Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Viewpoint "40 year grace period for the Jewish people before catastrophes strike

 
 “K A H A N E”
The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea
September – October 1987                                                             Elul-Tishrei 5748

 (Food for thought of why in the Exiles and in Israel we are having terrible problems)
 
VIEWPOINT
5748
“If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments and do them.  I will give peace in the land and you shall lie down and none shall make you afraid…

But, if you will not hearken untoMe and will not do all these commandments… and will set my face against you and you shall be smitten before your enemies…” (Vaykira, 26)

The litmus test of Jewish religious truth – of the existence of G-d and the validity of His commandments – lies in the reality of Reward and Punishment.  If there are indeed,Truth and Falsehood, Good and Evil, then it must be that there will follow in their wake, Life and Death.  The truth of Judaism rests on the reality that there is a real and Omnipotent G-d who has given us, who has compelled us to accept a Law of truth and life.  Who demands from us obedience and cleaving to it.  Who promises us life and reward if we do, indeed, follow Him but who just as emphatically, guarantees us terrible punishment and tragedy if we do not.
 
The G-d of Israel is not some plastic Santa Claus dispensing only the goodies we so desire, bestowing the artificial “love” of modern man that sees Him overlooking every abomination and ignoring every sin and crime in a Hollywood-Garment center version of a tolerant and live-and-let-live world we have created so that we can live tranquilly with all the abominations we care to wallow in.  There is Objective truth and G-d proclaims it.  And there is punishment and tragedy for those who willfully ignore the definite, objective commandments of G-d.

That is the foundation of a people that stood at Sinai and had the mountain raised over them as G-d proclaimed: “If you accept My Law, good; and if not, here shall be your graves.”

As the year 5748 begins, the fortieth year of the State of Israel, that fateful fortieth year of a period of grace and warning to the Jewish people to return unto G-d before awesome catastrophes strike, let us thing and rethink our ways.  G-d is not some plaything created in the image of materialistic man.  It is He who has created us and it is He who has not abdicated His role but who rules and runs the world, whom steers the ship of the universe.
 
The State of Israel that rose out of the fires and gases of the Holocaust, was the result of the Almighty’s fury at the nations who knew Him not, who rejected with contempt the concept of a G-d of Israel and who, by their oppression and contempt for the people of G-d showed their  contempt and their desecration for the G-d of Israel.  Their contemptuous trampling on the Jews was a contemptuous trampling on the G-d of the Jews .  It was Hillul Hashem – desecration of the Name – par excellence!
 
That and not Jewish merit or goodness created a Jewish state after 1900 years.  It is not we who deserved it, but the gentile with his mocking cry, “where is your G-d,” who did.  And Jewish tradition makes it clear that a redemption that is not brought about through Jewish merit will be first received by prolonged and terrible agonies.  It will not be the glorious and magnificent and SWIFT redemption that could be ours, if we deserved it.

And so, just as the first and second destructions of the Jewish state were preceded by a final forty years of grace, of Divine warning to the Jew to return to G-d, to His commandments, just as there was a final, last gasp opportunity given by G-d to His people in the hope that at the last moment they would throw off their abominations and cleave to His commandments, so is it with us and with this third Jewish state.

Forty years.  It is the fortieth year for a state that has lost its Jewish way, its Jewish head.  For a Jewish people throughout the world that has cast off its authentic Jewish truth and either opted for nothing Jewish or adopted the counterfeit frauds of Reform-Conservatism or all the other “wings” that fly off in all directions, except the right one.

Forty years. Perhaps a few more, but the principle is clear.  Time runs out for the Jew before the worst of horrors wipes out the Exile totally and brings awesome tragedy on Israel, too- before the coming of the final redemption.
 
We know the truth.  We know the frauds we grasp unto our souls.  Let us jettison our baggage of fraud and vanity.  Let us Return, for our own sakes and for those we love.  For the People of Israel! Let us return in this fortieth year as time flies away and so little of it is left.
 
“Thus saith the L-rd of Hosts: Return  unto Me…and I will return unto you, saith the L-rd of Hosts.”

5748.  Forty years.  They tick away.
 
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