Jewish destiny will find all Jews coming home to Israel

Once again I am about to leave Israel for a whirlwind speaking tour in the USA. As always I find myself asking myself, “Why am I doing this?” I am but one lone person making an annual trip for about ten days as a kind of self appointed ambassador for Israel. Am I crazy? I am not sure. Maybe I am.

I suppose the reason I keep coming back is because everywhere I go I know that I do make a difference. It is impossible to measure my accomplishments (or lack thereof), but the feedback I get from the people with whom I speak gives me tremendous encouragement. So even though I myself do not fully understand what it is that I am doing, I just know that it is important and that I must continue doing it as long as I am able.

The Bible tells us, (and I am neither a scholar nor a Rabbi so I do not remember where), that the day will come when there will be a great hunger and a great thirst. It will not be for either food or water, rather for the Word of G-d. When I go out to speak to people, both Jew and Gentile, I can sense this hunger and thirst. When I speak from my heart of the fulfillment I have found by leaving the comfortable Exile of the USA and coming home to what seems to be a dangerous Israel, I look into the eyes of my audience and they seem to be drinking up my words as a thirsty person would drink cool pure water! I have found this to be consistently true wherever I go. And it is this observation which gives me the strength and courage to continue.

Being a Jew brings with it a very heavy responsibility. The Creator of the Universe chose us to be His representative on Earth. When we obey His Will and follow His Commandments we bear that responsibility and fulfill our obligations. When we seek to escape our responsibilities and think that we can find “freedom” and “equality” by so doing we discover that just the opposite happens. There is no freedom for the Jew except when we bear the yoke of our Torah. And there is no equality for us since we are meant to be a nation apart, not to be reckoned among the nations of the world. As hard as our leaders try to make Israel like all of the other nations all of their efforts are destined to fail. And the reward for these efforts is always tragic.

The only peace process that will work is when Israel decides to become a nation that stands alone with her G-d. This is our destiny and this will eventually happen. When we try to give away our homeland for peace, we invite terror instead. When we stand up to both friend and foe alike and declare “Not one inch”, the terror melts away.

The Arabs are not our problem. We are the problem. The Arabs are our punishment for not living up to our obligations as Jews. When Israeli leaders talk about including Arabs as equal citizens in the Jewish State, the Arabs know that we are liars. Had we made it clear from the outset that we are willing to accept Arab residents as non citizens should they be willing to live by our laws, we could have lived in peace with our Arab neighbors. Tell me which Arab country welcomes Jews as equal citizens? It was our leadership which opened to door to our potential self-destruction by inviting the Arab Trojan horse into our homeland and into our Knesset.

When you give your enemy a knife and then turn your back, why are you surprised when you get stabbed in the back? How can you blame him when it was you who set him up?

Israel is not just another country.  It is destined to become the fulfillment of Biblical destiny. Those with eyes to see can see that this is already beginning. The Jewish People have begun to return home from all over the world. We have restored our ancient Hebrew language here and see people from extremely different backgrounds coming together as the unique Jewish nation that we are. This alone is an incredible miracle. In 1948 we accepted the suicidal partition plan. Had the Arabs accepted that plan then we would never have been able to develop into the modern country we have today. They saw us as a weak and feeble people who could not possibly stand up to a murderous onslaught. They were right. But they did not consider the fact that we have a supernatural partner protecting us. The fact that we survived the 1948 attempt to destroy Israel is another inexplicable miracle.

For those who like to insist that we must give up Land for Peace, and just give the Arabs all of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and East Jerusalem, the question that begs to be answered is, “Why did the Arabs attack us with intent to annihilate us back in 1967 when they possessed all of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and East Jerusalem? Are we complete fools, or have we just forgotten the miracles we witnessed with our own eyes?

We tried two states for two nations back in 1948. It didn’t work then and it most certainly will never work now. Notwithstanding the alleged peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt, the goal of all of the Arab nations is still the destruction of the Jewish State. To negotiate our “differences” is simply to find a way to agree to our self destruction. I think that it is about time to give real peace a chance and start to act like Jews for a change.

All Jews have the same obligations. If a Jew chooses to eat unkosher food, or not to observe the Sabbath, these choices do not remove his obligations. He may try to escape his Jewish identity and become like his non-Jewish neighbors. He may pretend that he is accepted by his neighbors and even try to adopt a foreign religion to cement his new identity. But, he will eventually discover that there is no escaping destiny. Anti-Semitism was not meant to drive us away from our identity, rather to prevent us from throwing it away.

There is only one path for the Jew to follow. It is the path of Torah. And that path also leads to the Land of Israel… the only place in the world where the Jew can be complete. Yes, the day is coming, and sooner than we think, that we will all come home, willingly or otherwise. Today we have the gift to choose to come home on our own.

Tomorrow that gift may be taken from us. Don’t wait for tomorrow. Begin to make plans to come home now.