With the post-pandemic return to normal, Arutz Sheva spoke to Yishai Fleisher, international spokesman for Hebron, about the upcoming Shabbat Hebron.

Fleisher tells Arutz Sheva that post-corona, “Everybody is yearning to come in.”

“I’m very excited for the Israelis who are coming, Fleisher says. “I don’t know it it’s going to be 20 or 30 or 40 thousand. Everything is full and the tables are full.”

The Hebron Fund is also bringing in 250 Americans for the event.

Click here to support the Jewish community of Hebron

“At the same time some organizations like Peace Now are trying to block Jewish building in Hebron,” Fleisher notes.

“How absurd it is that on the very Shabbat when we read about the first purchase of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, a so-called Israeli organization, Peace Now, which is actually Euro-funded, is trying to stop Jewish building in Hebron. That’s not going to happen. There’s nothing more authentic and natural than Jewish people building in Hebron.”

When asked how covid took its toll, Fleisher responds that there was zero international tourism, which was difficult for a city based on tourism.

Hebron is “a place of pilgrimage and visitation and tourism. Coming to see the site of our forefathers and mothers, a 3,800 year old site with a 2,000 year old building still intact above it.”

However, it was “also a year for more Israelis to come and visit because they couldn’t fly out.”

Fleisher adds: “We expect over a million visitors in around a year here. And it’s going to grow because more want to connect to the foundations of the Jewish people.”

So what is the secret of Hebron?

“The real secret is that according to the Kabbalah, this is the entrance to the Garden of Eden,” Fleisher says. “On the one hand, it’s a place to connect with something otherworldly, metaphysical, a portal into G-d. On the other hand, the other secret is there is chaos and an effort to replace the Garden of Eden with chaos. There’s always this tension between the good and chaos. And the Jewish people’s return to the Land of Israel is the opposite of chaos.”

Fleisher explains that “there’s a lot of forces in the world that want to stop us from building here, from worshipping here.”

Besides Peace Now, he mentions international groups like UNESCO.

However, there are also many international forces that “recognize the importance of Hebron” to the Jewish people.

Fleisher gives the example of former Trump administration UN Ambassador Nikki Haley who left a UNESCO meeting “specifically because of the Hebron declaration that said this is not a Jewish site.”

What’s next for Hebron to expand and flourish?

Fleisher just came from a dig to build foundations for a brand new neighborhood on land that was Jewish owned from 1870 but was lost in 1917 and then again after the 1929 riots.

“I’m very excited just to see the tractors in the ground and I can see the Jewish people living in beautiful towers here in Hebron and making this city flourish once again in a Jewish way as well,” Fleisher says.

Click here to support the Jewish community of Hebron