BS”D Parashat Be’ha’alotcha 5784
by Rabbi Nachman Kahana | Jun 18, 2024
We are fragile, yet strong
Fragility
Masada is a 550 meter high rock plateau (mesa) on the eastern edge of the Judaean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea, that served as an ancient fortification.
Once when ascending to the top in a cable car, I looked up to see the cable that was at that moment a two inch (5 centimeter) thick inorganic umbilical cord keeping me alive. Suddenly I realized that I had overrated my chances for survival, because the cord that really maintains us is thinner than a single strand of a spider’s web, and life can suddenly change drastically, as occurred to the Medina last Shemini Atzeret.
Broken Leadership
According to every economic and social indicator, the State of Israel was one of the world’s most successful nations in terms of gross domestic product [GDP], consumption, investment, international trade, stability, money supply, balance of payments, employment, etc. That is until Shabbat, Shemini Atzeret 5784 (October 7, 2023), a day that will go down in infamy in the annals of the Medina.
When at 6:30 A.M. thousands of fanatical Nazi-Moslems under the flag of Hamas breached the border between us and the Gaza strip, to unleash a pogrom the likes of which we endured for two millennia in Christian Europe, to prove that the Jewish State, with its F-35s and nuclear weapons cannot guarantee these atrocities from re-occurring to the Jews.
They invaded our settlements and towns, and with unbounded ferocity unleashed acts of cruelty (understatement), murdering 1400 Israelis and taking hostages, triggering a war that has gone on for 8 months killing so many of our holy Jewish people.
In human terms, we were caught unprepared due to the overconfidence of the IDF intelligence units which postulated that we were too strong for these Nazi-Arabs to start-up with us.
In spiritual terms our religious indicators were positive, but our anti-religious indicators were stronger. No one can know for sure, but some prophet might reveal that the straw that broke HaShem’s patience with our folly was one single anonymous woman, who on Yom Kippur went with her cohorts to disrupt minyanim in the public areas of Tel Aviv. She arrived totally improperly dressed and relentlessly stood by the side of a chazon until the minyan was dispersed.
How can we remedy the situation and restore our merits in the eyes of HaShem? The answer is not new elections, with more of the same goishe-oriented governmental personalities under the umbrella of their religion of liberal democracy. Some political analysts have compared these times to the War of Independence, and if so, let’s do it right this time.
We need a leader who is a benevolent despot and lives and breathes Torah and is not averse to banging the heads of the forces of disunity. We need a King David!
We have to disfranchise the authority of the secular supreme court and the Knesset for the period that it takes for the Jewish state to become a proper JEWISH state; where the ideal is not creating a country “for all its citizens” but a country only for Jews – apartheid if you will. Where the branches of government will be filled by Torah observant people, who believe that this Medina is the will of HaShem to prepare us and the world for the advent of the Mashiach. But where exactly can we find such a person?
In the time of Shmuel the prophet, it was a man from the tribe of Binyamin who went searching for his missing animals, but instead was anointed by Shmuel as the first king in the 400 years since Yehoshua Bin Nun. His initial mission was to unite the 12 tribes and destroy Amalek, the founding father of the world’s anti-Semites.
At this time, we don’t know where this person is, but we do know that he has four names, as stated by Chazal and who the Gaon of Vilna pointed out that the acronym of the four names spells — the word משיח (MASHIACH) Menachem, Shilo, Yinon, and Chanina .
It will be interesting to know who it is, but in any event, it certainly will come as a surprise to all the nation.
Strength & Victory
Many sources predict that in future times (now) there will be a great war between European Christians and Moslem nations; some call it the war of Gog King of Magog.
Now one could ask, how will this war begin? What will be the issue that ignites the fuse of hostilities? I humbly state my thoughts on this matter, as they have developed from the recent events in Eretz Yisrael.
It has to do with HaShem creating a situation whereby the State of Israel is perceived by the world as no longer capable of defending itself against such a huge horde of enemies.
In military science there comes a point where quantity overcomes quality; one ace pilot can defeat 3 inferior ones, but not ten.
At this point the plan set by HaShem to have evil destroy evil becomes activated.
The main religious contenders have roots in the holy land – Christianity and Islam. Each will want to take control of the holy land when the State of Israel will, in their estimation, be no longer able to resist the 2.18 billion Christians and 1.6 billion Moslems.
We will be like a lamb between billions of wolves. However, at the end of this bitter bloodletting, the wolves will bleed each other to death, and then the sheep will emerge as the sole survivor of Eretz Yisrael and the major nation in the world.
Wishful thinking– you might say. But not so according to the fascinating episode brought in chapter two of the book of Daniel:
It is related there, that Nevuchadnezzer, King of Babylon and the destroyer of the first holy Temple, had a dream, the details of which he could not recall on awakening. But it affected him to a great degree of distress. He summoned his advisors, with the order that they remind him of the details of the dream and then give its interpretation.
They responded that their expertise was limited to interpretations of dreams, and they cannot know what an individual has dreamt. The king was unimpressed and repeated his threat – reveal, interpret or die. Daniel prayed to HaShem for salvation, and that night the dream and its meaning were revealed to him.
In the morning, he came before the King and said:
In your majesty’s dream you saw an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. Its head was of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. Then suddenly a rock struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken “like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer”. The wind swept it away without leaving a trace. Then the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth (Daniel 2:31-35).
The King was impressed with the words of Daniel, and the Jew continued. The statue represents a series of kingdoms, each less glorious than the previous, as indicated by the decreasing value of the metals. Daniel identified Nebuchadnezzar as the head of gold, stating that HaShem had given Nebuchadnezzar much power (Daniel 2:37-38). The next kingdom to arise will be inferior to Babylon, but Daniel did not detail the identity of the replacing empires.
In time our Biblical commentators filled in the missing details: After Nevuchadnezzer King of Babylon, would come the silver chest and arms of Persia and Medes, followed by the bronze stomach of Greece, then the iron thigh of Rome —, with the fifth mixture of iron and clay the Christian and Islamic nations at the end of history.
At that time, the Jewish nation – the rock – will smash them all to bits, paving the way for the final earthly world empire: the Jews in Eretz Yisrael.
Conclusion: The thrust of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream dealt with the climax of world history, when the Jewish nation will outlive all of its arrogant, evil, demented enemies, who in the words of Daniel “will be reduced like chaff on a threshing floor”.
And the compelling conclusion is that the world’s raison d’etre – the reason for which the Creator brought this world into being – is the holy Jewish nation.
Tehillim 22, 28-29:
All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations will bow down before him,
for dominion belongs to HaShem and He rules over the nations.
Shabbat Shalom
Nachman Kahana
Copyright © 5784/2024 Nachman Kahana
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