Israel Today, Celebrating Purely Life

This past week Jewry solemnly remembered the six million Kedoshim and Israel’s fallen soldiers.These monumental dates were followed by celebrations marking Israel’s 69 years of independence.

One day after “Yom HaShoah,” Germany – the country responsible for forever blackening our world with The Holocaust – shamelessly announced that their Foreign Minister, who was visiting Jerusalem, had chosen to meet with virulent, anti-Israel extremist groups, rather than visit with The Jewish State’s Prime Minister.

Today, just after Israel’s memorial day for its fallen soldiers and celebration of independence, the Muslim countries Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan joined with dozens of others to submit a UN resolution calling upon Israel to cease its “occupying power” of Jerusalem. They announced that the Jewish people have no claim to Jerusalem and it is to be reserved as the capital of the future state of the Palestinians.

Celebrating Israel as merely 69 years old can only help fuel this incredulous, bloody narrative. Long overdue is an unapologetic proclamation to the world; Israel does not belong to The Jewish People by virtue of a UN mandate. It is The Creator’s. It is His to bequeath to whomever He desires. The Torah, a document accepted by billions as G-d’s word, deeded this land to the children of Yisroel. Ever since, and without interruption, Bnei Yisroel have remained inseparably connected to their homeland Eretz Yisroel.

Jews are called specifically Bnei Yisroel and not Bnei Moshe or Bnei Judah. For Yisroel is an acronym. Its letters begin the names, Yitzchak, Sarah, Rivka and Rochel, Avroham, Leah and Jacob. Eretz Yisroel by its very name, amplifies G-d’s promise that this land belongs to their children, Bnei Yisroel.

The forefathers pioneered Monotheism. Their children have lived and died for it. Left for dead in much of their history, driven from country to country throughout the entire world, struck by The Inquisition, blood libels and Pogroms, Am Yisroel has witnessed innumerable numbers of its people killed solely because they were Jews. Standing over their open graves, sobbing and in pain, we have said only one thing; “Yisgadal V’yiskadash Shemei Rabbah.”

In our time, evil was brought to its most hideous level when mankind watched millions of our brethren being slaughtered in The Holocaust. But no enemy has proved powerful enough to end the inviolable purity of faith of the undying Jew. We survived. But not before we were pierced right to our core. Triggered, an unprecedented explosion of life has been unleashed.

The blazing fires of hell on earth have forged ever stronger our people’s sacred connection to The A-lmighty. In tiny numbers, on a tiny piece of land surrounded by sworn enemies in overwhelming numbers, more than 6 million of our brethren have resettled the land and enjoy her magnificent resources. Her abundance has been facilitated by blessings of knowledge and discovery unmatched in 98% of the world’s developed countries.Indeed, from Zion flows life to the entire world.

Shabbat we read an unsettling promise. “When you reach your homes in Israel, the ones I have made your possession, I shall give these homes Leprosy.” This affliction is an impurity like death. To re-gain “purity” Torah dictates that any Tzora’as walls must be stripped away.

Rashi describes this as a gift. Safely home from a harsh, inhabitable, desert of exile, the words of King David are sounded. “How great is Your goodness that You have hidden for those who fear you in the presence of men, You have acted for those who take refuge in You.” (Psalms 31:20). Demolishing the walls, Rashi says, is G-d’s way of ensuring that Jewry uncovers treasures that have been hidden for all of this time.

Rashi is telling us that commensurate with the unprecedented depth of destruction is hidden away a promised treasure so great that once uncovered, G-d’s most intimate secrets will be revealed. Jewry’s torturous history, among the most profound mysteries of life, will be made fully clear and understood.

We read also of a seed. An egg incubated develops and grows until it is ready to hatch. Once complete, even the mother chicken can do no more. The chicklet itself must break through its shell, the dividing wall, and discover a new and awesome reality. Despite the many threats of extinction, G-d has preserved the Jew. Disproportionally endangered, Jewry today is the greatest indicator of our people’s G-dly connection and protection.

The surreal timing and sheer absurdity of the German Foreign Minister, joined by the blatant hypocrites at UNESCO have more than anything else reminded us that this exile is on its very last sputters. Just a thin shell remains.

The final task has been given to us. Like the chicklet we must do it alone. The Jew of each era and continent has purged every last vestige of impurity from the world. We stand like giants on their shoulders.

This shell of exile, the last hiding wall, must be broken. From our innermost core, the place where every Jew and G-d remain eternally one, we join the holy souls of The Holocaust and the fallen IDF soldiers, in exclaiming together one last triumphant time; Yisgadal V’yiskadash Shemei Rabbah!

Finally broken, we will step out and experience “The Temple Mount,” miraculously placed “in our hands” a Jubilee 50 years ago, filled with Hashem’s gloriously revealed Shechinah.

By every measure, Eretz Yisroel, Bnei Yisroel, Toras Yisroel and Am Yisroel – one G-dly whole – is fully developed. The people who “have feared You in the presence of man,” while never losing focus of “Your goodness that You have hidden” for 2000 years of bitter exile is about to hatch.