Hashem has made known His salvation; in the sight of the nations He revealed His righteousness. He recalled His kindness and faithfulness for the House of Israel; all ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God…” [1]

It is said that people love and yearn for miracles; this is a misperception. People tend to love magic and, evidence suggests, hate miracles intensely. The greatest miracle in human events is the faithful remembrance, endurance and survival of Israel amid invasions, libel, genocides and the perversion of its Torah. If there is a greater miracle it is the fulfillment in our times of the covenant and prophecies, from the patriarchs and Moshe to Malachi of the return of Israel in numbers to its inheritance and its blossoming against all odds, chief among them the “peace plans” of its ‘friend,’ Uncle Laban. (more…)

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). (more…)

Another American President has descended upon the Land and People of Israel to dictate peace terms to them. A client government, “scoffing men” and women, different faces with similar roles long has been in place to execute the will of the great eagle from across the sea [1]. We near checkmate in the long descent at the end of which the re-born Jewish state becomes effectively borderless and dependent, a slave fed with slogans blurring the extent of its subjugation. At the limit of contraction comes the day… (more…)