Tzipiyah.com

This evening I witnessed a political rally. Prime Minister Netanyahu was scheduled to give a much-anticipated address at Bar Ilan university, and just outside the campus stood a few groups of people. On one side of the road, on the pavement, stood groups of people who align themselves with the political right. And on the opposite side of the road stood a number of people who have taken a very adamant opposing stance, and who find themselves on the political left.

The demonstrators were relating to one of the hottest topics in Netanyahu’s, and in Israel’s, policy today, which is what to do with international pressure — specifically from USA — to create ‘peace’ with the Arabs, specifically with the steps demanded to create the much-touted “Two-State Solution.” There are many issues at play here, and the situation is complex.

Both groups of people waved signs and banners, and shouted slogans and chants. There was plenty media coverage, which meant that effectively the eyes of millions of people around the world were focused on the signs, the chants, and the general atmosphere at the demonstrations.

But when I passed by the area where the demonstrators were busy with their campaigns, I saw something that drew my attention, and flipped my world around. I saw a ‘haredi’ woman sitting about 10-20 metres away from the demonstrators, with her baby-bearing pram and her little boy nearby her. She was saying Tehillim with an intensity and a gravity that immediately caught my eye. She also understood that big things for the future of Israel, for the future of the Jewish Nation, are in the balance. And she knew a way to influence the happenings in a far deeper, far more substantial way than the way that the protesters chose. She sat down, and, in both uncomplicated simplicity and dedicated concentration, she prayed.

I thought to myself: this woman — who got no cameras turned towards her, and who was making no noise, drawing no attention to herself — was making more of an impact, having more of a significant effect, than the protesters, whose images will run across millions of screens around the world. So often, what really is significant, what really matters, is the small action, or the unwatched act of righteousness, holy dedication, or self-sacrifice for the values that G-d has given to us in His Torah.

So often, we forget that the flashy, loud, impressive ideas, actions, and images, are often nothing more than noise, and that the deeper things, the things that really count, are ideas, words, and most especially actions, are the things that really impact on the very essence of our existence, both today and tomorrow.

When I arrived at a shul later that evening, I said some Tehillim, remembering the woman I had seen, and her quiet sense of order, priority, and sanity, in a world that confuses us with so many flashy, eye-catching nonsenses.