People around the world held their collective breath as Israeli Air Force jets streaked across Middle Eastern skies, targeting Iranian nuclear facilities. Without international approval, the Jewish state hit at the heart of an existential threat—alone, as it has so many times before.
This time, Iranian leaders are reportedly huddled in underground bunkers, calculating their response to Israeli airstrikes.
As Jewish mothers in Tel Aviv sing lullabies in bomb shelters, Diaspora Jews are refreshing news feeds with trembling fingers. While many are scared and anxious as war unfolds, we need look no further than this week’s Torah portion, Beha’alotcha, for Divine guidance in this exact moment.
For more than 3,000 years, every time Jews remove the Torah from the ark in synagogues across the globe, we have recited the same verses taken from this week’s portion—words that Moses himself declared as the Israelites prepared for battle:
Vayehi binso’a ha’aron vayomer Moshe: Kumah Hashem v’yafutzu oyvecha v’yanusu m’sanecha mipanecha! Ki Mitzion Teitzei Torah U’devar Adonai Miyerushalayim.
“When the Ark was set forth, Moses would say: Rise up, O Lord! Let Your enemies be scattered! Let those who hate You flee before Your face! For the Torah shall go forth from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem!”
(Numbers 10:35-36)
85 letters that shook the world
These verses, which contain 85 letters in total, teach that the Jewish way of waging war, both physically and spiritually, is by placing the Torah front and center. When the Israelites went to war, the Ark of the Covenant didn’t hide in the rear with the supply wagons. It was advanced to the front of the formation, leading the charge into battle.
Picture it: Ancient warriors gripping bronze swords, following a golden box containing stone tablets toward enemies who outnumbered them, out-armed them and wanted them annihilated.
The parallel to today’s headlines is breathtaking. A small Jewish state, armed with ancient promises and modern precision, striking at nuclear facilities while the world watches in stunned silence.
However, these timeless verses contain several characteristics that make them even more powerful. First, they stand completely alone in the Torah scroll—positioned between two inverted Hebrew nuns, letters that appear nowhere else in the Torah. The 12th-century commentator Rashi tells us that these mysterious symbols indicate that the passage isn’t just noteworthy, but actually constitutes an entire book of the Torah unto itself. That means, according to this opinion, there are seven, and not five, books of the Torah.
For this reason, the Talmud teaches that if a Torah scroll is burned, torn or damaged beyond recognition, if just 85 letters remain intact—the length of this passage—then the entire scroll retains its sacred power and can therefore be salvaged. In other words, these 85 letters of Moses’ battle cry contain the essence of the Torah; the spiritual DNA of Jewish survival.
The message resonates across the centuries: Jews don’t retreat from their spiritual foundations during wartime; they lean into them as Divine protection.
The Torah demands spiritual warfare
But the Torah portion isn’t finished delivering its prophetic punch. God commands Moses to forge two silver trumpets, chatzotzrot, to use for summoning the nation and orchestrating military campaigns.
Different battles require different sounds. Peaceful gatherings get straight trumpet blasts. But verse 10:9 says: “When you go to war in your land against an adversary that oppresses you, you shall blow a ‘teruah’ with the trumpets and be remembered before the Lord your God, and thus be saved from your enemies.”
The teruah—that broken, wailing sound we know from Rosh Hashanah—represents teshuvah, the soul’s return to God. Even as bombs fall and missiles fly, the Torah demands spiritual warfare alongside military action. Just as the verse says God will remember us, we, too, must remember that we are God’s chosen people and that times of crisis afford us the opportunity to return to God’s Divine path.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson—in a Chassid discourse, shared that the Hebrew word for trumpet can be broken down into chatzi tzurot (“half forms”), which represents the fusion of Divine power with human determination. When we blow the trumpet at times of war, we fuse ourselves with God’s will and elicit his Divine protection.
An ancient rallying cry
It’s not a coincidence that the same week that Israel potentially triggers a regional conflagration, Jews worldwide read about Moses leading the Israelites through enemy territory with nothing but the God at the helm and unshakeable faith. The same 85 letters that protected our ancestors from ancient adversaries now hover with Israeli pilots navigating over Iranian air defenses.
The verse that opens our Torah service each week is more than just beautiful liturgy; it’s a war cry that has echoed through Masada, the Warsaw Ghetto, and now, the Iranian skies. Moses’ ancient rallying call reverberates today through Israeli command centers and Jewish hearts worldwide.
As Iranian leaders contemplate retaliation and Israeli families huddle in shelters, those timeless verses stand as an eternal testament: The people who carry Torah at the front of their formation, who sound the broken trumpets of teshuvah even in battle, who remember God in their darkest hours—these people will not only survive, but leap, plunge and charge forth with Divine protection and success.