Director of JED TALKS
God Is Shutting Down the Diaspora
In May 1933, my grandmother and father (who was six years old), traveled by ship on the RMS Empress of Britain from Montreal to Europe and overland to Vienna, to ask my grandmother’s five sisters and brother to leave Vienna in light of the rise of Hitler. They said: “Vienna is the center of art, culture and law, nothing will happen to us here.”
In 1938 they begged my grandparents to get them visas to come to Canada. I have the letters and telegrams in German. Despite great efforts, they could not get them out. Four sisters perished in Auschwitz with their families. Only two siblings survived having fled to Holland and Ecuador.
My family, and yours, have wandered the globe — surviving, adapting, and contributing far beyond what any exiled people should have been able to accomplish. Obviously it is God’s Guiding Hand, as testified to by Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, President Adams and countless others who stand in awe of the mystery, wonder, and miracle of Jewish national survival.
Now God is turning the final page on our journey of Lech-Lecha. Across Europe, North America, Australia and beyond, antisemitism is surging once again. The same ancient hatred that drove Jews from England, Spain, Portugal and Ukraine, now reemerges — this time dressed in the language of politics, activism, and anti-Israel violence.
In the words of my late teacher, Rebbe and mentor, Rabbi Berel Wein, z’l, “God is shutting down the Diaspora.”
The words of the prophet Isaiah 11:11 are unfolding before us in real time:
“And it shall come to pass on that day that the Lord will again extend His hand a second time to recover the remnant of His people… and He shall set up a banner for the nations, and shall gather the outcasts of Israel, and assemble the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.”
In France, thousands have already packed their bags and left — weary of armed guards at synagogues and Jewish schools. In Britain, where I served as a rabbi for 9 years, Jewish parents openly debate leaving.
In the United States, antisemitic incidents have spiked on college campuses and murders have occurred in major cities. The old assumption — that America would remain immune to the hatred —is wrong.
With the mayor-elect of New York allowing the globalization of the intifada onto the streets of New York, it is time for Jews in America to do what my aunts and European Jewry failed to do in 1933: See the writing on the wall, and act. Some did leave early enough; some on the last train out. Most, were too late. Are we to wait to send our children on a Kindertransport by plane, when the doors of the Diaspora are about closed?
We can hunker down, take self defense courses, get a gun license. Or move to Israel.
The Diaspora was never the destination — only the journey. Living in America is and always was “Exile”-galut, as a divine intermission, not a permanent home. The Diaspora produced extraordinary spiritual treasures — the Talmud, Jewish philosophy, Nobel Prize winners, that shaped world civilization. The commitment to Torah preserved the Jewish soul when the body of the nation was scattered. But the purpose of the exile was always temporary. Until the time came to return.
That time, has come. You can work remotely.
As the real “climate change” of Jew-hatred spreads, God is redirecting Jewish history. The doors of exile are closing. The familiar comfort of Diaspora life is becoming untenable.
This is not a punishment. It is a fulfilment of Jewish destiny as God promised in Devarim 30:5
“Then Hashem your God will bring back your captivity and have compassion upon you. He will return and gather you from all the nations where Hashem your God has scattered you. Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the heavens, from there Hashem your God will gather you and from there He will bring you back. And Hashem your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will do you good and multiply you more than your fathers.”
We Jews must now learn from history that:
1. Safety in foreign lands is fragile, even when it feels permanent.
2. Jewish continuity depends on identity and covenant, not comfort.
God is not abandoning His people, but calling us home. If not now, then when…