Pho tos by Angie Baan

Devorah Brenner, 22, of Oak Park, in prayer at Young Israel of Oak Park.

Women

gather to

reinforce their

beliefs.

SUSAN TAWIL
Special to the Jewish News

here is our bitachon (trust in God)?"
guest speaker Judy Young asked the
300 women gathered for an evening
of chizuk (inspiration and encour-
agement) regarding the situation in Israel. They
met April 17, at Young Israel of Oak Park.
Young, a Lawrence, N.Y., mother of seven and
principal of Judaic Studies at the Machon
Academy in Queens, is a noted lecturer at such
educational institutions as Gateways, Aish
HaTorah, Ohr Somayach and Neve Yerushalayim.
Her talk focused on the belief in Divine
Providence, that God is involved minute to
minute in individual and global events. She also
emphasized the core belief of bitachon — that
nothing God does is bad.
"And God saw that it was good," she quoted
from the Genesis account of Creation. "We may

not see that it's all good, but HaShem [God] sees."
- The "best" way for things to happen are not
necessarily the way we want them to be, she
explained, adding that no struggle through diffi-
culty is ever in vain.
Young continued her talk with an examination
of the Arab-Jewish relationship, drawing heavily
on commentary based on the verses in Genesis
concerning Yitzhak (Isaac, progenitor of the Jews)
and Yishmael (Ishmael, progenitor of the Arabs),
both sons of the patriarch Abraham.
The Torah terms Ishmael a pereh adam, a wild
man, she explained, noting that grammatically the
Hebrew term stresses the wild aspect more than
the human one.
A commentary she quoted stated that if Jews
are "empty," Yishmael will rule the land of Israel.
Commentary on other verses explain that empti-
ness refers to lack of Torah. Young then brought
up three areas in which women can "fill" them-
selves spiritually — by avoiding lashon hara (evil

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