Behold, the Irrelevance of Antisemitism.
Thou wilt arise, and have mercy upon Żiyyon: for it is time to favour her; for the set time is come. Psalms 102:14
A Prayer of the afflicted, when he faints, and pours out his complaint before the Lord.
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and let my cry reach Thee.
Hide not Thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble; incline Thy ear to me: in the day when I call, answer me speedily.
For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned like a hearth.
My heart is smitten like grass, and withered; so that I forget how to eat my bread.
By reason of the voice of my groaning, my bones cleave to my skin.
I am like an owl of the wilderness: I am like a night flier of the desert.
I watch, and am like a lonely sparrow upon the house top.
My enemies insult me all the day; and they that are mad against me swear by me.
For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,
because of Thy indignation and Thy wrath: for Thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down.
My days are like an evening shadow; and I am withered like grass.
But Thou, O Lord, sittest enthroned forever; and Thy name endures to all generations.
Thou wilt arise, and have mercy upon Żiyyon: for it is time to favour her; for the set time is come.
For Thy servants hold her stones dear, and cherish her very dust.
So the nations shall fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth Thy glory.
For the Lord builds up Żiyyon, he appears in his glory.
He heeds the prayer of the destitute, and does not despise their prayer.
This shall be written for the generation to come: so that a people yet unborn shall praise the Lord.
For he has looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the Lord behold the earth;
to hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those who are appointed to death;
that men may declare the name of Lord in Żiyyon, and his praise in Yerushalayim;
when the people are gathered together, and the kingdoms, to serve the Lord.
He weakened my strength in the way; he shortened my days.
I say, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: Thou whose years endure to all generations.
Of old Thou hast laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of Thy hands.
They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall grow old like a garment; Thou shalt change them like a cloak, and they will pass away:
but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end.
The children of Thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before Thee.
From the fourth verse on, the psalm could be describing the events of October 7 and the effect they have had on Jews. More specifically, these verses echo what might be said by the dead of Oct 7, if they could speak. “By reason of the voice of my groaning, my bones cleave to my skin.” With all the understandable concern for the safety of the remaining captives, and the understandable if regrettable mass obsession with political machinations, it seems that the voices of the dead are lost in the mix. It only seems that way:
And the Lord said to Qayin, Where is Hevel thy brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brother’s keeper?
And He said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood cries to Me from the ground (Gen 4: 9-10)
The blood from the ground of that slaughter has risen through the feet of every Jew and has settled around their welcoming hearts, hearts whose beating resonates through the collective Jewish consciousness, like a Semitic morse code, saying: “I am your keeper. I am your keeper. I am your keeper.”
The first three verses of the psalm have become an anthem of sorts for the Jewish people, sung in times of despair. One of the most poignant examples of this was on the day of the Expulsion of the Jews of Gush Katif, when young women and girls congregated in the main synagogue of Neve Dekalim and sang the verses in prayer that the evil decree would be cancelled.
This was the original sin that led to Oct. 7. Just in recent days, the first of probably endless “investigation committees” presented as a main reason for the army’s unpreparedness the fact that for the 15 years before the attack, the IDF had absolutely no humint sources inside Gaza. When the Jews lived in Gaza, there were thousands. Nothing like Oct 7 could have happened.
Another event that shattered the souls of the Jewish people was when three youths were kidnapped and subsequently murdered. For the weeks preceding the discovery that the youths had been murdered, while the country still had hope to recover them alive, many public prayers were held. During the one held in Tel Aviv, the same prayer was sung.
The pattern is clear. In times of urgent distress, the people of Israel must turn to their Father Above, or, if still distant from Him, at least unite as one against any evil that has risen against the Jews.
The living giving voice to the murdered was also heard at the time of the Expulsion from Gush Katif:
The bodies of their loved ones were dug up and reinterred elsewhere in Israel.
The Jewish people are bound up in their ancient scrolls, so much so that they become all but indistinguishable. As the ancient Dead Sea scrolls from Qumran were brought with great care to museums, where they were carefully un-scrolled by experts under highly magnified conditions and with fine tweezers and other specialty tools, so to the bodies of families hugging each other after being burnt alive until they turned into a single charred clump of flesh needed to be carefully un-scrolled by Israeli pathologists, so that they could be identified, recognized and finally mourned. Jewish unity is imperative, and if we do not achieve it in life, it will be achieved for us in death, hugging one another, our brothers’ keepers for eternity.
That is what is in Jewish hearts. Our brothers’ blood cries out to heaven: “Where was the IDF? Where was the Air Force? Where was God?” The answer to the first two questions is the subject of a year-long cover-up. Who knows if we will ever know the answers to these questions?
In order to address the third question, we must investigate the nature of this Great Pause in the war. If we look at it locally, we can explain it in logical terms. The Biden administration held us back. The Biden administration did not supply us with necessary munitions. The Israeli opposition leveraged the heart-breaking situation of the remaining captives to force the government to deal with murderous Hamas. The Israeli government itself was of two minds: one to destroy Hamas and two, to save as many hostages as possible. If we look at it this way it makes a kind of sense. We remain confused about the way forward, but the confusion itself makes sense: there is a new American administration that seems to want an Israeli victory more than the Israelis themselves. The Jewish State needs time to digest this change and to plan accordingly.
Widening our view, we see that the Pause is leading to a great consolidation of world-wide Jew hatred. It is important to remember that the latest iteration of Antisemitism did not begin on Oct. 7. It began sometime before when a famous “rapper” (defined here as one who spits out lyrics such as “off the pigs” and “get on your knees bitch) declared “war” on Jews. His millions of followers on social media cheered wildly in agreement to his rants. Enlightened Jews and friends of Jews were appalled. Some time passed and the rapper was declared mentally unstable and ruffled Jewish feathers began to smooth out. Then came Oct.7. What a difference a year makes. 365 little days. Literally and tragically, before the Israeli military knew what was happening, the Antisemites of the world were taking to the streets attacking the Jewish state …for what? Well, the answer to that depended on when you tuned in to the news. For as soon as Israel meticulously and accurately pointed out some action perpetrated by members of the death-cult, the narrative was twisted so that perpetrator became victim and victim became perpetrator. That might have been expected from the PR machine of the death cult, but what was surprising was the instantaneous acceptance of the death-cult’s narrative without question by the mainstream media. When presented with video evidence uploaded by the terrorists from their phones, or worse, from the phones of those that they were in the process of raping and burning and slaughtering while live-streaming to the families of the Jewish victims, the death-cult PR simply said: “It didn’t happen.” And for too much of the West, that was the end of the story. This particular—what to call it—insult to common sense is what has prevented the genie from being whistled back into the bottle. This time, the Jews will not have it. The result of denying the truth of the video evidence provided by the murderers themselves will become evident after the Great Pause has ended.
For the first time in over two thousand years, the Jewish nation is poised to defeat all of its surrounding existential enemies. None will remain who will take up the sword against the Jewish people. What will remain of Antisemites? First and foremost, the yapping ignoramuses the world over who publicly and for posterity proudly and loudly stood with the practitioners of a death-cult will almost certainly double-down on their ignorance. Certain Jew-hating factions in the US State Department and Congress who championed the “Antizionism is not Antisemitism” mega-meme will be left holding empty ideological shopping bags. And Europe. Well, almost-Islamo-Europe if we are to be truthful. Eighty-five years after gathering the Jews of Europe to be herded off to death camps or passively observing it being done, what is to be of them? Is their monstrous crime forgiven? Is it forgotten? It is most certainly denied. That is what created the template followed by the PR of the Islamo-Nazis of Oct.7: “You can say anything against the Jews. Go ahead. Try it. You’ll never be contradicted by anyone, other than the heads of a few Jewish organizations and some fevered Jewish minds on social media, i.e., interested parties, which will only strengthen our narrative.”
Europe is nothing more than a vast Jewish graveyard, howbeit with a potency not foreseen by the Nazis. For the very ashes that flew skyward from the crematoriums settled back down in widespread arcs, fertilizing the ground, being absorbed into the fowl and fauna that are nurtured from that consecrated earth, absorbed into the bodies and souls and of the perpetrators and their descendants. A Chernobyl-like fallout of Divine Morality. You wanted to get rid of your Jews? They are now part of your DNA, pointing an accusing finger from within. That pointing finger bearing witness to the crime cannot be ignored by the carriers of that guilt. So was born the Anti-Zionist NGO, profusely funded by silent and untraceable partners (along with shameless European governments), who cynically employ useful idiot Israeli leftists as foot soldiers, whose purported aim is to promote a utterly untenable “Two-State Solution,” but whose hidden purpose was always to be cleansed of the collective guilt of the Holocaust and to portray to the world that the true descendants of their murderous forefathers are the Jews themselves. The few exceptions to this European devilry will always be cherished by the Jewish people. They are the Righteous of the Nations.
If our interrogation of the Great Pause has led us back eighty-five years, might it not lead further? What has defined the Jewish condition since the destruction of the Second Temple is hester panim, “God hiding his face,” or the absence of a palpable, undeniable divinity in the world. Might this Great Pause be the bookend to the scroll of Jewish history, with this involuntary universal compulsion to self-sort into haters of Jews and lovers of Jews? In preparation for what, exactly? Is there a collective subconscious drive to will into existence a palpable Divine Immanence for the good of humanity, or, standing against that, a drive to defy and deny any thought of a Deity of Israel? “Hide not Thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble; incline Thy ear to me: in the day when I call, answer me speedily.” I am reminded of the hippies’ chant: “The whole world is watching!” Nothing describes the world’s obsession with Israel over the last eighty years better than this phrase, unless it be improved upon by the addition of two words. The whole world is watching and waiting.
What should be the Jewish stance in this reality? As always, the Jews have a scroll for that. The scroll of Esther, which will be read in public next week during the holiday of Purim. It portrays an early attempt to exterminate the Jews. One striking thing to notice about the book of Esther, that sets it apart from the rest of the books of the Bible, is that God is not mentioned in it. At least not directly. As such it can be seen as a chronicle of Jews in crisis during a period of hester panim, and can serve as the primary bookend of the Jewish story in exile. That scroll had a happy ending.
May it be God’s will that the scroll that is being signed and sealed during this Great Pause tell a story that ends with relief and deliverance for the Jewish people, and for the world at large.
Wow! I pray daily for Hashem to come where we can know that our Lord is palpable and with us. I have faith.
Maybe its time I came home.......Israel is Home