Rising Like a Lion
(Divrei Torah addressed to TABR middle school in honor of Yom Ha’aztmaut 5786)
Some 80 years ago, at the end of the Second World War and the Holocaust, as many Jews fled the fires and ashes of the inferno that was Europe, they arrived in Eretz Yisrael. Three years later, miraculously—with tremendous siyata d’shmaya and many challenges—Hakadosh Baruch Hu enabled the Jewish people to establish, for the first time in 2,000 years, a sovereign Jewish state in the Land of Israel.
For the first time since the days of Rabbi Akiva, there were Jews not just living in Eretz Yisrael, but in charge of it. One of the things this new state began to do, just a few years after its establishment, was to recover nationally from the years of trauma, pain, and suffering of the Shoah. Israeli intelligence began hunting for the Nazis—יִמַּח שְׁמָם—those responsible for the Holocaust.
In 1960, a group of early Mossad agents on a secret mission to Argentina found Adolf Eichmann—יִמַּח שְׁמוֹ—the chief architect of what they called the Final Solution. He was the man who engineered Hitler’s murder machine.
They captured him and brought him back to the State of Israel—to the survivors and the children of survivors. For two years, very publicly, they put him on trial, from 1960 to 1962. In the middle of 1962, for the first time ever—and the last time since—the State of Israel executed Adolf Eichmann for his role in the murder of six million Jews.
The identity of the person who carried out the execution, however, was kept secret for 42 years. Israeli intelligence knew that if it became known who had killed Eichmann, neo-Nazis and antisemites might try to harm him and his family.
But in 2004, 42 years later, they finally released the identity of that man. By that point, Shlomo Nagar was retired, 71 years old, and learning in a kollel in Yerushalayim.
When the news broke, German media wanted to interview him. Who was the man who killed Eichmann? They found him, reached out, and brought an entire film crew—cameras, lighting, microphones, professionals.
They said: “Mr. Nagar, we want to interview you. We want to hear the story of those two years, from 1960 to 1962. We want to hear what it was like to execute Adolf Eichmann.”
He said: “If you want to interview me, I will agree—but I’m not coming to your studio.”
Puzzled, they asked: “Then where?”
He said: “If you want to interview me, you have to come to my kollel.”
They were not accustomed to conducting interviews in loud, noisy environments. He held firm. So they came, set up cameras and microphones in a beis midrash filled with dozens of men learning, and sat across a table from him.
He told them:
“There were 24 Eichmann guards for those two years. The job was a strange one. We had to ensure two things: that Eichmann did not kill himself before the trial was over, and that nobody else killed him before his execution.
I had to taste the food, and only if I didn’t die within two minutes would they give it to Eichmann.”
It was difficult to find these 24 guards. All of them needed to be Israeli and Jewish, and they could not have relatives who had been murdered in—or survived—the Holocaust. Israel wanted to ensure that none of the guards would try to take personal vengeance.
“So we were all Teimanim, Moroccans, or Iraqis—the places the Nazis never reached.”
At the end of the interview, the journalists thanked him and asked one final question:
“Mr. Nagar, why did you insist on doing this in a kollel—a loud and noisy room—when a studio with lights, cameras, and professionals was available?”
He explained:
I know that this interview is going to be shown all around the world. I know it will be shown in Germany. And I know that there are people there who remember what happened to the Jewish people—people who were part of that Final Solution.
When they saw the ashes of our nation rising, when they saw the shuls, schools, and mikvaos going up in flames, when they saw six million—including a million children—murdered by Eichmann, whom I had the merit of removing from this world, they believed the Jewish people were finished.
I wanted them to see that not only did we survive, not only did we build a state, not only are we thriving in that state—but that the people who have believed in Torah and mitzvos and Hakadosh Baruch Hu for the last three and a half thousand years, since the days of Avraham Avinu, are still learning the same Torah. We are learning the same words. Everything they tried to destroy has been rebuilt by Jewish hands in a Jewish land that Hashem gave to the Jewish people.
Shlomo Nagar wanted them to understand what it means: עַם כְּלָבִיא יָקוּם—a nation that rises like a lion. Just as Hakadosh Baruch Hu is eternal, just as the Torah is eternal, the Jewish people are eternal.
We are back. We are home. Hashem has brought us home.
Rabbi Akiva’s Laughter
There is a well-known Gemara at the end of Maseches Makkos. Rabbi Akiva is walking with his colleagues, and they pass by Har HaBayis—the place where the Beis HaMikdash once stood. They see a fox running out from where the Kodesh HaKodashim used to be.
All of the other Tannaim begin to cry. Rabbi Akiva begins to laugh.
The Beis HaMikdash is destroyed. The place the Kohen Gadol entered only once a year is in ruins. This is what Yirmiyahu describes in Eicha: שׁוּעָלִים הִלְּכוּ בוֹ—foxes will walk through it.
They ask him: “Rabbi Akiva, why are you laughing?”
He responds: “Why are you crying?”
They say: “The Beis HaMikdash is destroyed—why are you laughing?”
He answers: “Because the Navi says about the destruction: צִיּוֹן שָׂדֶה תֵחָרֵשׁ—Zion will be plowed like a field. If the prophecy of destruction has been fulfilled literally, then the prophecies of Zechariah—about the rebuilding of Yerushalayim and the return of the Jewish people—will also be fulfilled literally.”
They respond: אֲקִיבָא נִחַמְתָּנוּ—“Akiva, you have comforted us.”
The question is obvious: what does that mean? Did they not believe in the Navi? These great Tannaim—did they suddenly doubt the Neviim?
The answer is subtle.
When one reads the words of a Navi, there is always a question beneath the surface: is this literal? Is this exactly what will happen—or is it metaphorical? A mashal?
The Tannaim believed in the Neviim—but they couldn’t see how to get from here to there. From total destruction and despair, how does one arrive at geulah? Maybe it’s symbolic?
Rabbi Akiva says: if a fox literally emerges from the Kodesh HaKodashim, then the redemption will also be literal.
The Nevuah Unfolding
There is a beautiful new sefer, HaNevuah, by Rav Shmuel Eliyahu, that walks us through the prophecies alongside modern reality—with charts, images, and data.
Where Hashem promises the return of the Jewish people, the Sefer shows population growth in Israel—from 600,000 in 1948 to almost 8 million today. Where the Navi speaks of agricultural blessing, he shows actual yield increases.
We are living in a time when Nevuah is unfolding before our eyes.
זֶה הַיּוֹם עָשָׂה ה' נָגִילָה וְנִשְׂמְחָה בוֹ.
With all the pain and all the tzaros, in just 78 years we have gone from survivors of exile to witnesses of prophecy fulfilled. From vulnerability to strength. From destruction of Torah centers to more Torah learning in Eretz Yisrael than at any point in the last 2,500 years.
Perhaps the greatest celebration of all is the Kiddush Hashem: ודברך אמת וקיים לעד—Your word is true and eternal.
The State of Israel stands as a living testament to the truth of Torah and Neviim.
Beneath the politics and beyond the pain lies a deeper truth: we are living in a generation of miracles.
Our world is the fulfillment of centuries of hope, longing, and prayer—so that we can say:
חַג הָעַצְמָאוּת שָׂמֵחַ.