
they doubled down. Because the Jews are a stiff-necked people.
It doesn’t matter where you start out as a Jew. When push
comes to shove, we know what to do. Many of the hostages were disconnected from
religion prior to being kidnapped. Keith Siegel, for example.
Growing up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Siegel attended a
Conservative synagogue with his family. But after 40 years on a secular kibbutz,
Keith had pretty much forgotten any of the prayers he’d learned as a child.
This is not to say that Siegel had turned away from God. He probably just hadn’t
thought much about religion or God during those years.
But held captive in a Gaza tunnel, Keith Siegel began saying
the Shema, an affirmation of faith: “Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord
is one.”
Siegel knew that what had happened to him, had happened to
him because he was a Jew. It shifted something inside of him, something that
called out to him in the haze of the endless starvation and torture, and the
constant dread of death. Keith Siegel reached out to the one God he’d almost
forgotten, and pledged allegiance. “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai
Echad.”
With plenty of time alone with his thoughts, Siegel reviewed
his slim knowledge of Judaism. He knew the blessing for bread. It was really
the only blessing he remembered. So he began saying the Hamotzi blessing at
meals. “We had a pita bread for every
meal, that was the first thing I would eat after I said the bracha (blessing),”
said Keith.
One day, Keith caught a glimpse of an Israeli TV show after his
captors happened to switch the set on. The program was about something like good places to eat in Tel
Aviv. Siegel heard one participant make the "borei minei mezonot," blessing
said over baked goods and pasta before taking a bite. Keith decided that from
then on, he too would make this blessing, whenever he ate anything other than
pita bread.
Someone else might have thought that wrong. That you cannot
say the mezonot blessing over, for example, a grape or a date. But with his
mezonot, Keith Siegel was connecting to God with the only resources God gave
him. “I thought it was appropriate,” he said. “But it was the only [blessing] I
knew.”
It was what Keith Siegel had. These were the tools of his
survival: the shema, the hamotzi blessing, and now, the mezonot blessing. These
things comforted and strengthened him. They were his pathway to God.
When Keith Siegel was finally freed after 484 days in
captivity, his family recognized that something remarkable had happened, that
cleaving to God was what had kept him alive. His daughter Shir spoke about it.
“Dad searched for his
Jewish identity while in captivity, and he found it in small prayers. He
started saying blessings over food, like ‘Borei Minei Mezonot,’ which he had
never said before, and ‘Shema Yisrael,’ which he had never recited in his life.
"He said that amidst all that hell, he wanted to remember
that he was Jewish, that there was meaning to his people and to the place from
which he came, and that strengthened him greatly.”
Ah, there it is right there, that backbone Jews get when
between a rock and a hard place, life and death, the Inquisition and the
Holocaust or a tunnel in Gaza. It only stiffens our resolve and our necks,
which is why they never succeed in getting rid of us.
“After he returned,” continued Shir. “I asked him what he
wanted us to do for our first Shabbat meal together. I imagined he’d want some
dish he loves or a good challah. He replied, ‘You know what I want most of all?
A kippah and a Kiddush cup.’”
“Who is like Your people, Israel?” (Samuel 7:23)
Keith Siegel is not the only freed hostage who turned to, instead
of away from God. There are many such stories. And we will have plenty of time
to tell them.
In fact it will be a delight to take our time in telling the
stories, knowing that the enemy will have it rubbed in their faces for years to
come. This is what happens when you try to kill the Jews.
It isn’t possible. You can’t do it. Because we’re a
stiff-necked people, who, in intolerable situations will always seek to reclaim
that spark in the soul that the Arab enemy so desperately wants to extinguish.
But never will.
***
We must thank two readers for bringing my attention to sources that state that it is acceptable to say the mezonot prayer on everything except water or water and salt, b'dieved (a posteriori).
A reader shares the following, "According to the Chayei Adam (58:3) and implied by the Gemara in several places (Brachos 12a, Brachos 35, somewhere in Nedarim that escapes me for the moment), 'Borei Minei Mezonos' on everything but water and salt is acceptable bdi'eved."
Yehudah Posnick comments that Rabbi Aaron Hamaoui of of the Sephardic Community of Greater Boston said that bdi'eved, the mezonot blessing covers all foods, except for water, because the word "mezonot," suggests that the item to be ingested is satiating, and water doesn't sate. (See his comment below for the full thread.)
My take: Keith Siegel did his best and his best was the right thing to do. Disclaimer: I am not a rabbi.
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