All Strings Attached

By Moshe Feiglin

"We will pass over armed before the LORD into the land of Canaan, and the possession of our inheritance shall remain with us beyond the Jordan.And Moses gave unto them, to the children of Gad, and to the children of Reuben, and unto the half-tribe of Manasseh the son of Joseph, the kingdom of Sihon king of the Amorites, and the kingdom of Og king of Bashan, the land, according to the cities thereof with their borders, even the cities of the land round about." (From this week's Torah portion, Matot, Numbers 32:32-33)

Once again this week, Israeli tourists were denied entry to Jordan because they had tefillin (phylacteries) in their luggage. Tourists who look too religious, even if they do not have Jewish religious items in their bags - are not allowed to enter the Hashemite kingdom. "We do this for the safety of the tourists," the Jordanian government justifies itself. In other words, while we have signed a peace treaty with you, for which we received a huge amount of territory in the Aravah, a steady stream of water at the expense of dehydrated Israel, civilian flights in Israeli skies, profitable tourism and more - that didn't really reflect the feelings of the Jordanian "nation." Deep down, the Jordanians do not want peace with you. They want to eliminate you.

By the way, in Jordan, it is still a capital offense to sell land to a Jew.

The Jordanians seem to remember the Torah verses that include both banks of the Jordan River within the boundaries of Israel. The Jews prefer to forget. Ze'ev Jabotinsky's movement, Beitar, has already officially deleted its founder's claim to both banks of the Jordan from its platform. But believing Jews cannot delete verses from the Torah. That is why the Jordanians fear G-d fearing Jews.

The Jordan tourism issue is amazingly similar to the Temple Mount tourism issue. At the entrance to Judaism's most holy place, a strange differentiation is made between religious looking Jews or those Jews with religious articles in their bags and between Jews who do not look religious at all. The first group is delayed, their religious articles are confiscated and they are closely scrutinized while they are on the Temple Mount. The "normal" group enters the Mount with no delay and nobody pays them much attention.

Both the Jordanian and Israeli authorities are onto something. Deep in their subconscious, they understand the spiritual bond between the Nation of Israel and its entire land, with the focus on the Temple Mount. They think that it is just the "religious" who express this bond, and they do what they can to disconnect the two. Jew haters outside Israel are not concerned by religious Jews who have no connection to their land - just look at Achmadinijad and the Satmers. Jew haters in Israel are not concerned by Israelis who have no connection to their religion. But when we will have Jewish leadership that will attach all those strings - a complete nation with complete faith in a complete land - the Jew haters of the world will really have something to worry about!

Shabbat Shalom,