If I Wasn't Frum...
My phone buzzes. Another news alert. My stomach drops before I even read it. This crazy terrible hostage deal is going through. We are about to reward the most vicious people in the world for October 7th and it just feels like the last 16 months of sheer devastation was for nothing, that our baby-faced soldiers fill up military cemeteries as we return the land they died fighting for.
If I wasn't frum, I'd probably be throwing things right now. Actually, part of me wants to anyway. Instead, I mechanically reach for my Tehillim, the same one I've been clutching every day since October 7th. The pages are already starting to wrinkle from my grip.
When we get bad news, we say "Baruch Dayan Ha'emes," even as the words taste bitter in my mouth. Not because we don't believe them - we do, I do, with every fiber of my being. But because being frum doesn't mean you don't feel the punch to the gut. It doesn't mean you don't want to scream at the news, or cry in your car, or lie awake at night wondering how much more we can take.
The difference is what happens next.
If I wasn't frum, I'd be lost in the spiral of news channels and Twitter feeds. Instead, I force myself to remember that sometimes my emunah looks like making myself get up for shacharis when I'd rather pull the covers over my head or eat 10 slabs of chocolate or do anything to numb this pain. Sometimes bitachon is saying Modeh Ani through gritted teeth. Sometimes staying frum means admitting that yes, this hurts like hell, and yes, I believe Hashem has a plan, and holding both those truths until my hands shake.
Someone asked me yesterday how I can still believe in a Master Plan. I wanted to laugh. Or maybe cry. Because being frum isn't some magic shield that makes the pain bounce off. Our soldiers in Olam Haba? They're still our soldiers. Their mothers still set their Shabbos tables with empty chairs, while they sit beneath the Kisei Hakavod, their neshamos radiant with eternal light, still protecting, still serving, still lifting Am Yisrael from the highest realms. Their sacrifice continues, transformed but unending.
But here's the thing about being frum - it's not about having all the answers. It's about knowing Who does, even when every cell in your body is screaming "why?" It's about saying Mizmor L'Sodah not because you feel grateful, but because your ancestors somehow said it in the camps, in the pogroms, in every impossible moment before this one.
If I wasn't frum, I'd be completely losing it right now. Sometimes I still do, between mincha and maariv where nobody can see. But then I straighten my sheitel and I march on. Because that's what we do. That's what we've always done.
Not because we're strong. Not because we're holy. But because we're frum, and that means we know - even when we can barely whisper it - that this story is bigger than today's headlines.
If I wasn't frum... but I am. And tomorrow, like every day since October 7th, I'll wake up, say Modeh Ani, and carry on. Because sometimes that's what emunah looks like.
And that has to be enough.
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