What can ride ocean currents for years before finally washing ashore and springing to life? According to National Geographic’s World magazine, it’s a nut that is native to South America and the West Indies. Some people call them “sea hearts.”
These 2-inch, chestnut-colored nuts are hardy, heart-shaped seeds that grow on high-climbing vines. They often fall into rivers and float out to sea. There they may ride the currents for years before coming to shore and sprouting into a plant.
This life-bearing, time-enduring, wave-riding seed illustrates a basic spiritual principle. Life gives us many opportunities to develop patience. This was true in this week’s parasha. Noah needed patience when building the Ark. As a ship builder he need to make sure the Ark would survive the pounding waves of the flood. As God’s messenger he needed patience in dealing with the generations of the flood in the hope of convincing them to repent. If he was successful, they would have repented and their punishment would have been averted.
Sea hearts can’t choose to
be patient, but we can. Nothing is harder or better for us than to accept King
Solomon’s advice, when he wrote in Ecclesiastes 7:8 “the patient in spirit is
better than the proud in spirit.” By being
patient we can have peace, and our faith will grow—even while we are riding out
the waves.
I know
that Israel will win this Simkhat Torah war. I hope that Israel will have the
patience to do what’s necessary the day the war ends. Thomas S. Warrick, is a nonresident senior fellow with Middle East programs
at the Atlantic Council and served in the U.S. State Department from 1997 to
2007, made the following suggestions based on his experience serving in the
State Department during the Iraq war. He suggests the following:
So what
should you prioritize at the outset? Consider these six points, however
difficult some may seem before a ground war even starts:
1. End Hamas’s culture of economic
corruption in Gaza. Corruption is at the heart of what
Hamas uses to keep the Gazan people in line. This needs to end. You may have a
chance to put in place once-in-a-generation root-and-branch reforms in public
integrity in government contracting, civil service hiring and business
practices in Gaza.
2. Listen to what Gaza’s residents
want. Ordinary Gazans must have a say in their future.
3. Change the educational
curriculum. This has been Hamas’s basis for ensuring
enduring hatred of Israel. But don’t listen to the equally poisonous voices in
Israel that would overplay your hand and undermine lasting educational reforms
that would work for Gaza. There are many experts today in the Middle East and
outside it who have constructive ideas for an educational curriculum that is
true to Palestinian history and in the best interests of lasting coexistence.
4. Find a path for Gazans to write
a constitution that will lead toward a more democratic state that can live in
peace side by side with Israel. Israel needs to
demonstrate that it is committed to a two-state solution. This is one way to do
that.
5. Show Gazans that Israel is
prepared to help Gaza rebuild economically. This close to
Oct. 7, Israelis cannot readily conceive of committing to a Marshall Plan for
Gaza. But Israel needs to think through what conditions would make this the
right thing to do.
6. Border security for Gaza that Israel can live with — not a siege —
is vital. The U.S. failure to plan for security along the
Iran-Iraq border was one of the most egregious flaws in the entire U.S. postwar
plan. Iran poured money, explosives and operatives into Iraq, undermining any
hope for a more stable Iraqi government. It is obvious that the measures Israel
has had in place since 2007 have not prevented Iran from funding, arming and
helping train Hamas. Israel needs now to do better. Even when Israeli ground
forces ultimately pull back from Gaza and Gazans start to provide their own
police force, Israel will want to ensure for at least three decades, as
unobtrusively as possible, that neither Iran nor anyone else has the ability to
smuggle into Gaza the means of waging war. At the Department of Homeland
Security, I helped draft this kind of plan for Israeli-Palestinian border
security that could be retrieved from storage and updated — and to be made
real. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/opinion/israel-gaza-iraq-iran.html)
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