The reason the world refuses to acknowledge the rights of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel is because they have no vocabulary for a people returning to its land after 2000 years according to divine prophecy. They’ve been bamboozled into believing there is no God and the Hebrew Bible is man-made. And that is partly our fault because, beginning a few centuries ago, we cooperated with the West’s agenda to wish away God and our obligations to Him, as the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions appeared to supplant faith in explaining human origins and providing felicity. (They haven’t! Do you think the secular West is happy?!)
This error will not be rectified and the void in the world—subsequently filled with so much evil—will not be replaced with goodness and holiness until our leaders begin speaking again about God, which is precisely the Jewish people’s vocation. Of course, our leaders cannot speak about God and the mandate for His chosen people to settle this land with authenticity and integrity while personally transgressing His precepts, can they?
How can it be that a non-Jew, the inestimable and gracious Mike Huckabee, declares the spiritual Jewish right to this land more eloquently than our political leaders, who barely mention Him, do?
The North burns and we are hemorrhaging beloved soldier-sons, while our leaders fitfully try to solve a spiritual problem with physical means. And no one tells our people the truth. That this is a divinely caused war which will only end for good in teshuvah. The amount of suffering we experience as a nation depends on how quickly we accept the message.
Observant Jews preach to our own self-selected audiences, remaining in our echo chambers. (And yes, we aren’t perfect and need improvement, too!) My own personal thoughts about the meaning of this massacre and the resultant war erupting on the joyous holiday of Simchat Torah are rather vulgar. It was as if Hashem was saying to us, “The party is over. I am done waiting. Now, the reckoning is beginning, and it will require the participation of everyone.”
We are one nation and responsible for one another. Live and let live is not a Jewish concept. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh (All Israel is responsible for one another) is a Jewish concept [Babylonian Talmud Shevuot 39a]. Rather than the national religious and Haredim turning on one another over the legitimate issue of the military draft, the faithful among our leaders need to find a way to speak to the rest of the nation and to its secular leaders together—with heart, with courtesy, with kindness, and with respect:
“We don’t want any more precious Jewish children to die in battle. None of us wants the tragic loss of husbands and the fathers of our nation’s children. We love you as fellow Jews and we want to welcome you into the mishpocha (family) of mitzvot-keepers. We will help show you how and we will rejoice with you as you discover the glory and joy of being a Jew who upholds the tradition of Moshe from Sinai.
"It is not a prison to live as a Jew, it is the utmost privilege. All your yearnings for a world of peace—brotherhood and sisterhood—will be fulfilled in it. Come and join us. Open your Bibles with a believing friend who can show you where all this suffering is prophesied, if we fail to fulfill the covenant we struck at Sinai, as well as the thrilling blessings promised us all when we return as a nation.
"And please, please, come to terms with the truth, for your own and your children’s sake as well as ours. Please participate with us and lend us your talents, your courage, your goodness, and your ingenuity for the journey that will take Israel and the Jewish people from the most internationally despised to the most revered...”
Amanda Chaittoffers a free concise and powerful argument for the truth of the Jewish Bible at www.antisemitismanswers.com She encourages the sharing of the essay with skeptics, Jews and non-Jews, alike.