|
|
October 6, 2004
Reprinted from Israel Insider, October 8, 2001
Simhat Torah represents the climax of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles. Meaning "joy of the Torah," referring to the scroll containing the five books of Moses, the holiday marks the end of the annual cycle of scriptural readings that starts "in the beginning" with Genesis and concludes with the last speech of Moses to the Children of Israel. On the holiday evening, in synagogues throughout the world, Jewish people will read from the end, and then "rewind" literally to the start of time, embracing the holy scroll, carrying it in circles around the synagogue, dancing with it inside and out into the streets.
The scroll being celebrated has never assumed a greater significance. The Book and the people who embrace it find themselves at the center of global attention, as Osama bin Laden cites the Koran to justify attacks on Christians and Jews, swearing that the world will know no peace until Israel is destroyed. Before our disbelieving eyes, the world is being forced to wage a war to defend the values of Western civilization against cave-dwelling terrorists and bloodthirsty fanatical mobs that long for nothing more than the eradication of the Jewish State.
Here we Israelis live, on a strip of land some forty miles wide between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. This was our ancient homeland, the land in which the Bible was born and on which the prophets walked. We as a people were repeatedly driven into exile, scattered to the four corners of the earth, with only the legacy of Holy Writ as our reminder of our ties to this land. Our sages say that more than the Jewish People kept the Torah, the Torah kept the Jewish People. Following the prophetic call, we returned to our land in the last century, emerging from the furnaces of the Holocaust to create a vibrant new nation, rising in the desert like the bones of Ezekiel's vision, gathering in our exiles from one hundred countries.
We have fought wars, and we have made peace. We have won victories, and suffered defeats. We have made brilliant innovations, and we have made foolish mistakes. We are a Jewish State, but we are also a pluralist, multi-ethnic, multi-racial democracy seeking to keep harmony and teach tolerance among our contentious groups and citizens. We are a largely secular and skeptical nation, yet the roots of faith and tradition bind us inextricably from this much contested, much desired, much hated Holy Land. And all of it, the whole amazing and tragic story, derives from the Torah, this holy scroll, the source from which emerged the legacies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Today a self-appointed representative of one of the children of Abraham has declared war against the other two, unleashing his hidden network of death-wielding subversives, seeking to ignite hatred among the world's one billion Moslem to destabilize the region and wage holy war against what he calls the Jewish-Christian crusaders. He clearly states his goal: to drive Jews and Christians out of the Middle East. He believes he is faithfully fulfilling the will of Allah, which he interprets to call for the extermination of our nation.
We are a nation of some six million facing the hostility of one thousand million. What chance do we possibly stand against those odds? For that matter, what chances did we have to survive this past century, or the previous two millennia of dispersion and persecution? Not only are we here, but we find ourselves largely alone, in the center of global attention, the eye of the furious storm that threatens to engulf the entire world.
The festival of Sukkot begins with the reading of the last chapter of the prophet Zachariah 14, which explicit predicts the war of Gog and Magog, which climaxes with a vision of the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem, followed by the massive return of the Jews and the coming of the nations to the Holy City in peace. The festival concludes with the reading of Ezekiel 38 and 39, which prophecies that gathering of the nations to attack the Jewish nation from the north. The penultimate day of the festival, Hoshanna Raba, expresses the fervent prayer of the Jewish people for deliverance and lasting peace. The Allied attack began precisely as evening fell to start this holiday of messianic longing.
Even those who do not take the Bible literally cannot help but be startled by the way in which "what was written" seems to be in the process of being fulfilled. We gaze on in amazement as the nations gather in the region, starting from the West and moving inexorably to the East. How improbable that the tiny nation of Israel has attained such global importance that it is now on the minds and in the hearts of the whole world! Those who read the Book of Books may be tempted to say "we told you so" -forgetting that the deeper truth of any book worth reading - especially Holy Writ - is concealed between the lines, and must be discovered through painstaking interpretation and explanation.
And there will be another temptation, one we in Israel are already hearing too often. It is the siren song, offered most recently by the killer of thousands, that only if the world brings "peace in Palestine" will it ever again be safe. How many will wish to believe that the replacement of the Jewish nation by a regime led by Arafat or his successors will mean an end to war! There will always be some who will want to believe that a Jewish state and an Arab state can share this forty mile strip. But many more will come to realize that bin Laden, Arafat, and most of the Moslem world, do not believe-have never believed-in the right of a Jewish state, of any size or shape, to exist in what they consider the holy land of Islam. And yet that belief is at the core of Judaism and Christianity, the source of the Bible, our respective prophets, disciples, and our faith.
The great temptation will be for Jews and Christians to say and decide: better to sacrifice the legacy of the Bible, abandon the nation of Israel, and take our chances at peace with a billion Moslems. The burden of a Jewish state, some will say, is just too great.
Since the eleventh of September, we have been living in a different world, marking the end of an old way of thinking and the beginning of a new way. It is a frightening time for all, yet perhaps we may draw reassurance in the perception of prescribed patterns revealing themselves to us with ever-greater clarity. For Moslem, Christian and Jew, it is a time to choose sides, to crystallize beliefs and to act on them. We are being tested, as individuals and as nations. As we rewind the scroll and prepare to reread the book of creation, with its story of the tree of knowledge and its forbidden fruit, of the choice of good and evil, may we all find the wisdom to resist temptation and to choose wisely.
|
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
