BS”D Parashat Re’eh 5771
TWO VIEWS FROM BEYOND THE HORIZON
Part A:
In this week’s parasha, the age old ethical-philosophic problem of defining right and wrong and what is good and what is bad, is unequivocally and unambiguously resolved:
See (acknowledge), I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse; The blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; and the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today to follow false deities which you have not known
“Good” is defined as “the commands of the Lord your God,” and “bad” is the negation of those commands.
I suggest a corollary to the above definition of good vs. bad. Any act that benefits the Jewish people is “good”; an anti-Semitic one is “bad”. Any act that supports what the Torah (Bible) says is good, an anti-Bible one is bad. An activity or resolution intended to foster the Jewish people’s return to all the Biblical lands as promised in the Torah is “good”; an act intended to distance the Jewish people from re-establishing our sovereignty over the Holy land is, by definition, “bad”. Any person or nation that supports “bad” acts or policies is by definition “bad”.
During the last six months, we have been witnessing the unexpected, sudden downfall of many evil leaders by the hand of their equally evil subjects.
It makes for fascinating news, but the real story is what is happening “beyond the horizon”, which is the subject of this d’var Torah.
The Torah states (Beraisheet 25:16)
These were the sons of Ishmael, and these are the names of the twelve tribal rulers according to their settlements and camps
Yishmael’s rise to power was through his 12 children, each of whom ascended the throne of some country in the area of Eretz Yisrael.
We are witnessing today the dramatic, and in historical terms “sudden” downfall, and imminent downfall of 12 malevolent leaders of 12 evil Yishmaelic Arab states: Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudia, Lebanon, Jordan, Algeria and Morocco.
It has all the trappings of a Godly production, where HaShem as the ultimate playwright draws the audience of the world to the edge of their seats, not knowing what the next scene might bring.
But as moving as these events appear to be on the front pages of newspapers and on TV screens, they are only the shadow of what is actually transpiring. The real story is as follows.
The prophet Yeshayahu says (24-21,22)
In that day the LORD will punish the powers in the heavens and the kings on the earth below. They will be herded together like prisoners bound in a dungeon; they will be shut up in prison and be punished after many days.
The 12th century renowned Bible commentator, RaDaK (Rabbi David Kimchi, Narvona France) echoes earlier sources, including the Zohar, Midrashim and many more; that prior to HaShem’s destruction of evil leaders and evil nations, He destroys the heavenly spiritual forces that empower those entities (guardian angels, if you wish).
In chapter 7 of the Book of Daniel, it is recorded (in Aramaic):
In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying in bed. He wrote down the substance of his dream.
Daniel said: “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea. “The first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground so that it stood on two feet like a human being, and the mind of a human was given to it.
And there before me was a second beast, which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. It was told, ‘Get up and eat your fill of flesh!’
After that, I looked, and there before me was another beast, one that looked like a leopard. And on its back it had four wings like those of a bird. This beast had four heads, and it was given authority to rule.
After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns…
As I looked, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days (HaShem) took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze. A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before him. Thousands upon thousands attended him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court was seated, and the books were opened…
Then I continued to watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking. I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire.
Avraham Ibn Ezra, in his commentary to the Book of Daniel, explains the meaning behind the dream. The fearful strange animals refer to the descendants of Yishmael. And Ibn Ezra writes:
I will reveal a little of the secrets surrounding the heavenly angels. HaShem will make judgment on the the world. The great books that recall all human actions will be open before Him. And an angel revealed to me that Daniel was shown how in future times HaShem will destroy Yismael in a very short period of time.
The Islamic cry of praise for their fictitious god “AlaHu Akbar” when beheading someone unfortunate enough to fall into their hands, is the absolute negation of what a human being was created for. The leaders of Islam, beginning with the illiterate Mechamad, use what they call “ala” to further their political-military interests as a soldier uses a weapon. So the time will eventually come when the descendants of Yishmael, who have sown and reaped so much evil over these many centuries, will pass from the world.
May we merit to see it speedily in our time.
Part B:
With authority comes responsibility. A parent must show an example to his children; a rabbi to his community; a mayor towards his city and a president to his nation. And a nation that deems itself to be the world’s leader must certainly maintain high ethical principles.
So lets go “beyond the horizon” to discover why the United States is in the situation it finds itself.
Like everything else in this material world, earthquakes have a superficial scientific explanation, while the real reasons are to be found in the spiritual world.
This week the East Coast of the US experienced an earthquake of 5.9 magnitude, felt from Virginia to Canada.
The Talmud Yerushalmi (end of chapter 1 of Berachot) states that one of the causes of earthquakes is homosexuality. That as a reaction to human being’s unnatural patterns of behavior, the earth reacts in an extremely unnatural way.
There are an increasing number of states which have, or are in the process of, approving same sex marriages, the latest one being New York.
A seismograph or Richter Scale can tell us the magnitude of an earthquake, but only the Torah traditions are able to inform us of the human misbehavior that incurs the wrath of HaShem which causes them.
The other misfortune to have fallen on the United States, as the leader of the western world, is the economic downturn. The economic indicators can measure the severity of the catastrophe, and can even explain what brought it about in economic terms, such as housing mortgages, etc., but that again is the superficial appearance of what is really causing the misery.
As I have previously written, it is happening because the US is the world’s leader in pressuring the Jewish people to refrain from building and developing the lands promised to us by the Creator.
The misery will continue and even worsen in the US if they do not reverse their anti-Bible policy of tying our hands in Eretz Yisrael.
It is vital for the US and the western world that this message be brought to the attention of their political movers and shakers.
It is even more vital for them than for the people of Israel, because as in the words of Mordechai to Esther when she hesitated to do what was necessary for the survival of the Jewish nation (chapter 4,14):
For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for just such a time as this?”
HaShem has brought the United States to the position of a world leader, but if it turns its back on the people of the Bible, we the Jews in Eretz Yisrael shall find “relief and deliverance” from wherever HaShem will choose, but the western world will decline and fall.
Shabbat Shalom
Nachman Kahana
Copyright © 5771/2011 Nachman Kahana