For parts I and II, click here
Israel’s Counterintuitive Optimism and Prosperity
Rounding off this list of positive evidence for the truth of the Torah tradition are Israel’s 2024 fifth place World Happiness Report ranking, self-rated happiness score, and OECD-documented quality of life. Despite dwelling in the Islamist Middle East, with more enemy missiles pointed at every square inch of our tiny land than anywhere else on earth—with wars and terror waves more frequent than rainfall—we are thriving. Our population has the highest birthrate in the developed world, we ranked tenth in 2022 worldwide life expectancy, and our citizens report hope in our future. This is manifestly the divine promise, conveyed by the Prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, and all the rest. None of this makes sense unless we accept that we reap the blessings of our forefathers and foremothers, and God remains loyal to us, even as we struggle against extraordinary odds to become the nation we are meant to be. These manifestations of Jewish chosenness are additional signs of the Torah’s reliability.
Let us now take a minute to see where we’ve arrived in this journey so far. The truth of the Torah tradition is reflected in these evidence-based phenomena: the match between the Hebrew Bible and the archaeological record; the fit between scriptural prophecy and Jewish history; Muslim encroachment upon the Temple Mount, the Cave of the Patriarchs, and other biblical shrines; Jewish giftedness; unquenchable Jewish idealism; embattled Israel’s dazzling achievements; as well as the indestructible faith and devotion of millions of Torah-observant Jews, who belong to an unbroken tradition dating back to the communal Revelation at Mount Sinai.
Let us now turn to the speculative phenomena—fortunate, unfortunate, and irrational—puzzling anomalies that can only be explained by the Torah, and God’s choosing the Jews to fulfill it.
Israel’s Improbable Military Victories
First, the good news: Although modern Israel may fall short of her spiritual potential, nevertheless, she must be worthy of the divine miracles sustaining her. How could tiny, embattled Israel survive in the center of the explosive Islamist Middle East without divine patronage?
In the Persian Gulf War of 1991, Iraq rained down thirty-eight deadly Scud missiles on Israel, which directly killed only two Israelis. In Operation Protective Edge, defending the nation against Gazan aggression in 2014, Israel absorbed more than forty-five hundred missiles and mortar shells, yet suffered only six civilian deaths. In another miracle, Gaza Palestinians lobbed over four hundred missiles into Israel during one twenty-four hour period in November 2018, killing only, regrettably, a fellow Palestinian Arab staying overnight in Ashkelon. Though skeptics may argue that a people can hold fast to a self-important delusion, only God can bring about military victory against insurmountable odds. The universe has a way of vanquishing the deluded—whereas in Israel, we feel the hand of God on our backs.
Michael Greenspan, an award-winning CNN investigative journalist, catalogued the miracles witnessed and reported in all of Israel’s defensive wars in the series Against All Odds: Israel Survives. In the prestigious scientific journal Nature in 1993, three American researchers argued, literally, that only “luck” and “good fortune” could explain the unexpectedly low Israeli casualty rate from Iraq’s Scud missiles, while Israelis themselves slowly connect the dots: we are sustained by God, and God alone, for a future more glorious than that of a mere Start-Up Nation.
Anyone advancing this argument must contend with the October 2023 butchery perpetrated by Hamas in southern Israel. As believers, we know that the State of Israel is far from the fully pious entity it is meant to be. Painfully, God allows us to be dealt a periodic blow, even a rare catastrophe, to nudge the nation to unite, to overcome our acrimonious religious and political differences, and to move us forward in repentance along the path to our ultimate redemption. It may be tragic and searing, but it doesn’t mar the overarching pattern of Divine stewardship. The wonder of relatively few Israeli Jewish civilian casualties from the more than thirteen thousand rockets Hamas has launched from Gaza into Israeli territory as of this writing (February, 2024), followed by Hezbollah missiles from Lebanon and the massive aerial attack by Iran in April, 2024, makes this claim even more compelling. The single unfortunate Muslim Israeli casualty from Iran’s aerial bombardment of Israel reminds us of the exquisite Providence enveloping our people.
Jewish Israeli Women and childbearing
I am fortunate to live among some of the most outstanding, self-actualized people in the world: Torah-observant Israeli women, who are another manifestation of the covenant between God and the Jews. Wearing modest attire and covering their hair as the Torah requires—which may seem like an imposition to some—these women are powerhouses who testify to the holy Source Who gives them life and breath. They are doctors, lawyers, nurses, and teachers, who see their families expand to five, six, seven, and more children with an infectious joy. Materially, many of them live simply, valuing neither luxury nor excessive leisure. Yet they are secure in their own worth, and their husbands cherish them, praising them at each celebration marking the birth of another child conceived in family purity. It is a privilege to live among them. They are worthy successors to their ancestresses in ancient Egypt, who bore trials yet bid their husbands to procreate and never lost their faith in God’s promise of redemption. To see their families grow, as they fulfill themselves professionally and personally, is to witness the divine promise of fruitfulness for those who live by God’s command.
I welcome my secular Western Jewish sisters to come and live among my friends here. Rather than the downtrodden, exploited, second-class Orthodox women whom they may believe us to be, they will find paragons of faith, self-discipline, and strength—truly Amazonian women—whose fruitfulness in so many endeavors, despite facing common, universal challenges, is further testament to their supernatural sustenance through living in the Holy Land.
Turning now from the fortunate to the unfortunate speculative phenomena demonstrating the authority of Torah, let’s tackle the most obvious, stubborn, and gloomy mysteries of all: If the Jews are so helpful to humanity, why are we so often hated? Why is antisemitism the world’s most durable scourge? And why is Israel, the Jewish state, subject to relentless international calumny, terrorism, and war?
Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism
The irrational hatred borne by much of the world toward Jews and the Jewish state is a vindication of our holy supernatural essence. There are anarchists, atheists, hedonists, and nihilists of all stripes who categorically reject Jews because the Jewish people represent divine authority. The Jews introduced Godly limits on human freedom by bearing Torah ethics to the rest of the nations. Although the Torah does not demand that non-Jews keep all of its precepts, a small but significant subset of them—the Noahide laws—are meant for all humanity, as children of Noah.
The Jews declare that humankind has a Creator, Who bids us to remain moral. Murder, sexual vice, profanation of God’s name, and theft are forbidden. And those who would transgress, hate us for saying so. Enemies of the Jews are enemies of God, of whom there are, sadly, many. To their number may be added those who envy Jewish chosenness. More still are riled by Jewish hypocrisy: Why aren’t you living your Torah law? they implicitly complain. They realize that many Jews have abandoned their calling, and the world is worse off because of it.
The more humanity denies our Creator’s will, the more violent, anarchic, and savage our world becomes. At best, it has become highly self-indulgent—a place where covenants and commitments are routinely violated for selfish gain. Relationships have become shallow and fleeting. And what has arisen in the vacuum of spirituality and authentic divine law? ISIS. Hamas. Islamic Jihad. Communism. Neo-Nazism. Antifa. Bids for power and domination by the truly depraved.
Furthermore, why is Israel pilloried internationally—held to criteria demanded of no other country—and expected to genuflect before her Palestinian rivals in acts of territorial self-sacrifice that would be nothing short of suicidal? The nations of the world apply the double standard because they will never accept a secular State of Israel! They intuit, but cannot articulate, that this is not the Jewish mission. We forfeit our authority and our legitimacy in trying to be anything other than what we were enjoined to be by God, our common Creator: a transcendental entity with transcendental laws, able to bring spiritual and material blessing to the whole world, once we embrace our destiny and restore our sanctity. The nations are punishing us for not fulfilling God’s will. In doing so, they are His agents…See Part Four for more!
Author Amanda Chaitt invites readers to visit her website www.antisemitismanswers.com to receive the entire essay, “Cracking Open the Jewish Code.” gratis. It has been deemed “compelling” by Rabbi Aharon Feldman, Rosh HaYeshiva (Dean) of Ner Yisrael Rabbinical College in Baltimore, MD.
Amanda Chaitt invites readers to visit her website www.antisemitismanswers.com to receive the entire essay, "Cracking Open the Jewish Code, " amply documented with interesting references.
