It is not only Australia that has changed; almost the entire West has changed. Western civilization is being slowly conquered by Islam, with no response from the Christian world. The more common reaction is criticism of Israel, as if that will save those being overrun. Caught in between, in this clash of civilizations, are the Jews, still clinging to the altar horns of democratic states, hoping someone will wake up and come to their senses.

It will not happen. Progressive governments are captive to their Muslim voters and to wealthy Muslim organizations, and they prefer them over the future of their own countries. The government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will make some notion of noise and issue foolish statements, but for the Jews who were murdered, it no longer matters. There is no future for Jews in Australia, not in Britain, and certainly not in France, Belgium or Canada.

The Australian government did not fight terrorism or antisemitism; it encouraged it through its actions and statements. The government in Canberra did little when synagogues were burned, did not arrest anyone when, at the foot of the Sydney Opera House, a frenzied mob chanted "Gas the Jews." Muslims waving Hezbollah and Hamas flags, along with those of other terrorist organizations, demonstrated freely. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong was apparently the only minister to visit Israel during the war, yet did not find the time to visit the site of the massacre.

Where was Australian intelligence? After all, they expelled the Iranian ambassador. Did they monitor incitement in mosques or examine bank accounts for the transfer of terror funds? The terrorists knew that this was the easiest place to carry out attacks. So, they did almost nothing, yet knew how to accuse Israel with lies, put obstacles in the wheels of the war on terror, and above all, the Australian government went so far as to declare recognition of a Palestinian terror state. What does it care? Now it is getting a terror state within its own borders.

If abandoning the Jews is the sin, the punishment will fall on all of Australia. Jews are the litmus test of a society. Pogroms against them are the prelude to attacks on other minorities and ultimately to the collapse of society. Prime Minister Albanese has abandoned Australia's Jews to their fate. He will not protect them.

Rest for a generation only to be uprooted again

About 20 years ago, I visited Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia. Only a few Jews remain there. In the early 1980s, when dictator Robert Mugabe rose to power, most of them fled to Australia. Jews arrived in Rhodesia at the end of the 19th century from Rhodes. Those who did not migrate to Africa and remained in Rhodes were sent to Auschwitz during World War II. Where did the Jews of Rhodes come from? From Sicily, at the end of the 15th century, after they were expelled by order of the Spanish crown along with the rest of Spanish Jewry.

And so, the Jews wandered from Sicily to Rhodes, from there to Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe, from which they fled to Australia, resting for a generation or two, only to be uprooted again. And now where to? Has the time not come to understand the verdict of history?

Dear Jews, our brothers and sisters, what are you waiting for? You have no future in the Diaspora. Come home. Make Aliyah. This is your place.

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"Jacob settled in the land where his fathers had sojourned, in the land of Canaan" (Gen. 37:1). How much calm, peace of mind, and security these words convey. Jacob, a man of storms and battles, the one who wrestled with God and with men, has finally reached rest and security. In his tents, there are the voices of children and the laughter of grandchildren. At last, he can rest. And then, suddenly, disaster. His beloved son, the living memory of his only beloved wife, is torn from him, and with him, Jacob's life is torn apart; he refuses all comfort.

The Book of Genesis teaches humility. Shlomo Yitzchaki, known as the Rashi, writing in the 11th century, echoes a historical truth that applies not only to the private Jacob but also to the nation: "Jacob sought to dwell in peace, but the trouble of Joseph leapt upon him. The righteous seek to dwell in peace; the Holy One says: Is it not enough for the righteous what is prepared for them in the World to Come, that they also seek to dwell in peace in this world?"

2.

And indeed, how many times in our personal and national lives did we think we had reached rest and security, that we had passed an age of struggle, only to find ourselves surprised by yet another round of complications? Our sages taught: "The deeds of the fathers are a sign for the children." This is not only educational but a sign of our destiny. Jacob is the seal of the patriarchs, the first to be called Israel, and all his children form the family that will become a tribe, and then a nation that will establish a kingdom. The life of the third patriarch is a sign for the life of our people throughout history, up to this very day.

The story of Jacob and Joseph is a tragic model of life on the edge, of walking along a cliff without knowing that the abyss is waiting for us. And we, the survivors of October 7, know very well the enormity of the abyss between the night of that Simchat Torah and the accursed day that followed. In us were fulfilled the words of Alterman in Simchat Aniyim (The Joy of the Poor): "And joy said: No, your destroyer has come, no, your last day has come." A people whose life is all struggle and whose surroundings are hostile forces must never imagine that we have finally been granted peace.

3.

Jacob's troubles are not merely personal. Jacob is Israel, the father of a nation destined to enter history with great tumult and to bring a message to the world. In contrast to mythological worldviews in which the gods play with human beings arbitrarily, Scripture expresses a clear position regarding reward and punishment and, above all, regarding how we view reality: the visible events and the hidden ones.

The Book of Genesis teaches us to read history on at least two levels: rational and spiritual. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook: causal perception and moral perception. Causal perception sees a logical order operating in the material world, with its economic, political, military, and social causes, extending all the way to the human being's spiritual world. History's laws can be explained rationally, as one event leads to another.

For roughly 2,500 years, Western philosophy has occupied itself with the logic of cause and effect, nihil est sine ratione, nothing exists without reason. But this rests on a limitation. Logic does not answer everything. We must liberate ourselves from "causal suffocation", from the strict logic of history, and enter the realm of the historical dream. Here, the "moral perception" operates, in which higher laws govern events beyond what seems reasonable to us. In this view, historical events are not merely a chain of "this is how it happened," but carry a meta-historical meaning of "this is how it ought to be."

4.

Human psychology also works on two levels. The primary process of thought takes place in the unconscious, while conscious thought is secondary, although we tend to focus only on it. The truth is that one cannot understand the human being, or humanity, without delving into the hidden layers. Dreams are masks, garments of the primary process clothed in the secondary. Through the dream, the hidden strata break through into consciousness and demand interpretation.

The dreams in Genesis give us a glimpse behind the scenes of history, as if God had torn open a window to show how events truly unfold. The first dream was revealed to the father of the nation in the Covenant between the Pieces (Genessis 15), when he was told that his descendants would go down to a foreign land, become slaves, be swallowed in the Egyptian womb, where the Hebrew embryo would develop until, at the end of a historical process, they would emerge as a nation returning to the land of their fathers. From that moment on, the events of Genesis are directed toward that purpose, a deep current pushing reality forward. As we see, Joseph's dreams are part of this drama. They foretell what will happen and push events onward: they generate the brothers' hatred and Joseph's sale into slavery in Egypt, leading eventually to the family's descent after him.

5.

So it is also part of the modern history of our people. "A song of ascents: When the Lord restored the return of Zion, we were like dreamers" (Ps. 126:1). What lifted Joseph from the pit was a dream. What lifted our people from the pit of exile and subjugation was the historical dream of the return to Zion. To achieve this, we must rise beyond ordinary rational calculations and read our history through the "moral perception", which peers into the realm of the dream, into the mighty forces that preserved us in the valley of the shadow of death among nations, and awakened us to emerge from the womb of the nations with great noise and many sacrifices, in order to return to Zion.

A year after he witnessed the humiliation of Alfred Dreyfus, and about a month before his revolutionary book "The Jewish State" was published, Herzl wrote in January 1896 about that very dream: "It is a wondrous thing that we Jews dreamed this royal dream through the long night of our history. And now the day has broken. We need only to wipe the sleep from our eyes, stretch our limbs, and turn the dream into reality. I am no visionary and no prophet, but I admit this: I hope with confidence that a mighty enthusiasm will one day seize the Jewish people."

6.

We learned another lesson in historical humility from the long night of our exile. It was not in vain that we struggled to restore our spirit to its home. We are an eternal people, and therefore we must read the present with the perspective of eternity. Joseph dreamed dreams of greatness, and as youths do, he was in a hurry to fulfil them. He rushed to tell his brothers: "Listen now to this dream that I dreamed" (Gen. 37:6). Because of his boasting, his brothers hated him even more. He persisted and told further dreams, pushing the end as if to force destiny: "And behold, we were binding sheaves" (Gen. 37:7). How much violence is hidden in that verse (Sheaves are "Alumim" in the Hebrew source, which has similarity to "Alimut", i.e. violence). The reaction was not long in coming. He nearly died, was thrown into a pit, sold into slavery in a foreign land, and torn from his family. Even there, he tried to hasten the end, begging the chief cupbearer in his prison pit to help secure his release. But the cupbearer forgot. His redemption would not come from him.

What would have happened had Herzl not witnessed the disgrace of Dreyfus? Would he still have founded the Zionist movement? What would have happened if the chief cupbearer had remembered Joseph and brought about his release? Perhaps Joseph would have returned home to Canaan or resumed work in Egypt, but in any case, he would not have been in the prison, "the place where the king's prisoners are confined" (Gen. 39:20), available for the redeeming summons of Pharaoh. Two more years passed in the Egyptian prison until the dream again rose from the depths of the world's unconscious to knock on the door of the ruler of the greatest empire of that era, in order to redeem Joseph and fulfil the great vision Abraham had seen in his dream. We need patience. And faith.

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When we return home after a long exile, just as our third forefather did when he fled from his red-haired brother to the house of Laban the Aramean and came home twenty years later, the land awakens our spirit. In exile we were terrified even of the rustle of a windblown leaf, subject to the whims of rulers and mobs. Now we do not retreat before our enemies; we fight back fiercely.

"For we shall not turn back, and there is no other way; no nation ever retreats from the trenches of its life," wrote Natan Alterman in 1938 in "The Song of the Platoons."

2.

"Jacob was left alone" (Genesis 32:25), as has happened to us many times. Our enemies exploited such moments and attacked: "And a man wrestled with him until daybreak" (Genesis 32:25). It was a struggle of life and death, a war over the land and, in truth, over the spiritual inheritance of the House of Abraham.

The old Jacob, a quiet man dwelling in tents, would have fled for his life. But the Jacob who returned home was a new man who had adopted Esau's courage. The struggle is fierce, and Jacob overpowers his opponent, who asks to be released. Yet Jacob replies: "I will not let you go unless you bless me" (Genesis 32:27).

In other words: I did not start this war, and I will not release you until you declare that you relinquish the aims for which you sought to kill me. In other words: acknowledge that the land belongs to me and that I continue the House of Abraham.

Here is something the State of Israel has never done in its wars: we have never forced our enemies to publicly declare their surrender and their recognition of the Jewish right to our historic homeland. Yet this was the very reason they fought to annihilate us from 1948 until October 7. They never fought over partition, but over our destruction.

3.

"And he said to him: What is your name?" (Genesis 32:28). Meaning, who were you until this moment? "And he said: Jacob." One who followed others by the heel (the Hebrew root of Jacob – Ya'akov – is akev, i.e. a heel), who faced reality in exile from a low, vulnerable position, whose survival sometimes depended on trickery and convoluted means.

"And he said: Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have wrestled with God and with men, and prevailed" (Genesis 32:29). Sovereignty is the opposite of being a heel. One who does not flee the battlefield but wrestles with God and with men, and prevails, is worthy of inheriting the land and continuing the House of Abraham.

This is the first time in Scripture that the profoundly meaningful name "Israel" appears, a name that contains the name of God (El).

Nahmanides, also known as the Ramban, the 13th-century sage from Girona in Catalonia, writes: "This entire event was a sign for his descendants, that there would be a generation in which Esau would overpower them to the point of nearly uprooting them entirely. This happened in the time of the Sages of the Mishnah... and there were other generations who suffered the same or worse. And we endured and passed through it, as hinted in the verse: 'And Jacob came safely'" (Genesis 33:18).

It is as though the Ramban speaks of himself and his own generation, of the Church that persecuted him until he fled to the Land of Israel in 1267, where he saw its devastation. He succeeded in renewing Jewish permanent presence in Jerusalem.

The Ramban, who read the Torah systematically as a historical code, describes a generation in which the Jewish people would reach the brink of annihilation. Our own eyes have seen the survivors of that generation.

And from a perspective of more than 3,500 years, this is precisely what happened to us: we wrestled with God and with men, with nations, faced persecution and death, stood against waves of history that wiped out mighty civilizations, and yet we prevailed. With our current enemies too we shall wrestle, and with God's help we shall prevail. Israel.

4.

"To wrestle with God and with men" is not only a struggle but a confrontation with opposing poles, a constant effort to connect heaven and earth. The people of Israel are the ladder joining heaven and earth, spirit and matter, prophecy and kingship. This is our message to the world, and we must continue to convey it today if we wish to win the global battle for consciousness against the antisemitic propaganda of our enemies.

There is a spirit within the individual and the nation that rises above calculations and causal chains, a spirit of eternity that reveals itself not in fleeting individuals but in the people to whom they belong. Israel.

Another dimension of the name "Israel" holds the mystery of our existence. Israel is the nation that dwells with its God. We do not rest in His embrace; we struggle with Him, challenge Him, question and confront, then reconcile, and then struggle again. "God" here is not only the familiar sense of the divine but also a broad symbol of our identity. The struggle with Him reflects our ongoing contention over identity, which has characterized many periods of our history: debates over the place of religious tradition and the place of God in our public life.

To wrestle with God (and with men) is essential to who we are. The symbiosis between the people and their God has accompanied us since our birth. This lies at the heart of the intense debate in Israeli society today over our identity. This is why the heated public discourse should not alarm us; such debate is natural to us, even if at times sharp and painful. Israel.

5.

These reflections complete another perspective on the mystery of our survival. Since our earliest days, we have been engaged in an unending debate about our identity: Who are we?

This perpetual discussion created a flexible, fluid identity that adapted itself to changing conditions. The inner core remained constant, yet the outward form shifted from era to era. Each generation answered this question differently, according to the spiritual and national needs of its time.

The answer given by the Jews of Spain's Golden Age was not the same as that of the exiles from Spain; the Jews of the Second Temple period answered differently from the Jews of Babylonia in the first millennium; the Babylonian exiles in the sixth century BCE responded differently from the generation that returned to Zion; and Jews of the Enlightenment responded differently from the Jews of Arabia.

From these varied answers we constructed an immense textual and intellectual skyscraper, unlike anything any other nation has created for its descendants. The editing of the Mishnah was such an answer, as were the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. Medieval Jewish philosophy emerged from this process, just as the poetry of medieval Spain grew from a burst of contemplation on identity. So too Jewish mysticism, Hasidism, modern Hebrew thought and literature, all were responses to the question of identity.

6.

This ongoing debate is not a weakness but the secret of our endurance. Through it we confronted immense historical forces that would have erased any other people, and yet we prevailed. Like the waters of the Shiloah that flow gently (see: Isaiah 8:6), living waters that find new paths when old ones are blocked, we managed to keep flowing and to revive weary souls along a long historical journey through the wilderness of nations.

This slow movement is hinted at in Jacob's vague response to Esau, who suggested that they travel together. Jacob declines, since the children are young and the flocks need care, and he does not want to slow down his brother: "Let my lord go ahead of his servant, while I travel slowly" (Genesis 33:14) along the roads of history until we meet again one day.

This is the depth of the blessing given to Jacob in his new name, and through him to us, his descendants: "For you have wrestled with God and with men" (Genesis 32:29). You confronted the challenges that threatened your existence and fought to preserve your identity. Through this constant struggle you survived and even flourished under conditions no other nation could have endured. "And you prevailed" (Genesis 32:29). Indeed.

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Righteous anger has not historically led us to good places, even when the justifications may have been understandable. First, above any debate, Torah study in Israel must be recognized as a national value. The proposed law does not deal only with the military and national service of young ultra-Orthodox men. It also sets a framework for Torah study, reflecting the understanding of its central role in the life of the nation and in anchoring the Jewish people in their land.

The legislation arrives after decades of political foot-dragging, arguably since the founding of the state. The ambiguity served various political parties well. The recent war accelerated the need for a fundamental correction. What is being proposed is a correction whose implications are revolutionary. And like any revolution, care must be taken not to break things to the point that the process cannot move forward. This is a generational repair.

2.

The primary challenge is the psychological barrier, or more precisely, a barrier within consciousness, the sense of emotional and cultural alienation from military service. The reasons are varied: ideological, cultural and social. The ultra-Orthodox are not the national-religious community; their concern is safeguarding their identity. Military service has not historically been an easy place to preserve that religious identity. Therefore, before broad change can take root, the mental barrier must be overcome.

We are an eternal people, which means we must also analyze current events through a historical lens.

3.

I recall two figures: Moses and Herzl. Moses grew up in a foreign environment and as a young man questioned his identity: Hebrew or Egyptian. When he stepped outside his immediate surroundings and saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, he chose a side. Herzl, grappling with his own questions of identity, was sent to cover the Dreyfus trial. There he witnessed a French officer persecuting a fellow Jew, and he too chose a side.

But before taking the Hebrews out of slavery or the Jews out of exile, both leaders had to shatter the psychological barrier of the enslaved Hebrews and of diaspora Jews. One act that broke the mental chains in Egypt was the Passover sacrifice: the Hebrews slaughtered what was considered a deity in Egypt and displayed the blood on their doorposts. After that, there was no path back. For Herzl the task was even harder, because the people were scattered across the world. Yet the Zionist movement managed to shift Jewish consciousness, convincing Jews that their future could be secured only through the renewal of their independent state.

Even the founding of Petach Tikva (1878) was a breakthrough in challenging the exile mentality. Its pioneers demonstrated to the entire nation that it was possible to live from the labor of one's own hands rather than relying on communal stipends. After that, the wave of new agricultural settlements only intensified.

4.

Breaking a psychological barrier is the first crack through which living waters begin to flow until the crack widens and changes history. The ultra-Orthodox community has already been experiencing tectonic shifts in its relationship with the state and with Israeli society. As is typical of ultra-conservative communities, the changes unfold slowly. But once a shift does occur, it tends to become permanent and more stable than one that happens rapidly. This is evolution, not revolution.

The ultra-Orthodox are spread across the country and do not live in a sealed bubble any more. They are exposed to public criticism and debate. Naturally, we hear the loudest opponents, but the quiet majority wants the issue resolved. The expansion of media access inside the community is also a factor. A prominent ultra-Orthodox Torah scholar once told me he watches me on television. I was surprised and asked how. He smiled and replied: "I have a screen that is less than the halachic minimum size..."

Add to that the sharp rise in university degrees among ultra-Orthodox men and women, and the magnitude of the change becomes clear.

5.

It is worth reading the proposed law before forming an opinion. It includes a number of sanctions and fines that are intended to ensure a viable enforcement mechanism, and it will presumably undergo adjustments. Ultra-Orthodox leaders have given their consent. Once the law is enacted, a welcome process of enlistment will begin among their followers who are eligible for service.

The breaking of the psychological barrier, combined with the social, cultural and economic changes underway in ultra-Orthodox society, will create legitimacy for military service. Over the coming years this will normalize the phenomenon. With the next generation, we can hope the issue will no longer require public dispute.

A few more thousand IDF uniforms hanging on laundry lines in the streets of Bnei Brak, Jerusalem and Beitar Illit, and residents will grow accustomed to the sight. Footsteps of redemption will be heard. What we need now is patience. And faith.

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The ladder is a symbol (in Hebrew, Sullam and Semel have the same words), in fact the symbol, containing our historical calling. Jacob, fleeing from his red-haired brother, finds himself in mid-life unprotected in a foreign environment. He fears entering the Canaanite cities, so he sleeps along the way. Like his descendants, who generations later will also be exiled from their land, danger hovers over his existence. Many questions trouble him. He arranges stones around himself for protection and tries to fall asleep.

But exile is not only a punishment, it is a correction. His mother Rebecca sends her younger son to her brother Laban so that he might learn in the school of life how to contend with God and with human beings and prevail. She believes in him. But does he believe in himself?

2.

This is the purpose of the dream, emerging from the depths of the self and the depths of reality, to answer his fears and guide him: "and he dreamed, and behold, a ladder set upon the earth, and its top reached the heavens, and behold, angels of God were ascending and descending on it" (Genesis 28:12). You and your descendants have a mission in the world: to serve as a ladder connecting heaven and earth, spirit and matter, morality and interests, prophecy and kingdom.

What does the Master of the Ladder promise him? A homeland: "the land on which you are lying, I will give to you and to your offspring". A great nation: "your offspring shall be as the dust of the earth". And a purpose: "all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you and through your offspring" (Genesis 28:13-14). A people, a land, and a Torah.

And one more crucial promise that Jacob and his descendants would carry with them wherever they wandered: "behold, I am with you, and I will guard you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not abandon you" (ibid 28:15). Even if you are exiled and scattered to the four corners of the earth, the Master of the Ladder promises, I will not abandon you, and through a long historical process I will bring you home.

And we have spoken often about how Genesis, the foundational book of our nation,  teaches us to read our historical journey correctly. We have seen it with our own eyes.

3.

Jacob spent twenty years in Laban's exile, wrestling with God and with human beings. Despite his loyalty and devotion to increasing Laban's wealth, he is deceived at every turn. Yet in the twists of life he manages to build a large family and increase his possessions, only to confront a phenomenon familiar to us: antisemitism.

Laban's sons are unimpressed by his devoted labor and focus instead on what he gained: "Jacob has taken all that belonged to our father, and from what belonged to our father he has made all this wealth" (ibid 31:1). Public sentiment influences leaders, and they change their attitude toward Israel: "and Jacob saw that the face of Laban was not toward him as in earlier days" (31:2).

And when life in foreign lands becomes dangerous, when Jews are no longer secure in life or property, especially when hatred is hurled at them by figures once considered to be on their side, the time has come to return home: "and the Lord said to Jacob, 'Return to the land of your fathers and to your birthplace, and I will be with you'" (31:3).

The move of our brothers and sisters from around the world back to the Land of Israel comes with economic, employment, cultural, and even language difficulties. It discourages many. Therefore, comes the promise: "and I will be with you" (31:3). No fear. Come home, as Jews have done for centuries, and because of them their descendants were born here. "Arise, leave this land, and return to the land of your birth" (31:13). Thus, Jacob was commanded.

Years later, his descendants in the Babylonian exile were commanded by the prophet Isaiah: "Depart from Babylon, flee from the Chaldeans... proclaim this... to the ends of the earth" (Isaiah 48:20), even across the Atlantic Ocean. Do we hear the eternal call?

4.

As in many moments in history, Jacob does not depart in an orderly manner but flees in haste, moments before disaster, a warning sign for his descendants: "in haste we went out of Egypt" (Exodus 12:39). Every generation and its own Egypt.

When Laban hears "that Jacob had fled," he is enraged: "and he pursued him for seven days and overtook him in the hill country of Gilead" (Genesis 31:23). On our way home, and even when we arrive, the pursuit will continue. It is almost a law of nature. Therefore, the question is not why they chase us or hate our existence, but how we confront this eternal phenomenon that Nahum Sokolow called in 1882: "Eternal hatred for an eternal People," as the of his book was.

One thing is clear: we must not remain indifferent to the current abandonment of the battlefield of publicopinion and world consciousness.

5.

Jacob flees and Laban pursues. When they meet, the father-in-law mutters: "it is in my power to do you harm" (Genesis 31:29). He accuses Jacob of stealing his gods and searches the tents thoroughly, in vain.

At that moment, all the anger Jacob had stored for twenty years erupts. He rebukes Laban for his deceit, his schemes, and his treachery: "what is my transgression, what is my sin, that you have pursued me?... for you have rummaged through all my belongings, what have you found?... set it here before my kinsmen and yours and let them decide between us! For twenty years I have been with you... I served you fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flocks, and you changed my wages ten times... were it not for the God of my father... you would have sent me away empty handed..." (Genesis 31:36–42).

But Laban is unmoved: "the daughters are my daughters, the sons are my sons, the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine. and for my daughters, what can I do... or for the children they have borne?" (Genesis 31:43).

The broken dialogue between Jacob and Laban echoes a truth, thousands of years old. This same conversation was heard in the exiles of Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Spain, Europe, and the Arab countries. In all the places where Jews lived and enriched their surroundings, contributed to culture, science, the economy, and security, gave their lives for kingdoms that never called them by name, and increased their wealth, prosperity, and safety.

Look at the list of Nobel Prize laureates, in which the proportion of Jews is vastly greater than their proportion in the world population.

And as the Netziv (Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin) wrote in the nineteenth century in his introduction to Genesis : "This was the praise of the patriarchs, that besides being righteous, devout, and lovers of God... they were also upright, meaning they behaved toward the nations of the world with love and concern for their welfare, for such concern sustains creation."

6.

In the final accounting, we were almost always answered with Laban's words: "all that you see is mine" (Genesis 31:43), and we were told to be grateful for escaping with our lives.

Even today, facing the transformation of Europe and the threat to the West, including the US, by Islamists from the school of the Muslim Brotherhood, antisemitic forces remain unconfused. True, Jews no longer live among them as before; millions were exterminated and now they live in their own state. In contrast, Muslims are reshaping the character of the West. Still, the ancient hatred of Jews is stronger than the real threat. And so, they join forces with Israel's enemies and fight the Jewish state, even as it fights for them against the enemies of civilization and humanity.

Jacob, returning to his ancient homeland, is no longer the same man. He now contains within himself qualities of Esau that he acquired in exile, together with a deeper spiritual world and a mature relationship with the Master of the Ladder. He is no longer merely a simple man dwelling in tents. This time, when he must confront Esau, the reckoning will end in his favor. He has no option but victory. We need patience. And faith.

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A Jew digs in the arid desert soil. The earth is unyielding. He persists, striking rock and dirt, clawing at the land's innards with his bare hands. Hostile neighbours mock his naïveté, but he believes. "The land's ancient wrath, smoky and primeval... it whitens your lashes with salt... as you ravage it, metal again bludgeons your bones... your body weeps through aching hands, against sealed stone, against a deaf ear."

That is how the poet Nathan Alterman described the struggle to find water in the Negev, before Israel was born. "A man in his dream and a tree in its roots, bound in dread, petrified and stilled."

We can imagine it was the same in the days of the patriarchs, when Abraham dug and found water, and Isaac continued his father's work. Water in the desert benefits everyone. It brings life, settlement, trade, food, and agriculture. This was the old, rational "conception": that everyone seeks prosperity, that people would rather build and flourish than fight. That peace and cooperation would prevail because they are in everyone's best interest.

2.

But not everyone sees it that way. Without morality and fear of God, ancient hatreds, tribal laws, foundational myths, and desert codes easily outweigh logic. Myth trumps reason. "And all the wells that his father's servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth." (Genesis 26:15). Not merely sealed, but deliberately filled with dirt to ensure no one could ever use them again. They were willing to suffer thirst and doom their region to ruin just so that the Jews would suffer.

For generations, commentators struggled to explain why the Philistines would destroy their own lifelines just to harm their enemies. But those of us who survived October 7 know that such a thing is possible. For our neighbours, the destruction of their own homes, towns, and lives was worth it for a single day in which they could humiliate the Jews and unleash unimaginable cruelty upon them. The biblical Philistines vanished long ago, but new invaders have taken their place, from the Philistines to the Palestinians of our time.

3.

Why? The Bible offers a succinct answer: "And the Philistines envied him." (Genesis 26:14). Isaac told Abimelech the truth: "You hate me." They couldn't bear the success of this Hebrew man, who had received the same barren land as they had, but unlike them had turned it into a thriving, prosperous region with a strong economy, blooming communities, and a cultural, spiritual, and technological message for the entire region. "And Isaac sowed in that land, and in that year reaped a hundredfold – and the Lord blessed him. And the man became rich, and he grew richer and richer, until he was very wealthy. And he had flocks, herds, and many enterprises." (Genesis 26:12).

Look around at Israel's neighbouring states, and you will understand the root of the hatred. Now that they have failed to destroy us, they are doing the same to Europe – the continent that expelled and murdered its Jews. Israel stands at the front line of Western civilization. In fighting the invaders, we are also defending those in Europe who have chosen to collaborate with the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks their destruction. What a disgrace.

4.

Abimelech said to Isaac: "Move away from us, for you have become too powerful for us!" It wasn't just his economic success that bothered them – worse, he had grown strong from within their midst. His wealth, they claimed, came from them. In reality, as the Torah tells it, Isaac succeeded through his own talents and hard work. He sowed and reaped, dug and found water. He did not grow rich by exploiting others, but by contributing to them. His success only served to highlight his neighbours' failures, and what could they tell their own people, who were responsible for their own poverty? The familiar antisemitic formula of blaming Jews for others' failures began back then.

The 19th-century Torah commentator Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (the Netziv) wrote: "Scripture tells us this is what happens in exile – they will fence us out from settling in all parts of the land." Isaac's son Jacob experienced the same pattern. He arrived at his uncle Laban's small farm and turned it into an empire within 20 years. Even Laban admitted: "The Lord has blessed me because of you." But this did not earn gratitude – only continued deceit. And when Jacob became wealthy – not at Laban's expense, but together with him – he heard Laban's sons say what Jew-haters have said throughout the ages: "Jacob has taken all that was our father's, and from what was our father's he has gained all this wealth."

This is a historical formula we know all too well. Jews settle, contribute to the local economy, culture, ethics, and governance. They sometimes enter politics and help the place thrive. Then, when they succeed, alongside their contributions, they are accused of exploiting the land and enriching themselves at the expense of the "native" population. The next stage is always the same: riots, destruction, exile. It makes no difference that Jews lived in those places long before their so-called "indigenous" populations: in Spain for a thousand years until the expulsion in 1492; in Italy for 2,200 years until deportation to the death camps in 1943; in Iraq for some 2,500 years until the 1941 Farhud pogrom – and so on.

5.

And yet we never gave up on the world. Even after being expelled, even after being herded into gas chambers, we sought to repair and improve humanity. We do not give up even now, despite the hypocrisy of Europe, Australia, Canada and other countries that have capitulated to terror and incitement by the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, turning their backs on the Jewish people and its state in the hope of quieting the riots on their streets.

Jews have always been the canary in the coal mine for civilizational collapse. Hatred begins with the Jews, spreads to other minorities, and ultimately consumes the very societies that harbor it.

As in Jotham's parable, the thornbush, barren and full of hate, is a warning to the world: if the thornbush reigns and directs violence against the Jews, then ultimately "fire will come out of the thornbush and consume the cedars of Lebanon." Western civilization is in peril. We repeat our call to our Jewish brothers and sisters worldwide: Come home before it's too late. This is your place.

6.

But we did not despair. We returned and re-dug the water wells that our enemies had stopped up – for the benefit of the entire region. "And Isaac returned and dug again the wells of water." Our sages learned from this: "Great are the righteous" – why? "Because they work to build the world." The wells are the sources of life – Torah, science, culture, ethics, and the countless innovations that this blessed land has produced in unprecedented abundance compared to the rest of the world. And we do not hoard them; we share them with humanity to improve the lives of all who have breath and spirit.

"And there they found a well of fresh water... and he named the well Esek for they quarrelled with him... and they dug another well and called it Sitnah... and he dug another well and they did not argue over it – and he called it Rehovot and said, Now the Lord has made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land." (Genesis 26:17–25).

They will burn, destroy, and block the sources of life. But we will heal, build, and add justice and repair to the world. The deeds of the patriarchs are a sign for their descendants.

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"The danger is not antisemitism onthe Left. It is antisemitism on theRight. And I'm here to tell you In the last six months I have seen antisemitism rising on the Right in a way I have never seen in my entire life..... In the last year we had three prominent voices on the right, publicly news Gush: maybe Hitler wasn't that bad guy after all. I am here to tell you: The Church is asleep right now". These forceful words were spoken recently by Senator Ted Cruz at the Christians United for Israel (CUFI) conference. Cruz fits the ancient Jewish definition of a Righteous Among the Nations. His commitment to Israel, its security and its future is inspiring. We must listen to him.

2.

Cruz said he had spoken with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the phenomenon. The prime minister's first response was that "Itis Qatar, that'sIran, they paying for it, it's astroturf." Cruz said it was true that they run bots and finance the spread of antisemitic messages, but behind the phenomenon there are also real people and a young audience that listens to the toxic propaganda. "Imagine how different American political history would have been if Rush Limbaugh had been an antisemite instead of a philosemite; We would a fundamentally different country! If Rush Limbaugh had spent years spreading poison."

He was referring, of course, to hosts like Tucker Carlson, who has turned sharply against Israel and even hosted an openly Nazi guest on his program, as well as other figures on the American Right.

This antisemitic poison is seeping into right-wing youth. It includes an appealing argument that supports isolationism. "What do we have to do with Israel? That is their problem, not ours." Cruz told his listeners that supporting Israel is not charity but "aunequivocally in a national security interest of the US to support Israel! Those who hate Israel hate America; those who hate Jews hate Christians." The return the US receives for its annual 3 billion dollars in assistance is high-quality intelligence, as seen in the recent war. "If America tried to replicate that intelligence network, it would cost tens of billions of dollars! Every lunatic terrorist that Israel took out made Americasafer. And the united State of America should say to that little nation: thank you, thank you, thank you."

3.

Cruz did not rely only on the security argument; he wanted to speak as a Christian. Support for Israel among young Christians is Plummeting. In addition to the political and security lies being spread, he said, a false theological claim is being taught: "They are being taught replacement theology." This ancient early Christian claim, which fed generations of hatred and pogroms, says that once the Jews rejected Jesus' messianic role, they violated their covenant with God, and God, in turn, annulled the covenant with them and chose the Church in their place.

Cruz mocked the claim, as if "when God made a promise he did not mean the promise he made," and as if all the promises of Israel's prophets in the Hebrew Bible, which the Church in its various denominations accepts, were merely "a dead letter."

The Texas senator called passionately on the Church to understand that this antisemitism is a rapidly "growing cancer." A decade ago, he said, "when the Democrats saw it rising, they did nothing, and lost the party. I will not remainsilent!" In his view, this is the most serious danger facing those who love Israel. "The Church is being corrupted right now, and leaders in the church need to engage and say that the Bible is not silent on Israel, the Bible is cristal clear on Israel, and in the church, we will stand and fight!"

Indeed, words of sharp urgency. Thanks to Senator Cruz and to the excellent CUFI organization, led by Pastor John Hagee. But we cannot rely on others and are obligated to act ourselves. In this regard, it appears that we too are asleep.

4.

Israel must allocate resources and personnel to confront antisemitism on the American Right, especially among young Christians. This is a battlefront in every respect. A task force must be appointed that understands the issue not only politically but also theologically. The government must send its own envoys to churches and Christian communities in the US to get ahead of the threat and work on the ground in light of the troubling momentum. We do not have the privilege of losing this core base of support. These young people will be the leaders of the next generation. It is possible. The Foreign Ministry, the Prime Minister's Office and the Diaspora Affairs Ministry must break free from their fixation and address this problem with tools never used before. Our future depends on it.

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2.
In the twelfth century, Rabbi Judah Halevi asked with emotion: "Zion, will you not ask after the welfare of your captives, your seekers of peace who are the remnant of your flocks? And later, he longed to wander through "the places where God appeared to your prophets and messengers." In his imagination he reached Hebron and the resting place of the great founders of the nation: "Even as I stand upon the graves of my forefathers, I am struck silent in Hebron before your choicest tombs."

When Moses sent spies to scout the land of Israel, the only place they knew from the stories was Hebron and within it the Cave of the Patriarchs: "They went up and scouted the land... they went up through the Negev and came to Hebron" (Numbers 13:21–22).

Two of them withstood social pressure and clung to the truth against the ten who slandered the land. One was Caleb son of Jephunneh, who after the entry into the land conquered Hebron and made it the capital of the tribe of Judah. Years later, the reign of King David began in Hebron, and from there, it spread across the land and history, until it reached Jerusalem.

3.
The negotiations  between Abraham and Hittites described in the Torah echo well-known conventions of the ancient Near East and Hittite documents, yet they contain a unique innovation. Abraham says to the Hittites: "I am a resident alien among you. Grant me a burial holding among you so that I may bury my dead before me" (Genesis 23:4).

A resident alien was someone who arrived from another country and settled in a place, typically with the consent of the local landowners. His residence was considered temporary and he lacked rights to acquire land permanently, certainly not for a family burial estate.

Rabbi David ben Amram al Adani, author of the Midrash Hagadol (Yemen, mid-14th century), writes: "Come and see the humility of our father Abraham. The Holy One blessed be He promised to give him and his descendants the land forever, yet now he found no burial place except by paying money, and he did not question the ways of God or protest. Moreover, he spoke to the inhabitants of the land only with humility, as it says, a resident alien. God said to him: Because you lowered yourself, I swear I will make you a lord and leader over them."

It is a timely message: faith is measured in historical patience regarding the gap between what is hoped for and what is present, both personally and nationally. Many times, we protest political or military decisions that appear weak, only to discover later that they were part of broader stroke, whose value becomes clear with time.

4.
The Hittites offer Abraham their choicest burial sites as a gift, but he insists on purchasing one. A gift can be regretted, if not now then in future generations. So what of the prohibition on selling land to foreigners? The solution comes through a legal workaround: the place is given as a gift for which one pays a tremendous price. "Abraham weighed out to Ephron the silver he had spoken of before the Hittites, four hundred shekels of silver of the accepted weight. And the field of Ephron in Machpelah, facing Mamre, was established as Abraham's property in the presence of the Hittites and of all who entered the gate of his city") Genesis 23:16–18(. And today we may add: before all of humanity.

The cave held within it the fathers and mothers of the nation, like seeds planted in the earth that sprouted not as words in books but as living reality. A central symbol weaving through the Book of Genesis is the womb. The Garden of Eden appears as a cosmic womb containing the embryo of humanity in the form of Adam and Eve. Noah's Ark is a human-made womb that also holds humanity in its embryonic state. Then comes the cave to which Lot and his daughters fled, where Moab was born, from whom came Ruth, the ancestral mother of King David. And now the Cave of Machpelah. And what is the cave if not a womb holding the memory of the nation until its rebirth?

5.
In many myths and folktales we meet a hero who sets out in search of a treasure hidden in a cave. This reflects a quest for the treasure that the psychoanalyst Carl Jung called the self, the deep core of our being beneath disguises and masks. Jung distinguished the self from the ego, which is only the center of consciousness, while the self is the whole personality toward which we grow.

Guardians protect the treasure: a dragon, a serpent, a monster. They symbolize the binding force of the Great Mother, a figure whose dominance can overwhelm us and prevent the development of an independent self. Overcoming the dragon represents the triumph of the emerging self over the old ego, shedding the masks and emotional chains that imprison us. It is the release from the heavy shadow of our parents. After a painful and demanding process, the hero gains his essence and independent identity and is reborn in the cave. This is true both personally and nationally.

"Isaac went out to meditate in the field toward evening, and he lifted his eyes... and Rebekah lifted her eyes, saw Isaac and fell from the camel... and she took the veil and covered herself" (Genesis 24:63–65). Isaac goes out to pour out his soul in the field of Machpelah. He had mourned his mother for three years, her only son, visiting her grave throughout that time. Even now he enters the cave where his mother lies, a place where his self is bound to her memory. Something within him is stuck. The Abrahamic movement of lech lecha has frozen. Isaac stops laughing.

Did Abraham see this paralysis in his son? Perhaps that is why he sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac, to release him from the paralyzing memory and help him build an independent life. And so, Isaac emerges from the cave with eyes blurred by tears and longing. Then Rebekah approaches him, and the hope of the house of Abraham is reborn, the hope of thousand years: "Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother. He married Rebekah, she became his wife and he loved her, and Isaac was comforted after his mother" (Genesis 24:67). And with him, we too are comforted.

6.
Judah Halevi ends his poem of longing for Zion: "Happy is he who waits and arrives and sees the radiance of your dawn, whose mornings break forth upon him, who sees the goodness of your chosen ones and rejoices in your joy when you return to the days of your youth."

Here is a great Jew who lived nearly a millennium ago and expressed the essence of Zionism: the Jewish people return home to their father and mother. Once our first father was a resident alien here, but then our mother Sarah, the first Hebrew woman, died. Abraham purchased a burial estate, and from it began our permanent settlement. We returned not because our ancestors are buried here, but because they lived here, because these were "the days of Sarah's life", because here they created and founded a nation with an eternal message.

As I write these words, my eyes are filled with harsh videos of the wave of antisemitism sweeping the Jewish world. These verses are more relevant than ever: our brothers and sisters, come home. This is your place.

And not only in his poems. Judah Halevi ended his great philosophical work, the Kuzari, with a Zionist call as well, in the classic translation of Judah ibn Tibbon: "For Jerusalem will truly be rebuilt when the people of Israel long for her with the utmost longing, until they cherish her very stone and dust."

Will we listen?

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Abbas repeated the same statements his hosts wanted to hear: "We want to live in our own state alongside Israel, which we recognized in 1988 and in the 1993 Oslo Accords, as a state and as a territory." Like all Europeans, the Italians are careful to distinguish between the "moderate" Abbas and the Hamas terrorist organization, and between Ramallah and Gaza. These kinds of statements make that artificial separation easier to sustain.

2.
For decades, people have been talking about the "two-state solution," as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also did in her statement after meeting with Abbas. But in both Abbas' declaration and Meloni's remarks, half the phrase was missing, "for two peoples." The premise of the Oslo Accords was that two national movements lie at the root of the conflict: the Jewish Zionist and the Palestinian, struggling over the same territory. The logic went that if they divided the land, peace would follow.

Yet while Israel recognized the national identity of the Palestinians, they have never recognized the Jews as a people entitled to national self-determination. It is almost absurd when one considers that the Palestinian people did not truly exist before Israel captured Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem in 1967. Until then, those territories were controlled by Jordan and Egypt. Why, then, was no Palestinian state established at that time?

The answer is simple: Despite Abbas' sweet words, the Palestinians never wanted a state of their own alongside Israel. They only wanted a state instead of Israel. Had the Jews lost the 1948 War of Independence, the Arabs of the region would have slaughtered them as they did on October 7, and then divided the spoils and land among themselves, southern Syria, northern Egypt and western Jordan. "Palestine" was never meant to be a distinct Arab homeland, but an antisemitic psychological construct, a name the Romans in the second century deliberately gave this land in place of "Judea" (or "Israel") to erase the link between the Jewish people and their land.

3.
It is not only Hamas that denies the Jewish people's existence as a nation; Abbas does too. Article 20 of the Palestinian National Charter explicitly states: "Judaism, being a divine religion, is not an independent nationality. Likewise, the Jews are not one people with an independent personality; they are citizens of the states to which they belong." This clause in the official document of the Palestinian Authority has never been amended. It asserts that the Jews, one of the world's most ancient peoples, are merely adherents of a religion, not a nation, and therefore have no right to their own homeland.

This is why when Abbas speaks before European audiences about recognizing Israel, he does not recognize it as a Jewish state, meaning, he does not recognize the Jewish people's right to their ancestral land. The consequence is that even if a Palestinian state were established, as in the European fantasy, the conflict with the Jews would continue.

Every survey conducted in the Palestinian Authority shows a solid majority supporting Hamas and its atrocities. The cruel irony is that Abbas himself has encouraged such support: His government pays lifelong stipends to terrorists who murder Jews and to their families, with the payments determined by the number of Jews killed. This is a formal budget item, signed and defended by Abbas despite international pressure to abolish it.

4.
And a geographical note: Gaza lies at sea level, while Ramallah sits at an altitude of about 900 meters, overlooking Israel's main population centers and its international airport. Supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state there is equivalent to calling for Israel's suicide. After the October 7 massacre, there is a broad Israeli consensus against this reckless idea.

Some 32 kilometers east of the Italian prime minister's residence in Rome stands Monte Gennaro, at an elevation of about 1,200 meters. Would the Italians agree to the creation of an entity modeled on Nazi Germany atop that mountain, one devoted to their annihilation? The answer is obviously no, and that same clarity should guide policymakers in Rome when it comes to Israel.

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The day after Hitler was appointed chancellor, pogroms against Germany's Jews began under the protection of the SA, the Nazi stormtroopers, on the chancellor's orders. The riots sparked a wave of protests around the world, and Germany's Jews were shaken for the sake of their homeland and its good name. Yaakov Trachtenberg, a publisher in Charlottenburg, appealed to Jewish communities across the Reich to repel "the propaganda of horror." His office began to receive statements from the major organizations of Germany's Jews that stood with the chancellor against those who slandered him and the German fatherland.

"We Jews of Germany have for generations been part of the very flesh of the German fatherland, the German people and German honor, and so we will continue in the future. We will serve Germany with all our strength, with loyalty and love... We reject... the despicable propaganda... against our fatherland" (Union of Jewish Reich Soldiers).

The president of the Union of Rabbis in Germany, Dr. Leo Baeck, wrote: "The national German revolution fights on two fronts: a struggle against Bolshevism and the reconstruction of the German fatherland... The reconstruction of Germany is a noble ideal, accepted by all the Jews of the German fatherland. There is no other country in Europe in which the bond between Jews and their fatherland is so strong and intimate."

In the summer of 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were enacted and emancipation was revoked along with Jews' citizenship. In October 1938 the identity cards of Germany's Jews received the letter J (Jude) and the original name of the cardholder was appended with Israel for men and Sara for women. This was how the Nazis returned to "Germans of the Mosaic faith" (of the religion of Moses) their original identity.

2.

And what about the US? In the early 1950s Elmer Berger, a Reform rabbi who rejected Jewish nationalism, wrote that the State of Israel is evidence of Hitler's victory, because the Zionists "exploited the powerlessness of the Jews under the Nazi regime to promote Hitler's idea of separation (between the Jews and the nations of the world), by turning it into a positive value and political capital to establish the Jewish state."

During a visit to the Middle East he went to Egypt, Syria and Iraq. He wrote that "there is no sign or trace of anti-Semitism in those countries." He dismissed the accusation that Nasser persecuted the remnants of the Jewish community as a "Zionist conspiracy" and declared that "there was never true discrimination on the part of Muslims toward the Jews."

3.

And Canada? At the end of 2002 a Jewish professor named Michael Neumann of the University of Ontario wrote: "My only concern is indeed to help the Palestinians... I am not really interested in truth, or justice, or understanding, or anything else, except insofar as it serves that goal... (To that end) I will use anything, including lies, injustice and obfuscation, to do it. If an effective strategy means that some truths about the Jews will not see the light of day, I do not care. If an effective strategy means encouraging reasonable anti-Semitism, or reasonable hostility toward Jews, I do not care. If that means encouraging cruel racial anti-Semitism, or the destruction of the State of Israel, I still do not care."

In April 2009 the Neumann brothers sent a letter to the president and to Yad Vashem demanding that their grandmother's name be removed from the list of Holocaust victims: "Remove our grandmother's name from the memorial wall at Yad Vashem... Please accept this as an expression of disgust and contempt for your state and everything it represents." His brother Osha added: "Israel created a fusion between the image of Jewish perpetrators and war criminals and the victims of the concentration camps as weak people. This fusion is abhorrent to me. I do not want to take part in it." There are many such examples.

4.

The existence of Jews in an independent state sometimes creates an intellectual and emotional dissonance for Jews of the diaspora, because they have to explain, at the very least to themselves, why they do not make Aliya to their ancestral land. There are many excuses, and for a not small number there is an overlap between ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist attitudes and liberal anti-Israel positions that verge on anti-Semitism.

In the mid-1890s the anti-Semitic politician Karl Lueger was elected mayor of Vienna. In his campaign he proclaimed: "These Jews, they rob us of everything sacred to us! Fatherland! Nationality! And finally our property as well." The rise of anti-Semitism drove many Jews to convert, assimilate or turn away from their people, but it also pushed one man, Binyamin Ze'ev Herzl, to understand that the Jews had no future in Europe other than returning home to Zion. Herzl did not live to see the results of his call, but those who accepted it and returned home were spared the final solution that awaited them from Lueger's spiritual descendants.

5.

In 1492, after an almost thousand-year stay in Spain, the Jewish people were expelled. Among the exiles was a four-year-old child named Joseph Karo, later one of the greatest of Israel in all generations, author of the Shulchan Aruch, the Great Halacha Codex of the Jewish People. In 1536 he made Aliya to the land of Israel and settled in Safed. One night, during the Shavu'ot festival, the holy group led by Rabbi Karo heard "a voice speaking from the pious one, a great voice..." that was heard again the next day, and it was interpreted by them as a heavenly voice: "Go up to the Land of Israel, for not all times are the same... and if you desire and listen, the good land you will eat, therefore hurry and go up..." Do the Jews of New York hear the call?

Rabbi Judah Alkalai wrote in the 19th century that one must distinguish between private repentance (Teshuva in Hebrew) and general repentance. Private repentance is a religious matter, remorse for sin, confession and personal atonement. General repentance is "that all Israel will return to the Lord our God to the land of our fathers' inheritance" (The root of Teshuva derives from shuv, which means: to return). Concerning general repentance "all the prophets commanded... and Israel will not be redeemed except in repentance... which means... that Israel will return to the holy land."

From this we can understand the depth of the words of the tannaitic sage Rabbi Yehoshua in the Talmud: "If (the People of) Israel do not repent, they are not redeemed, and the Holy One, blessed be He, will set over them a king whose decrees are harsh like Haman's, and Israel will repent and he will restore them to the right." Haman sought "to annihilate, to kill and to destroy all the Jews" (Book of Esther 3:13). If Israel does not repent, in other words, if they do not return home to Zion, they are not redeemed, and perhaps they do not want to be redeemed but to remain in their exile. Then, the Talmud says, a terrible anti-Semitism will awaken that will raise rulers committed to the ideology that crushes the Jewish people and its state. Admittedly this is a long process, but why wait for it to ripen fully?

6.

In the week between the call "Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father's house to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1), and the Lord's announcement to Sarah of the birth of Isaac (18:10), the first native-born who never left the land, we were notified about the election of a Muslim anti-Semite as mayor of the city with the largest number of Jews in the world. After the binding of Isaac, we are told: "For I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring... and your descendants will inherit the gates of their enemies." (Genesis 22:17).

Come home, Jews, my brothers and sisters. You do not see it now, as Jews in other periods did not perceive the danger at its outset. But perhaps a future generation will tell our descendants that the historical process of the return of American Jews to their ancient homeland began this week.

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