I just read about Joseph?s tomb and the horrible things that have been done at the grave of our Patriarch. This is a man who, with Hashem?s help, saved the lives of Jews and Gentiles alike. He rescued an entire region from famine. But saving people and providing for them is too often forgotten. Very soon after his death, the Egyptians forgot what he had done and enslaved his descendants.



He was forgotten again when the Israeli government allowed his grave to fall into the hands of non-Jews, and forgotten again when, after we were told of the destruction of his tomb by the dedicated Hassidim who still go there to pray, and the rest of the Jewish people said, ?Oh well,? and went back to their cel-phones and child care responsibilities, and their important jobs.



Natan Sharanksy, the only one in government at this time who seems to have a clear notion of Joseph?s importance, had to actually suggest some action at a cabinet meeting. He had to actually call upon Ariel Sharon to publicize the photos of the destruction at the site and let others know what had been done.



"If we would have razed the gravesite of one of the founders of Islam," Sharansky said, "billions of Moslems would have taken to the streets. It's inconceivable that the world should not know about this travesty."



It should be inconceivable, but, unfortunately, it has happened. We were not vigilant. Of all things one must be, vigilant is the hardest. You see, you can do something right almost every day of the week, almost every day of the month, almost every day of the year, but if you mess up once, everything is lost and all that time and effort you spent being vigilant the other times doesn?t count. It doesn?t matter whether the thing you want is important, it only matters whether someone or something wants it more than you do.



For example, it?s been almost two years since I had chickens. The chickens I had were a group of six hens and six roosters that I had to special order at the feed store. I normally don?t have roosters, because they make the eggs treif, but I promised a rabbi with a small congregation about 50 miles from here, that I would raise them for him for Kapparot. I have a nice little chicken house out back, and a small fenced area for the chickens. During the long summer days, I would open the door to the house and let the chickens free-range on my acre. Every night, after they had returned to roost, I would close the door to the chicken house with all of them safely inside.



Also, almost every night, the coyotes would come and check my security arrangements. They would come as a pack and visit. I didn?t see them, but I knew they were there because my dog barked, and I found their footprints the next morning. On those mornings I would pat myself on the back. I was feeling very good about how I had protected my chickens, and about the mitzvah I was doing for that small congregation.



Then, just a few weeks before Yom Kippur, the coyotes found an opening. Coyotes don?t howl, at least not when they are on the hunt. They are quiet then, and when they see something they want, they begin to make small chirping and whining noises. On this particular night, I had been awakened by my dog, and when I got out to the porch, I realized that the coyotes had surrounded the yard in all directions. The chirping and whining of each individual coyote was merging into a harmonic that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. It was impossible to tell where the sound came from, and I realized, for a split second, that this must be the sound people hear when they think they have been picked up by aliens in the desert south of here. It was creepy.



Suddenly, as if there had been a prearranged moment of attack, the coyotes came from all directions into my yard. My dog came up from behind me, her hackles raised, and threw herself at the coyotes. Two of them led her off, while the rest went for the chicken-house. It was then that I realized that I had forgotten to shut the door that night. The chickens were screaming, white feathers, lit by the porch light behind my house, were being carried on the breeze. I grabbed the closest weapon I had, a large mop, and ran for the chicken house yelling at the top of my lungs, ?Get out of here coyotes! Go! Shoo!? But it was no use. They coyotes left with as many chickens as they could grab, holding them in their teeth by their necks, as they scattered into the night. In the startling silence, I could hear my dog in the distance, barking.



The next morning two hens and one rooster, missing feathers, but alive, made their way back to the chicken house to eat, but they would never sleep there again. They took to roosting in the tops of my trees, out of reach, and the eggs, which had been so easy to find before, were now laid in clutches behind piles of wood, in sagebrush, and even under some tumbleweeds near the back gate. A trust had been breached that could never be repaired.



I shook my head. One day of missed vigilance. Months and months of work down the drain. I went over and over in my mind about how I had arranged heat-lamps for the new chicks, how I had gone out in the rain and even in a late spring snow to secure them against the cold. I thought about the new nesting boxes I had made with my own hands and the clean straw that I had brought in the back of my mini-van and hauled to the chicken house more than once after cleaning. It was wasted time.



And that wasn?t all of it. There would be no chickens for the rabbi that year, and it was too late to get new ones. An entire congregation would be disappointed by my lack of vigilance. The rabbi never asked me for help again. What had started out to be an important mitzvah had ended in tragedy, and in a hard lesson about the importance of vigilance.



I learned the lesson as an individual on a very small scale with a very small trust, and I wonder how long it will take for us to learn that lesson as a people, on a large scale, with the most important trust of all? We were not vigilant with the first Temple, we were not vigilant with the second Temple, many are not vigilant with mitzvot or against intermarriage, we have not been vigilant with Israel, we were not vigilant with Joseph?s tomb. How much more has to be lost? How much more has to be sacrificed through a lack of vigilance?





We can all make excuses about why it happened, can?t we? But it doesn?t matter how much time we spent in the past or in the present or in the future to protect something, it only matters that we know we can never let up for an instant. We must realize that an entire day, week, life or millennia can be wasted in a single moment by lack of vigilance. We can stand and say that these things are important, we can march in the streets, we can become enraged, and we can lecture and campaign and yell from the treetops, but we must know that the most important thing is vigilance. We must want the things we have enough to be vigilant, and we must know that those who are hungry for an opportunity will, if the opportunity arises, take what we have in an instant.



Let?s not forget Joseph again. Let?s learn from the destruction of the tomb that we can never lack vigilance, ever again.

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Michelle Nevada lives in a small town in rural Nevada. She can be contacted at [email protected].