While looking over this week's parsha, I could not help but to recall the famous Led Zeppelin double live album of the late 1970s entitled The Song Remains the Same. And then again with yesterday's horrible suicide bombing still fresh in our minds, in spite of the fact that our Jewish memories go back, at most, a day or two.
The IDF has declared that they will be imposing restrictions on the Arabs in the territories from which the murderer came (at least for a full week!). This, after the same IDF had just opened up free travel for the Arabs so that they could get into the holiday spirit of Ramadan. This came just one day after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Israel must give the Arabs freer travel. Of course, freer travel for the Arabs only means more dead for Israel - for that is exactly what "holiday spirit" means to the PA Arabs. Already forgotten are the three murdered Jews in the Gush Etzion area, not even two weeks ago, and also after the IDF opened up freer travel for the Arabs. I could continue to write examples of dead Jews, killed solely because of the stupidity of Israeli leaders and pressure from the US, but it would take pages and pages of tears (drenched in blood) to do so. For as we know, "the song remains the same...."
So, once again, as we start anew our holy Torah, we come upon the famous first Rashi on the Torah. Even if we have spoken about it time and time again in the past, its message is timeless and its words have still not hit home for the Jews.
"In the beginning...." G-d need not have begun the Torah with the creation, but from "This month shall be for you..." for that is the first mitzvah for the Jewish people. What was the reason that it began with the book of Genesis? It began with Genesis because it wished to convey the message of the verse: "The power of His acts He told to His people" - in order to give them the estate of nations. So that if the nations of the world will say to Israel, "You are bandits, for you conquered the land of the seven nations," then Israel will say to them: "The whole world belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He, He created it and He gave it to them [the seven nations] and by His will, He took it from them and gave it to us."
This is the point of conflict between us, the Jewish people, and the nations; and it will not end until we, the Jewish people, understand that the Torah is talking to us, not to the nations. Once we realize that HaShem has given us the Land, and it no longer causes us embarrassment to say so openly, only then will the nations melt away. Never have the nations, in their haughtiness, come to accept this, and they have always held on to the claim that the Jewish people has stolen the land they all want a piece of. This we have seen this past summer, from the pressure of brother Esav - the US - to have us destroy our own towns and villages, only to have it given over to the children of Ishmael.
Nor have the children of Ishmael ever given up their claim to the Holy Land. Even before 1967, when Israel did not have all the Biblical land that it holds today, time and time again, we saw the Arabs terrorizing the Jewish community that lived here in the Land, whether it was in the form of the Arab riots of 1929, up to Israel's War of Independence, in which thousands of Jews were murdered. Or by the British, who placed very hard restrictions on the Jews who wanted to settle the Land.
Even as far back as 1905, Neguib Azoury, an Arab leader at that time, was quoted as saying that the reawakening of the Arab nation, and the growing Jewish efforts at rebuilding the ancient monarchy of Israel on a very large scale - these two movements are destined to fight each other continually until one of them triumphs over the other. But one does not have to go so far back to prove the point - even though this conflict does go back to Ishmael, the son of Abraham - one only needs to open today's paper and hear the words of the president of Iran - that Israel should be wiped off the map - to understand this point.
Iranian President Ahmadinejad's words must not cause us fear or dismay, but should strengthen us, as we read once again the first words from our holy Torah, "In the beginning...." and Rashi's message to us: the Land belongs only to us, the Jewish people, the whole Land - for this is the will of HaShem.
The IDF has declared that they will be imposing restrictions on the Arabs in the territories from which the murderer came (at least for a full week!). This, after the same IDF had just opened up free travel for the Arabs so that they could get into the holiday spirit of Ramadan. This came just one day after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Israel must give the Arabs freer travel. Of course, freer travel for the Arabs only means more dead for Israel - for that is exactly what "holiday spirit" means to the PA Arabs. Already forgotten are the three murdered Jews in the Gush Etzion area, not even two weeks ago, and also after the IDF opened up freer travel for the Arabs. I could continue to write examples of dead Jews, killed solely because of the stupidity of Israeli leaders and pressure from the US, but it would take pages and pages of tears (drenched in blood) to do so. For as we know, "the song remains the same...."
So, once again, as we start anew our holy Torah, we come upon the famous first Rashi on the Torah. Even if we have spoken about it time and time again in the past, its message is timeless and its words have still not hit home for the Jews.
"In the beginning...." G-d need not have begun the Torah with the creation, but from "This month shall be for you..." for that is the first mitzvah for the Jewish people. What was the reason that it began with the book of Genesis? It began with Genesis because it wished to convey the message of the verse: "The power of His acts He told to His people" - in order to give them the estate of nations. So that if the nations of the world will say to Israel, "You are bandits, for you conquered the land of the seven nations," then Israel will say to them: "The whole world belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He, He created it and He gave it to them [the seven nations] and by His will, He took it from them and gave it to us."
This is the point of conflict between us, the Jewish people, and the nations; and it will not end until we, the Jewish people, understand that the Torah is talking to us, not to the nations. Once we realize that HaShem has given us the Land, and it no longer causes us embarrassment to say so openly, only then will the nations melt away. Never have the nations, in their haughtiness, come to accept this, and they have always held on to the claim that the Jewish people has stolen the land they all want a piece of. This we have seen this past summer, from the pressure of brother Esav - the US - to have us destroy our own towns and villages, only to have it given over to the children of Ishmael.
Nor have the children of Ishmael ever given up their claim to the Holy Land. Even before 1967, when Israel did not have all the Biblical land that it holds today, time and time again, we saw the Arabs terrorizing the Jewish community that lived here in the Land, whether it was in the form of the Arab riots of 1929, up to Israel's War of Independence, in which thousands of Jews were murdered. Or by the British, who placed very hard restrictions on the Jews who wanted to settle the Land.
Even as far back as 1905, Neguib Azoury, an Arab leader at that time, was quoted as saying that the reawakening of the Arab nation, and the growing Jewish efforts at rebuilding the ancient monarchy of Israel on a very large scale - these two movements are destined to fight each other continually until one of them triumphs over the other. But one does not have to go so far back to prove the point - even though this conflict does go back to Ishmael, the son of Abraham - one only needs to open today's paper and hear the words of the president of Iran - that Israel should be wiped off the map - to understand this point.
Iranian President Ahmadinejad's words must not cause us fear or dismay, but should strengthen us, as we read once again the first words from our holy Torah, "In the beginning...." and Rashi's message to us: the Land belongs only to us, the Jewish people, the whole Land - for this is the will of HaShem.