Rabbi Lazer Brody: The Land of Miracles

Friday at noon is a time of hustle and bustle in Israel - people are coming home from work and/or from the marketplace, having made last-minute purchases of fresh challas, fruit, and fish for Shabbat. Despite the ongoing war, people here continue to live their lives. There were plenty of pedestrians and vehicles in the area when the Red-Alert alarm sounded; the pedestrians ran for cover. The motorists pulled over to the side of the road. Usually when a terrifying Grad rocket falls, it makes a tremendous boom (from the crash of the missile on the ground), followed by an afterblast from the explosion of its warhead. This missile landed, shaking the earth with an enormous thud, but the afterblast never came. The missile failed to explode. No one was scratched...

Another missile landed near a gas pipeline. The pipeline was undergoing maintenance and had been emptied of gas a few days previously.

Just now, right after midnight on Saturday night, an emotional father from Jerusalem called me and said that he had something important to tell me. His son is an NCO is a special forces unit operating in Gaza. He and his squad were about to storm a house with suspected Hamas terrorists inside. A woman in long black local attire came out and pleaded with them not to storm the house. During the fierce house-to-house fighting, the same woman appeared to the NCO and his unit in three other houses. It turned out that all four houses were booby-trapped.

Who was that woman? Sounds to me like Rachel Imenu...

Hashem is surely giving us wake-up calls, but He's also showing us just how much He loves us.

We had a quiet Shabbat night, but two missiles were fired at us right before Mincha, a 4:10 and 4:15 PM on Shabbat. Both landed in non-populated areas.

Every cloud has a silver lining with Hashem's signature on it. Have a wonderful week.

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