Where are we being led and why?

This message is in honor of dear friends who have purchased homes in Israel and received Israeli citizenship. Kol hakavod!

My scholastic career began in a less than illustrious fashion. At the age of five, I was expelled from kindergarten in PS 177 Brooklyn; although over time I understood the importance of the details.

All the little Italian and Irish Catholic kids and the one little boy with a kippa, would begin every morning by singing with the teacher “My country, tis of thee”, except for the little kippa kid who stood silent without a word.

Teacher questioned me every day, in front of my young gentile classmates why I don’t sing? And I would repeat every day – because of the words “land where my fathers died’ – but my father is still alive, and he was born in Palestine.

At some point, the teacher said that we will now begin preparing decorations for the coming Christmas holiday by cutting and pasting. I would sit at my little table or play with the blocks, and true to form, teacher would ask me why I don’t participate, to which I would answer, “it’s not my holiday”.

One day my Abba came to the school (by invitation of the principal). We went to the principal’s office and I waited outside. A little later, Abba came out with a happy smile and gave me a big kiss.

I never returned to PS 177. Abba explained to me that the teacher complained to the principle that I was disrupting the class; so, it would be better if I remained at home. I was deliriously happy to be at home, until I was enrolled in the Yeshiva of Flatbush for the following 8 years.

I remember these details because from time to time my parents would retell how their young son confronted the system and won.

I don’t know why this incident came to my mind, now, 83 years later. Strange enough, perhaps because of its similarity with these mid-term elections in the US, as follows.

The ubiquitous breeze of anti-Semitism is metamorphosing into gale winds that shout what happened at PS 177 when I was expelled, but in the opposite direction: “Your father was born in Palestine. And your father’s beliefs are still alive that God chose the Jews as His favored nation. And in addition, our holidays are not yours! So, you are expelled”.

Explanation unnecessary!

Something is amiss

There is an uncomfortable feeling in many Jewish galut communities that something is amiss – an understatement!

The question is: where is HaShem leading us now and why?

I submit:

The landmark Pew Research Center studies, primarily the 2013 “A Portrait of Jewish Americans” provides the baseline data for understanding contemporary American Jewish demographics and intermarriage patterns. The disastrous results show that the intermarriage rate among non-orthodox Jews in the US is 70% – that is of every 100 non-orthodox weddings 70 are with gentiles.

Another study concludes that those who identify as Jews on the basis of reform and conservative conversions, or their recognition of a child born to a Jewish father and gentile mother to be Jewish, make up over 50% of the non-orthodox population; meaning that in any census of Jews in the US half are halachically goyim.

This falls under the category of what the prophet Yechezkel meant in chapter 20 verses 32-33:

והעלה על רוחכם היו לא תהיה אשר אתם אמרים נהיה כגוים כמשפחות הארצות לשרת עץ ואבן

חי אני נאם א-דני יקוק אם לא ביד חזקה ובזרוע נטויה ובחמה שפוכה אמלוך עליכם

 

What you desire will never happen, to be like the nations, like the peoples of the world, who serve wood and stone.

As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will reign over you with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath.

There comes a point where the flight of Jews from the Torah way of life descends step by step from putting on the TV on Shabbat, to eating shrimp on Yom Kippur, to marrying out and finally crossing the electrified barbed wire boundary when the Jew longs to be accepted into his goyishe society by adopting their culture in name and in dress, down to publicly denouncing the State of Israel and adopting anti-Semitic positions.

“What you desire, to be like the nations, like the peoples of the world, who serve wood and stone, will never happen. As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will reign over you with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath”.

When the drizzle of assimilation turns into an unstoppable cloud burst HaShem steps in to make a reset through anti-Semitism.

As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will reign over you with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with outpoured wrath.

There is no way to stem the tide. The only sustainable choice is to be on the right side of Jewish history by returning home.

Shabbat Shalom & a Meaningful Chodesh Kislev when every Jew in the holy land is a Maccabee!

Nachman Kahana

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