1.21 gigawatts?! Looking to the future

What did you do to mark Back to the Future Day? (Do you even know what I’m talking about?)

October 21, 2015 is the date 30 years in the future to which Doc Brown and Marty McFly travel in the film, Back to the Future.  (Here’s a blast from the past - 1.21 gigawatts?!) 

Well, the future is here.  How did we do?  Cars don’t fly, and we don’t really have hover boards.  We haven’t brought peace to the Middle East, and who could have guessed Donald Trump would be leading the polls in the 2016 presidential election back in 1985?  (See here for a humorous look from the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” show.)

While it would be nice to predict the future, the world is a very unpredictable place.  One of the great things about the people – and the Jewish people in particular – is our ability to always move forward regardless of the situation.

On YNET right now is the report of a family of five injured when a terrorist threw a fire bomb at their car (refuah shleimah!) as well as reporting on a successful Tel Aviv fashion week.

Terrorists show no concern for decency and morality by attacking men, women, and children, and there is absolutely no regard for the truth on the Palestinian side.  The Jews, however grapple with morality.  Israeli hospitals treat both terror victims and terrorists.  (Just today, Mahmoud Abbas’s brother-in-law had lifesaving heart surgery in Israel.)  While the number of terrorist attacks in Israel increased, Rav David Stav of Tzohar was addressing the moral issues of harming neutralized terrorists.

Where do we get the ability to balance firebombs and fashion and murder and morality? 

Lech lecha.  We get going?  Avraham left and didn’t know exactly where he would end up.  He embarked on the journey, entered the land, and then stopped.  Who told him where to stop?  Avraham just know.  There is something inside us that allows us to keep going, to focus on the positive, and to strive for what is right. 

There are some things which seem to never change – like the Arab position on the Temple Mount or the UN being anti-Israel.  At the same time, we can be sure that our commitment to life moving forward, to goodness, to joy, and to looking towards the future will never change either.

Here’s to the future! 

P.S. Israel is obviously on our minds and in our hearts more than usual.  Rabbi Lookstein, in his message to the KJ community, captured the ways that we can respond religiously and practically, and here is another great message of what we can do for Israel at this time.