On Thursday, June 12, Prime Minister Netanyahu visited the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem. He placed a prayer note in the Wall, on which he had scribbled a single line, a quote from the Torah:
“Behold, a people rise like a lioness, and stands up like a lion.”
Hours later, the world understood the significance of that verse. Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, named Operation Rising Lion. And there couldn’t be a more fitting name.
Our sages note that the lion’s shape is unique: broad in the front, narrow at the back. This symbolizes the Jewish people. Our strength is forward-facing. We lead, not follow. We don’t look back, but look ahead to a better world, and do what we can to bring it about.
The lion metaphor is reflected perfectly in the current war. This is Israel at its best.
Israel launched a preemptive strike. Like a lion, we are on the front foot. Rather than wait to be attacked, Israel struck first, in keeping with the Talmudic rule: “When someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill them first.”
History has taught us to take that rule seriously. When Israel hesitates or ignores clear threats, the consequences are devastating, like the Yom Kippur War and October 7. But when Israel acts decisively to prevent our enemies’ plans, we see victory, like the Six-Day War, and the dazzling achievements we are seeing now in 12 days!
Israel is doing it alone with the US. Some condemn, some applaud, some remain silent. But Israel presses on. This is who we are. Our destiny is to lead the world in the fight of good against evil. Israel does not need lectures from other nations. Like a lion, we do not look back to see who is with us. We look ahead, showing what it means to stand up for what is right.
Israel is guided by faith. The cabinet meeting that launched this war opened with a prayer and closed with a chapter of Tehillim (Psalms). Israel’s leaders, political and military, have repeatedly affirmed that only with G-d’s help can we be victorious. And around the world, people are recognizing the miracles that can only be the hand of G-d.
This is not a minor detail. It is essential to the success of this war. Our enemies invoke a murderous and corrupt version of faith to justify their bloodshed. We will defeat them with a faith that is pure and peace-loving. With the confidence of a lion, we know that G-d is with us, there is purpose in the pain, and the future is bright.
We mourn our tragic losses. We honor those who have fallen. We pray for the protection of our people. And we embrace with joy the epic calling of our nation, to lead the world into a new era.
How relevant this story is to our generation and to our time.
Following the greatest tragedy ever to have struck our people, the Holocaust, the Jewish world appeared like a corpse. Mounds of ashes, the only remains of the six million, left a nation devastated to its core. An entire world went up in smoke.
What happened next will one day be told as one of the great acts of reconstruction in the history of mankind. Holocaust survivors and refugees set about rebuilding on new soil the world they had seen go up in the smoke of Auschwitz and Treblinka.
One of the remarkable individuals who spearheaded this revival was the Rebbe, whose 31st yartzeit is this coming Sunday, the third of Tammuz, June 29. In 2025, the Rebbe and other great Jewish sages and leaders from many diverse communities refused to yield to despair. While others responded to the Holocaust by building memorials, endowing lectureships, convening conferences, and writing books – all vital and noble tributes to create memories of a tree which once lived but was now dead -- the Rebbe urged every person he could touch to bring the stick back to life: to marry and have lots of children, to rebuild Jewish life in every possible way. He built schools, communities, synagogues, Jewish centers, summer camps, and yeshivas, and encouraged and inspired countless Jews to do the same.
He opened his heart to an orphaned generation, imbuing it with hope, vision, and determination. He became the most well-known address for scores of activists, rabbis, philanthropists, leaders, influential people, laymen, and women from all walks of life, giving them the confidence to reconstruct a shattered universe. He sent out emissaries to virtually every Jewish community in the world to help rekindle the Jewish smile when a vast river of tears threatened to obliterate it.
The Rebbe urged his beloved people to use the horrors of destruction as an impetus to generate the greatest Jewish renaissance and to create "re-Jew-venation." He gazed at a dead staff and saw in it the potential for new life.
His new home, the United States, was a country that until then had dissolved Jewish identity. It was, as they used to say in those days, a non-kosher land. Yet the Rebbe saw the possibility of using American culture as a medium for new forms of Jewish activity, using modern means to spread Yiddishkeit. The Rebbe realized that the secularity of the modern world concealed a deep yearning for spirituality, and he knew how to address it. Where others saw the crisis of a dead staff, he saw an opportunity for a new wave of renewal and redemption.
Who was the Rebbe? One way to answer this question is this: He has that unique ability to see a crisis as an opportunity. Where others saw the end, he saw the beginning. Where others saw disintegration, he saw the potential for birthing. It remains one of the most empowering messages for each of us as an individual, and all of us as a collective.
Rabbi Yehudah Krinsky, the last living secretary of the Rebbe, related the following episode.
"It was around 1973, when the widow of Jacques Lifschitz, the renowned sculptor, had come for a private audience with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, shortly after her husband's sudden passing.
"In the course of her meeting with the Rebbe, she mentioned that when her husband died, he was nearing completion of a massive sculpture of a phoenix in the abstract, a work commissioned by Hadassah Women's Organization for the Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus, in Jerusalem.
"As an artist and sculptor in her own right, she said that she would have liked to complete her husband's work, but she told the Rebbe, she had been advised by Jewish leaders that the phoenix is a non-Jewish symbol. It could never be placed in Jerusalem!
"I was standing near the door to the Rebbe's office that night when he called for me and asked that I bring him the book of Job from his bookshelf, which I did.
"The Rebbe turned to Chapter 29, verse 18, "I shall multiply my days like the Chol."
"And then the Rebbe proceeded to explain to Mrs. Lifschitz the Midrashic commentary on this verse, which describes the Chol as a bird that lives for a thousand years, then dies, and is later resurrected from its ashes. Then, a Jewish symbol."
"Mrs. Lifschitz was delighted. The project was completed soon thereafter."
In his way, the Rebbe had brought new hope to this broken widow. And in the recurring theme of his life, he did the same for the spirit of the Jewish people, which he raised from the ashes of the Holocaust to a new, invigorated life. He attempted to reenact the "miracle of the blossoming staff" every day of his life with every person he met.
Rabbi Berel Baumgarten was a Jewish educator in an orthodox religious yeshiva in Brooklyn, NY, before relocating to Buenos Aires. He once wrote a letter to the Rebbe asking for advice. Each Shabbat afternoon, when he would meet up with his students for a study session, one student would walk into the room smelling of cigarette smoke. He was smoking on the Shabbat. "His influence may cause his religious classmates to cease keeping the Shabbat," Rabbi Baumgarten was concerned. "Must I expel him from the school, even without clear evidence that he is violating the Shabbat?"
The Rebbe’s answer was no more than a scholarly reference: "See Avos Derabi Noson chapter 12." That’s it.
Avos Derabi Noson is a Talmudic tractate, an addendum to the Ethics of the Fathers, composed in the 4th century CE by a Talmudic sage known as Reb Natan Habavli. I was curious to understand the Rebbe’s response. Rabbi Baumgarten was looking for practical advice, and the Rebbe was sending him to an ancient text…
I opened an Avos Derabi Natan to that particular chapter and found a story about Aaron, our very own High Priest of Israel.
Aaron, the sages relate, brought back many Jews from a life of sin to a life of purity. He was the first one in Jewish history to make "baalei teshuvah," to inspire Jews to re-embrace their heritage, faith, and inner spiritual mission. But, unlike today, during Aaron’s time, to be a sinner, you had to be a real no-goodnik. Because the Jews of his generation have seen G-d in His full glory, and to rebel against the Torah way of life was a sign of true betrayal and carelessness.
How then did Aaron do it? He would greet each person warmly. Even a grand sinner would be greeted by Aaron with tremendous grace and love. Aaron would embrace these so-called "Jewish sinners" with endless warmth and respect. The following day, when this person would crave to sin, he would ask himself: How will I be able to look Aaron in the eyes after I commit such a serious sin? I am too ashamed. He holds me in such high moral esteem. How can I deceive him and let him down? And this person would abstain from immoral behavior.
We come here full circle: Aaron was a leader, a High Priest, because even his staff blossomed. He never gave up on the dried-out sticks. He never looked at someone and said, "This person is a lost cause; he is completely cut off from his tree of any possibility of growth. He is dry, brittle, and lifeless." For Aaron, even dry sticks would blossom and produce fruit.
This is the story related in Avos Derabi Noson. This was the story the Rebbe wanted Rabbi Berel Baumgarten to study and internalize. Should I expel the child from school was his question; he is, Jewishly speaking, a dried-out and one tough stick!
The response of Aaron is this: Love him even more. Embrace him with every fiber of your being, open your heart to him, cherish him, and shower him with warmth and affection. Appreciate him, respect him, and let him feel that you care for him. See in him or her that which he or she may not be able to see in themselves now. View him as a great human being, and you know what? He will become just that.
In recent times. especially since October 7th, 2023, our people have faced crises on many fronts. These are no simple times. Yet every crisis is an opportunity for rejuvenation and renaissance like never before. Let's do it!
The lion of Israel has risen. Am Israel Chai!
Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky
Gillian Bayford wrote...