Swords of Iron Day 1081: The Day of Atonement Truth
The Day of Atonement is the holiest day in the Hebrew calendar, and I hope yours was meaningful wherever you watched from. Here in Israel the entire country pauses. We fast, we pray, we repent, we reflect, and we go deep with friends and family. I am thankful to live in a country that still honors the mo’adim, the appointed times of God.
Then You Look at Ontario
But then I look at Canada and hear about the attack at the Sons of Jacob synagogue in Ontario, where around twenty worshippers had gathered to pray.
Security neutralized the attacker. Still, imagine the trauma those people now carry, attacked for the crime of gathering before God on the Day of Atonement.
It makes you ask the obvious question. What is the world coming to? We need God’s protection, and free people everywhere need to recognize the times we are actually living in.
A synagogue in Ontario is not a front line in anybody’s conflict. It is a room where people sing. When that room needs a guard on the holiest day of the year, something has broken far beyond the Middle East.
It Happened in Israel on the Day of Atonement Too
Even in Israel, just before the fast began, an IDF tracker repelled an attacker near a mikveh, a ritual immersion, where people were preparing themselves for the holy day.
Think about the target selection. Not a base. Not a checkpoint. People washing before prayer.
We stay vigilant because the threats are real and they are aimed at exactly these moments.
Ed Sheeran, Macklemore and the Word Unjustifiable
Meanwhile, while Israel defends itself, we hear voices like Macklemore attacking this country, and we watch pressure land on Ed Sheeran until he broke.
Ed Sheeran became emotional and called Israel’s defense catastrophic and unjustifiable. I hear his heart. I do. But there is so much ignorance about what actually happened here, and it landed in the same week as the Day of Atonement, which made it sting more than usual.
How does anyone call a war of self defense unjustifiable while stepping over October 7 as though it were weather?
What He Is Stepping Over
Hamas and other armed groups murdered about twelve hundred people. They abducted more than two hundred and fifty, including babies, Holocaust survivors and young people dancing at a music festival. They carried out atrocities I will not describe in detail here.
Israel is defending itself so that it cannot happen again. Hezbollah has attacked us from Lebanon during the same period.
You can criticize how a war is fought. That is fair and we argue about it ourselves. Calling the defense itself unjustifiable is something else entirely. It tells a nation of nine million people that it has no right to stop the next massacre.
I would ask him one question, with genuine respect. What exactly should Israel have done on October 8?
One Hundred and Fifty Thousand on the Day of Atonement
And yet something is moving in the other direction.
About one hundred and fifty thousand people gathered at the Western Wall in Jerusalem to pray on the Day of Atonement. Nearly two million have visited the Kotel across the Ten Days of Repentance.
On the final night the crowds grew so enormous that police had to block access entirely.
No campaign organized that. No influencer drove it. People simply came, in numbers this country has not seen in a generation, and stood in the dark to say sorry.
Something Is Shifting
I look at all of it together and I feel something changing.
People are recognizing that we need something deeper and something different from what the culture is offering. They are not finding it in slogans, and they are certainly not finding it in a stadium. They are finding it on the Day of Atonement, standing in a crowd at a wall, saying words they mean.
I am looking forward to new days, when more people stand up for what is right and stand with Israel while it costs them something.
Strength and Peace
Psalm 29 says it plainly. The Lord will give strength unto his people. The Lord will bless his people with peace.
Notice the order. Strength first, then peace. Not one instead of the other.
Let us believe for both of those together, and let us not settle for either one alone.
Watch the full update here: Swords of Iron Day 1081, Day of Atonement
