The Rescue We Fear

When safety becomes the threat and exile feels like home

A woman stands draped in black, her voice quivering, tears streaking down her cheeks. She looks like she doesn’t belong in this city, with its clean lines and confident glass. Her hands are raised. Her eyes plead. She’s not begging for food. Not asking for money.

She’s begging to be saved - from the very people trying to save her.

She’s from Lev Tahor, a cult that locks its women indoors and dresses them like shadows. She’s been sent - maybe allowed, maybe ordered - to come outside just this once, to protest. To cry and scream and shake her fists in front of the government building across the street. The one that rescues people like her.

That’s the part that won’t leave me alone. The rescue is right there. The answer to her prayers. Plane tickets. A safe house. Warm clothes. Therapy. A second chance for her and her kids. All she has to do is cross the street.

But she can’t.

Not because she’s weak. Not because she’s stupid.

Because she’s been taught - relentlessly, lovingly - that the people across the street are demons. That her pain is sacred. That the walls that confine her are the only real safety there is.

And here’s the part that haunts me:

I know that woman.

Not literally. But I’ve been her.

And in some deeper way - I still am.

---

We’re a people shaped by suffering. That part isn’t controversial. Exile. Pogroms. Expulsions. Auschwitz. We didn’t imagine it. We earned our trauma.

But then we crossed the ocean, and we brought it with us.

We built new lives, but never unpacked. We taught our children that the world outside was dangerous, that America’s smiles were a trap. Even when it gave us everything.

It gave us freedom of religion, freedom of speech. Ivy League degrees. Supreme Court justices. Broadway. Bagels. Billion-dollar companies. It let us pray, not pray, change our minds. It gave us space to breathe.

And still - we whisper that it’s exile. Still we brace for the next Hitler. Still we raise our kids to fear “outside influences.” We act like Pharaoh’s army is right around the corner.

We build invisible walls.

We teach our kids that goyim will always hate us. That every awkward headline is the beginning of the end. That Mashiach is coming to rescue us from… this.

But what if Mashiach already came?

What if he’s the barista at Starbucks, offering you a smile with your coffee? What if she’s your OB-GYN? What if they’re holding the door open at the library? What if the promised land is already here - and we’re standing outside, wailing in fear?

---

America - messy, flawed, loud - is not Egypt. It’s not Spain. It’s not Poland in 1939. It’s the first place in 2,000 years that said, “Be weird. Be different. Be free.”

And we said: Better not.

We tell ourselves we’re protecting our identity. That the outside world is a spiritual minefield. But maybe, just maybe, we’re afraid. Afraid to let go of the pain. Afraid to loosen our grip on exile.

Because if we’re not being persecuted, then who are we?

---

That woman in black, screaming at her rescuers - she isn’t crazy. She’s terrified. And her fear is real, even if it’s misplaced.

So is ours.

But the rescue is real, too.

And maybe it’s time we looked up, took a breath, and noticed the people waving to us from across the street.

We don’t have to cross a desert.

Just a street.

Source