By Rabbi Josh Wander
I returned recently from Sydney carrying images that don’t leave you alone easily. A massacre aimed at Jews, unfolding in real time, with a detail that should terrify anyone paying attention: most people nearby did nothing. Not just civilians frozen in fear, but armed police officers backing away, retreating, waiting. The violence wasn’t subtle. The threat wasn’t theoretical. And still, the default response was paralysis.
That moment crystallized something I’ve been circling for years.
In Israel, when a terrorist attacks, the script is brutally different. Anyone who is armed runs toward the threat. Not because Israelis are fearless, but because they are trained—culturally and psychologically—that passivity is a luxury Jews can no longer afford. Neutralize the attacker. End the event. Minimize casualties. This isn’t bravado; it’s survival logic learned the hard way.
Now place that experience next to what I’m seeing in Lakewood.
In shuls—holy places meant to anchor Jewish life—there are large buttons mounted on the walls. They read, in bold letters: LOCKDOWN. Press the button. Seal the doors. Hide. Wait.
This is not an accident. It’s a worldview.
The lockdown mentality is the refined survival strategy of exile. Antisemites attack, Jews huddle together. Some are murdered, others wounded, and the community waits for outside forces to arrive, restore order, and declare the danger over. This pattern is old. Pogroms. Riots. Ghettos. Attics. Cellars. Back rooms. Always the same choreography: endure, survive, rebuild—somewhere else.
That mentality made sense when Jews had no power, no land, no army, no sovereignty. It was a rational response to centuries of helplessness. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: what once preserved Jewish life is now actively endangering it.
Lockdown is reactive. It assumes the attacker sets the terms. It assumes the best possible outcome is to make it through the night.
Israel rejected that assumption.
The Jewish state operates on a different axiom entirely: attacks will not be tolerated, and response will be immediate, overwhelming, and decisive. Not because Israelis love violence, but because history taught them that waiting politely for rescue is how Jewish cemeteries get filled.
You can only lock down for so long. You can only hide in an attic for so many generations before the house burns down around you.
And while that image was still burning in my mind, I had another unsettling experience. In a different shul, my eyes landed on a curious sefer sitting on the shelf. Its title stopped me cold: “The Halachos of House Fires – A Practical Guide for What to Do in the Event of a House Fire on Shabbos.”
I remember staring at it and thinking: I could write this book in three words—Put. It. Out.
If your house is already aflame and you’re opening a sefer to start learning the sugya of what to do, you’re already too late. Fire demands action, not footnotes.
And the parallel is impossible to ignore. When the Jewish nation is aflame in Galus, this is not the moment to sit back, stroke our beards, and debate sources. This is not the time for pilpul. This is the time to move. To run. To remove ourselves from the burning structure before it collapses entirely.
And the house is burning.
The exile is not merely dangerous; it is imploding. Social order is fraying. Antisemitism is no longer whispered; it’s shouted. Law enforcement hesitates. Political will evaporates. The illusion that Western societies will always protect their Jews is cracking in public.
Preemption is the only rational strategy left.
Preppers understand this instinctively. They talk about two options when danger is coming: bug in or bug out. Bugging in means fortifying your current position and hoping it holds. Bugging out means leaving before the situation becomes unmanageable.
For Jews in exile, bugging in looks like lockdown buttons, reinforced doors, and instruction manuals for house fires. Bugging out looks like Aliyah.
Which brings me to a concrete proposal: the creation of a West Gate in the west bank (Yehuda and Shomron). A massive, intentional effort to build affordable housing—fast, dense, and scalable—to absorb tens of thousands of American Jews who will soon need a real escape route. Not symbolic units. Not boutique projects. A serious gateway home.
Some will bristle at the word refugees. I use it tongue-in-cheek. Jews returning to their ancestral homeland are not refugees; they are returnees. History doesn’t call this displacement. It calls it correction.
The exile trained Jews to survive by hiding. Israel trains Jews to survive by standing their ground. One mindset presses a button and waits for the fire to pass. The other grabs a hose, calls reinforcements, and rebuilds on solid ground.
Lockdown is not a strategy. It’s a pause button.
Bugging out is.
And the door is still open—for now.
