The Days of Awe (Yamim Nora’im) 5781
by HaRav Nachman Kahana
With every new year we draw closer to the final redemption of our nation as we return to our holy land, as promised by our prophets.
The Torah states (Devarim 22:1-2):
לא תראה את שור אחיך או את שיו נדחים והתעלמת מהם השב תשיבם לאחיך:
ואם לא קרוב אחיך אליך ולא ידעתו ואספתו אל תוך ביתך והיה עמך עד דרש אחיך אתו והשבתו לו
If you see your brother’s (fellow Jew) ox or sheep straying, do not ignore it but return it to its owner. If your brother (the owner) is not close to you or if you do not know who owns it, take it into your home to be with you until your brother seeks it out, then return it (after receiving convincing signs of description).
What is HaShem planning for His people in Eretz Yisrael?
In our unpredictable, erratic world one immutable principle has stood the test of millennia, with no sign that it will ever change – that nothing of significance has ever evolved or will evolve without implicit or covert implications for the Jewish people!
Empires rose and fell, and will rise and fall, because of the Jewish nation. If we can’t always discern the historical connections of all great historic events with the Jewish people, it is due to our intellectual limitations or lack of information. But the principle is intact – humanity and its march in time revolves around HaShem’s chosen nation, as the planets orbit the sun. And just as each planet revolves in its predetermined orbit contingent on the gravitational energy exerted on it by the sun, so too do the nations of the world develop in relation to the direct or indirect Jewish influence on them.
The descendants of Aisav and Yishmael have always been closely involved with the descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya’akov. Hence, their development is more sophisticated than cultures which were less involved with the knowledge of HaShem as passed on through the Jewish people.
Numerous studies have been made into the genealogy of major European leaders and found that Jewish blood – from mother or father or a grandparent – flowed freely in their veins.
Aisav and Yishmael as individuals, had a love-hate relationship with their Jewish brothers – Yitzchak and Ya’akov – that passed on to their descendants. The Christian and Moslem peoples have so much to be indebted to the Jewish nation and our teachings, but the scratch in their brains makes it impossible for them to live with us or to live without us. When we are in the galut, they rant “Go back to Eretz Yisrael”; and now that we have returned to Eretz Yisrael they rant “You do not belong there”.
I wish to point out three nations in particular: England in Western Europe, Turkey with one foot in Europe and the other in Asia, and Iran (Persia) deep in Asia. There is no apparent connection between them, save for one – that aside from the Arabs, these three are the most anti-Israel nations in the world today.
England is the seat of intellectual anti-Israel feeling. Their universities boycott ours, and every Israeli is in danger of being arrested, which prevents ranking army officers and cabinet ministers from going there. Turkey is regressing into Islamic darkness, with the initiation fee being the severing of its ties with the Jews in Eretz Yisrael. Iran is Shi’ite, removing them from the thought processes of rational people.
But why just these three nations? I suggest:
They have a common historic experience. At some time in their history, each was an empire with colonial holdings which included Eretz Yisrael, until HaShem’s stopwatch of history sounded and the Holy Land expelled them. Their insatiable jealousy at losing the fulcrum of human activity leaves them little room for rationality.
And one more common feature. Their anti-Eretz Yisrael policies will in time be the cause of their destruction as national entities.
The prophets predicted the fall of the great empires of their times: Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and Phoenicia. Would they be alive today, the prophets would speak of the downfall of all the nations that prevent the fulfillment of our God given obligation to return and rebuild the holy land.
To return to the question of where is HaShem taking us?
With every passing day, anti-Semitism disguised as anti the State of Israel is becoming more bold and aggressive. Many Jews in the United States – orthodox and otherwise – are fearful of their frail status as accepted equals and compete with the worst of our enemies in mudslinging at our holy Medina.
The prophecy of what will be our destiny in the generation of the Mashiach was delivered by HaShem through the foul mouth of the evil Bil’am, when he said (Bamidbar 23,9):
כי מראש צרים אראנו ומגבעות אשורנו הן עם לבדד ישכן ובגוים לא יתחשב:
From the highest plateau I will view him (the Jewish people) and from the high places I will acknowledge him. A people that shall dwell in isolation and will not regard the (gentile) nations
Herein lies the master plan of the Creator.
As we in Eretz Yisrael are increasingly excluded from international forums designed to de-legitimize the Jewish state, despite the seeming warming of relations with some gulf states, we will draw ever closer to the God of Israel.
The evil Bil’am saw the future return of the Jewish nation to HaShem and the Torah. It will be brought about by our non-reliance on foreign “friends”, coupled with HaShem’s miraculous intervention in unprecedented military victories.
RaMBaM (hilchot Melachim) states that the Mashiach will lead us in our final wars, that is to say the Mashiach will have a military background, that puts an entirely new perspective on who to expect to be HaShem’s messenger to redeem His people.
The future demography of Eretz Yisrael
The wide expanse of the Golan is waiting for millions of Jews to settle there and infuse the area with Torah life. Yehuda, Shomron, the Negev and Galil, as well as the areas of Biblical Eretz Yisrael waiting to be returned to us, will be settled by tens if not hundreds of millions of Jews returning home.
From where will all these Jews come? For this we have to think “outside of the box”.
They will not come from the Jewish community in the United States which is quickly dwindling through inter-marriage, coupled with apathy and antagonism of most orthodox Jews towards God’s greatest miracle of the last 2000 years. The Jews of Western Europe and South America are following suit. The 70+ years of opportunity for the Jews in the West is rapidly ending, for the timetable of HaShem waits for no man.
The big numbers will come from the hundreds of millions of Jewish descendants of the Ten Tribes and Anusim, who will awaken one day to their Jewish heritage. They are the Jewish nation of the future, as prophesied by Yechezkel (11:17)
לכן אמר כה אמר א-דני ה’ וקבצתי אתכם מן העמים ואספתי אתכם מן הארצות אשר נפצותם בהם ונתתי לכם את אדמת ישראל:
Therefore say: ‘This is what the LORD says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again.’
As the Malbim explains this verse:
שלעתיד יאסוף את עשרת השבטים שהם בארצות רחוקות ולא שבו בבית שני, ונתתי לכם את אדמת ישראל לא כמו שאמרו לנו נתנה הארץ למורשה
“In the future HaShem will gather the Ten Tribes from faraway lands, those who did not return at the time of the second Temple, and I will give them the land of Israel”
With this in mind, I would like to suggest an additional understanding of the verses quoted at the beginning of this message:
לא תראה את שור אחיך או את שיו נדחים והתעלמת מהם השב תשיבם לאחיך:
ואם לא קרוב אחיך אליך ולא ידעתו ואספתו אל תוך ביתך והיה עמך עד דרש אחיך אתו והשבתו לו
The first verse deals with lost articles that belong to your brother Jew. I suggest that the second verse deals with your Jewish brother who is seemingly lost to his people, as follows.
ואם לא קרוב אחיך אליך ולא ידעתו ואספתו אל תוך ביתך והיה עמך עד דרש אחיך אתו והשבתו לו
If your brother Jew is far from you (in the spiritual sense), to the extent that you can no longer recognize any Jewish features in his life. Bring him into your home (Eretz Yisrael) until his heart is opened and he begins to seek out his Jewish roots. Then be prepared to return him to those roots.
This is what will be in the near future, when HaShem will awaken the millions of our brothers so distant from their roots and return them miraculously to us in Eretz Yisrael.
Gemar Chatima Tova
אבינו מלכנו מנע מגפה מנחלתך
Nachman Kahana
Copyright © 5781/2020 Nachman Kahana
No comments:
Post a Comment