“You should probably go check on your neighbor; he seems a bit emotional.” This was the first thing a tzedaka collector said to the great Rav Asher Weiss when he knocked on the Rosh Yeshiva’s door at eleven at night. Something didn’t feel right.
The next morning, Rav Asher checked in on his neighbor. “Is everything okay?” he asked.
“Actually, everything’s great,” the neighbor replied. “I mean, we are at war, and my two boys are in Gaza, but at this moment, I feel really good.”
“Well,” Rav Asher responded, “the collector mentioned something about you last night.”
He responded: “Let me explain. Last night, at 11 o’clock, I got a knock on my door. We dread knocks like that especially late at night. Who else could it be but the army? With two sons in tzahal, we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. My wife and I were already in bed. We checked our phones, maybe hoping for news, and hurriedly got dressed. We were already emotional before we even opened the door.
“When we finally did, there was a man asking for tzedaka. I saw him, and I gave him the biggest hug in the world. My sons are still alive. We don’t know what they’re going through, but they’re alive.”
This year, when you hear the 100 blasts of the shofar, think about how many mothers have gotten knocks on their doors late at night, hearing the words, “Your son and your family have made the ultimate sacrifice.” While many attribute the shofar’s broken sounds to the tears of Sisera’s mother, others connect it to the crying of Sarah Imeinu, who upon hearing from a stranger that her son, Yitzchak, was being brought up as a sacrifice, cried out in anguish.
This year, that emotional crying from Sarah is what we’ve been experiencing for the past 11 months. When you hear the shofar, daven for the Jewish people in the merit of those strong, resilient mothers, pray for their strength, and that no mother needs to get these knocks on the door again.