Several people who read my previous Letter from Jerusalem, “Year’s End”, sent five weeks ago, wrote back with some very positive reactions. Yet one or two found reason to take offense on the grounds that “rabbis should not meddle in politics”, angrily demanding to be unsubscribed. This simply underlines the deep polarization in today’s world. However, having recently passed my 72nd birthday on the second day of Sukkot, I think I may give myself the license to say directly and openly what I believe: For: “If not now, then when?” If you care to listen, you are most welcome, while anyone who wants to unsubscribe is at perfect liberty to do so and will cause me no offense.
Since that last letter five weeks ago, a key issue has been the unashamedly tyrannical forced vaccine mandates now being imposed by many governments across the world from France, Britain and the USA to Australia and New Zealand, the latter two having been exceptionally harsh in their Covid response.
In the USA, the Biden administration’s ruthless vaccine mandate campaign is but one prong of his overall war against America, terrorizing the population into surrendering their last surviving freedoms while bringing down the political system through dilution of the population with illegal immigrants, weighting the electorate in favor of permanent Democrat government, destruction of American agriculture and industry, inflation and economic havoc, subversion of the police, armed forces and teachers at all levels through the interminable promotion of “woke” ideology, and the open persecution of political opponents using all the cutting-edge methods of the post-modern police state.
The immensity of Biden’s Afghanistan debacle is daily becoming clearer both in terms of the needless deaths and human suffering caused by top level negligence if not willfully, as well as in terms of the international strategic implications of his surrender to the Taliban, thereby emboldening Moslem terrorists across the world while giving China and Iran greatly expanded power and influence. Meanwhile France and Germany plan Europe’s first joint army as they saber-rattle against the Russian bogey, Ukraine taunts Belarus, China taunts Taiwan, and the short break from wars and tension we enjoyed during the years of the presidency of Donald Trump has come to a bitter end.
Nearly 80 years ago, America took the leading role in freeing the world from the Nazi devil. However, with the enormous social and cultural changes in the country since then, it is now an open question whether the classic America cherished by those who voted for a second term for Donald Trump can survive the pernicious deep state war against it or not. From time to time someone asks if there will be a civil war – a stupid question because the war is already on in full force right now, except that it is invisible to the vast section of the population that is bewitched by mainstream-media-induced mass hypnosis.
Those who believe in the original American dream are by and large upright and moral people. But the big-time, super-rich and powerful global gangsters who are now carefully fostering the still-secret, embryonic world government are always many steps ahead of the righteous, having endless financial resources, prestigious “research institutes”, “think tanks” and “charitable” foundations, etc., gangs of deep state agents embedded everywhere, together with big bank, corporate and mainstream media collaborators, as well as hosts of “useful idiots” throughout the population, Only the Almighty is well ahead of the wicked and sees ahead to their coming downfall.
It is a fact of life that those who are truly hard-working and successful inevitably attract the resentful, jealous “evil eye” of others who feel they have been unlucky and short-changed. While the poor and persecuted across the world long pined to have a part in the American dream, many others, prominent among whom are the Moslem extremists who consider America the “Great Satan” (yet gleefully grab all her handouts and benefits), are only too happy to gloat over her woes and losses and hurl accusations and insults.
We need pay no attention whatever to their castigations. Yet at this critical juncture in the history of America, people of genuine faith and traditional values need to reflect carefully on the sins and moral failures that have become rampant across much of the country, if only in order to cleanse and separate themselves from them. America’s destructive post-WWII wars and subversive activities against many other countries while ravaging their resources cannot be blamed upon the ordinary U.S. citizens or upon the unfortunate soldiers whose lives were lost or ruined for the sake of the agendas of the super-rich and powerful elites. Clearly America’s official, loudly-advertised quest to promote “freedom” and “democracy” in other countries was mostly a guise for propping up corrupt regimes favorable to the interests of those elites.
Over the course of many decades, the traditional hard-working, ethical, hard-working, frugal American has been brashly upstaged by the extravagant, wasteful homo consumens, the obedient consumer, particularly if young, who is immensely more profitable businesswise. Through the subversion of the education system and mass media, many sections of the population now display total disregard for the basic norms of civilized society and the sanctity of human life, as evidenced in the flood of abortions of advanced embryos or the endless violent assaults and murders in many parts of the country. A shameless sexual license prevails all over, actively promoted by school and university teachers, the media and entertainment industry. There is widespread corruption throughout the legal system, judiciary and police. A leading symptom of the cultural cancer that has metastasized across the country is the plague of foul language, cursing and ruthless denigration of all who think differently that infects virtually all public discourse including politics, among “celebrities”, on the mass media and Internet. Meanwhile the remaining vestiges of religion are largely commercialized, and true fear of God is almost entirely absent.
What are we to do?
You and I are quite unlikely to be able change all the millions of Americans who have fallen victim to mass media mind control and are racing like lemmings to self-destruction. “If I am not for myself, who is for me?” Each and every one of us must see this world situation as G-d’s direct, personal call to each of us individually, because in His inscrutable wisdom, He has planted our souls in our present incarnation precisely in the time and place where we are. If we cannot change or save the whole world, we can strive to change ourselves for the better and at least save our own souls and those of the people we can influence. Each and every one of us has much for which to repent, be it selfishness, pride, arrogance, anger, cruelty, jealousy, laziness, wastefulness, the pursuit of vanity and many others. We need to separate ourselves from the surrounding profane culture and embrace the nobility of the Priests of God that we truly are, cleansing ourselves of evil traits and impure speech.
Within our own spheres of activity and influence, in the home, in the family and community, at work etc., wherever possible we need through acts of kindness, loving outreach, listening and mutual understanding to build and strengthen the social fabric at the grass roots in order to overcome the divisiveness that our enemies are fomenting.
Our greatest priority must be to protect, immunize and save our children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, pupils, students and all the precious young in our communities from the unremitting, savage, invasive and deeply-penetrating attacks against them by government, public education, big business and the media, attacks that come straight into their eyes and ears through their very phones if they have one.
The first commandment of the Torah is to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). This does not mean merely to breed “humans”. In the words of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov:
We all have an obligation to try to make this world a civilized place – a world filled with people who are true humans, Children of Adam, as the Torah says: “And fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28). The world is a civilized place only when filled with true Children of Adam, people who possess awareness and knowledge of God. A world without people who know God is a world of desolation and emptiness. Those who do not have this awareness cannot be called Children of Adam.
Just as it is a commandment to have children in order for the world to survive, so it is a commandment to instill awareness and knowledge of God in our children and anyone else whom we are in a position to influence. Teaching our children to know God is the essence of the commandment to have children. It is vital to ensure that future generations will be true Children of Adam and not wild animals who merely look human on the outside. Those who have no knowledge of God and do not feel His power cannot be called Children of Adam, because the ability to know God is the defining feature of the Children of Adam.
Likutey Moharan Part II Lesson 7
Is this THE END?
Watching for signs of the End of Time is now evidently a highly popular activity among people of all kinds of beliefs and backgrounds across the world. Some years back excitement was aroused by tears seemingly dripping from the Kotel (Western Wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem). More recently, letters of the Divine Name have been discerned on the Eastern Wall of the Temple Mount. With the momentous changes now taking place so rapidly before our very eyes, we may justly wonder: “Is this IT???” Shall we see the Final Redemption in our time? Will our eyes or those of our children and children’s children actually behold King Mashiach riding in on his white donkey?
We are indeed obliged to wait and hope for his coming every day, in accordance with the twelfth of the Thirteen Principles of Torah Faith:
“I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and even though he may delay, nonetheless, I wait every day for his coming.”
But while we wait, we are not supposed to sit around getting drunk on vodka. Rather, like all the righteous in all the past generations who because of their foreordained time and place were unable to receive Mashiach in their lifetime in this world, our task is to continue, each one, in our simple service of God the King in accordance with His commandments. Here lies our repair, our Tikkun, and if we are not destined to receive Mashiach in this lifetime, our efforts in Torah and Mitzvot will be surely rewarded with the Light of Mashiach in the World of Truth. Here in this world, we are all warriors in the army of the King, each with his or her unique role. It is not for the soldier to glance constantly in all directions to see how the overall war effort is going. Each warrior must concentrate on fulfilling his or her assigned role according to orders of the King.
There are indeed signs of Geulah all around today. The waves of Jewish people now returning to their Torah roots and the unparalleled quest for Torah among people of all backgrounds across the world are tremendously heartening signs. If we look for signs of Geulah in the history of Israel, the very establishment of the State in 1948 and the reclaiming of large swathes of the ancestral Promised Land in the 1967 Six Day War were undoubtedly “footsteps of Mashiach”. Indeed, the exponentially-increasing numbers of Jews returning from exile to the Promised Land over many hundreds of years before that are testimony to the continuous process of ingathering of the exiles, though this is far from complete. As taught in the Holy Zohar (end Balak), there are certain moments in history when Mashiach may be revealed somewhat, yet afterwards he again becomes concealed, even for lenthy periods.
We are taught that the “birth pangs of Mashiach” can be a time of sore trouble (Daniel 12:1). Quite clearly for great numbers of people the present “Pandemic”, with its many ramifications in all our lives, has and continues to be a time of sore trouble. Yet there have been troubled times for thousands of years, from the Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman persecutions through the ravages of the Moslem and Crusader armies, the Spanish Inquisition, Pogroms, the Holocaust, the Communist repression, the Great Depression, etc. etc. until today, yet we still have not seen Mashiach.
The classic Bible commentator, sage, philosopher & statesman, Rabbi Yitzchak Abarbanel (1437-1508) in his introduction to Isaiah 63:1ff writes that the prophesied destruction of Batzra will be the destruction of Rome by Ishmael, as depicted in the ancient Midrash Pirkey d’Rabbi Eliezer.
While this may not appear to be on the cards in the short-term foreseeable future, we may well be surprised sooner or later, because the destruction of “Sinful Rome”, i.e. the Vatican, is the avowed goal of Iran, the Taliban and numerus other Islamic groups. With present-day intercontinental ballistic missiles, this would not prove too great a challenge for those inspired by 9/11 and emboldened by Biden’s gift of Afghanistan. Christians have been all but eliminated in many Moslem countries. What was once “Christian” Europe is no more. The goal of Biden and his controllers is likewise to erase any kind of meaningful Christianity, or indeed any kind of meaningful FAITH, from America.
As God’s soldiers and warriors in this dire world situation, our task and mission are to spread the light of His Torah to whomever we can wherever and whenever we can.
I wish you a Good and Blessed Month of Marcheshvan and Shabbat Shalom!
Avraham ben Yaakov
