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Parshat Shemot
By: Rabbi Moshe Goodman, Kollel Ohr Shlomo, Hebron

בס"ד

לשכנו תדרשו

Discovering the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land

וישמע א-הים את נאקתם... ויזכור א-הים את בריתו את אברהם את  יצחק ואת יעקב... וידע א-הים

“Have compassion upon Israel Your People...and upon Zion Sanctuary of Your Honor.”

The plead for compassion before HaShem, especially in regard to redemption, is in many ways tied to the merit of our Patriarchs, as we see in our title quote. Indeed, it was when HaShem remembered His covenant with the Patriarchs that He ‘decided’ to redeem them. Similarly, we evoke this merit in all our prayers, in the first blessing of the Amida, in order to merit our future redemption.

Another important component of redemption as seen in our title quote is the crying out to God from the troubles of Exile. The importance of this component is found not only in the story of the Exodus but continues with us every year in the form of the marror on Seder night. The marror comes to symbolize the bitterness and the suffering the People experienced which brought about their crying out to God, which in turn brought about God’s compassion upon them through redemption. In this way, bitterness and suffering at all times can be seen as important steps towards redemption.

One of the painful and bitter episodes of our People in the past century in the Land of Israel was the Massacre of Tarpat (1929). This Massacre, which spread across the Land of Israel, was most devastating to the Jewish community of Hebron, essentially causing the cease (save for a few individuals) of the continuous presence of Jews in Hebron, a beacon of the Holy Land, till the Six-day War. This episode, strikingly occurring just before to the Holocaust in Europe, perhaps may be seen as God’s warning from the Holy Land, the Land of Divine Communication (as we explained in the past), as to what was about to transpire in Europe. It should also be noted that at the head of this massacre stood Amin Al Huseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem and founder of the Palestinian National Movement, who later met with Hitler in Germany, forming there a Muslim division of the Nazi S.S meant to destroy the Jewry of the Land of Israel. 

Today, Tarpat Rd.and Junction connect between the Beit Hadassa and Admot Yishai neighborhoods of Hebron. The name of this road, commemorating the Tarpat Massacre, essentially acts like the bitter herbs of the Seder Night. We should remember and not forget the suffering of those before us. By remembering their suffering we remember to be ever wiser, ever-more connected to God through prayer, ever-more appreciative of what we have, ever-more appreciative of the sacrifice taken bringing us to where we are today, and it is through this memory that we bring ourselves ever-closer to the redemptive future...

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Real Stories from the Holy Land #204

‘On the Tenth of Tevet I was pondering what could be the origins of the Tenth of Tevet in the chumash, as the Talmud states that everything has an origin in the chumash. Just about three minutes later I was given a ride where the driver just ‘happened’ to talk with his friend how the Tenth of Tevet was the day of the Sale of Joseph by his brothers...’ Y.G

Sources: ‘Hebron - 4000 years’ Noam Arnon

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