From the Haftara of parashat Shoftim:

Awake, awake, Zion, clothe yourself with strength!

Put on your garments of splendor, Jerusalem, the holy city.

The uncircumcised and defiled will not enter you again.

Shake off your dust;

rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem.

Free yourself from the chains on your neck, Daughter Zion, now a captive.

Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem,

for the Lord has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem.

The Lord will lay bare His holy arm in the sight of all the nations,

and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.

Settling Historical Debts

The UN is like a mass of infective germs, microbes, bacteria, viruses, etc., swarming around each other under a lab microscope. The automatic hand raised against Israel is commonplace in the Security Council, the General Assembly and in all the UN commissions. Israel is the only UN member state that cannot be a member of the Security Council, because we do not belong to any regional organization!

The European Union is no better in its attitude toward the Jewish State.

Today, most leaders of nations have their plates filled with unsolvable problems, but none has a plate as big as the one set before our Prime Minister.

Some of the minor problems facing the nation are: the civil war in Syria with millions of Syrians just waiting to escape to the Golan; the worsening economies of Europe where 30% of our exports go; the rising price of food and raw materials; the unfriendly nation of Turkey to the north; the wool being pulled over our eyes by the American administration, and the millions of Jews in the U.S. who could not care less about the Jewish State.

The more serious problems are three major headaches facing the State of Israel: Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon with their tens of thousands of rockets and missiles supplied by Syria, and Iran (modern-day Persia) which is tinkering with the atomic bomb, and Egypt as the newest member in the Islamic circus with the largest military force in the Middle East.

Our situation is the setting for the "Greatest Show on Earth", which Hashem will soon perform before mortal man.

Why Iran and why Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon? Egypt will come later.

I submit:

The world owes the Jewish people an enormous debt for our contributions to humanity: monotheism, Shabbat, justice, morality, science and so much more.

But there are two nations to whom we owe a religious and national debt - Iran-Persia and Southern Lebanon.

Hiram, King of Tzur (Tyre) in southern Lebanon, supplied King Shlomo with construction materials and artisans to build the first Bet HaMikdash. Although he was paid handsomely, it appears that his merit has not been fully recompensed.

Cyrus, King of Persia, permitted the Jewish exiles in his lands to return and rebuild the Bet Hamikdash – 42,360 Jews took advantage of the opportunity to return under the leadership of Ezra and Nechemia. For this we owe the Persians a debt.

Hashem, whose accounting system of right and wrong and justice and injustice is perfect, will not consummate the redemption process of Am Yisrael as long as we, the Jewish nation, continue to owe these debts concerning the Bet Hamikdash.

With every day of increasing belligerence and hatred by Iran and Hezbollah, the debt becomes smaller, until the hate neutralizes any residual good that they have done for us.

Rabbi Nachman Kahana is an Orthodox Rabbinic Scholar, Rav of Chazon Yechezkel Synagogue – Young Israel of the Old City of Jerusalem, Founder and Director of the Center for Kohanim, and Author of the 15-volume “Mei Menuchot” series on Tosefot, and 3-volume “With All Your Might: