Averting the decree.

This year we approached the new year with more fear and trembling than for a very long time.

We saw Israel a double risk of Hamas missiles and tunnels,

forced into some of the most difficult choices a nation has ever had to make.

How do you fight a war against terror when

terrorists take a whole people hostage and hide bombs and rocket launchers in schools, hospitals and

mosques? As Amaz asked, what would you do if your neighbor across the street sits down on the

balcony, puts his little

boy on his lap, and starts shooting machine gun fire into your nursery?

The tower says that when Jacob was about to meet Esau, after a separation of 22 years,

Vahira Yaakov Mahodva Yateselo, he was very afraid and distressed.

Says Rashi, he was very afraid that he might be killed and distress that he might have to kill.

The commentators on Rashi asked the obvious question,

You're allowed to kill in self-defense.

So why was Jacob distressed that he might have to kill a man

who was about to kill him? The short answer is that if life matters to you, you are distressed,

even if you are morally justified. This summer, Israel had to defend itself, but it did so with no joy, only distress.

This was also the summer in which anti-Semitism reappeared with a vengeance in the streets of Europe,

the old anti-Semitism of the far right and far left, and the new anti-Semitism that demonizes

Israel and seeks not peace but destruction.

I sensed a wave of anxiety go through the Jewish world. Is this it? After all the tears and

tragedies of the past, do we still have to live in fear? Do things never change? To which I think one of the answers is the key word

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