“אֲנִי יְשֵׁנָה וְלִבִּי עֵר. קוֹל! דּוֹדִי דוֹפֵק – I am asleep, but my heart is awake. Hark! My beloved is knocking” (Shir HaShirim 5:2).

The ra’aya, representing Knesset Yisrael, lies in bed. She hears the Dod, Hakadosh Baruch Hu, knocking at her door, His head drenched with dew. He pleads: “Open for Me, My sister, My beloved.” But she hesitates: “I have taken off my robe; how shall I put it on? I washed my feet; how shall I defile them?” (5:3). By the time she rises, He is gone. The watchmen strike her, wound her (5:7). The Daughters of Jerusalem, representing the nations, taunt her as she searches for her lover.

This is the scene Rav Soloveitchik seized upon seventy years ago. The Rav identified six divine knocks, i.e. six ways Hashem was “banging” on the door of the Jewish people after two thousand years of waiting. Would we open the door in 1956, eight years after the State’s founding? Seventy years later, each knock resounds louder. Do we hear them? Will we finally rise, or miss another opportunity to answer the loving knocks of Hashem?

The six knocks, requalified

The political knock: In 1956, both the western powers and the Soviet Union somehow agreed to vote for the partition plan – a Cold War miracle. Today, the Abraham Accords providing for the Gulf states aligning with Israel, have amplified that knock. And yet, the miracles are reported as geopolitics, stripped of providential character. The Rav heard the Divine hammer in the UN gavel. We hear only headlines.

The military knock: In 1948, Israel miraculously defeated six Arab armies. Today, Israel’s achievements against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran – its intelligence reach, its precision, its resilience – have amplified that knock beyond imagination. And yet, we marvel at the technology, credit the soldiers, and forget to ask Who made them possible. The ra’aya hears the sound but ignores the Dod’s hand on the door.

The theological knock: In 1956, Christians could no longer point to Jewish exile as proof of G-d’s rejection. Today, Jewish sovereignty and the ingathering of exiles refute every denial of Jewish rootedness. And yet, we have grown accustomed to shivat Tzion. Sovereignty is a headline instead of what the Rav saw: Hashem proving that His covenant endures.

The psychological knock: In 1956, the State injected pride into the Jewish psyche. Today, since October 7th, tens of thousands have made Aliyah, not fleeing but running toward home. And yet, the surge of solidarity fades. The ra’aya’s heart stirs, but her body remains in bed. The excitement of October 8th gives way to the routine of August.

The ethical knock: In 1956, the Rav declared that Jewish blood was no longer free. Today, the knock resounds in every soldier who risks his life to minimize civilian casualties, in a military code no other army matches. And yet, the ICJ entertains genocide charges against the people who were nearly annihilated. The knock demands that we not internalize their verdict.

The practical knock: In 1956, every Jew had a place to flee. Today, when war broke out, Israel opened its gates wider – not refugees but fighters came home. And yet, the door is open and we remain in the corridor. The ra’aya hears the Dod say, “Get up,” and answers, “I have washed my feet.”

The knocks of “brit goral” and “brit ye’ud”: what we must become

The Rav’s framework rested on two covenants: brit goral, the covenant of fate – involuntary, shared, inescapable – and brit ye’ud, the covenant of destiny accepted at Sinai – the voluntary commitment to a sacred mission. The six knocks were phenomena of goral. But goral is what happens to us; ye’ud is what we choose to become. Fate can catalyze energy but cannot provide direction.

Translating the Rav’s categories into our moment, we hear additional knocks meant to transform us from goral to ye’ud – from machane to edah, from a people united by threat to a people united by mission. These are knocks not of Providence acting upon us, but of Hashem demanding what we choose to make of ourselves.

The knock of achdut: October 7th briefly created a united camp (machane) – Charedi and secular, left and right, Diaspora and Israeli. But a machane dissolves when the threat recedes, and the fractures have returned. The knock calls us to become an edah, i.e. a congregation united not by shared danger but by shared covenant. How do we fail to hear it? We let the unity of October 8th curdle back into the partisan camps of October 6th.

The knock of moral clarity: The Rav believed Judaism’s unique contribution was the connection between religious experience and ethical action – tzedek u-mishpat, not moral relativism. After October 7th, the world inverted its compass: Israel accused of genocide while defending itself against genocidal enemies. The knock demands that we not internalize their verdict – self-defense with ethical restraint, yes, but without moral apology for protecting Jewish life. How do we fail to hear it? We become defensive rather than declarative.

The knock of kevod ha-adam: The Rav insisted that denying human dignity calls into question the raison d’être of the human race. The hostages. The bereaved. The wounded. The displaced. Each demands that the Jewish people become a society refusing to let suffering become abstract or partisan. “Jewish blood is no longer hefker” must extend beyond the battlefield to the living: the healing of hostages, the widows and orphans, the soldiers learning to walk again. How do we fail to hear it? The hostages become a political football. The bereaved become a ceremony. We move on, but the knock asks whether we can sustain the seriousness of kevod ha-adam.

The knock of kedusha: The State of Israel has achieved remarkable successes in the realm of goral – military dominance, technological prowess, diplomatic breakthroughs. But the knock implores: what kind of society are we building? One of power alone, or one of Torah, humility, chesed, and holiness? The Rav’s Adam I – majestic, creative – has been realized. But the knock demands Adam II – the covenantal man of humility and inwardness. The State cannot remain merely a refuge, an army, an economy measured by GDP and military victories; it must strive for kedusha manifest in kindness, justice and Torah values. 

The laziness the Rav feared

The Rav feared the laziness of his own community. He confessed that during the Holocaust, American Jewry failed to feel their brethren’s suffering with sufficient intensity. “We all sinned in our silence.” Orthodox Jews, he charged, suffered from miserliness not only of wealth but of spirit – experts at criticism, amateurs at construction. Seventy years later, the Negev he warned was dangerously underpopulated remains a frontier. Have we opened the door, or merely changed into cleaner pajamas?

Opening the door means Aliyah when possible, serious Israel education when not, material support for soldiers, evacuees, and bereaved families, investment in the Negev and Galil, and a Diaspora Jewish life organized around responsibility rather than sentiment – hearing the goral knocks as calls to national destiny (ye’ud).

The knock that answers the oaths

The Three Oaths (Ketubot 111a), derived from Shir HaShirim (chapters 2, 3, 8), adjured Am Yisrael not to “ascend as a wall” to reclaim the Land and not to rebel against the nations, while adjuring the nations not to oppress Israel excessively. For centuries, these oaths deterred return. Rav Zvi Hirsch Kalischer and other nineteenth-century proto-Zionist rabbanim concluded that the oaths prohibited only forcing the End, not the gradual, faithful return that Hashem’s providence had made possible.

Rav Soloveitchik’s Kol Dodi Dofek, also based on Shir HaShirim, reminds us that even for those who felt the oaths of the ra’aya as constraining Jewish initiative toward the Land, the Dod is not constrained. He comes to her. He knocks on her door. When Hashem knocks through history – through the birth of a state, through military miracles, through the ingathering of exiles, through the very suffering that tests our resolve, refusing to open is not caution. It is spiritual negligence.

The ra’aya’s tragedy: she delayed, and He departed. The watchmen found her. The Daughters mocked her. She then searched for Him, wounded and alone. October 7th was the watchmen’s blow. Global antisemitism is the Daughters’ taunt. How much suffering might have been averted had we opened the door when He first knocked?

Tishrei: the time to rise

And so we arrive at Tishrei – a month of individual and national introspection. The shofar blasts are echoes of the Dod’s knocks: Kol dodi dofek! The shofar is the sound of a hand reaching through the hole in the door (5:4), stirring our innards, calling us to rise as stated in Devarim: “And you shall return to Hashem… and He will return your captivity and gather you from all the nations” (30:2–5). Return to Hashem leads to return to the Land. Individual teshuva becomes national return. But only after we get out of bed.

The Rav implored Diaspora Jewry not to remain in slumber. Seventy years later, the knocks are louder – the knocks of goral and ye’ud, the knocks of what happened to us and what we must become. The Dod stands at the door, His head drenched with the dew of mornings in Eretz Yisrael. He is knocking. He has been knocking. Will we rise from passivity, remove our pajamas of complacency, and open the door before He turns and leaves, and we are left to search for Him through the dangerous streets of a world never kind to a wandering ra’aya?

פִּתְחִי לִי אֲחֹתִי רַעְיָתִי – Open for me, my sister, my beloved, cries Hashem now more than ever. The door is yours to open.

Rabbanit Shani Taragin is Educational Director of Mizrachi, Mizrachi Lapidot and Matan Eshkolot Programs for Educators, and the Rosh Beit Midrash of Mizrachi-Tzemach David Women’s Learning Hub, Mizrachi Lapidot, and Yeshiva University in Israel Women’s Torah Studies Program.