The famous Kabbalist, philosopher, Talmudist Rabbi Yehuda Loew ben Betzalel, known as the Maharal of Prague (1524-1609) in his works dealing with the Exodus of the Children of Israel from ancient Egypt, emphasizes that the Final Redemption (geulah achronah) of the Jewish People, that is now taking place in Modern Times, will be both similar to, and greater than, the first Redemption (geulah rishonah) of the Children of Israel from ancient Egypt. Living as he did mostly in the 1500s he was not witness to modern day events because during his lifetime the bulk of the Jewish People lived in the Diaspora outside of the Land of Israel.
The original Exodus of the Children of Israel from ancient Egypt and their journey to the Promised Land in the Land of Israel all took place in the area that today is known as the Middle East. The subsequent chapters of history involving the people of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah involved other powers also located in and spread over the Middle and Near East such as Assyria, Babylonia, Media and Persia. The Greeks and Romans that later took control of the Land of Israel and the Jewish People came from southern Europe. Following the destruction of the two Jewish Holy Temples, the Jewish People were spread out in a long exile that stretched over three millennia and over three continents from the Middle and Near East, North Africa and Europe.
Starting with a slow trickle and then turning into a flood, the exiled Jews of the world began to return to the Land of Israel in modern times, leaving behind the countries that had hosted them in Europe, North Africa and the broader Middle and Near East. By 2026, with the return of the majority of the Jewish People to modern Israel, the Jews there faced the hatred of Muslims of the Middle and Near East that were in neighboring countries.
Once again, Israel faced enmity from the land and country of Egypt and its Arab cohorts, just like in ancient times when the Children of Israel were enslaved and then liberated from slavery and persecution in ancient Egypt.
Just as there was an exodus of the Children of Israel from ancient Egypt, there was an exodus of Jews from modern Egypt, the strongest Arab country at the time, and all Arab countries and lands in the Middle East. This also extended to the Jews living in the land of ancient Persia, today known as modern Iran. Further afield, Jews fled persecution from antisemitism in Europe, particularly after the genocide of the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany and its cohorts as well as from the persecution that Jews lived under in the Communist USSR.
As in the original Exodus of the Children of Israel from Pharaonic Egypt when millions of Jews won their freedom from slavery under Egyptian taskmasters, the Jewish People who are the modern day descendants of the ancient Children of Israel eventually won their freedom from oppression. Whereas the original Children of Israel were liberated from the one ancient empire of Egypt and then went on to conquer the Land of Canaan and turn it into God's promised Land of Israel, eventually building two Jewish Holy Temples over the course of living there, later generations of Jews were confronted by and eventually survived and were liberated from multiple enemy empires:
Assyria, Babylonia, Persia-Media, Greece, Rome, multiple Islamic persecutions in the lands of North Africa and the Near and Middle East as well as the accursed lands of Europe such as Spain, Germany, Russia where millions of Jews were subjugated and awaited the inevitable downfall of those cruel and evil antisemitic empires.
In modern times one of the greatest turning points came when the Islamic Turkish Ottoman Empire was defeated [mainly] by the British in 1917 during the First World War and the British government issued the Balfour Declaration granting the Jewish People the right to establish their own Jewish Homeland in what was then known as Palestine.
However, the British also tried to appease the Islamic Arab world and put strict limits on the number of Jews allowed to enter Palestine. It would only be as a result of the Second World War that afterwards the United Nations would officially sanction an official Jewish homeland in Palestine in 1947. That was only another stage of destiny and history in the "redemption" of the Jewish People on what was now to be an ongoing international global scale.
In the original story of the Exodus as told in the Book of Exodus in the Torah, God kept on hardening the heart of Pharaoh. To the point that even even after ancient Egypt suffered the devastating Ten Plagues that flattened Egypt and that saw God kill the Egyptian first born - after which Pharaoh agreed to let the Children of Israel go - Pharaoh and his army of chariots still pursued the Children of Israel to the shores of the Red Sea and tried to annihilate them.
Modern day events have proven to be as dramatic or perhaps even greater than the past as the Arabs persisted with wars to annihilate the Jews of Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, continuing with wars of attrition, Intifadas, Jihads until the present time. Mercifully for the Jews of Israel, God has always been on their side and has saved the Jewish People from all of the modern versions of multiple Pharaohs and their war machines!
Today it is the Islamic Republic of Iran that has picked up the baton in the cruel relay race of the empires, nations and countries of the world that have been persecuting the Jewish People starting from the times of ancient Egypt and continued by later enemies such as the Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Crusading armies, Muhammadean armies, German Nazis, Russian Communists, Palestinian Arabs, ands now clerics and Ayatollahs in Iran.
All of these enemies of the Jewish People have also been the enemies of God which is why they have failed in their objective to destroy the Jewish People who are God's Chosen People.
Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College-Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach - Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988-1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994-1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995-2015. He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy. Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at izakrudomin@gmail.com
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