The Big Umbrella
                                         By Miriam Ungar

So I figure this thing is not over yet. Like, we seem to be in it for the long haul. We have just emerged from the September 11 devastation to stand on wobbly legs and sure enough, we are shaken right back into a state of hysteria. There is a sense of impending doom and growing sense of helplessness.

So many things have changed since 9/11. Flying is done only if there's an extreme necessity. Going to and from Manhattan
is no longer a casual affair. Every radio station opens up with "The latest: America fights back!. I'm not even discussing the surreal war taking place halfway across the globe.

In a way, the American psyche is so naive. Americans believe
if there's a problem, "Well, all ya' folks, git a gun (or some F-16's),
shoot hard and git rid of the bad guy!" But that is so ridiculously
simplistic. The good guy versus the bad guy days are over for America.

Now we've got the good guys (clean cut Americans) versus the
bad guys-irrational "holy" Muslims-who think they are the good guys! They are "religious do-gooders" who don't care if they die.

A week or so after September 11, I went to a standing room only lecture in K'hal Chasidim featuring Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis. The
rebbetzin, a tiny ball of fire strode in, just off a plane from Phoenix,
where her message to 1,000 unaffiliated college students had been to keep Shabbos to prevent more tragedies from occurring. For the packed heimishe crowd in Boro Park, she had a different message. She announced that this is a very different war; it is the war of Chevlei Moshiach. "This is in some way worse, believe it or not, than Nazi Germany. During the Holocaust, there was one enemy: the Germans. Here, Yishmael is everywhere and nowhere.

They have infiltrated our grocery stores; our planes; our post offices, our apartment buildings. They are vicious and invisible and they hate us. They will be attacking us in different ways every day and they are not scared, unlike the Germans. These terrorists have no life, no land, no home, just the promise of heaven. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain by dying! So how do we fight such an enemy? How can we protect ourselves?"

How can we protect ourselves? Do we stop traveling, opening
mail and riding elevators?

I've been studying this situation and turning it round and round like a rubric cube in my mind. How do we solve this insoluble problem? The first thing I did was turn off the radio and stop reading most of the newspapers (except Yated). And then a funny thing happened despite my conscious decision to close all depressing news stories from entering my house. Bad news began seeping in through my tightly sealed windows and doors via my telephone. Incredibly, the amount of tragic episodes among our
heimishe seems to be occurring in epidemic proportions. This one's beloved brother became violently ill with a brain tumor a week after Sukkos ; that one's eighteen year old son needs an emergency liver surgery with a new liver no one seems to have; this 9th graders father just died; this woman's husband died of an aneurysm leaving her to cope with five little children.

It's raining down from the heavens, I thought chilled. How on earth am I to go about protecting my family, my children, my parents, myself! from all this craziness? If it's not a plane, it's a bomb; if it's not a bomb, it's Anthrax, if it's not Anthrax, it's cancer; if it's not cancer it's freak accidents! So how does any normal thinking person deal with these abnormal times? How do I get up with a spring in my step and a happy serene attitude without giving way to a grim and frightened state of mind? All persons that are left without hope usually feel helpless and consequently depressed, because humans thrive on the concept of being
powerful and in control of their destiny. And this situation we are going through is way out of control. How can we stay safe? My conclusions have been embarrassingly simple.

Rebbetzin Jungreis looked out at a thousand women of all
shapes and sizes and she shook her hand at them. "We are living in crazy, crazy times, so, women what are you waiting for? STORM THE GATES OF HEAVEN! START DAVENING LIKE YOU'VE NEVER DAVENED! THERE IS NO OTHER ANSWER!"

In a extreme example of non-coincidence, my husband's 93 year old grandmother whom we loved dearly was niftar Erev Yom Kippur, mere weeks after the World Trade Center disaster. She was the family's crown jewel, a tall intelligent, strong, humorous woman of sound mind and body. She was our protector. Every week, she davened-by name-for all her 70 descendents. Although, she felt very humble and simple she always told me,
"See, I'm reeeally Hashem's kint (child). I can ask him vot I want.. And I ask him everyday to take care of everyvon. You know what? Everyvon of my children and grandchildren and great granchildren are shomer shabbos! Dis is a big ting, Miriam, very big. I'm living almost 100 years and everybody stayed frum!"

Actually it is a pretty big deal. She survived World Wars I and II, immigrated to a new country with a foreign tongue and went through life's ups and downs for over nine decades. She believes she and her children got through it basically in one piece due to her ongoing dialogue with Hashem. She talked to Hashem in Hungarian, Yiddish, English. And then she recited Tehillim in her painstaking self taught loshon kodesh.

So, I'm feeling a bit bereft right now as I kind of relied on her tefillos to keep my entire family safe and sound. Immediately,
following her petirah, Rav Pam and of course, Rav Shach were taken away from this world. Ribbono Shel Olam, how can we ever feel safe if the righteous are slowly being taken away one by one? Whose merits will protect us now? What with my grandmother and her daily prayers for my family gone, the
gedolim and their prayers for klal yisroel gone and a world gone amok with terrorists on the loose, what's a person to do?

I keep wondering how I can hold an umbrella over my family,
friends and loved ones to shield them from all the tragedies that are raining down from the heavens. Sometimes at night when everyone is safe and sound (and hopefully, asleep!) in their beds at night, I dream of the umbrella floating above my roof.

We all try to create our own umbrella in our unique way. Some feel in control when they read the news obsessively to be "on top" of things; others purchase gas masks or refuse to travel. They are sincerely relieved that republicans like Bush and Cheney will keep us safe. Please.

Instead, the real power, the true ability to keep us safe and sound is collecting dust. Someone told me an amazing line by Rabbi Yisroel Jungreis given at his weekly lecture in Manhattan. "Immediately after September 11, there was not an American flag to be found. All sold out! But you couldn't say the same of the tehillim in the seforim stores. Plenty left."

Enough already with our busy, busy lives that barely give us enough time to mumble brochos and say a quick shemonah esrei. We need to take the time of day to consciously daven (otherwise known as kavanah), in order for Hashem to give us the time of day. Why start davening when crisis hits? How about davening and saying tehillim everyday-slowly-to beg Hashem
to "passover" our homes from calamities, rachmona litzlon. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and right now we need quarts of prevention.

Listen, we are Hashem's children. We can ask him for anything. Don't your children ask you for anything and everything? Don't you hate refusing them? Imagine some stranger running over and begging you for a $200,000 loan for a life and death operation. The stranger sobs. Of course, you feel terrible, you even discuss doctors and surgeries, but are you running to your bank? Probably not. Imagine that stranger looking up and you suddenly realize it's your daughter begging you for the operation to save
her life. Is it a question? Suddenly you are running to every bank, friend and family to raise the money. It's your child, your blood.

So, I finally got it through my head that I am Hashem's child, not a stranger. I am related by blood via tzelem elokim. Why have I always felt that I have to be a Sara-Rifkah-Leah-Rochel-Chana for Hashem to listen to me? Do you, as a parent, only pay attention to your "best", most gelungana child? Don't you give to the child that drives you a bit crazy, as well? I don't have to be a
tzadekis to daven and ask Hashem to save my life and that of my loved ones. I just have to be his Jewish child (which I am) and ask Hashem sincerely, with kavanah (which I'm working on). We just have to "STORM THE GATES OF HEAVEN"!

Rav Shmuel Berenbaum, in a recent shmuess covered by the
Yated, exhorts us to "sit up and take notice..to learn from our mistakes. Hashem is telling us something." He continues, "Our influence on the world around us cannot be underestimated. The power of the individual is enormous." He quotes the Rambam, "Yesterday (the sinner) was separated from Hashem, yet today, after repenting, he merits to adhere to the Shechina. He davens and is answered immediately.(Hilchos Tshuvah 7;7)

Recently, I had breakfast with my 5 year old daughter. We were shmoozing about davening and "Mommy," she said dramatically, "I don't know why, I just don't know why, but I feel like every time I open up my mouth to daven, rubies and diamonds are coming out!" I grinned in agreement and she continued, "You know what my Morah says? She says that if you forgot your snack and your friend got mad at you, what can you expect if you don't daven hard to Hashem for a good day? First, you have to ask Hashem for
everything and then your day can go right. Isn't that easy? "

From the mouths of babes.