‘From Where the Sun Rises to Where It Sets’ — A Bitter Paraphrase for 2025
The prophet Malachi envisioned a world united with a shared reverence for God:
“For from where the sun rises to where it sets, my name is honored among the nations.”
This verse has always moved me deeply and let me to the hope that shared reverence for God can lead us toward shared humanity.
And yet today, in 2025, I hear this verse with a heavy and broken heart. It echoes within me as a bitter inversion:
“From where the sun rises to where it sets, Jews are murdered because of who they are.”
From the killing of Jews in “enlightened” Western societies where the sun sets, to the darkness at noon of mass murder in Israel, and onward to today’s mass murder of Jews in Australia in a religious celebration, where the sun rises, the globe itself has been encircled by violence against Jews for the crime of their very identity.
What breaks me is not only the violence itself, but how foreseeable it was. In the United States, in England, in Australia, many understood that it was only a matter of time. When the global obsession with demonizing Jews was allowed to grow unchecked—when calls to “globalize the intifada” were normalized—it was inevitable that words would become weapons, and slogans would turn into acts of murder.
We are living through an Orwellian inversion of reality. Language has been hollowed out. Evil is dressed in the language of justice; dehumanization parades as moral courage. Across large sectors of the media, academia, and the cultural world, the progression has been chillingly consistent—from boycott, to delegitimization, to justification of violence, and finally to killing.
At the same time, these years have revealed the extraordinary resilience of the people of Israel—standing, often alone, surrounded by forces openly committed to their destruction. I have faith in the God of Israel that we will persevere.
But Malachi forces a harder question upon me, and upon all of us: can we still have faith in humanity?
That question is no longer abstract. It is up to the nations of the world to answer—not with declarations, but with moral clarity and courage.
I am profoundly inspired by those who have chosen to stand with the Jewish people in this moment. Your solidarity restores something essential in me: the belief that Malachi’s words still speak truth, even now.
The Jewish people carry an eternal memory. We will remember, with gratitude, those who stood with us. And we will also remember those who fueled—by action or silence—the obsessive hatred directed at the Jewish people and our tiny homeland.
Responsibility does not belong only to those who pull the trigger or wield the knife, but also to those who created the poisonous moral atmosphere that made such violence possible.
From where the sun rises to where it sets, humanity is being tested once again.
Am Yisrael Chai.
