What it really means to daven: To appeal with utter helplessness to the only One who can help

It’s late at night, the world is blanketed in black, and once again I’m checking the news. It is just as dark as the sky.

Politicians and pundits are still faithfully bleating their belief in the “two-state solution,” but those protestors on the Brooklyn Bridge have made it quite clear that they will only tolerate one state — and it doesn’t include Jews. I have zero foreign policy expertise, but from my vantage point it seems pretty clear that there’s no political solution for our problems.

Maybe there’s a military solution, though. Can’t the IDF blast Hamas out of existence, like the government promised?

I turn to two investigative reports about Hamas’s tunnel network, where it houses soldiers, weapons, and resources. One IDF soldier describes the specialized equipment and skills needed to fight in tunnels — the standard night vision goggles and communication systems don’t work underground. And since oxygen is limited, soldiers must bring oxygen supplies, respirators, and masks. An experienced tunnel soldier tells NBC News that inside the tunnels, every meter traveled “is like crossing a desert for a month.”

And for those soldiers fighting aboveground, the tunnels pose a petrifying risk. “It’s like fighting ghosts,” one veteran describes the experience. Armed apparitions appear out of nowhere, fire some bullets, then slip behind a doorway and slither underground.

How do you conquer an enemy that keeps disappearing? And how many lives can you risk in the process?

SO

maybe there’s a logistical solution. Early this week, Israeli headlines lit up with Naftali Bennett’s 10-point Siege Plan. It sounds so logical: instead of entering Gaza, enforce a long-term siege. Permit humanitarian deliveries of food, water, medication — but not a drop of fuel. Without circulation or light, the Hamas fighters burrowed in tunnels will have no choice but to eventually exit. “We have all the time in the world,” Bennett said.

I love the reassuring sound of that guarantee. But do we?

America’s brutal battle in Mosul lasted nine months. Israel hasn’t been granted even one month; the UN has already passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire. A long-term siege requires a free pass in the media and in world opinion that Israel just doesn’t get.

Even if the IDF is somehow given the time it needs to locate every tunnel — which is far from a given — they cannot simply bomb them out or flood them with seawater, as many armchair strategists helpfully suggest. Every military decision carries moral agony, because there in the very same tunnels our enemies hold hostages — innocent, vulnerable brothers and sisters whose names and faces haunt us all.

H

ere in this world, we may be gifted with resources to tap when hard times come: financial means, powerful connections, even physical resilience. We know that our abilities are limited, but even as we daven for His help — for the shidduch or the diagnosis or the raise — we lean on that protektziya or our stamina or the top doctor to play a role in the solution.

Now we keep grasping for those crutches and they’re nowhere to be found. There’s no political solution. There’s no military solution. There’s no logistical solution. There’s no visible way out of this disaster.

The trusted Israeli “conceptziya” — the idea that deterrence and containment would convince our enemies not to hazard a war — lies prone and powerless behind us. A web of tunnels manned by armed terrorists yawns before us. On all sides are social justice warriors who are very frank about their desire to eliminate the Jewish “oppressors.” And even the most rousing pep talk — We will destroy Hamas! Never again is now! — sounds hollow against the silent screams of the hostages.

If there’s something familiar about this feeling, it’s because many years ago, when all the crutches were gone, when there was no safe way forward and no option to rewind to yesterday’s illusory security, that’s when He split the sea.

Does the fact that there’s no solution mean there’s no hope? We like solutions; we like checklists and maps, plans and protocols. But hope can exist when mortal solutions don’t. Hashem is our hope, and He isn’t constrained by our limited oxygen, imagination, or supporters.

The night is dark and the news is dark and I’m beginning to realize that this obsessive search for some glimmer of a solution isn’t getting me where I need to go. If I could truly feel that desperation, give in to the knowledge that there is no mortal solution, then I might taste what it really means to daven: to appeal with utter helplessness to the only One who can help. And if I could fully submit to both my helplessness and His boundlessness, then I might find a path forward with those two thoughts coexisting in my mind: There is no solution but there is One hope.

—Shoshana Friedman

Managing Editor