Monday, August 31, 2015

Lessons To Be Learned - 1990


K A H A N E
The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea
September – October 1990    Ellul 5750 – Tishrei 5751

VIEWPOINT – Lessons to be learned
(EXCERPTS)

(change Iraq to Iran and 1990 to 2015)

The Rabbis tell us that Gog will rise up against Israel in order to do war against the G-d of Israel.  The ultimate Hillul Hashem.  And, indeed, until the Jew understands that the war against Ishmael and ultimately the world, is a war of Judaism, of the G-d of Israel, against the nations and their religions and beliefs, a war to proclaim the G-d of Israel as King, as the One and only G-d, we will never understand any of the events that are taking place around us.

We do, indeed, not understand.  Worse, we do not want to understand.  Having been conquered and subjugated by the gentilized Foreign Culture, such talk sounds to us as “medieval” and “primitive” and “tribalistic” and, of course, “Khoumeinism.”  Alas, the Ishmaelites, the Muslims understand it only too well and Saddam, whether through belief or cynical politics, used it and proclaimed it in his proclamation calling for a holy war:

“To all Arabs and Muslims masses wherever they are – save Mecca and the Tomb of the Prophet from occupation . . .

“The imperialists, deviators, merchants, political agents, the servants of the foreigner and Zionism all stood up against Iraq only because it represents the conscience of the Arab nation and its ability to safeguard its honor and rights against any harm.

“Iraq, O Arabs, is your Iraq... It is the candle of the right to snuff out darkness…

“O Arabs, O Muslims and believers everywhere.  This is your day to rise and defend Mecca, which is captured by the spears of the Americans and Zionists.

“Strike at their interests everywhere.  Save Mecca and the Tomb of Prophet Mohammed in Medina…

“Victory is ours, God willing, and the invaders will be repelled and with them oppression and corruption everywhere and the sun will shine forever on the Arab and Muslim nations…”

This is what Gog is all about,  This is the beginning of the final era and the lessons of the events of our time can be summed up in one general cry: “Return unto Me, saith the L-rd of Hosts, and I will return unto you” (Zechariah 1); “Return unto Me, ye backsliding children, I will heal your backslidings.”  That is the lesson of lessons, and from it all the others, the individual lessons are to be learned.
The events surrounding the Iraqi attack and conquest of Kuwait are things to be studied, learned, to be engraved on the tablet of our hearts.  For there are so many lessons to be learned here, so many lessons that the Almighty pleads with us to learned before terrible tragedy strikes.

ONE:  The Arab world is populated with people who are filled with hate and cruelty, ambition for power and lust for ascendancy.  They are people for whom truth, a promise and pledge are totally meaningless things, without the slightest moral or ethical value, meant to be used as weapons and means to achieve whatever goal strikes the fancy at that time.  The fact is that whatever the Iraqis said and did was part of one huge tissue of lies.  The original charges were lies.  The cover of meeting with the Kuwaitis to ostensibly work toward a settlement was a lie.  The claim that they were called in by Kuwaitis rebelling against the government was a lie.  The greatest truth of the Middle East is that Arabs simply lie.  

Of course, it is not only Iraq.  Every time (and that means many times) slaughter breaks out in Lebanon, there is a call for a truce.  Any particular outbreak of violence is certain to give birth to at least a dozen “truces” each one broken whenever any side feels that it has an opportunity to benefit from the breach.  A promise, a word, a treaty, in the Arab world is a weapon in the game of acquisition, and the person who takes an Arab’s word seriously deserves his punishment if not for no other reason than that he is a fool.

The lesson?  We would be worse than foolish to trust the Palestinians.  We would be murderers of our loved ones.  Saddam Hussein is not a person – he is a concept.  Every Arab ruler is a Saddam Hussein, and given the opportunity, they behave like him.  Answar Saddat who attacked across the Suez Canal on Yom Kippur was a Saddam.  And we, who gave away a huge land mass and moved the border to within 60 mils of Tel Aviv, are mad.  And Hussein Mubarak is a Saddam and when he feels that his opportunity is ripe, will strike at Israel.  And Hussein, of Jordan, the little king, in 1967 smelled that opportunity for himself and attacked Israel.

There is not truth, no honesty, no word, no loyalty among the Arabs.  Yesterday’s enemy is today’s “friend,” and Jordan can massacre the PLO and then a PLO terrorist can assassinate a Jordanian minister and drink his blood, and tomorrow they can be “allies.”  Yesterday, Syria tried to do to Jordan what Iraq did to Kuwait; today they are “brothers.”  There is a diseased soul in the Arab world.

TWO:  To everyone who has told me (and I cannot begin to count the ways), that the reason we cannot expel the Arabs is that the world will not accept it:  Why is it that Saddam Hussein was not worried about “the world?”  Why is it that the Iranians are not worried about “the world?”  Why is it that the Esaus of the world never worry about what all the other Esaus might say and do?  Why is that only Jacob sits about all day watching tragedy grow and an awesome and terrible future come closer and refuses to act normal because of “the world” and what it might do and say?  Why is it that Saddam is prepared to do a terrible thing and not fear “the world” and Jews are not ready to do a mitzvah that will save them, i.e. throwing out the Arabs, because of “the world?”  Learn the lesson.

THREE: The real and natural reaction in the Arab world was one of awe and respect for a man who wasted no time in diplomatic niceties but used power and strength.  And here is the key to the Arab and Middle Eastern mind – strength and power is what impresses, not goodness and morality.  When Israel was perceived by the Arabs to be strong and tough, they hated her but feared her and cowered in terror.  Each time that Israel, consistent with her Hellenistic-influence, grants insane concessions, it is not perceived by the Arabs as “goodness” but as weakness, and the weak in the Middle Eastern jungle are ripe for the slaughter.  Learn the lesson.

FOUR:  The Iraqi dictator has become a hero to the Palestinians who see in his actions the only way to deal with Israel.  They dream that his moves, in defiance of the world, will be adopted by other Arab states against Israel.  That is why the PLO supports him.  He has brutally taken over another Muslim Arab state – does that matter? Not in the slightest in the jungle of beasts and wild animals that comprises the Arab world.  Learn the lesson.

FIVE:  From this lesson comes forth another lesson.  The Iraqi move will embolden the Israeli Arabs inside the Jewish state to intensify their attacks on her.  The so-called intifada will grow and expand inside Israel and give Iraq greater reason to intensify its own threats against Israel’s existence until the madman who typifies so much that is the Arab megalomaniac mind may be driven by dreams to launch his missiles and chemicals against the Jewish state.  Already on behalf of Saddam, a man threatened to incinerate Israel.  The Arabs of Israel are possessed by a hatred of the Jewish state that transcends their fear of being incinerated along with the Jews.  And we allow them to remain and grow and become a fifth column cancer within our midst.  Madness!  Learn the lesson that cries out two things:

a)      Remove the Israeli Arabs now, before it is too late.
b)      Strike at Iraq now, before that, too, is too late.  And that is the next lesson:


SIX:  It is only a matter of time before Saddam, drunk with adulation of his people and the Arab world, and seeing himself as one of the great Arab heroes of history, takes upon himself to do that which the Arab world has dreamed of doing for 42 years – wiping out Israel.

Every day that passes sees Saddam’s nuclear and chemical power and potential grow.  Israel’s interests are not those of the United States.  America seeks to protect the oil fields and the “moderate” Arab state.  Our concern is not that; ours is knowledge that even if Saddam should capitulate to all American demands and retreat from Kuwait, he remains to continue his progress to nuclear weapons, even more awesome chemical and biological ones, and the ever-more sophisticated means of delivering them.

The U.S. wishes Israel to stay out of the fray.  It wants Israel neither to be seen nor heard, lest that harm U.S. interests in the Arab world It certainly does not want Israel to bomb Iraq, despite the fact that Iraq’s main and hallowed target is Israel.  The nuclear bombs of Iraq are not aimed and never will be aimed at Washington.  They will be at Israel.

Israel’s interest are not those of the United States, and we should do only what is best for us.  One can feel for American hostages, and in great measure they are there now because George Bush waited and allowed the Iraqis time to round them up and place them as hostages inside the sensitive Iraqi targets.  But all that is ultimately irrelevant.  Just as the U.S. did nothing for Israeli hostages and really could not have cared less, so must Israel disregard American interests when its survival is at stake.

Every day Saddam moves closer to perfecting weapons of awesome mass destruction.  Now, now, now, before he can wipe out, G-d forbid, hundreds of thousands of our people, is the time to strike and level his potential – factories, installations, missiles.  Now, now, now while the world – which we so fear – is itself in a mood of anger and fear of Iraq.  Strike; destroy the man and people who both have the halachic status of a “rodef,” of one who wishes to kill Jews.

Israel should never be bound by any made, murderous, perverted ethics and immoral morality of the disturbed liberal-left axis.  Never should to ever pledge not to strike a first blow.  If the need arises or if Israel even perceives the need arising, it must strike first.  And never should Israel ever fall into the trap of banning any kind of weapon.  There is nothing in any way less “moral” about a huge weapon of destruction than a small one.  Any weapon that is used to kill people in an immoral war is bad.  Any weapon used to kill vicious enemies in a war of survival is a mitzvah.

Israel should make no bones about, and should not be shy in any way about telling the world that it plans to have one of the world’s most potent and efficient arsenals of what is stupidly called “unconventional weapons” “conventional” forces far outnumber Israel’s and who are working feverishly to obtain nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them.  Israel should have every possible weapon of mass destruction imaginable and deal with the question, “but will that not give the Arabs an excuse to do the same,” with the nausea it deserves.

It is best that no one bomb.  But it is better, far, far better, to bomb than to be bombed.  It is better to gas than to be gassed.  And when dealing with Saddams and Arabs – that is the only language they will ever understand.  Learn the lesson.

SEVEN: The last and most important lesson, without which all the others will avail us nothing.  Return unto G-d, quickly, now, now, now.  We and all that is ours are in His hands.  The Saddams of this world are nothing before Him, and yet, everything, if G-d hides His face from us.  Of course, we must strike Saddam, but the hawks of this world who devour shrimps are too small to help the Jewish people.  They understand nothing that is Jewish.  And yet, the lesson is so clear, the lesson of G-d and history.

Two things are the call of the hour:  Return to the L-rd, G-d of Israel.  And wipe out Iraq’s power.  Now.

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Thursday, August 20, 2015

The Lemming - 1984


K A H A N E

The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea -  Spring 5744 -1984

 THE LEMMING

 The lemming looks like a sensible enough animal, but its habit of drowning itself in the sea has long puzzled scientists.  The lemming is a small animal, about the size of a rat.  The lemming is a strange animal with a very strange custom.  The lemming, every few years, gathers together with a great many other lemmings, and they all march together – to the sea.  The lemming and all the other lemmings march shoulder to shoulder and when they reach the sea they do a very strange thing:  They jump in and drown.  The lemming is a very strange animal and no one can understand it.

There are various categories of lemmings and last Saturday night, the Hebrew lemmings gathered in Jerusalem, some several thousand of them, small creatures, the stature of rodents.  And they marched.  Shoulder to shoulder down the road of madness, inexorably moving to the sea of destruction.  The march of the lemmings,  “Suicide Now”.

The Hebrew lemming is a strange animal undoubtedly the most irrational of all.  Psychologists and sociologists and anthropologists and biologists and students of irrational behavior from far and wide gathered to study the march of the Hebrew lemmings.  “Peace Now”, was what they carried as their slogan as they marched to the sea of suicide to partake of the most permanent of peace. “Leave Lebanon” was etched on their banners as they marched in preparation of leaving the world.  “Stop Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories” they proclaimed as they began their uprooting of their settlement on this earth.

The Hebrew lemming is a strange animal and it is said that no one can understand it.  That is not really true.  I understand the small Hebrew lemming, the stature of the rodent, who seeks to leap into the sea to die.  And if the sociologists and psychologists and anthropologists and biologists and students of irrational behavior will gather together, I will describe for you what makes the Hebrew lemmings – run – to commit suicide.

The issue is not and never was “Lebanon”.  The issue was never the “occupied territories of 1967”.  What strikes terror into the hearts of the Hebrew lemmings of the stature of the rodent, is an immense cancer called guilt, that grows inside of them until it gives them no rest.

The lemming of guilt is the Hebrew-speaking rodent who is haunted by the thought that he is not only an oppressor and aggressor in the “occupied lands of 1967” but he is also a thief and robber of a people he calls “Palestinians”, and really has no right to any of the land that was once “Palestine”.  The Hebrew lemming of Suicide Now is haunted by the thought that his family had no right to come from Russia or Poland or Galicia or England or Canada or Argentina or the United States to create a “Jewish State” on lands that were owned by others.

But since the lemming is the size of a rat, who lacks the courage to honestly follow up his convictions, stand up before the “Palestinian” and say:  “I am a thief and I hereby return my kibbutz to you” – he must, instead, fight all the harder for the poor “Palestinian” in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, Lebanon.  His weakness and inability to give up his houses in Kibbutz Mishmar Ha’Emek or the artist’s colony of Ein Hod or the tennis courts of Ramat Ha’Sharon or villa in Savyon, drives the Hebrew lemming into even greater depression of guilt and self-hate.  His need to prostrate himself before the poor Arab of any other area except his own house becomes an all-consuming, obsessive one. 

And, of course, the guilt goes much further.  The Hebrew lemming, who is a small animal about the size of a rat, deeply despises with a psychopathic passion everything that smacks of Judaism and the curse of fate that made him Jewish.  In his little heart the lemming knows that Judaism’s values are at odds with everything that he wishes his life to consist of.  The separateness and exclusivity of Judaism vis-à-vis other peoples is anathema to his universalistic desire to intermarry, assimilate, amalgamate with all the goyim and thus find love and escape in their midst.  The concept of Chosenness repels him for he seeks anything that will enable him to eliminate the barriers between Jews and others.  The holiness that decrees discipline and sanctity and abstinence and personal limitations are all diametrically opposed to his materialistic need for total freedom, anarchy, and limitless right to license.  He sees in Judaism racism, primitiveness, parochialism, concepts that he abhors because he seeks to be a universal rodent.  And faced with this Judaism, he is faced, too, with the fact that he is a Jew.  This is the horror that he cannot abide.  From guilt emerges self-hate, black and ugly self-hate.  The lemming must escape.  His escape is through the sea.  The Sea of Suicide, Suicide Now. Let the state that he feels to be a robber state, go under.  Let the people and faith that he sees as reactionary and fascist and abominable, cease to exist.  “Let my soul perish with the Philistines!  The cry of the Hebrew lemmings of Suicide Now
            The tragic story of the Hebrew lemmings.  But, if it must be, it would be sufficient if they leaped into the sea themselves.  The real tragedy is that while ordinary lemmings take the plunge themselves, the Hebrew ones seeks to take all of us with them.
            And that cannot be.  That is why the lemmings of Israel must be fought.  Because they have become more than an interesting zoological phenomenon.  They threaten the existence of normal, healthy, true Jews who are not small animals the size of a rodent.
           

THE GREAT DANGER  (excerpt)

The great danger and most powerful weapon of the Hebrew-speaking gentiles and lemmings of Israel, is their ability to so instill guilt and doubt in us, that we close our mouths and minds and fear to say what we know is to be true.

The small circle of leftists and guilt-ridden liberals, intellectuals and frustrated artistic type, possesses a weapon of overwhelming power, and it is this that enables them to march toward victory.  Their control of the news media affords them the opportunity, daily, to influence, indoctrinate, pervert, corrupt, an entire generation that is their captive audience.  They decree the gentilized foreign culture that becomes the passion of the masses.  They decree the ideas and perverted gentilized values that are heard and propagated over the waves.  An entire generation of youth is in their hands.  And they are aided by the frustrated spiritually sick, lost artists who join them in parody of championing of  “peace and love”.  They din their message of perversion into our ears every day, every hour, every minute.

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Thursday, August 6, 2015

The Soul Of A Jew - When The Time Comes To Separate - 1989

Beyond Words
Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,
1960-1990
Volume 7


“Beyond Words” is a newly-published seven volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings that originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial publications, and his privately-published works.
“Beyond Words” also includes a number of extra features:
Chronology of Rabbi Kahane's life.

Beyond words now can be bought at Amazon.com  Type, Beyond Words Kahane
If interested in links to other places, please write to me and I will forward them.


THE SOUL OF A JEW

What causes the Jew in Israel, afflicted by daily murders, attacks, stoning, terror and deadly fear, to sit by passively, acquiescing in the process of his own gradual destruction?  In China, where the citizens are not threatened daily by the enemy that wishes to destroy them, people rose up and demonstrated openly for democracy in the face of a totalitarian, brutal government.  In Jordan, when gasoline prices were raised, people rioted and burned automobiles.  President Marcos of the Philippines was forced out by a people’s upsurge in the streets, not because the people’s lives were in danger but because they were furious at corruption.  The list is a long one and only sharpens the question:  What is wrong with the Jew in Israel?  What is it that paralyzes him and keeps him from taking to the streets in the hundreds of thousands and demanding fundamental change, a change in the government and system, both?

The Ibn Ezra, one of the greatest and deepest of the Biblical commentators, asked the same question in a different context and his answer remains a light unto our feet.  Concerning the children of Israel who were standing at the Red sea and seeing the Egyptian army approaching, began to weep and wail hysterically, the Ibn Ezra asks:

“One must wonder.  How can a large camp of 600,000 men fear because they are being pursued, and why did they not fight for their lives and their children?  The answer is that the Egyptians were masters over Israel, and the generation that left Egypt learned from youth to suffer the yoke of Egypt, and its soul was degraded and how could it fight against its masters…”

A degraded soul.  A soul that is low and humble, fearful and apprehensive.  The soul of the Jewish slave who had just left the Exile of Egypt and the soul of the Jew of ghetto mentality who left the Exile of our time and took large parts of it with him (and how much easier is it for the Jew to leave the Exile than for the Exile to leave him!).  The Jew of Israel, despite all the nonsense of “the soul of a Jew yearning,” and the “New Hebrew,” remains with the same soul of the slave, degraded and frightened, terrified of the gentile while bereft of any faith in G-d or belief in himself as the chosen People of that G-d.  And so, there remains in him a slave mentality and soul of massive proportions that, on the one hand, sees himself fully cognizant of the reality of Arab savagery and intention to wipe out the Jewish state, while, at the same time, with a fear of rising up and acting in a way that will save him, his family, his people and state.

And the Ibn Ezra continues: “And the L-rd, who alone does great things and weighs events, caused it to come about that all the males who left Egypt died out, for they had no strength to fight the Canaanites.  Until there arose a new generation of the desert, that had not seen the Exile and which had an elevated soul…”

The generation of Egypt, with its soul of degradation, was kept from entering the land.  The generation of our times, with all its degrading lowness and complexes, succeeded in entering Eretz Yisrael.  The generation that removed itself from the Exile must now complete the work by ripping the Exile from itself.  We must free the Jew spiritually so that he rises up.
Printed in J.P., June 30, 1989


WHEN THE TIME COMES TO SEPARATE

That unity is a thing which we devoutly hope and pray is axiomatic.  The unity is not the supreme value is rather less understood.  As with everything else, the authentic Jewish value clashes with liberal fluff and perversion.  Unity is a positive Jewish value only when those who are being unified do not openly and arrogantly deny and reject authentic Jewish values and Torah commandments.  There is not only no mitzvah to unify under Jewish leaders who are un-Jewish, anti-Jewish and despising of Jewish values, but there is rather a great mitzvah to disperse them, to break away from them.

“The coming together of the righteous is good for them and good for the world,” say the rabbis (Sanhedrin 71). “and the scattering of the wicked is good for them and good for the world.”  To accept the leadership of Hellenists and rejecters of Jewish Law in the name of “unity” is to pervert Jewish values and G-d’s commandments.

…I raise the issue because it is clearer and clearer to me, daily, that the greatest danger to the Jew, both in Israel and in the Exile, is the Jewish leader.  The ones who make up the Jewish Establishment are the anti-Jewish spiritual dregs of the earth.  Astoundingly ignorant of anything authentically Jewish, they are chose only for their money and power, and it is precisely those that create within them an arrogance and haughtiness that leads them to contemptuously declare war on Torah and true Jewish values.  The words of Kind David in the Psalms (73) ring too true:

“Arrogance is their necklace . . . .  Their eye bulge from fat, they have exceeded the fantasies of their heart.  They consume, and speak evilly about oppression; they speak as if there were none on high.  They have set their mouths against the heavens.”
Printed in J.P. November 17, 1989

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Friday, July 31, 2015

Forty Years - 1983

FORTY YEARS

Rabbi Meir Kahane 1983

Forward to the Second Edition

It was in 1982 that I wrote this book, “FORTY YEARS”.  In the seven years that have passed, the words I wrote and the thoughts I put down here have only been sadly affirmed.  The tragedy, the awful national tragedy and catastrophe I wrote about and that need not be, comes closer and closer.  And my people see nothing and hear nothing.  There are those who, in their tragic ignorance of Judaism and Jewish destiny, simply do not understand what they see and what they ear.  And there are those who do not wish to see and do not wish to hear.  And so it comes closer.
           
My people, my poor people…
           
More than 2500 years ago, the Prophet Ezekiel spoke, in the name of G-d, to the people of Israel, saying: “If I shall bring upon the land a sword – the inhabitants shall take a man from amongst them, and they shall appoint him a tzofe, a watchman for them.  And when he seeth the sword come upon the land he shall blow the shofar and warn the people.” (Ezekiel 33)

            The tzofe the watchman.  Appointed to see the sword come upon the people of Israel and cry out; to blow the shofar and warn his people!  That is the role of every Jew who can see and hear and understand – and who loves his people.  To cry out, to sound the shofar, to warn them!

            That is why this book was written.  It is the nation shofar of our times.  One will hear it’s warning by reading it, by studying it, by taking it to heart.  May the Almighty give us the wisdom to understand and the courage to act on that understanding.  For the forty years of which I speak, have passed.
            And the days of Judgment are here.
26 Tevet 5749  -  3 January 1989                                                    Meir Kahane

An Introduction

            It is seven years since I wrote the manuscript, FORTY YEARS, and with the passing of the 40 years of which I speak in the book, with the Jewish State now past its fortieth year, the terrible realities of which I wrote hem, become starkly clear.  Terrible visions become awful realization.  The Jewish State crumbles and shakes and shudders before our eyes as the gentile enemies gather strength and momentum and the Jew stands astonishingly impotent and paralyzed – at best – and deeply divided by defeatism, abnormal guilt and suicidal tendencies from within.  The dream of centuries becomes a nightmare; the hope that was never lost becomes a thing to be questioned, doubted, attacked.

            But, of course, it could never be anything else.  The fate of the Jew, despite the foolish arrogance of the secularists and the unfathomable loss of the way of apparently religious Jews, has always been based upon the iron law of Divine determination:  “If you shall walk in My statutes and keep My commandments … I will give you peace in the land and you shall lie down and none shall make you afraid… But if you will not hearken unto Me and will not do all these commandments, and if your soul abhor My ordinances so that you will not do all My commandments but break my covenant…I will set My face against you and you shall be smitten before your enemies; they that hate you shall rule over you and you shall flee when none pursueth you.” (Leviticus 26)

FORTY YEARS

The idea first entered my head as I sat, one day, in Ramle Prison. It was the eve of Tisha B”AV, the tragic commemoration of the destruction of both Temples, the beginning of both terrible exiles.  I sat, reviewing the book of Jonah, with its message of repentance, on the day of national tragedy.  Jonah enters the city of Nineveh, to which he has been sent by the Almighty, to warn them of impending destruction unless they repent.  And as I read, the words of Jonah to the people suddenly leaped out at me:  “In forty years, Nineveh shall be overturned!”

            Forty.  The thought suddenly struck me:  How many times, again and again, does that number arise in connection with sin and punishment?  “And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.” (Genesis 7:12), the punishment of a world flooded for it s sin.  Forty.  And centuries later, as the Jews of the desert “despised the pleasant land” and wept over their “home” in Egypt, the Almighty angrily decreed that the generation of the desert would not enter the Holy Land saying: “And your children will wander in the wilderness forty years and bear your faithlessness.” (Numbers 14:33).  Again, forty.  And the punishment of stripes, whipping, is one of “forty shall he strike him, he shall not increase”, and the atonement for sin and the purification process begin with a study of Torah given forty days at Sinai, continuing in a mikva, ritualarium, whose water must be a minimum of forty S’ah.

            Forty.  Again and again, the number forty connected to sin and punishment.  Why forty?  I do not know except to quote the rabbis in Bamidbar Rabah 5:5: “And why does the Torah obligate forty stripes?  For he (the sinner) violated a Torah given in forty days and brought death unto himself (man) who was created in forty days.  Let him therefore, be whipped forty times and be relieved of his punishment, as was done to Adam who sinned, was deserving of death, and was punished with forty.  For the world was cursed, due to his sin, forty curses:  ten for Adam, ten for Eve, ten for the serpent and ten for the land.”

            And in that tiny cell in prison the thought expanded.  Not only was the concept “forty” tied to sin and punishment, it was specifically connected to the warning of G-d to the sinner, a warning designed to avert that punishment.  Jonah warns Nineveh of impending punishment and this gives them a grace period of forty days during which they might search their souls and change their ways.

            In the case of both Holy Temples, the Almighty gave the Jewish people a period
of forty years of grace; time to think and rethink their ways.  Time to return to Him
and save themselves from that punishment.  In the awful final days of the first Jewish
State, the L-rd tells the prophet Ezekiel: “And thou shall lie again on your right
side and bear the iniquity of the House of Judah, forty days; each day for a year,
each day for a year.”(Ezekiel 4:6)

            And the Biblical commentator Rashi declares: “We learn that the time of the
exiling of the ten tribes until the destruction of Jerusalem there was a period of forty
 years.” Forty years:  The Almighty, having brought down His wrath on the ten tribes of
 Israel, begins the countdown to the terrible day of punishment that is decreed for a
 House of Judah that has turned its back on its G-d.  But one final opportunity is given
them, a grace period.  A grace period of forty years.  And so a prophet is chosen, a
 prophet of grace, of final warning – Jeremiah.  And in the words of the rabbis:  “The
 book of Lamentations was more effective for Israel than the forty years that Jeremiah
 prophesied unto them” (Eichah Rabah 4:27)

            And the Second Temple “Forty years prior to the destruction of the Temple, the lot (for the Yom Kippur sacrifice) never was chosen by the High Priest’s right hand; and the red slip outside the Holy of Holies never turned white (as a sign of divine forgiveness) and the western candle would not light and the doors of the Sanctuary opened by themselves until Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai admonished them, saying: “Sanctuary, sanctuary…I know that you are destined to be destroyed…(Yuma 39b).

            And again: “For forty years did Rabbi Zadok sit and fast in the hope that Jerusalem not be destroyed.” (Gittin56a)

            And again: “For forty years prior to the destruction of the Temple, the Sanhedrin exiled itself (from the Temple) and sat in the market place.” (Avoda Zara 8b)

            Once again, the period of grace.  Forty years.  The final hope of the Almighty that, perhaps, His final warning would be heeded.  The countdown of forty years, the last chance.

And it was then that the full impact of the thought stuck me:  if it is true that in the first Jewish state and in the second, the Almighty granted us a grace period of forty years – is it possible that the same could be true with the third state?  Our state – the State of Israel?

            The thought has become an ongoing one; call it obsessive, if you will.  After all, the final redemption is one that our rabbis have explained as coming in one of two ways – and there is no third.  “In its time, I will hurry it (the Redemption).” (Isaiah 60).  And the rabbis explain:  “If they, the Jews, merit it I will hurry it.  If they do not merit it, it will come in its time”.

            The difference is more than chronological It is a qualitative difference that goes to the very essence of our existence.  A “hurried redemption is one that comes with majestic glory and free of pain and tragedy.  But one that is “in its time”, by the very fact that it comes despite our unworthiness, is accompanied by terrible destruction and holocaust as the deserved punishment that precedes the final glory and salvation.  How important it is for us to avoid this awful and needless suffering!  And how convinced I am that the Almighty pleads with us to do just that; to replace a redemption “in its time” with one that is “hurried”; to search our ways and return to Him  And how convinced I am that just as in the past He has given us a period of grace, so, too today we have been granted it.
            And it becomes clearer and clearer to me that, once again, it is forty years; forty years of warning, admonition, opportunity.  The final chance.

            The State of Israel, that most incredible of miracles, marked the beginning of the final redemption, a redemption born – not out of the betrothal of Jew to his Maker through faith and return – but rather out of the wedlock of Holocaust that was the depths of desecration of the name of G-d, the Hillul Ha’Shem that was mockery, humiliation, and denial of the prowess or very existence of the G-d of Israel.  It was that Holocaust which broke the patience of a G-d of Israel who watched His name mocked and dragged in the gentile dust for 20 centuries.  “Not for your sake do I do this, O House of Israel, but rather for My Holy Name that you desecrated by the very fact of being among the nations.” (Ezekiel 36).

            And so, a Jewish State rose from the crematoria and ashes, not because we deserved it, but because the gentile did.  Because the punishment and awesome wrath of G-d were being prepared for a world that had mocked and humiliated the name of the
L-rd, G-d of Israel.

            The State of Israel, which rose up in the year 1948, I am convinced, is the beginning, not only of the redemption, but also of the grace period granted us.  In the very marrow of my bones, I feel that the Almighty, in His infinite mercy and goodness, gives us the final beseeching opportunity to turn needless suffering into glorious and instant redemption.
 
            Forty years. The number may not be exact; it may be a few more, a few less, but the period is clear.  Forty years of warning, of heartfelt cry from our Father in Heaven.  Forty years of grace, of a last opportunity to reverse needles disaster, to bring the redemption with grandeur and majesty

            For make no mistake.  The magnificent miracle of return and rise of a Jewish State is surely the beginning of the Final Redemption, but hardly the end.  The true finality, the magnificent era of the Messiah, comes to fruition gloriously and majestically and breathtakingly only if we cleave to the great axiom “If you walk in My statutes…I will give peace in the land.” (Leviticus 26)

            This is the immutable law of the People of Israel.  There is no escaping it. What will be with the Jew; whether his future will be bright or black; whether he will enjoy peace or horrors, depends only on his cleaving to his role, obligation and mission in this world, upon his bending his neck and will beneath the yoke of Heaven.

            “If you walk in My statues… I will give you peace…  But if you will not hearken unto Me… I will appoint terror over you.” (ibid.).
             
This is the choice; the only choice. All the rest is nonsense. And time ticks away and the decision is in our hands.
           
Dear Jew, the Almighty gives us this day life or death.  Will be choose life?

My people; my dear and foolish people!  We speak of your life and that of your seed, your children and grandchildren.  Choose wisely!  Choose life!  The magnificence is yours for the asking.  The horror will be yours for the blindness.  Choose life, but quickly; there is little time left.  The forty years ticks away.
[Time is ticking as the forty years has past giving us daily terror, daily fighting our government for what is rightfully ours.  Jews arrested, while blind eyes are turned to Arab enemies. Jewish homes destroyed, Arab illegal homes allowed to remain.  The Temple Mount where Jew are arrested and Arabs allowed to curse the Jews and desecrate The Mount.  Disruptions by Arabs in the Cave of our Patriarchs in Hebron during Echa.    Iranian Deal with the world against Israel. Allowing a Gay Parade in our Holy City which caused the terrible stabbing.  Fear of the U.S. and the rest of the world.  Time ticks on and we suffer.  When will be wake up? BG]

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