Rabbi Josh Wander

 Maybe, “Yehoshua”

I have long questioned whether the State of Israel should remain a member of the United Nations. The institution that was supposedly created to promote peace and cooperation among the nations has developed what, from an Israeli perspective, can reasonably be described as an extraordinary fixation on the Jewish State. Critics of the UN have pointed for years to the disproportionate number of resolutions directed at Israel compared with other countries, including regimes responsible for horrific human-rights abuses.

And yet, despite everything I think about the United Nations, there is something fascinating about the institution from the perspective of Geula. Whatever its failings, the UN is perhaps the closest thing humanity possesses today to an assembly representing the nations of the world. That alone gives events occurring there a certain symbolic significance.

There is also an extraordinary historical irony. The United Nations was not the first international forum through which the nations recognized the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland. That process had already begun decades earlier. In 1917, the Balfour Declaration announced that the British government viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” That principle subsequently received broader international recognition at San Remo in 1920 and was incorporated into the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1922, which explicitly recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and the grounds for “reconstituting their national home in that country.”

Then, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, recommending the partition of Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Israel certainly did not receive its fundamental right to Eretz Yisrael from Britain, the League of Nations or the United Nations. The Land promised by the Creator to the Jewish people hardly requires the authorization of mortal governments. Nevertheless, something historically remarkable had occurred: through a succession of international acts, the nations themselves had formally recognized the return and national restoration of the Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael.

That history becomes particularly fascinating when viewed alongside one of the most controversial passages in the Talmud: the שלוש שבועות, the Three Oaths. The Gemara in Ketubot 111a includes the oath שלא יעלו ישראל בחומה—that Israel should not ascend to Eretz Yisrael “as a wall”—together with an oath against rebelling against the nations and an oath upon the nations not to oppress Israel excessively. There are numerous approaches to these aggadic oaths, and major Torah authorities have disagreed sharply about whether and how they have halachic application. But among the answers advanced is one especially relevant to our discussion: even assuming that the oaths once prohibited a mass Jewish return undertaken against the will of the nations, what happens when the nations themselves consent?

That consent did not suddenly appear in 1947. It developed through the Balfour Declaration, the decisions at San Remo, the League of Nations Mandate and ultimately the vote of the United Nations. According to this approach, the very nations against whom we supposedly could not rebel had themselves recognized the Jewish national home and the return of the Jewish people to Eretz Yisrael. The irony is difficult to miss. The international community whose representatives today so frequently condemn the State of Israel includes the institutional successors of the very international order that formally recognized the Jewish people’s return. The nations opened the door—and now some of those same nations protest that we walked through it.

Which brings us to what happened yesterday. On September 24, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approached the podium of the United Nations General Assembly. As he began his address, dozens of diplomats rose and walked out. There was jeering and booing, while members of the Israeli delegation and supporters responded with applause and cries of “Am Yisrael Chai.” Israeli officials subsequently counted 77 national delegations whose seats were empty during the speech—some because they walked out and others because they were already absent.

The timing could hardly have been more striking. We stand on the eve of Sukkot, the one festival that Chazal explicitly connect to the nations of the world. During Sukkot, seventy bulls were offered in the Beit HaMikdash. The Gemara asks, הני שבעים פרים כנגד מי? כנגד שבעים אומות—“These seventy bulls, to whom do they correspond? To the seventy nations.” Israel brought korbanot not merely for itself, but on behalf of humanity. Rabbi Yochanan goes even further: אוי להם לגויים שאבדו ואין יודעין מה שאבדו—woe to the nations, who lost something and do not even understand what they lost. When the Beit HaMikdash stood, the mizbeach brought atonement for them.

But there is another message to the nations that we have just read, only days before Sukkot. On Yom Kippur afternoon, at the very height of the Jewish people’s national encounter with teshuvah, we read Sefer Yonah. Remarkably, one of the great examples of successful national repentance presented to us on the holiest day of the Jewish year is not the repentance of Israel. It is the repentance of Nineveh.

Yonah enters that great non-Jewish city carrying a terrifying warning: עוד ארבעים יום ונינוה נהפכת—“Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.” The warning reaches the king of Nineveh, who rises from his throne, removes his royal garments, covers himself with sackcloth and sits in ashes. He calls upon his people to cry out to God, abandon their evil ways and turn away from the violence in their hands. And then Scripture records what happened: וירא האלקים את מעשיהם כי שבו מדרכם הרעה—God saw their deeds, that they had turned away from their evil path. Nineveh was warned, Nineveh listened, Nineveh changed, and Nineveh was saved.

There is a profound message here for the nations of our own time. Biblical prophecy does not present destruction as inevitable simply because a nation has chosen the wrong path. There remains another path: teshuvah. Nineveh demonstrates that even when judgment has been announced, nations and their leaders retain the ability to change direction. They can recognize wrongdoing, abandon injustice and choose a different future. This is truly their opportunity.

Immediately after Yom Kippur comes Sukkot, and Sukkot carries an extraordinary prophetic message concerning those very nations. The prophet Zechariah describes an astonishing vision of the end of days. First comes confrontation: ואספתי את כל הגויים אל ירושלים למלחמה—“I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem for battle.” The imagery is frightening. The nations of the world gather against Jerusalem. But that is emphatically not where the story ends.

Zechariah then describes the survivors of those very nations undergoing a remarkable transformation: והיה כל הנותר מכל הגויים הבאים על ירושלים ועלו מדי שנה בשנה להשתחות למלך ה׳ צבאות ולחג את חג הסוכות—those remaining from the nations that had come against Jerusalem will ascend year after year to bow before the King, Hashem, and to celebrate Sukkot. Yonah and Zechariah therefore belong together. Yonah teaches us that the nations can repent, while Zechariah tells us where history is ultimately heading.

Think about those images and then think about what we witnessed at the United Nations. On the eve of the festival that represents Israel’s relationship with the seventy nations, representatives of the nations assembled together in one chamber. The representative of the Jewish State rose to speak—and scores of representatives turned their backs and departed. For someone looking at history through the prism of Geula, the symbolism is impossible to ignore.

I am not suggesting that we can confidently identify a particular news event as the literal fulfillment of a specific prophecy. Jewish history has taught us to be careful about setting timetables and declaring that we know precisely where we stand in the prophetic process. But neither should we become so cautious that we cease noticing extraordinary parallels when they unfold before our eyes.

Sukkot presents us with two radically different pictures of the nations. There are nations gathered against Jerusalem, and there are nations ascending to Jerusalem. There are nations that reject Israel, and there are nations that ultimately recognize the sovereignty of the Ribbono Shel Olam. There is confrontation, but there can also be transformation. And Yonah reminds us that the transition from one to the other does not have to come through catastrophe. There is another path, and that path is teshuvah.

That was the choice Nineveh faced, and it chose correctly. Its leaders humbled themselves, its inhabitants changed their ways, and destruction was averted. That lesson, read in every synagogue on Yom Kippur, is not merely a story about an ancient city. It is an eternal message about the possibility of national repentance and the responsibility of nations to recognize when they are traveling down a destructive path and change direction before it is too late.

The destiny described by our Nevi’im is not that Israel eventually earns the approval of the United Nations. It is something far greater: that the nations eventually recognize what Jerusalem actually represents. The final destination is not Jerusalem seeking legitimacy from the nations; it is the nations ascending to Jerusalem. Yesterday, many of them walked out. Zechariah tells us that one day they will walk in the opposite direction, and Yonah tells us that they still have the opportunity to choose how they get there.

נצח ישראל לא ישקר. Or, in the immortal words of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman, “What, me worry?”

עם ישראל חי! וחג שמח!