BS"D Parashat Ve’etchanan 5771
The continuous flow of world history with its myriad episodes, can be likened to a motion picture consisting of innumerous individual frames. But, unlike a motion picture where thousand of frames pass through the viewer’s eyes on their way to his cognizant self; in HaShem’s technicolor extravaganza with a cast of billions, the 120 years of a human life is confined to only one frame.
In this week’s parasha, we are witness to a major frame change. The frame depicting Moshe Rabbeinu and Aharon HaKohen’s leadership slowly glides into the frame where Yehoshua Bin Nun will be the next nation’s political and military leader, and Aharon’s son Elazar the Kohen Ha’Gadol (High Priest).
If one were to view a movie for a single minute, he would be hard pressed to understand the plot unfurling before his eyes. Ever more so regarding us, mere mortals, whose lives on the background of HaShem’s master plan, exist no longer than the time it takes for a lightning bolt to illuminate the night sky.
In an attempt to create a semblance of order and understanding in our seemingly chaotic existence, our rabbis divided the frames of human history into three stages, as the Gemara (Sanhedrin 97a) states:
ששת אלפים שנה הוי עלמא, שני אלפים תוהו, שני אלפים תורה, שני אלפים ימות המשיח
The world will exist for 6000 years: 2000 of chaos, 2000 of Torah and 2000 the period of Mashiach
"Chaos, Torah and Mashiach":
1- ‘Chaos’ refers to the development of civilizations prior to the time the Torah was revealed to the Jewish nation and from us to the world.
2- The period of ‘Torah’ refers to when Jewish influence began taking hold in the world, as in the matter of a seven-day week, the concepts of morality, human dignity and the rule of law.
3- The Period of Mashiach, when human beings will cease experimenting with weird religious, political, economic and social lifestyles. And after failing in them all, they will draw the inevitable conclusion that life without the centrality of the God of Yisrael will always end in an unavoidable, inhumane impasse.
I see another attempt to departmentalize human history in the much underrated lyric poem we recite after the weekday Shacharit and Shabbat Musaf prayers:
אין כא-לוהינו, אין כאדוננו, אין כמלכנו אין כמושיענו
There is none like our God (Elokainu), there is none like our master, there is none like our king, there is none like our Savior
The poem separates human existence into four periods:
1- Of the many names of HaShem - ‘Elokim’ - is used in the first verse of the Torah: "In the beginning Elokim created the heavens and the earth".
The period of Elokainu’ was a chaotic one that witnessed the expulsion of humanity from Gan Eden, the first incident of fratricide, the deluge, the dispersion of peoples from Bavel to all parts of the globe; and the first international war, starvation, slavery and more.
It was a time when HaShem was forgotten and replaced with all sorts of idolatry.
2- This was followed by the period of Adonainu (our Master), that began with Avraham Avienu, as the Gemara states (Brachot 7b):
אמר רבי יוחנן משום רבי שמעון בן יוחי: מיום שברא הקדוש ברוך הוא את העולם לא היה אדם שקראו להקדוש ברוך הוא אדון, עד שבא אברהם וקראו אדון
Rabbi Yochanan quotes Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai: From the day that Hashem created the world no man called Him Adon (Master, meaning Creator who keeps constant watch over His creations).
3- The period of ‘Malkeinu’ (our King) as defined by the actions and leadership of the Davidic monarchy in Yerushalayim and based on HaShem’s Torah and prophecies, intended to mirror the absolute majesty of HaShem’s kingship over the world, as stated in Tehilim (Psalms 103:19)
ה' בשמים הכין כסאו ומלכותו בכל משלה
God has established His throne in heaven, and His monarchy is supreme
4- The final period of ‘Moshianu’ (our Salvior) is the one we have been experiencing in the last 2000 years of our exile. And HaShem’s miraculous restoration of His people - Yisrael - to our status of God’s "Chosen People" through the initial stage of Medinat Yisrael.
As we witness current events, I would suggest dividing the last three centuries as follows:
1- The 19th century was conspicuous as the century of colonization of the "primitive natives" by the Western Christian powers in the spirit of the poem entitled "White man’s burden," by Rudyard Kipling in 1899.
2- The 20th century was the century of unspeakable atrocities, when more people were murdered than the combined number of all the victims throughout the history of the world.
3- The 21st century in which we are living today, and I believe will be called in future history books "The Payback Century". Because we will see Christian Europe slowly and painfully descending into the abyss of poverty and chaos. The great history books in shamayim are recording every murderous act perpetrated against the Jewish people from the Iberian Peninsula to the Ural mountains.
Perfidious England will stand before the heavenly court whose prosecutors will be the ten martyred Jews of Eretz Yisrael:
Shlomo ben Yosef, Dov Gruner, Mordechai Alkachi, Yechiel Drezner, Eliezer Kashani, Yaakov Weiss, Avshalom Chabiv, Meir Nakari, Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani - who were hanged in Jerusalem and Acco and murdered by the British in other ways in the years leading up to the Medina.
The prosecution will be accompanied by all the Jews who were refused entrance to Eretz Yisrael by His Majesty’s Royal Navy beginning in 1939, and were returned to Europe or drowned at sea.
England, which is now witnessing uncontrollable riots in their cities, is not a "junior partner" of the German Reich when it came to the destruction of European Jewry.
Germany, Portugal, Spain, France, Poland, Russia and indeed all Europe will follow suit - each in its time and in the way that will be decided by HaShem.
Last week, I suggested that it was Hashem’s "measure for a measure" that caused the bottom of the American economy to drop out on the background of housing, with their defaulted mortgages, derivatives and sub-derivatives, etc., brought about by the current American President, as well as past presidents, who have forced the Israeli government to refrain from building in our Eretz Yisrael. So America’s Achilles heel will be housing.
But the list of America’s sins towards the Jewish does not end with preventing Sarah from adding another lavatory in her ever increasing kindergarten in Ariel.
What awaits Germany and the other European descendants of Aisav I leave to others, because there are limits to my imagination of what Gehinom is.
Indeed, the caption I would put on this 21st century is "The century of God’s measure for measure".
I am informed that many Jews living in London, Manchester and other places in England are beginning to ponder two words which were "bloody" heretical until yesterday - Eretz Yisrael!!
The same will soon be true of Jews in other lands as they become affected by the credit downgrading of the USA to AA+ and soon to reach AA level.
When the time arrives for retribution for the evils perpetrated to His nation Yisrael, HaShem will wait for no man.
The world is shaking, and no one can foretell what the next hour might bring.
In these unprecedented circumstances, the wise man, blessed with the will to live, will know that there is refuge in Zion.
Shabbat Shalom
Nachman Kahana
Copyright © 5771-2011 Nachman Kahana
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