Wildfire in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles
Wildfire in Pacific Palisades, Los AngelesREUTERS/Daniel Cole

LA is burning. The fury-filled, blood-colored flames are the stuff of a Hollywood movie about the plagues in ancient Egypt. Many people will say that the raging fire and wind storm is a freak outbreak of Nature. Others will blame it on Global Warming and Climate Change. Still others will blame shortsighted California government agencies who slashed firefighting budgets and more. But in Israel, amongst the true believers, we wonder if the fire has been sent by Hashem to bring His People home to Israel.

I specifically write the believers in Israel because the believing Jews in Los Angeles weeping justifiably about the tragedy will probably begin rebuilding or buying new homes when the blazes subside, whether in California or other states. Some Jewish organizations have already promised to rebuild their destroyed synagogues and communities with monies gathered from “gevalt” fundraising campaigns.

The scorched wastelands look more like Gaza than sunny California. Hundreds of thousands of American Jews and Israelis reside in the destroyed area.

Perhaps he destruction isn’t a coincidence of the weather. Maybe it is a message from G-d.

We have just begun to read the Book of Shemot. What are the first words that Hashem says to Moshe at the Burning Bush. “I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of Mitzrayim, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and large Land, to a Land flowing with milk and honey…” (Shemot, 3:8).

The purpose of the Exodus is not merely to free the Jews enslaved to the land and culture of Egypt – Moshe is sent to bring the Jews to the Land of Israel. From this point on, this journey is the principle narrative of the Torah. It is the mission of the Children of Israel to live in the Land of Israel. This is how the word of G-d is brought to the world. This is the will of Hashem.

How can it be that 75 years after Hashem created the State of Israel, Jews are still building new Jewish communities in Southern California, Nevada, Texas, and South Florida? This is in absolute opposition to Torah. Do you really believe that Hashem is happy with this? Do you really believe that after nearly 2000 years of chasing Jews out of one foreign land to another that Hashem has forgotten all of His wrath when His children settle down comfortably in gentile lands - until they are reminded that they don’t belong in in Spain, or Germany, or Poland, or the Ukraine? Wasn’t the Holocaust enough for us to learn that we don’t belong in Berlin? Or Hollywood? ?

Hashem does not want His children living amongst the gentiles, desecrating His Name, as the Prophet declares: “And when they came to the nations into which they came, they desecrated My Holy Name in that people said of them, ‘These are the people of the L-rd and they are gone out of His Land’” (Ezekiel 36:20). Jews belong in the Land that Hashem gave them – not scattered around the globe assimilated amongst the gentiles or living in glatt-kosher Orthodox communities in Las Vegas, Cheyenne Wyoming, or Boston Massachusetts with the descendants of the Pilgrims.

Perhaps this is the deeper meaning of the Burning Brush.