Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The Hub of the Universe, the World and of Israel

By Professor Eugene Narrett

Those who trust in Hashem are like Mt. Zion that falters not but abides forever. Jerusalem, - mountains enwrap it and Hashem enfolds His people from this time to forever [psalm 125:2-3]

Jerusalem is built as a city that is bonded intimately together [psalm 122:3]

Those who hold Jerusalem and the Jewish people central to their thoughts know that the key event for the last four decades of Jewish and world history was when Moshe Dayan, representing the Labor government surrendered the Temple Mount, liberated by nineteen centuries of Jewish blood, sweat, toil and prayers to the Muslims. The rationales were 'tolerance' and 'peaceful coexistence' as mandated by the real sovereign of the perennial official Labor regime, the British Mandatory authority and the United Nations. All the land for peace blather, the entire, continuing war of attrition process and endemic violence derives from that alienation. When the Temple Mount was not reclaimed fully by rebuilding the Temple the Hub of the wheel was damaged badly: the connection of God to the world; of the Jewish people to Judaism, of Judaism to the Temple and the blessings that flow from its service and prayers alone. All the restrictions of access and prayer, all the Islamic gutting and scarring of the Mount follow from that terrible alienation, that rejection of patrimony and Torah by the perennial regime.

This failure would have staggered Rav S.R. Hirsch who wrote that "the collapse of the state and Temple has crushed my heart and deprived it of the strength to draw restoration and quickening from [even] those spiritual resources left to me" (on psalm 102: 5). Even in the exile, perhaps most in the exile where Israel eats "ashes like bread and mixes its drink with tears" the alienation of the Temple, the rejection of national identity, history and Judaism mars the heart of Israel's prayer which becomes like "the twittering of sparrows." We become like "a just man, poor and parched," like a lonely widow, "like the evening prayer of the end of days" when the Shekhinah itself "is parched, withered and dried...in captivity like the garments of a poor man" (Zohar on Genesis 23b).

The mortars and rockets that rained on the Jewish towns of Gush Katif, that rain on the city of Sderot and environs up to Ashkelon; the millions of rounds of ammunition, rifles and training, even armored cars that America gives to Arab gangs for "security" and "necessity, the tyrant's plea," the embattled status of Jews everywhere within their dear and dearly reclaimed land, ruined so long results from the self-negation that turned the great victory of 1967 down the dark road of defeat and the shadow of death.

Labor-Zionism, official 'Zionism' that accomplished much had its eyes on a secular and exclusive version of sentimental-Judaism that led it to war on any Jew with an integral vision and made it unsustainable. Winner of many victories (including over other Jews) it has lost the war for renewing Zion and Jewish sovereignty about which it had profound ambivalence. For it wanted "a place among the nations" based on the values of the nations rather than on the heritage of Israel.

They now run to American diplomats who want to erase its borders, Judaism, and independence, to Christians who want to convert them and jostle to shake the hands and fill the armories of Muslims who want to murder or convert them. They have lost and spend much of their remaining energies afflicting those Jews deeply attached to the land and heritage of Israel.

June 1967 was the hinge of modern history. Though few of its top leaders may have been observant, when Israel attacked those gathered against it to destroy it, they fought not only for survival but in accordance with Torah law; so they conquered but because they were not grounded in Jewish heritage they pulled back just when and where their triumph would have established an intact Israel and true Jewish state "that will not be counted among the nations" but that will radiate "streams of living water," a radiance of Torah in whose brightness nations will go their ways.

A threshold like the original Pesach had appeared but it was one the perennial regime would not leap across: their mindset, their secular-socialist categories of thought kept them in bondage rather than freedom, in "gasping spirit" rather than expansive and eager heart though the entire nation and much of the world felt it.
In June 1967, there was no need to re-invent the wheel. Eight centuries before Rambam had specified the Torah commandments to be fulfilled upon re-entering the land in strength: appoint a king; annihilate Amalek; and build the Temple (Hilchot Melachim 1:1a-c). No one with a more practical plan for Jewish sovereignty, survival and holiness has spoken since. The great sage subsequently stipulates that fulfilling these mitzvot is foundational to the survival and integrity of Israel: "there will be no difference between the current age and the messianic era except the end of our subjugation to other kingdoms" (ibid. 12:2; cf. Sanhedrin 97a3) [1] and that to appoint the king and destroy Amalek properly the Sanhedrin of seventy-one elders must be established to fulfill their role (Hilchot Melachim 1:2-3).

When this process of obligations is followed true freedom, the basis of which is sovereignty will ensue for Jews which can be only in the Promised Land, integral and intact as Jacob was when he returned from Charan to Shechem (Gen. 33:18). A king who destroys Amalek and also walks in the ways of Torah, "builds the Temple in its place and gathers the dispersed of Israel he is definitely the Messiah" (Melachim 11:4): this is the ultimate integrity.

As to re-attaching all the spokes of Israel to the hub of their and the world's wheel, Rambam's review of the mitzvot shows that there can be many great kings of Israel that accomplish much, including building or beginning the re-building of the Temple without being the Messiah. Judaism is practical and sensible, a derekh ("way") of doing and faith not an abstract or mental system in which it suffices to profess belief: hence the need of everyone to do what they can to begin and sustain the process of redemption. "It is not your business to complete the work, neither are you free to refrain from it" (Avot). Yet the goal must be kept in sight: "once the [Messianic] kingdom is established and all of Israel gathered around him the entire nation's line of descent will be established on the basis of his words [filled] with prophetic insight: "he shall sit as a refiner and a purifier" (ibid. 12:3 quoting Malachi 3:3). While the Messianic king of Israel will play the decisive role in finalizing the tribal status and portion of each family of Israel as the discussion indicates, preceding kings will begin the process of settlement and establishment of sovereignty beginning with the annihilation of Amalek, - all those who gather against or come against the land or people of Israel with an evil decree against them, their Torah or land.

Even today and before today, those who travel to Homesh and those who persist in Sderot and Har haZeitim and throughout the inheritance of Israel begin the completion of the work and help establish the preconditions for its fulfillment. The Torah is true and if it is necessary for the road to be very bumpy for this to happen, based as it is upon a myriad of free will choices [2]. The faiths that have borrowed from Judaism only to distort it and to afflict horribly the Jewish people, the witnesses of the Creator have, Rambam writes, looking on the bright side, helped to spread knowledge of the creation, providence, purpose and mitzvot throughout the world. "In time they will all return and realize that their ancestors endowed them with a false heritage" and the peoples "will serve God together with a pure speech [Torah principles in Hebrew] and serve Him with one purpose" (Melachim 11:4).

For this triumph to ripen more quickly those who cherish the land and people of Israel and know that this means complete Jewish sovereignty must learn to work together, to focus on that which unites them and discard what appears problematic. In this embrace for the ultimate goal the contradictions that currently appear, dislikes and discomforts will dissipate in the joyous clarity of Yisrael Shleimah.

Again, Judaism is miraculous not magic. For seventeen centuries Israel, "the afflicted man" has been "surrounded by a false brilliance borrowed [or stolen] from it" by those who profess to walk in a new improved light. "They have conspired against me" because "Israel stands in the way" of imposing their false light and imperial systems upon the nations, establishing a tyranny far greater and more intrusive than Pharaoh's [3]. Undoing this pattern deeply engrained in the history of Edom and Ishmael, more subtly in Edom will take work and time, many kings; but guided by the main principles, the victory is certain because it is true, "a psalm of song whose foundation is in the holy mountains" (psalm 87).

Israel, the upright and victors of God were scattered by the ancient empires on one of the potential paths for humankind. They sowed seed of light with tears of care amid alien corn. "Israel has fulfilled this vocation as 'God's sower' through the Divine Book...for every aspect of Israel's life was devoted to that which was spiritual, humane and pure" despite the damage of being in exile and being beaten there into a hunger artist. "But he will return to exult and rejoice in the harvest discussed by Rambam as an obligation as well as a destiny: the hub will be restored upon Mt. Zion, the spokes joined firmly to it in the mighty wheel and they will judge the Mt. of Esau and the kingdom and entire earth will rejoice to be in balance with the Creator and His hila shining throughout creation [4].

1. Rav Shmuel is one of the sages Rambam cites. Similarly, Rav Shmuel states of the exile, the absence of full integrity, sovereignty, "It is enough for a mourner to endure his period of mourning" (Sanhedrin 97b4). See Psalm 102 and the plain facts of history for the exile having atoned for the loss of the kingdom and bringing near "the appointed time" (psalm 102); "for your servants have cherished her stones and favor her dust." These servants are "the humble and forbearing people," the settlers of the heartland today who persist despite the power of the "informers to the gentiles" against them [Sanhedrin 98a2, 97a4]. And the amgushai, sorcerers and fanatical idol-worshippers and gazirpatai idolatrous judges who use brutality against Jews will overplay their hands and be swept away by the flood of their lies and "covenant with death" (Sanhedrin 98a3, Isaiah 28:12-28)
2. Ramchal (Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzato), Derekh Hashem, c. 1735, see previous essays for his discussions of the interplay of free will and providence of material and spiritual or metaphysical in parts II - IV of his great work; essays on www.israelendtimes.com .
3. Rav Hirsch on psalm 102:9-10
4. Rav Hirsch on psalm 126; Ovadiah 1:15-21; "the nations drink and will be confounded," "consumed through bewildering terrors" via their culture of terror (Modernism, the idolatrous worship of the human imagination, its products and ostensibly divine powers) and "War of Terror." Their cult of imagination and fantasy unleashed, the culture of terror as forecast in Romantic literature and art (Casper D. Friedrich or Shelley's Frankenstein: the Modern Prometheus) "in the city will render their appearance despicable" an irony that is measure for measure to the arrogant violence that blinds their eyes and girds their hips, exposing their ruin and true ugliness in contrast to "the fairest of sites, joy of all the earth, Mt. Zion, by the northern side of the great king's city..." (Psalm 48:2-4, 12-15; 73:6-20).

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