Rav Nachman Kahana on Parashat Bechukotei 5771

BS"D Parashat Bechukotei 5771

It was in 1967, two days after reading parashat Bechukotei that the Six Day War erupted. Two days after that, on Wednesday, HaShem restored the holy city of Yerushalayim to its rightful owners - the Jewish people. Two days after that, on Friday, all the area east of the Jordan River was liberated by the holy soldiers of Medinat Yisrael. and the following day, Shabbat, the entire Golan Heights was liberated.

Forty three years later, on Thursday, two days before parashat Bechukotei, Barak Hussein Obama, the US President, faced the world and declared that we must relinquish the holy soil of Eretz Yisrael that was liberated with the blood and courage of our holy soldiers.

Every Jew in whose veins flows the blood of those who stood at the foot of Mount Sinai when HaShem declared that we are His chosen people, is devastated at the very thought that the major areas of the TaNach could be Judenrein, when handed over to those who openly declare that they would finish what Hitler began.

But like all things in life we try to find a Torah source for what occurs.

Not what Obama is saying interest us. What is essential is what HaShem is telling us through the words of this man.

So I submit.

The Gemara (Sanhedrin 97b) quotes the great Tanna Rabbi Yehoshua who says:

הקדוש ברוך הוא מעמיד להן מלך שגזרותיו קשות כהמן, וישראל עושין תשובה ומחזירן למוטב.

HaShem appoints (over the Jewish people) a king who decrees are as brutal as those of Haman, and the Jews will do teshuva and return to the ways of the Torah.

No one can predict the future. It is possible that Obama is not the man referred to by Rabbi Yehoshua and his words will pass by like last year’s snow. But it is possible that he was sent by HaShem to place the Jews in Eretz Yisrael in the impossible position, beyond borders which Abban Eban once called "Auschwitz Borders."

If the time that Rabbi Yehoshua referred to has indeed arrived, Jewish suffering will not be limited to us in Eretz Yisrael; it will be felt by every Jew in the world because the purpose of this evil is to bring the Jews to teshuva. And teshuva for Jews in the galut is their return to the holy land of Eretz Yisrael.

Nachman Kahana