After requesting the re-establishment of the Jewish state that exemplifies God’s love for law and order, we ask God to protect this state from rebels who seek to destroy it and sabotage our national redemption. This request is said with tremendous love for God and not hate for people. It expresses our hope that evil—not evil-doers—be cast from the earth, and that our enemies and sinners be subdued and do teshuvah. And as for the slanderers, may they not have hope, and may all evil disappear instantly. And may all Your enemies be quickly cut off. And all deliberate sinners may You quickly uproot, break down, crush and subdue, speedily in our time. Blessed are You, YHVH, who breaks enemies and subdues deliberate sinners. This twelfth blessing was the last blessing to be added to the Amidah, making the “Eighteen Blessings” (Shemoneh Esreh) in fact nineteen in total. The rabbis added this blessing relatively late in Jewish history when many Jews were collaborating with the Romans who were ruling the country at that time. It is difficult to imagine that when the Sages of the Great Assembly first composed the Amidah, there was no prayer that God should protect us from our enemies. After all, the Jewish people have always had enemies, as we read in the Passover Haggadah, “In every generation they come upon us to destroy us…” Why, then, did the Sages not include this blessing from the very beginning? Because this blessing addresses no ordinary enemy. During the Roman occupation there arose a new kind of threat—the enemy within. The “slanderers” (malshanim) were Jews who informed on their fellow Jews to the occupying powers ruling Israel, causing disastrous problems for the community. There were so many malshanim at the time that almost every Jew was suspect. The Talmud recalls that if a cantor leading the prayer service began to stutter at his recital of this blessing, he was immediately suspected of being an enemy of the people. It is noteworthy, however, that this prayer was not written only for that specific period of Jewish history. The rabbis, in their wisdom, knew that this prayer would be necessary throughout the process of our national redemption. Indeed, we have been reciting this blessing for hundreds of years. We can still see aspects of this threat today. The missionary situation in Israel is quite bad. In fact, a group of missionaries was recently exposed in Meah Shearim, one of the most religious areas of Jerusalem. They were dressed as Chassidim, wore peyos (“side-locks”) and took part in all facets of community life, but they were really there to spread Christianity. There is a similar story about a secretary working in a yeshiva who was actually a missionary. The problem of malshanim is not a typical one of outsiders who threaten the Jewish community. It is much more diabolical, because these people appear to be our own but are working against us.