It’s a dark time of year and a dark period of history. Like an eagle that “sets its nest among the stars,” Edom has suffused the perennial regime in Washington DC and together they gather forces against Jerusalem. Arming, funding, and training those who murder Jews in Israel they bury the world in darkness, increasing violence and the lies and power lust from which these conditions extrude.

“All this, however has a fixed limit: darkness cannot prevail nor impurity sully the world completely and corrupt all mankind.” Still, “we live in a world where darkness and secular concepts prevail,” in which Israel, the people and land long have been degraded and with it the Creator and Master of all worlds. The nations, despising Israel, have made a covenant against the Eternal One. Yet “it is possible for man to bring spiritual light into creation”; indeed, “the world can be rectified only by man, not by itself,” not by the forces of nature or man’s own undirected passions [1].  (more…)

So he lived for many years…in visible glory, honored by the world yet troubled in spirit by its perversion of the truth… To fight against this lack of understanding, against a whole world of non-understanding was impossible… Everywhere, as if by secret agreement, a positive revulsion from professional fasting was in evidence [and] it was now too late to take any counter-measures [1]

Yes, the position of the children of Israel has become untenable, too late for any counter measures to the subservience of its rulers to foreign powers and faiths, subservience masked as a quest for peace. And yes, the past is all but gone; traditions, attitudes, rules in economics and family relations are radically changed. “We live in a different world now” and spiritual matters, much less their integration with the substance of daily life, rhythms and events, the true work of Judaism and Israel is being driven from the stage, buried in the straw and the mixture dumped to make way for the panther of predatory appetite [2]. The terror as well as “the joy of life streams with such ardent passion from its jaws” and throat most people seem unable to look away from the screens of virtual reality and seductions of magic. Again, the marriage of lust and war, Aphrodite and Aries seems to triumph from Hollywood to the murdering bomber deluded by clouds of virgins: the offshoot is “panic and terror” [3]. (more…)

Chanukah is the perfect festival to consider and marvel at the interplay of freedom and providence. This complementarity is very different than determinism. Indeed, this latter concept scarcely exists in Judaism: freedom at every level, choice and discrimination shape the structure and pace of which the creation plays out its purpose and natural laws work with their Creator to produce “measure for measure” with a helping of mercy. (more…)

In 1510 the Islamic rulers of central India pressed southward and came up against an ancient Jewish kingdom termed “the black Bnei Israel” and the prosperous towns and ports they had established in the Malabar region in cities like Cochin and Calicot [1]. At the same time, they heard reports from anousim and conversos among the Portuguese sailors, for example the great physician and botanist Abraham ben Samuel Zacuto of the extreme distress of the Jews in Portugal and Spain. From these dual threats to life and national continuity a young Jewish leader from a line dating back more than two millennia developed an audacious strategic plan of redemption spanning five continents and twenty-five years. His name was David Reubeni.   (more…)