Two Armies of G-d: Reflections for Yom Yerushalayim

This Saturday night and Sunday marks Yom Yerushalayim, a day which many Jewish communities will celebrate with the recitation of Hallel. I’d like to share just a few of the miraculous events from the first day of the war which I hope will enhance our kavana as we recite the pesukim from Hallel :

But first I want to look at a story from Melachim Bet that (some of) our MTC girls recently learned in Tanach Seminar. For decades Malchut Yisrael had a tense relationship with their northern neighbor, Aram, and fought several wars with them during the time period of Eliyahu and Elisha. At one point, Elisha Ha-Navi woke up to find Armenian troops had lay siege to his city in an effort to hunt him down. Seeing the scores of armed soldiers, Elisha’s servant panicked. The Navi, however, remains calm and responds: “Have no fear. There are more on our side than on theirs.” (II Kings, 7:16) The servant looks around but only he and Elisha stand there, with no back up support. Elisha then asks G-d to open the eyes of his servant. Suddenly, the servant sees what Elisha has clearly perceived all along: “He saw the hills all around covered with horses and chariots of fire. (ibid 7:17)” 

R’ Yaakov Meidan, Tanach Scholar and Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, explains that G-d has two armies. We see the army of flesh and blood that fights down here. But the Navi perceives the heavenly army that fight alongside us. Every general knows that its army is only as good as its air force. The Navi Elisha was acutely aware that our success or lack thereof was not a result of our own military strength, but rather a result of how much coverage we had ‘in the air’ – coverage from the heavenly army, that is. 

When reading about the Six-Day War, and certainly for those who remember it, you do not have to be a Navi to realize that the celestial soldiers were fighting alongside chayalei tzahal and that Hashem’s hand was directly guiding these historic events. Dr. Hagai Ben-Artzi describes the miraculous events of the Six-Day War in his book which has been translated into English, The Six Day War Scroll. It is a fascinating and quick read and I’d like to summarize what he writes about the start of the war. 

 At 7:15 am, May 5, 1967, all but twelve of Israel’s military planes took off for a very risky mission to attack the Egyptian air force. At the time, the Israeli Air Force was equipped with old French warplanes whereas the Egyptians boasted a Russian-made highly developed anti-aircraft system. Had the Israeli planes been detected before the attack, the anti-aircraft system would have surely downed most of them. Here occurred the first miracle. Every single Israeli plane reached the Egypt airports in Sinai without even one being detected. The planes flew under the radar at just 20 meters above the sea and at 7:45am bombed the Egyptian runways and planes. In just one hour, over 200 Egyptian aircraft were destroyed which made up about half of its air force. No one in the Israeli Air Force or the Israeli government expected such a wildly successful mission with so few losses. As Major General Moti Hod expressed, “Even in my rosiest dreams, I never imagined such a stunning accomplishment as this.” 

Ben-Artzi points to three separate incidents that took place that morning which enabled this unmatched victory. 

1. The Egyptian Vice President and Defense minister decided the night before to schedule an aerial patrol of their military positions in Sinai for the next morning. All of top air force generals were invited to join them and they scheduled to take off at 7am. In addition an Iraqi delegation was invited to join the tour as well.  To ensure their safety, anti-aircraft units were given strict orders not to fire between 7am-8am. This was, of course, the critical hour for Tzahal. Because of this, when the Israeli planes appeared over the airport, they were not immediately shot down because the Egyptians were told they needed to get special authorization to fire. Israeli intelligence did not know anything about this aerial tour or the orders not to shoot.

2. Every morning, Egyptian planes patrolled the Sinai skies from 4:30am-8:30. Every hour, on the hour, a new shift would take off and relieve the old shift. On the morning of May 5th, the 7:30 shift was delayed. The head pilot of that shift had overslept and was running late. The night before the Air Force had thrown a massive party for its pilots to boost morale. No wonder this pilot slept through his alarm. By the time they got off the ground, it was too late – Tzahal was already bombing the runways. Had the Egyptian patrol been in the sky at 7:30 as planned, they would have detected the attack.

3. At 7:20 am the Jordanians detected fast movement on their screens approaching the Egyptian coast. They immediately realized that Israel was launching an attack. Quickly they relayed the message to their Egyptian allies, sending the code word for an Israeli attack: ע נ ב.  Over and over they repeated this emergency message but the Egyptians failed to decipher the code. Finally, out of frustration, the Egyptians broke contact with them. It turns out that the Jordanian sending the code accidentally used the old code from the day before. The Egyptian soldiers who had just started their shift at midnight did not know yesterday’s code. By the time someone on the Egyptian side thought to look up the code from the day before, it was too late. 

All three of these “random” occurrences coincided at exactly the critical moments for Tzahal and Am Yisrael.  One could view this as mere coincidence. But as As Rabbi Sacks z”l writes: “A miracle is not necessarily something that suspends natural law. It is, rather, an event for which there may be a natural explanation, but which – happening when, where and how it did – evokes wonder, such that even the most hardened skeptic senses that God has intervened in history.”  (Covenant and Conversation, p106).      

With prayers for peace in Jerusalem and the whole world.

Shabbat Shalom.