Posts by NKahana

With every new year we draw closer to the final redemption of our nation as we return to our holy land, as promised by our prophets.

The Torah states (Devarim 22:1-2):

If you see your brother’s (fellow Jew) ox or sheep straying, do not ignore it but return it to its owner. If your brother (the owner) is not close to you or if you do not know who owns it, take it into your home to be with you until your brother seeks it out, then return it (after receiving convincing signs of description).

What is HaShem planning for His people in Eretz Yisrael?

In our unpredictable, erratic world one immutable principle has stood the test of millennia, with no sign that it will ever change – that nothing of significance has ever evolved or will evolve without implicit or covert implications for the Jewish people!

A LETTER TO HASHEM

It’s that time of year, when Your children withdraw a bit from the distractions of this life in order to introspect on what we have or have not done properly this past year.

I will skip the formalities of asking how You are because You are absolute perfection.

The following is my yearly E-mail (Elokim Mail) to report to You on the state of Your people as perceived from this virtual world, which of course is quite different from what is perceived from Your world of absolute truth.

If in the eyes of the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), the Security Council, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, and the Quartet, etc., we are the BAD BOY of the world. The UN’s blatant anti-Israel, pro-Arab and pro-Muslim stance has within it the potential to consolidate the international anti-Semitic powers into a potent force against our Jewish State. The UN wishes to forge the “BIG GANG”.

The rabbis explained why HaShem elevates the leaders of the enemies of Am Yisrael to high positions. It is analogous to a king who wished to punish a disloyal soldier but felt that it was beneath his dignity to deal with a person of such low rank. So, the king appointed the soldier to the position of army chief, and then afterwards had him hanged in the city square. Throughout our history, we see that HaShem took evil-minded criminals and endowed them with great authority in order to degrade, demean, and disgrace them in this world and in the next.

Can you guess the author of each of these 8 quotes? Within them you’ll find the secret to success in defeating every enemy of Israel.

Do you understand the significance of the pandemic in the overall scheme of Jewish history and our future?

The agreement with the UAE joins with those previously signed with Egypt and Jordan, and soon possibly with Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and the Maghreb states. It is a breakthrough of historic proportions, reversing the obstinate refusal of all the Arab states to recognize the Jewish state in the midst of what they believe to be the Arab part of the world.

Is it good for Israel or bad – and if bad, how bad?

This week’s parasha introduces the new generation of Am Yisrael to the calamitous City of Shechem. There they would participate in a ceremony marking the nation’s confirmation of being Hashem’s chosen people. Even though the confirmation was first done in chutz la’aretz in the Sinai desert, it had to be repeated in Eretz Yisrael, its predetermined natural habitat, because the confirmation in chutz la’aretz did not have the same spiritual energy as the holy land.

Our acquittance with the city of Shechem leaves a bitter taste.

The Gemara (Shabbat 30b) records a didactic strategy that the illustrious amora Raba ben Nachmani would employ in order to gain the attention of his students before entering into a complex halachic discourse. He would begin with a humorous story or joke. So, in the spirit of the 15th of Menachem Av, one of the two happiest days in the lives of our ancestor’s years ago, permit me to begin with a light story.

This Wednesday night is the 9th of Menachem Av (the 9th day of the 11th month of our calendar year Menachem Av, counting from the previous month of Tishrei [Rosh HaShana]- that is our 9-11). For the 1950th time, we will mourn – in that exquisite unity that binds all Jews – the death of the 600,000 Jews in the desert who turned their backs on Eretz Yisrael and will feel the fresh anguish at the destruction of our two temples and subsequent expulsions into galut.

The Jewish Hall of Infamous Events and Characters contains villains like Nimrod of Mesopotamia who cast Avraham Aveinu into a fiery furnace; Avimelech the Philistine king at the time of Yitzchak Aveinu, Lavan who did everything he could to make Ya’akov Aveinu’s life miserable, and the Egyptian king who enslaved our fathers. The list goes on to include the arch anti-Semites of each generation: Nevuchadnezer, the destroyer of the first holy Temple; Haman and Achashverosh, the evil players in our Purim shpiel; Antiochus of the Chanuka episode; and the Roman general Titus, destroyer of the second holy Temple. The list includes popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, local Spanish, Ukrainian and Polish priests, caliphs, kings, knights, emperors, czars, presidents, chancellors, chairmen of the party, sheikhs and just plain folk who murdered Jews for the fun of it.

The situation could only be described as surrealistic, bizarre, inconceivable, and even grotesque. The participants, on both sides of the issue; those who stood for HaShem, for Torah, for Yiddishkeit versus those who turned their backs in denial of all they had mastered over the previous four decades: all behaved and responded inappropriately.

Medinat Yisrael is now on a crossroads of our future: annex or not? And if yes, how much and where? Many of the world’s leaders, each in his own manner of speech and threats, seek to instill fear in the hearts of our civilian and military personnel, that to annex would be suicidal.

It is a test by HaShem. Pressure was brought to bear on David ben Gurion not to declare independence in 1948. The US threatened and kept their word that they would place an arms embargo on the nascent State if he declared independence. But Ben Gurion and the majority of the yishuv’s heads voted for independence, and now we are 72 years old and standing tall among the leading nations of the world.

The universe, in its entirety, comprises space and time and their contents. It includes two trillion galaxies consisting of planets, stars, black holes, and all forms of matter and energy. The actual size of the spatial universe is unknown, but the size of the observable universe is currently estimated at 93 billion light-years in diameter. The distance of a light-year is about 9.46 trillion kilometers (5.88 trillion miles). Therefore, the size of the observable universe is 9.46 trillion kilometers times 93 billion. There are theories hypothesizing that our universe is only one of many disconnected universes belonging to a larger multi-universe, which comprises all of space and time and its contents.

So, the question under consideration is why did HaShem create such a huge and complex entity?