Crisis unites 5 Towns

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A dais of rabbis from across the Orthodox spectrum faced a full house in Far Rockaway’s White Shul (Congregation Kneseth Israel) for a community-wide Kinnus Chizuk (unifying and strengthening assembly) as the Fast of 17 Tamuz drew to a close on Tuesday.

The kinnus was called to pray to support Israel from rocket attacks from Gaza and in the escalating war with Hamas, and in memory of the three boys killed, Naftali Frankel, Gil-ad Shaar and Eyal Yifach, Hy”d. Participants were also asked to pray for the recovery of a local boy, Nosson Zvi ben Sara Rivka Kashtiya, who was hospitalized last Sunday.

Each speaker invoked the broad display of unity by Jews throughout the world in the 18 days following the kidnapping of the missing boys.

Rabbi Feiner questioned why the boys, who, it was later discovered, were murdered within the hour that they were kidnapped by terrorists, were not found for 18 days.

“The Abishter wanted our tefillos.” he cried out, and said that some rabbis conjectured that “klal yisrael had to daven and come together for 18 days because of the missile crisis” that followed, that we needed to be protected. Rabbi Raphael Pelcovitz, rabbi emeritus of the White Shul, read psalm 73.

Rabbi Steven Weil, senior managing director of the Orthodox Union, recounted, as we begin the period of bayn hametzarim, the three weeks culminating in the ninth of Av that commemorates the destruction of the Temples, that one third of Ashkenazic Jewry was destroyed during the crusades and noted that all tragedy and destruction stems from the destruction of the Bait Hamikdash. He said that it is not the physical destruction of the building that we mourn but our separation from G-d.

“The purpose of a taanit (fast day) [is to] do teshuva (repentence) like never before,” citing the current threat to “our precious tiny homeland.”

Rabbi Hershel Billet of the Young Israel of Woodmere, after reciting Psalm 121, noted that a commander of a Givati brigade wrote a letter in Hebrew citing their determination to fight those who curse the G-d of Israel. He wrote “Shma Yisrael Hashem Elokaynu Hashem Echad” and stressed the need to be unified and that Hashem will fight with them against their enemies.

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