Rabbi Rael Blumenthal

The truth is, I was working on another article. But shortly after 11pm, my phone began buzzing as messages, notifications and news from Washington filled the screen.

Two Jews were murdered in cold blood in the name of “Free Palestine.”

What I felt in that moment was a mixture of shock and horror, coupled with a strange numbness, as if we all knew that this could happen. It's that awful feeling that we’ve been here before, over and over and over again. We felt this way in every country we have lived in; from Spain to Portugal, from Poland to Germany, from Morocco to Iran. At some point, despite our economic success and exemplary citizenship, someone decides that we are the problem. This story is the oldest and most painful in our long history.

How are we supposed to look at these headlines? How are we supposed to respond?

No doubt, this will be a moment that galvanizes some families on the fence about Aliyah to make the move. Jewish security organizations will be stepping up their personal and training. Many will be taking legal action against anti-semites and their sponsors; while others will take action in the world of politics and policy.

But what’s the Avoda? What does Hashem want us to think and do right now?

The Lubavitcher Rebbe would often explain that we need to live with the Parsha; that somehow, clarity would come through the Torah we read and learn each Shabbos (אַ איד דאַרף לעבן מיט דער צייט).

And indeed, the Meshech Chochma who left this world in 1926, wrote a letter to me and you in 2025, in Parshas Bechukosai.

“For the Jew who thinks Berlin is Yerushalaim... A great storm will come. It will uproot him from the place he is planted; he will know that he is a stranger, that his true language is Lashon HaKodesh, that all other languages are like a clothes that are stripped off and exchanged. He will know that the place from which he is carved is Jewish wood, and his only comfort is in the words of the prophets who spoke of Mashiach at the end of time. In his meanderings he has forgotten his Torah, its depths and study. But in returning to it he may find some temporary respite... Since the ultimate reason we are hated and despised because we are living in a foreign world. We need to awaken to be ready and prepared to accept our Godly destiny; that which must happen at the end of time, when we are unified throughout the land; when Hashem is One, and His name is One.”

The Storm is coming for our generation as well.

If this is your moment to make Aliyah, I support and encourage that wholeheartedly. But make no mistake, this is not a call to flee. This storm is worldwide; it affects each and every Jew, regardless of where we are. It is not uprooting us from our place, as much as it is uprooting us from our mistaken identities.

The core of the Meshech Chochma’s perspective is that there is no difference between Tzeela Gez, who was murdered in Israel last week on her way to give birth, and Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim who were murdered last night in Washington working for the Israeli Embassy.

Our enemies do not distinguish between Israeli and Jew. They see no difference between solider and civilian. For the anti-semite, there is nothing that changes between religious and secular, right or left.

The centuries of assimilation into foreign cultures and their politics has convinced us that we can divide up the Jewish people. Our enemies remind us that between Jews, there is no “us and them.”

There is some temporary rest to be found in the Beis Medrash, in the words of Torah, in transcendent thoughts. It’s a good place to hide while preparing an evacuation place. But the storm will only pass when we are willing and able to claim our identity as Klal Yisrael; and to see every other Jew as a card carrying member.

That’s the ultimate goal: That the Unity of Hashem, His morals, ethics and values, will be demonstrated in our world through the Unity of the Jewish people, living His Torah.

Rav Shmuel Mohliver, the leader of Chibbat Tzion used to say that the Jewish people will need two Mashiachs – Mashiach ben Yosef and Mashiach ben David. One will take the Jews out of Galus, and the other will take Galus out of the Jews.

This Storm is coming to take Galus out of us.