Is the impossible possible?

Is the impossible possible?
David Wilder
21 Shvat 5776
January 30, 2016
 

A few days ago, while wading thru Facebook I saw an article headlined, “American Jewish Leader Urges Jews to Get Out of America – by Rivkah Lambert Adler”

It caught my eye. Investigating, I discovered a woman named Lori Palatnik, who was recently recognized by the Hadassah organization as “Most Outstanding Jewish American Women of Our Time”.

Checking her out on the web, I obviously found a very impressive personality. But my interest centered on her latest statements, declaring that the time had come for Jews to leave the United States for Israel.

She is quoted as saying,

“I speak about this all the time in my community. I talk that way to the people around me. I say, ‘Don’t get fooled. This is coming down. This is happening.’”
 

Palatnik is referring to the dangers of increased anti-Semitism. “There’s been a build up. Anti-Semitism is worse than before the Holocaust. In Paris you can’t wear a kippah on the street. Is that what we’re waiting for?” she asked.
 

Millions of American Jews do not yet see the danger about which Palatnik is speaking. Even if they believe that ultimately they will end up in Israel, concerns about making the adjustment are common. Additionally, most American Jews think they still have plenty of time.
 

I think it won’t be long,” she warned. “As the winds of anti-Semitism and politics change, your child having a hard time adjusting to an Israeli school will be very minor compared to the need to get out, get out now!”
 

Acknowledging the difficulty some Jews will have adjusting to life in Israel, Palatnik quoted the rabbinic commentary on Proverbs 13:24 which teaches that, “God has given the Jewish people three gifts, but all of them must be acquired through suffering. These are: Torah, the Land of Israel and the World to Come.”
 

The way she and her husband raised their own children is an echo of her deeply-held beliefs, she said. “My kids have been told since they were very young, ‘America is not your home. We’re here doing a job for the Jewish people. Israel your home.’ I hope and pray that we’ll all end up there.”
 

A little while ago I came across an article headlined: Denmark May Fine Girl for Pepper Spraying Rapist
 

A 17-year-old girl may face criminal charges after she used pepper spray — which is illegal in Denmark — to successfully fight off her assailant.
 

We live in a world in which it is difficult to distinguish between sanity and insanity. And with the continued growth of social media and the information explosion, it’s getting worse.
 

Earlier this week I found and article published in the Jewish Press. I’ve had numberous  articles printed in this amazing publication. They printed a weekly column by Rabbi Meir Kahane HY”D. So I was not a little surprised to read a blog by one Harry Maryles called ‘the Settlers of Chevron.” He writes:

The settler claim is that Chevron is holy, it is ours, and has been ours since Matan Torah. It was the home of Avrohom, and it contains the holy burial grounds of our patriarchs and matriarchs. They therefore will do whatever it takes to keep Chevron in Jewish hands. The Jewish Press seems to agree with that. So they report the eviction of Jewish settlers there with an immoral and unjust spin.
 

I don’t know if those settlers did or didn’t have a legal right to occupy those buildings. But in my view they endanger the welfare of their people. Their presence in or near that city is an incitement that is unnecessary and a source of anger to Palestinians. Which increases the chances of more Jews being harmed of killed…If it were up to me, I would evacuate all of Chevron’s Jews. And I would consider doing the same thing to Kiryat Arba, the Israel town right next to it. I see no value to having a town there – even though it has been there since shortly after the 6 day war of 1967.
 

I spent much of the last two decades replying to such dribble. Honestly, I’m tired of it. But this kind of opinion, espoused by a religious Jew, at the present, is more than disturbing. We are undergoing attacks in Israel and around the world. By ‘we’ I mean Jews around the world, Jews living in Israel, and in particular, Jews living in Judea and Samaria. The assailment is physical – with terrorist murders the name of the game, as well as rabid anti-Semitism, against Jews and against Israel. Be it BDS, be it the EU labeling of products produced in Yesha or now, the same American marking of such products. And of course, today the media reported US and British spying on the most sensitive Israeli intelligence information, which could literally be defined as existential. This is the same United States that help Jonathan Pollard in jail for 30 years, and now, released, is under virtual house arrest, with conditions that make one shiver. No, we can’t spy on them, but they can spy on us.
 

Sane or insane?
 

And last, but not least, a few days ago, the impossible became reality. Labor party leader (Labor – Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, etc etc.) may have committed political suicide by saying, by speaking…..the truth! Yitzhak Herzog:  ‘the two-state solution is not a realistic option in the near future.

 “I don’t see a possibility at the moment of implementing the two-state solution,” he told Army Radio. “I want to yearn for it, I want to move toward it, I want negotiations, I sign on to it and I am obligated to it, but I don’t see the possibility of doing it right now”
 

Of course, his way of dealing with the situation is not what I would call ideal. And, of course, his colleagues ate him alive. But, he said it.
 

Sane or insane?

It is clear that the world is undergoing dramatic and unforeseen changes. As is Israel and the Jewish people. But sane people, with their eyes open, should be able to discern what’s going on, and act accordingly. Whether they live outside of Israel, or in Israel. And the former should change their status at the earliest possibility. In other words, tomorrow. Otherwise their sanity with quickly transfer into the opposite, with their vision being blurred or even blinded, leaving them, abandoned to the vacuum of their fate.
 

Our job is to recognize the truth and make the impossible possible. After 2,000 years in Galut, it is time to go home. Now!!!