EXPLAINING
THE UNEXPLAINABLE:
THE SHOAH AND LOVE OF THE
EXILE
Although no human creature can truly understand the Mind of God, we Jews believe that the Torah, the writings of our ancient Sages and our historical experiences have provided us with sufficient guidance to turn our collective existence into a blessing for the generations. Nevertheless, the lessons imbedded in certain events are just too painful to extract. And so it has become a truism among us that the Shoah (Holocaust) is a theological mystery that can never be comprehended.
And, in fact, it would appear, at first blush, that there is theological support for this position embedded in the story of the deaths of the two sons of Aaron -- Nadab and Abihu -- who, in their religious exuberance, had brought before God their fire pans with an uncommanded alien fire. As the Torah relates: "A fire came forth from before HaShem and consumed them; and they died before HaShem. Moses said to Aaron, 'Of this did HaShem speak, saying, "I will be sanctified through those who are nearest to Me, and [thus] I will be honored before the entire people"'; and Aaron was silent." (Lev. 10:2-3). Why was Aaron silent in the face of the horrific death-by-fire of his two sons? Aaron's silence reflected his acceptance of the Truth that God's Actions are always Just, and yet sometimes -- to the human mind -- Incomprehensible. Ultimately, Aaron was able to take comfort in only one thing, namely, God's Declaration that his sons had died for Kiddush HaShem (sanctification of God's Name). However, while we certainly honor God -- as did Aaron -- by faithfully accepting the incomprehensibility of individual tragedies, we do Him no honor by presuming the incomprehensibility of national tragedies. For, our national tragedies are often comprehensible; and God demands of us that we learn from them.
Accordingly, I believe that our general avoidance of any attempt at a theological understanding of the Shoah as a national tragedy is a form of rebellion against God. This is so because every painful chapter in our long collective history, including the Shoah, demands that we first discern, and then bow to, God’s Will so that we may avoid future national tragedy. Only in this way can we hope turn the Chillul HaShem (desecration of God’s Name) inherent in the Shoah into the Kiddush HaShem inherent in its nullification.
It is first necessary to comprehend that all things proceed from God. As the Prophet Isaiah, speaking in God’s Name, declared: "'I form Light and create Darkness; I make Peace and create Evil; I, HaShem, make all of these. '" (Isaiah 45:7). Only with this primary understanding can we begin the task of examining the theological underpinnings of the Shoah.
God has raised us up from among the family of nations to be His Chosen
People. God said of and to us: "... So said HaShem: My first-born
Son is
God explicitly admonishes the Hebrew tribes prior to their original
return to the Land of Israel that, as result of the future sins which
they will commit while residing therein, all due to their future lack of
Yirat Elokim (fear of Heaven), they would be punished by suffering mass
expulsion therefrom and then by having to endure horrific persecutions in the
lands of their Exile: "'And you shall I scatter among the nations, and I
shall unleash after you a sword. ... And to the survivors among you I shall
bring a weakness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound
of a rustling leaf shall pursue them, and they shall flee as one flees from the
sword, and they shall fall without there being any pursuer. They shall stumble
over one another as [in flight] from before the sword without there being any
pursuer; and you shall not be able to stand before your enemies. You shall
perish among the nations; and the land of your enemies shall devour you.'"
(Lev. 26:33-38); and "HaShem shall scatter you among all the peoples, from
the [one] end of the Earth to the [other] end of the Earth … And among these
nations you shall find no ease, neither shall the sole of your foot have rest;
but HaShem shall give you there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and
despair of mind. And your life shall hang in doubt before you, and you will be
frightened night and day, and you shall have no assurance of your survival. In
the morning you shall say, 'Who will give [back to me] the night' and in the
evening you shall say, 'Who will give [back to me] the morning', for the fear
of your heart which you shall fear and the sight of your eyes which you shall
see." (Deut. 28:64-67); and, even more ominously: "… I will
hide My Face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles
shall befall them; so that they will say on that day: ‘Are not these Evils come
upon us because our God is not among us?’" (Deut. 31:17).
Yet, despite God’s 3,300 year old warning to our ancestors describing the horrors that awaited us in the lands of the Exile, the Shoah was a disaster of such enormous dimensions that it has, nonetheless, been virtually impossible for us to accept that this too was part of God’s Master Plan for the Jewish people. It was the one event that actually caused many Jews to consider that if God were, in fact, the embodiment of pure Goodness, then He surely would have used His Power to prevent, or at least, mitigate this Evil. That God was instead silent -- seemingly impotent or, worse, indifferent -- during those long years of Darkness caused some to deny God’s very Existence or to condemn His Behavior (that is, to say, His Morality). And in literal fulfillment of the above-quoted Prophecy, many more -- not daring to question either God’s Existence or Behavior -- subjugated their cognitive dissonance by opining that since God embodies only Goodness, the Shoah could not have taken place but for God’s purposeful withdrawal of His Presence from among the Jews of Europe.
As can be seen from the explicit language of Scripture, all of the prophesied "evils and troubles" that have befallen us throughout the millennia, including the Shoah, are umbilically connected to our presence in the Exile. The Torah explains that, owing to the harshness of the punishment of Exile, "… perhaps then their unfeeling heart will be humbled and then they will gain appeasement for their sin. [Then] I will remember My Covenant with Jacob and also My Covenant with Isaac, and also My Covenant with Abraham will I remember, and I will remember the Land." (Lev. 26:41-42). However, our Sages have said: "God regrets having created four things: Exile, Babylonians, Ishmaelites and the Evil Impulse". (Succah 52b). God nevertheless regrets having created the Exile because, although the Exile and its attendant "evils and troubles" was a just punishment for our repeated disobedience to Him while we yet possessed the Land of Israel, it did not fulfill its explicit purpose of causing us, through our traumatic sense of loss, to repent of our sins quickly so that we could be repatriated to the Land of Israel quickly. On the contrary, for the last 2,000 years the Jews of the Diaspora, both the Secular and the Religious, and especially those living in affluent countries, have instead treated their Exile from the Land of Israel as a well-deserved reward from Heaven with little or no desire to end it -- this despite our Sages' words that: "Living in Eretz Yisrael equals the combined weight of all of the mitzvot in the Torah." (Sifri, Re’ei, 80). Furthermore, our Sages have declared: "A person should live in Eretz Yisrael, even in a city whose majority is idolaters, and not outside the Land, even in a city that is entirely Jewish ." (Tosefta, Avodah Zarah, 5:2) -- this is a proof that residence in the Land of Israel is required well before the completion of the prophesied Ingathering of the Jewish people and the coming of the Messiah -- and, just so that there be no room for ambiguity or misunderstanding, they have sharpened the point by exclaiming: "Whoever lives in Eretz Yisrael is like someone who has a God, and whoever lives outside of Eretz Yisrael is like someone who has no God, as it says, ‘… to give you the Land of Canaan, to be a God to you’ (Lev. 25:38)." (Ketuvot 110b).
Unfortunately, the Jewish people’s love for, and desire to prove their
loyalty to, the countries of the Exile proved to be greater than their love
for, and awe of, the God of Israel. In this respect a parallel can be seen with
God’s Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden). As the
Torah relates, due to Adam’s disobedience to Him, God declared: "… ‘accursed
is the ground because of you; through suffering shall you eat of it all the
days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it sprout for you, and you shall
eat the herb of the field. By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread until
you return to the ground from which you were taken: For you are dust, and to
dust shall you return.’ … So HaShem God banished him from the Garden of Eden,
to work the soil from which he was taken. And having driven out the man, He
stationed at the east of the Garden of Eden the Cherubim and the flame of the
ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the Tree of Life." (Gen. 3:17-24).
Overnight, a world of perpetual ease and tranquility had become one of hard
labor and unending conflict. But although the Expulsion from Paradise was initially
traumatic in the extreme for Adam and Eve, they adapted to life outside
However, lest the Religious among us say that, just as Adam could never return to Eden on account of his sin, neither can the Jewish people return, with God’s blessing, to Israel until they are first cleansed of their sins, then they should consider the words of the Prophet Ezekiel, speaking in God’s Name: "I will take you from [among] the nations and gather you from all the lands, and I will bring you to your own soil. Then I will sprinkle pure water upon you, that you may become cleansed; I will cleanse you from all your contamination and from all your idols. … Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will be disgusted with yourselves in your own sight because of your iniquities and because of your abominations. … On the day when I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited and the ruins will be built. The desolated land will be tilled, instead of having been desolate in the eyes of every passerby. People will say, ‘This very land, which had been desolate, has become like the Garden of Eden …’" (Ezek. 36:24-35). Clearly, by the Hand of God, the Ingathering of the Jewish people precedes the repentance for, and the cleansing of, their sins.
The fanatical love of the Jew -- both the Secular and the Religious -- for, and his attachment to, the Exile is the theological root of all of the "evils and troubles", including the Shoah, that have befallen us since we were sent out in disgrace from the good Land that God had chosen for us to possess in perpetuity.
Our people’s perverse alchemic conversion of punishment into reward was foreseen by the Prophet Ezekiel when he said, in God’s Name, that: "I scattered them among the nations and they were dispersed among the lands; according to their way and according to their acts did I judge them. They came among the nations where they came, and they desecrated My Holy Name when it was said of them, ‘These are the people of HaShem, but they departed His Land.’" (Ezek. 36:19-20). In other words, the Jews’ very presence in the Exile constituted a Chillul HaShem. This is so because the gentile nations saw that, contrary to God’s Wishes, the Jewish people were more than content to remain among them forever. And, astonishingly, the subsequent Crusades, Inquisitions, Farhouds, Fatwas and Pogroms which periodically plagued our people prior to the Shoah not only did not diminish their unrequited love for the Exile and, consequently, cause them to yearn for the return to the Land of their forefathers, but rather, such regular eruptions of gentile hatred towards our people instead stiffened their resolve to make themselves more palatable to their gentile neighbors, thereby further exacerbating the original Chillul HaShem inherent in our people’s presence in the countries of the Exile.
However, lest the Religious among the generations boast that the Prophet’s
chastisement does not apply to them because they -- unlike the
Secular -- theologically isolated themselves from the corrupting embrace of
gentile society by their punctilious performance of the Torah mitzvot
(commandments), and should they have further convinced themselves that, as long
as the mitzvot are, in fact, performed, it matters little to God where
they are performed, then they should be reminded of our Sages’
admonishment, in God’s Name, that: "Although I exile you from the Land,
continue performing the mitzvot so that when you return [to Israel]
they will not seem new to you" (Sifri, Ekev 43), and the later
concurrence of Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, b. 1040 - d. 1105) that:
"Even once you are exiled, continue performing the mitzvot. Put on
Tefillin and affix a Mezuzah so that they do not seem new to you when you
return [to Israel]" (Rashi on Deut. 11:18), meaning that we have
continued performing the mitzvot in the Exile only in order to keep our
memories sharp and for no other reason, which clearly indicates the lowly
status to which God accords the Exilic performance of the mitzvot. As Ibn
Ezra (Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra, b. 1089 - d. 1164) commented on Deut. 4:10:
"God knew they would be unable to perform His mitzvot properly while
in lands under foreign domination." And as Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman
aka Nachmanides, b. 1194 - d. 1270) noted on Ex. 3:12: "God told Moses two
things. Firstly, He promised that He would descend to save the people from the
hand of
Thus was the Chillul HaShem created by the secular Jew’s denial of God’s Existence firmly joined to the Chillul HaShem created by the religious Jew’s denial of God’s Preference.
But the Chillul HaShem of the Exile was not limited to the Jews’ indifference to God; it also manifested itself in the gentile nations’ erroneous theological interpretations of the Jews’ presence among them. Prior to the rise of Judaism’s monotheistic rivals, the polytheistic idol-worshipping gentile nations, such as Babylon and Rome, which had subjugated Israel -- not comprehending that God was merely utilizing their empires to punish His People for their lack of Yirat Elokim (fear of Heaven) -- mistakenly believed that their defeat and exile of the Jewish people represented a victory of their false gods over the God of Israel. In other words, their military triumphs were used as proofs by them that the God of Israel was a false god. In contrast, after the rise of Christianity and Islam, the monotheistic gentile nations readily accepted, in theory, that the God of Israel was the one and true God, but they mistakenly believed that the Jews’ presence among them and their ability, at will and with impunity, to murder their Jewish subjects and plunder their assets were incontrovertible proofs that God had punished the Jews, not for their lack of Yirat Elokim, but rather for their failure to accept Christianity or Islam as the complete and final religion of God. Due to their conviction, born of military victory, that their respective religions had thereby superseded Judaism, and that their Scriptures, in cases of conflict, had thereby superseded the words of the Hebrew Bible, these nations developed such a distorted view of the God of Israel (which they now called by the name of Jesus or Allah) that it may fairly be argued that they do not worship Him at all, but rather, false deities of their own invention. Since the God of Israel, as revealed to the nations through the Torah of Israel, had intended from the beginning of Creation that not only Israel but, as well, the entire gentile world crown Him as King (-- this is reflected in the Prophets' statements made, concerning the aftermath of the future messianic War of Gog and Magog, that: "HaShem will be the King over all of the Earth; on that day HaShem will be One and His Name will be One." (Zechariah 14:9); and that: "I swear by Myself, Righteousness has gone forth from My Mouth, a Word that will not be rescinded: that to Me shall every knee bend and every tongue swear." (Isaiah 45:23) --), the gentile nations' subsequent misunderstanding of the true purpose of the Exile, which caused them to further distance themselves from accepting Him as King, caused a great Chillul HaShem which (when joined to the underlying Chillul HaShem created by the Jews’ very presence in the Exile) was more than God could bear. He therefore determined, after almost 2,000 years, that the time had finally come to sufficiently weaken the "Cherubim and the flame of the ever-turning sword" that blocked the way of mass return to the Land of Israel so as to begin the Ingathering of His People, this by permitting an idea to take hold among them -- that idea was Zionism: the resettling of the People of Israel in the Land of Israel.
The idea of Zionism would finally become both a practical as well as a juridical reality commencing with the League of Nations' formal issuance of its Mandate for Palestine in 1922, whose goal would be "... the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people ..." (Mandate for Palestine, Preamble), owing to the fact that "... recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country" (Mandate for Palestine, Preamble), thereby imposing upon Great Britain, as Mandatory trustee, a legal obligation to "... facilitate Jewish immigration and ... encourage ... close settlement by Jews on the Land ..." (Mandate For Palestine, Article 6).
The Samsonian efforts of the early Zionists -- both before and after the
issuance of the Mandate -- towards resettlement and nation-building eventually
resulted in the creation of the modern State of Israel. This State, however
flawed, constitutes the resurrection of the biblical
God’s reason for commencing the repatriation of His People to the Land of
Israel, even in the absence of their sincere and complete repentance for their
sins, and for utilizing, as His Agents, secular Zionists who denied His very
Existence, was declared by the Prophet Ezekiel, speaking in God’s Name: "I
scattered them among the nations and they were dispersed among the lands;
according to their way and according to their acts did I judge them. They came
among the nations where they came, and they desecrated My Holy Name when it was
said of them, ‘These are the people of HaShem, but they departed His Land.’ I
took pity on my Holy Name which the House of Israel had desecrated among the
nations where they came. Therefore, say to the House of Israel: Thus said
the Lord HaShem-Elohim: It is not for your sake that I act, O House of Israel,
but for My Holy Name that you have desecrated among the nations where you came.
I will sanctify My Great Name that is desecrated among the nations -- that
you have desecrated among them; then the nations will know that I am HaShem --
the Word of the Lord HaShem-Elohim -- when I become sanctified through you
before their eyes. I will take you from [among] the nations and gather you
from all the lands, and I will bring you to your own soil … Not for your
sake do I act -- the Word of the Lord HaShem-Elohim -- let this be known to
you! Be embarrassed and ashamed of your ways, O House of Israel!" (Ezek.
36:19-32). This is analogous to God's Motivation for permitting the Jewish
people's original return to, and conquest of, the
In other words, even the Israelites' original return to the Land was not predicated upon their righteousness; on the contrary, our ancestors' biblical conquest of the Land proceeded, at God's Insistence and with His Blessing, in the absence of such merit. Similarly, since the revealed purpose of the present Ingathering is to effect a Kiddush HaShem among the Jewish people and the gentile nations who will then acknowledge His sole Kingship over the World, Israel's prior restoration of religious merit was not required for the commencement of this Ingathering; in fact, Ezekiel's prophecies makes it clear that Israel's very lack of such merit influenced God not to wait for its restoration. Seen in this light, it is perfectly logical, and a measure of poetic justice, that God would utilize secular Zionists, who denied His very Existence, to initiate the fulfillment of biblical prophecy which will eventually cause the unbelieving Jewish people and the amoral gentile nations to acknowledge His Kingship -- just as God had previously utilized a "stiff-necked" Jewish nation lacking any merit whatsoever to initiate the process of dispossessing the evil Canaanite nations from the Land of Israel.
For, the God of Israel will nonetheless utilize those persons most suited
to accomplishing His Task, although their motivations exclude any thoughts
of accomplishing such Holy Task and be otherwise wholly improper. This
is one of the main lessons to be learned from the story of Samson, who ruled
over pre-monarchal
While it is clear that God chose Samson as His Instrument to begin the process of liberating the Jewish people from the Philistine yoke, it is just as clear that Samson had no thoughts of accomplishing this Task; and, consequently, he was motivated in all that he did, not by a noble urge to effect a Kiddush HaShem among the Jewish and Philistine peoples by leading a national Jewish army in battle against the Philistines' hegemony and idolatry, but rather by an abhorrent combination of his unquenchable lust and the compulsion to unleash his personal revenge upon the Philistines for affronts large and small. That Samson himself sought to avoid any ennobling confrontation with the Philistines is evidenced by the fact that he purposefully concealed from his own parents -- who well-remembered the Angel's declaration concerning him -- the fact that he had torn apart a lion with his bare hands and had then scraped out honey from the inside of its carcass (see Judges 14:5-9). For, had he revealed these events to his parents, it may be assumed that they would have insisted that these were, in fact, long-awaited Divine Signs that their son was now ready to nationally confront the Philistines on behalf of the Jewish people, thereby effecting a much greater Kiddush HaShem than would be wrought by his decimation of the Philistines merely in order to satiate his appetite for personal revenge. By concealing these events from his parents, Samson instead elevated his personal prerogatives over his national responsibilities. Yet, despite Samson's improper motivations, the God of Israel nonetheless determined that he was, indeed, the person most suited to accomplishing His Task in that Day, namely, to inflict a certain measure of God's Vengeance against the Philistines; and, accordingly, He successfully utilized him for that Holy Purpose. In furtherance thereof, God blessed him (see Judges 13:24), repeatedly infused him with His Spirit (see Judges 13:25; 14:6; 14:19; and 15:14), and even brought forth for him, at his request and in a miraculous manner, water to quench his thirst (see Judges 15:18-19). Moreover, even Samson's lust was directly influenced by God -- this in order to create a pretext upon which Samson would be inclined to act in accordance with his natural predisposition to inflict personal revenge upon his enemies -- thereby ultimately effecting God's Purpose (see Judges 14:4), albeit without Samson having so intended.
As it was with Samson, so it has been with the secular Zionists. For, God
determined that they, too, were the persons most suited to accomplishing His
Task in this Day, namely, to seize and retain possession of the Land of Israel,
in the face of violent resistance thereto by the Arab and larger Muslim worlds,
in order to facilitate the prophesied Ingathering of the Jewish people to their
biblical homeland in modern times -- this despite the fact that they were motivated,
not by any thoughts of facilitating the fulfillment of biblical prophecy
(thereby validating, for the Jewish people and the gentile nations, the
Existence and solitary Kingship of the God of Israel, and thereby effecting the
ultimate Kiddush HaShem), but rather by an obsession to create a modern secular
State which (although serving as a necessary refuge for the pandemically
persecuted Jewish people) would, on the contrary, eschew religious
Jewry's ancient belief system. And just as God had once influenced Samson to
declare of his Philistine woman: "She is suitable in my eyes" only
because it furthered His Purpose in that Time, so He had now declared of
the secular Zionist leadership: "They are suitable in My Eyes" only
because it has furthered His Purpose in this Time. For, in the same way
that the God of Israel once chose a flawed Samson to "begin to save
But, in the meantime, a new Chillul HaShem was in the making, this one tenaciously pursued by the Jewish people as a way of showing their respective loyalties to the mutually-antagonist nations in which they were resident -- this was World War I, a conflict that was officially declared on July 28, 1914 (which date fell on Tisha B’Av, being the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av). As nation warred against nation, the Jews of each -- more than 500,000 Jewish soldiers even prior to the participation of the United States in 1917 -- took up arms and, without qualm or scruple, did their best to kill their fellow Jews who were conscripted into the Enemy’s military forces, while their homebound brethren prayed for their side’s triumph over the Adversary. And during the flush of a victory, the Jew rejoiced with his gentile comrade over the destruction of the Enemy, including his Jewish brother. It is not that any particular French Jew knew that he was killing a German Jew (at the battles of Somme and Verdun) or that any particular Austrian Jew knew that he was killing an Italian Jew (at the battles of the Isonzo Valley) or that any particular British Jew knew that he was killing a Turkish Jew (at the battles of Gallipoli and the Dardanelles) or that any religious Jew specifically prayed for such a result; it is just that the Jew’s absolute and undivided loyalty to his particular gentile nation simply caused him to become indifferent to this possibility. In other words, each Jew hid his face from his brother. Jewish tradition informs us that God administers justice according to the principle of mida k’neged mida (measure for measure). If, at the behest of their gentile masters, the Jewish people so callously participated, by deed and/or prayer, in each others’ destruction under the mistaken belief that this would permit them to secure for themselves a safe and secure haven in their beloved Exile, then perhaps they needed to be shown, mida k’neged mida, what happens when God, too, decides to hide His Face from the Jewish people, and to thereby permit their destruction.
There was already a precedent for this concept in Jewish history. The Torah
states that after the discouraging report of 10 of the 12 tribal leaders sent
by Moses to spy out the
That the God of Israel will severely punish the Jewish people for their
eagerness to engage in internecine violence against each other was already
clearly established by the circumstances of the horrific civil war fought among
the Hebrew tribes of biblical Israel (see Judges 19:1 - 21:25). In those days
the Jewish people had not yet been forged into one nation by the existence of a
king (see Judges 19:1 & 21:25); consequently, each Jew considered himself
bound only to his particular tribe. And, from this starting point, the
parallels between the advent of the War between the Hebrew tribes and the
advent of World War I become uncanny. Prior to World War I, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
a province populated mainly by ethnic Serbs (both Christian and Muslim), was
occupied by the Austro-Hungarian empire, which also included, in addition to
Austria and Hungary, portions of Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia,
Croatia and Italy. In a plot to unite Bosnia-Herzegovina with
In the years between World War I and World War II, the political, military
and economic upheavals which shook the gentile nations unleashed many a
massacre against the Jews of Europe. Although Zionism was gaining adherents
among those who yearned for a practical solution to the Jew-hatred, dislocation
and death that enveloped them, the non-Zionist elite, both the Secular and the
Religious, opposed the Movement -- the secular elite because Zionism drew
unwanted attention to Jews as a people distinct from their gentile neighbors
and brought with it the implication of dual loyalty which threatened to undo
all of secular Jewry’s past achievements in assimilating into gentile society,
and the religious elite because they believed that God wanted them to continue
living in the Exile until the arrival of the Messiah (even if it was then
possible to live in the Land of Israel) and because they could not believe that
God would utilize secular Zionists, who denied His very Existence, to herald
the mass return to the Land of Israel -- this despite the fact that the lack of
religious merit among the secular Zionist leadership is rendered irrelevant
once it is acknowledged that God began the great Ingathering of His People only
in order to sanctify His own Name among His People and among the
gentile nations. However, that being said, although the secular Zionists did
not -- for the most part -- observe the personal Torah mitzvot, such as
those of Shabbat (keeping the Sabbath) and Kashrut (consuming only kosher
food), they did perform the important national Torah mitzvot of
acquiring and maintaining possession of the Land of Israel so as to facilitate
the great Ingathering of the Jewish people that would commence in earnest in
the aftermath of the Shoah, as promised in the Hebrew Bible (see Deut. 30:1-6;
Isaiah 54:7; and Ezek. 36:18-35 & 39:28-29). Unfortunately, due to the fact
that the early secular Zionists substituted belief in the Land of Israel for belief
in the God of Israel, the non-Zionist religious elite, in reaction thereto,
spiritually distanced themselves from any reverence for the Land even to the
point of calling the Zionists' love of the Land a form of avodah zara (idolatry
and other deviant worship), when, in point of fact, the Hebrew Bible itself
extols and mandates love of the Land of Israel: "HaShem said, ‘… a good
and spacious Land … a Land flowing with milk and honey …’" (Ex. 3:8); and:
"For HaShem, your God, is bringing you to a good Land: a Land with streams
of water, of springs and underground water coming forth in valley and mountain;
a Land of wheat, barley, grape, fig, and pomegranate; a Land of oil -- olives
and date-honey; a Land where you will eat bread without poverty -- you will
lack nothing there; a Land whose stones are iron and from whose mountains you
will mine copper. You will eat and you will be satisfied and bless HaShem, your
God, for the good Land that He gave you." (Deut. 8:7-10); "But the
Land, to which you cross over to inherit, is a Land of hills and valleys; from
the rain of Heaven shall you drink water; a Land that HaShem, your God, seeks
out; the Eyes of HaShem, your God, are always upon it, from the beginning of
the year to the end of the year." (Deut. 11:11-12); and: "The
commander of HaShem's legion said to Joshua, 'Remove your shoe from upon your
foot; for, the place upon which you stand is holy.' And Joshua did so."
(Josh. 5:15). It seems that, in their disdain for Zionism, the non-Zionist
religious elite distanced themselves from the national Torah mitzvot of
settling and defending the Land primarily because these important mitzvot were
being performed by the impure secular Zionists (albeit not out of a desire to
observe the Torah). And as for their complaint that, since the Jewish community
in
From 1933, when Adolf Hitler, y’mach sh’mo (cursed be his name), was
appointed as Chancellor of Germany, until 1939, when Nazi Germany
changed its Jewish strategy from one of expulsion to one of annihilation
(although the tactical mechanisms for achieving the latter goal were neither
finalized nor formalized until the 1942 Wannsee Conference) in reaction
to the collective refusal (with the exception of the Dominican Republic)
of the World's other nations at the 1938 Evian Conference to accept even
modest Jewish immigration emanating from the territories then controlled by
Nazi Germany, and when Great Britain, as Mandatory trustee, in abject
contravention of the dictates of Morality as well as its legal obligations to
the Jewish people under the Mandate for Palestine, issued its infamous
Palestine White Paper of 1939 which severely restricted Jewish immigration to
the Land of Israel in an effort -- largely unsuccessful -- to wean the Arab
populations of Mandatory Palestine and the larger Middle East away from their
open support of Nazi Germany (as the latter was beginning its conquest of
Europe), Jews still had a window of opportunity -- albeit subject to British
whim -- to escape the full brunt of the Destruction by going to Mandatory
Palestine (which, under God’s Protection, remained unscathed by the
Shoah). But, too few heeded the signs. After that, virtually all avenues
of escape were closed. And, while the fires of the Shoah yet consumed Europe's
Jewry, Great Britain ruthlessly implemented its illegal White Paper, this
despite the fact that the League of Nations had refused to approve it. In furtherance thereof,
While the Shoah did not create the State of Israel, the absence of
the State of Israel did create the Shoah. It is often declared that the existence
of the modern State of Israel was the direct result of the Shoah; but
this is certainly False. For, Israel exists neither due to
Europe's alleged guilty conscience over its complicity in the Shoah nor due
to United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (commonly known as the
Palestine Partition Plan) issued in the wake of the Shoah -- which resolution
was nonetheless rejected by the Arab leadership of Mandatory Palestine as well
as by each and every Arab and (non-Arab) Muslim state which was then a member
of the United Nations -- but due only to the fact that the God of Israel
enabled the renascent Jewish State to militarily defeat the six Arab
states which, together with local Arab militias drawn from villages, towns and
cities throughout the Land of Israel, had sought to annihilate it from the face
of the Earth. Yet, it is undeniably True that the Shoah was the direct result
of the non-existence of the modern State of Israel. For, had the Jewish
State already existed when Nazi Germany arose from the ashes of World War I,
virtually all of those who perished in the Shoah would, instead, have
been forcibly expelled by Nazi Germany to a welcoming
Jewish tradition informs us that the lives of our ancestors serve as
guideposts for our own conduct. In our unending love for, and attachment to,
the Exile, we are like our tribal ancestors who descended to the
Finally, the Jewish people came to the border of the
Astonishingly, despite their past enslavement in the
God knew that the Jewish people's adaptation to the ways of the Exile would
soon cause them to favor life there over repatriation to the
Not only did God provide His People with numerous directive warnings but He
also gave them several narrative warnings. One such narrative warning is
represented by the 6th Century BCE episode which is commemorated in
the Hebrew Bible as the holiday of Purim (see Esther 1:1 to 10:3). Although
Purim is traditionally portrayed and celebrated as a holiday of merriment and
mirth, it bears a darker message wrapped around an ancient warning. The Jews of
Persia, descendants of those Jews exiled from the
Purim is a case study in loyalty and assimilation to no avail. Although all of the Jews of the Persian
Empire were given permission by the prior monarch, Cyrus, to return to the Land
of Israel and to thereby begin the process of rebuilding the Temple (see Ezra
1:1-11 and II Chronicles 36:22-23), only a paltry 42,360 of them actually
deigned to do so (see Ezra 2:64); the Jewish community of Sushan, capital of
Persia, thereafter participated in the seven-day lavish celebration made
by the new king, Ahasuerus, for the enjoyment of all of his subjects (see
Esther 1:5), despite the fact that the festivities traversed the holy Sabbath;
Mordechai, a leader of the Jewish community in Persia as well as Esther's first
cousin and adoptive father, although a God-fearing man, nonetheless
permitted Esther to successfully compete for the position of wife to that gentile
king (see Esther 2:5-9), despite the Torah's strict ban on intermarriage;
Mordechai then instructed Esther to pretend before king and public that she was
a gentile (see Esther 2:10 & 2:19-20); and, at the risk of his own life,
Mordechai presented evidence implicating two high ranking gentile officials of
the royal court in a conspiracy to assassinate the king, and the latter was
expressly made aware by Esther of the fact that it was Mordechai who had saved
his life (see Esther 2:21-23). Yet, in a twist of irony that would repeat
itself throughout History, the God of Israel -- in response to the
frantic attempts by the Jewish community, including its secular and
religious leaders, to fully integrate into Persian society -- raised up an
implacable enemy who sought to destroy the Jewish people despite their
collective loyalty to the regime. For, immediately after it details the
above assimilationist conduct on the part of the Jewish people, the Book
of Esther continues: "After these things, King Ahasuerus promoted
Haman, son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and elevated him; and he placed his seat
above all of the officers who were with him." (Esther 3:1). And, in
reaction to the rise of Haman and the public dissemination of his evil
intentions towards the Jewish people, the latter reacted as Jewish communities
-- being boundlessly loyal to their countries of residence -- have reacted to
the hatred directed against them from time immemorial. As the Book of Esther
further relates: "The couriers went forth hurriedly by the order of the
king, and the edict was distributed in Shushan the capital. The king and Haman
sat down to drink, but the [Jewish community of the] City of
Yet, the story of Purim reveals more than the generalized historical danger to the Jewish people of relying upon the fickle protection of the gentile nations; in fact, the episode constituted a specific harbinger of the Shoah. For, Haman, y'mach sh'mo, like his spiritual descendant Hitler, y'mach sh'mo, planned to annihilate every man, woman and child of Jewish ancestry residing throughout the multi-nation empire (see Esther 3:5-14); but, in an epic event which ushered in a 2,500 year existential reprieve for the Jewish people, Haman, y'mach sh'mo, and his army of multi-ethnic collaborators, including his 10 sons, were killed in battle with Jewish forces before they could carry out their cataclysmic plan (see Esther 9:1-18).
Another connection between Purim and the Shoah -- this one representing the
implementation of God's retributive Justice against those who would annihilate
God's "first-born son" (Ex. 4:22) -- is manifested when one considers
the seemingly illogical post-battle request of Queen Esther that the 10 already
dead sons of Haman, y'mach sh'mo, be hanged on the gallows (see Esther
9:13) together with the mysterious appearance in the ancient Hebrew text of
four abnormal-sized letters (-- one enlarged-sized letter, being
"vav", and three reduced-sized letters, being "tav",
"shin" and "zion" --) interspersed among the enumeration of
the names of the 10 slain sons of Haman, y'mach sh'mo (see Esther 9:7-9). It
turns out that the 10 sons of Haman, y'mach sh'mo, posthumously referenced in
the Book of Esther are not the 10 dead biological sons of Haman,
y'mach sh'mo, but rather the 10 future spiritual sons of Haman,
y'mach sh'mo, namely, the 10 high-ranking Nazi officials who would be hanged
upon the gallows in Nuremberg, Germany on October 16, 1946 (which date fell on
Hoshana Rabba, the seventh day of the Torah holiday of Sukkot -- known as the
Feast of Tabernacles -- when Jewish tradition posits that God finalizes His
annual Judgment upon the nations). This incredible otherworldly prophetic
assertion is substantiated by the fact that, commencing with Rosh HaShana of
that year, the Gregorian calendar year 1946 corresponded to the Hebrew calendar
year 5707. Since the Hebrew language does not possess separate numeric symbols,
it uses Hebrew letters to represent numbers, including the dates of the Hebrew
calendar. Accordingly, the Hebrew calendar year 5707 is expressed by the Hebrew
letter "vav" (representing the number "6") for the Sixth
Millennium of the Hebrew calendar and by the Hebrew letters "tav"
(representing the number "400"), "shin" (representing the
number "300") and "zion" (representing the number
"7") for the 707th year (400 + 300 + 7) of the Sixth Millennium. In
other words, the abnormal-sized Hebrew letters contained within the names of
the 10 evil sons of Haman, y'mach sh'mo, who were hanged some 2,500 years before
the Shoah, specifically direct the Jewish people to the future time --
the Hebrew calendar year 5707 corresponding to the Fall of 1946 -- when the 10
evil "sons" of Hitler, successor to Haman, y'mach sh'mahem, would be
hanged, as well. Ironically, additional proof of this portent came forth from
the mouth of Julius Streicher, y'mach sh'mo, the last of the 10 Nazis to be
hanged at
The story of Purim even contains an accurate portrayal of the psychology of Jew-hatred that would later permeate the Shoah. As the Book of Esther relates: "That day Haman went out joyful and exuberant. But when Haman noticed Mordechai in the king's gate, and that he did not stand up and did not stir before him, Haman was filled with wrath at Mordechai. [Nevertheless,] Haman restrained himself and went home. He sent [for] and summoned his friends and his wife, Zeresh. Haman recounted to them the glory of his wealth and of his many sons, and all [the ways] in which the king had promoted him and elevated him above the officials and royal servants. Haman said, 'Moreover, Queen Esther brought no one but myself to accompany the king to the banquet that she had prepared, and also tomorrow I am invited by her together with the king. Yet all of this is worth nothing to me so long as I see Mordechai the Jew sitting at the king's gate.'" (Esther 5:9-13). The obsessive hatred of Haman, y'mach sh'mo, for the Jewish people rendered meaningless his great wealth, exalted social status and high political office, all of which he eventually forfeited. This is because Haman, y'mach sh'mo, was so focused on annihilating the Jewish people, that nothing else mattered to him. Similarly, the obsessive hatred of Hitler, y'mach sh'mo, for the Jewish people rendered meaningless Nazi Germany's military gains in the early years of World War II, all of which it eventually forfeited. This is because, Hitler, y'mach sh'mo, was so focused on annihilating the Jewish people that -- even during a time when Nazi Germany was fighting and losing a two-front war -- he irrationally diverted essential funds, men and material to that obsessive cause, thereby depriving his armed forces of the critical resources needed to avoid an unconditional surrender and to thereby preserve at least some of Germany's initial war gains.
Lastly, there is one final connection between Purim and the Shoah -- namely,
the fact that the Book of Esther is the only book of the Hebrew Bible which
does not mention God's Name even once. Moreover, the salvation of the
Jewish people recounted in its pages appears to have been accomplished
in a non-miraculous manner. The omission of God's Name coupled with the
Jews' seemingly mundane salvation from their adversaries have been
traditionally explained to mean, not that God was absent during the
events of Purim, but rather that, even if God's Presence was not manifest,
God was nevertheless always present, orchestrating in a hidden
way the salvation of His People by the manipulation of persons and events. In
fact, proof of God's Presence during the events of Purim inheres in the text
itself: When Mordechai, through palace intermediaries, informed Esther of the
king's decree of mass annihilation and requested her immediate intercession
with the king, she demurred, reminding Mordechai of the well-known Persian law
that any unsummoned person, even the queen, who dared to approach the
king's inner court risked death. The text thereafter continues:
"They related Esther's words to Mordechai. Then Mordechai said to reply to
Esther, 'Do not imagine in your soul that you will be able to escape in the
king's palace any more than the remainder of the Jews. For, if you persist in
keeping silent at a time like this, relief and deliverance will come to the
Jews from another place, while you and your father's house will perish. And who
knows whether it was just for such a time as this that you attained the royal
position!'" (Esther 4:12-14). Mordechai's response to Esther seems very
strange indeed. Logically, Mordechai
should instead have responded: "If you do not immediately intercede
with the king, then all of the remainder of the Jews will be destroyed,
and you will be forced to live out the remainder of your life with a
survivor's guilt upon your head!"
Clearly, Mordechai's actual response assumes something otherworldly,
namely, that the Jewish people, as a collective entity, would be protected from
ultimate harm without regard to Esther's actions. This response is a
powerful proof of Mordechai's complete faith that the Protector of the Jewish
people -- the God of Israel -- was firmly in control of events and that, while
He might permit individual Jews -- even large numbers -- to perish, He
would never permit the entire Jewish nation to be destroyed, despite its
many sins (including those in which he -- Mordechai -- was personally
complicit). For, God had made this explicit Promise to the Jewish people almost
a millennium earlier: "'But despite all of this, while they will be in the
lands of their enemies, I shall not reject them and I shall not abhor them [in
order] to obliterate [all of] them [and] to annul My Covenant with them; for, I
am HaShem, their God. But I shall remember for their sakes the Covenant of
their Ancestors, whom I took out from the
Accordingly, it is clear that God's apparent Absence during the events of Purim was a harbinger of His apparent Absence during the events of the Shoah (--"… I will hide My Face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say on that day: ‘Are not these Evils come upon us because our God is not among us?’" --). As foreshadowed by this lesson of Purim, it can be said that although God's Presence was not manifest during the Shoah, He was nevertheless always present, manipulating persons and events in order to fulfill Prophecy, even if -- this time -- the Jewish people were not to be so completely saved from their enemies.
Unfortunately, the Jewish people's historical failure to properly understand
the message and warning of Purim caused them to falsely believe, throughout the
next 2,500 years, that they could -- and would -- eventually find a
permanent and safe home in the Exile. However, with the rise of Hitler, y'mach
sh'mo, this fundamental misunderstanding of the true nature of the Exile contributed
greatly to the substantial annihilation of
The destruction wrought by the Shoah was so enormous that, for many Jews, it forever changed the way in which they had perceived life in the Diaspora, thereby impelling them to abandon their illusions of Exilic paradise and to return to the Land of their forefathers, even as the Jewish community there braced for its own existential conflict -- Israel's 1948 War of Independence. But, alas, for most Diaspora Jews, the Shoah constituted, not a reason to abandon the Exile, but merely an incomprehensible testament to Man's inhumanity to Man which could be harnessed to improve the Exile by building Holocaust museums and spreading the gospel of toleration among the nations.
More than a half century after the Shoah (and over 3,400 years since the
Exodus from
But wait -- does not God require us to bless and pray for the welfare of
those countries of the Exile in which we now find ourselves? For, did not the
Prophet Jeremiah enjoin us: "And seek the peace of the city to which I
have exiled you and pray for it to HaShem, for through its peace will you have
peace." (Jer. 29:7)? The answer is that these words were part of a
specific series of instructions which Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the
Jewish captives in Babylon ordering them to submit to their Exile in
Babyonia for the next 70 years after which they would be repatriated to the
Land of Israel, while Babylonia would eventually be judged by God and
thereafter be destroyed. Even assuming that Jeremiah’s directive applies as
much to the present Roman Exile as it did to the earlier Babylonian Exile, no
portion thereof enjoins the Jewish people to love the Exile, let alone
to abandon their longing for repatriation to the
On the contrary, Today, the Jews of the Exile can freely emigrate to the
State of Israel. However, Tomorrow, the countries of the Exile may prevent a
modern Exodus. The Jews of the Exile (especially those who live in the United
States -- an immigration magnet for the entire World, including, unfortunately,
the Jews of Israel) should know that the State of Israel will endure until the
arrival of the Messiah and beyond, not because God finds any merit in
the actions of its leadership, but only because God has so
identified Himself with the Jewish people -- including with their
reestablishment of sovereignty in the Land of Israel and with their Ingathering
thereto from the far reaches of the Earth -- that Israel’s destruction at this
juncture in History would be wholly misinterpreted by the gentile nations,
thereby causing a catastrophic Chillul HaShem. After the sin of the faithless
Hebrew spies, Moses successfully pressed this very argument upon God Who, in
His Burning Anger against the undeserving Jewish people, had just declared to
Moses that He would now annihilate them. As the Torah relates: "HaShem
said to Moses, ‘How long will this people provoke Me, and how long will they
not have faith in Me, despite all of the Signs that I have performed in their
midst? I will smite them with the Plague and annihilate them, and I shall make
you a greater and more powerful nation than they.’ But Moses said to HaShem,
‘Then Egypt, from within whose midst You brought up this nation with Your
Power, will hear [of Your Annihilation of the Children of Israel], and they
will say to the inhabitants of that land that they have now heard that You,
HaShem, are in the midst of this people, thatYou, HaShem, appear Eye to eye
[with them], and that Your Cloud stands over them, and that in a Pillar of
Cloud You go before them by day and in a Pillar of Fire [You go before them] by
night. And yet You killed this people as if they were a single man; then the
nations that heard of Your Fame will say, "Because HaShem lacked the
Ability to bring this people to the Land that He had sworn to give them, He
slaughtered them in the Wilderness." And now may the Power of the Lord be
magnified as You have spoken, saying: "HaShem is slow to Anger, and
abundant in Kindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and clearing [the
penitent but] not clearing [the impenitent], visiting the iniquity of fathers
upon children unto the third [generation] and unto the fourth
[generation]." Please forgive the
iniquity of this people due to the Greatness of Your Kindness and as You have
forgiven this people from
Moreover, the Prophet Samuel would later affirm the nature of God’s Special Relationship, including His Self-Identification, with the undeserving Jewish people. As the Hebrew Bible relates: "Samuel said to the people, ‘Fear not; you have done all of this Evil, yet do not turn from following after HaShem; rather serve HaShem with all of your heart. And you shall not turn to follow after vanities which cannot benefit [you] and cannot rescue [you]; for, they are vain. For, HaShem shall not abandon His People for the sake of His Great Name; for, HaShem has sworn to make of you a people for Himself.’" (I Samuel 12:20-22).
The State of Israel endures, and will continue to endure, only in
order that God's Holy Name will be sanctified among the nations and
among His unbelieving People. As the Prophet Ezekiel says concerning the
powerful and arrogant Gog with respect to his future defeat at the hands of a
tiny and vulnerable State of Israel led by the Messiah at the End of Days:
"Thus said the Lord HaShem-Elohim: Surely on that Day, when My People
Israel dwells securely, you will come to know, when you come from your place in
the uttermost parts of the North, you and many peoples with you, all of them
riding horses, a vast horde, a mighty army, and you advance against My People
Israel like a cloud covering the Earth. It will be at the End of Days that I
will bring you upon My Land, in order that the nations may know Me, when I
become sanctified through you before their eyes, O Gog!" (Ezek. 38:14-16);
and as the Prophet further says concerning the Jewish people residing in the
resurrected nation-state of Israel at the End of Days: "Then they
will know that I am HaShem, their God; for, having [previously] exiled them to
the nations, I [now] gather them back into their Land and leave none of
them there [among the nations]. I will never again hide My Face from
them [who have returned to the
Yes, because it is the Foundation Stone of God's Plan, the State of Israel
will endure until the arrival of the Messiah and beyond; but the blind and
"stiff-necked" Jews of the Diaspora, like the generations of the Exodus
and pre-Shoah
© Mark Rosenblit