Clouds of Glory during Hakhel Year 5776

See how Hashem is tightening the screws to hasten the Era of Redemption. He stirs up an enormous hurricane (“Patricia”) to raise the specter of potential terror. Had the hurricane come well into land, much of Mexico would have been devastated. Suddenly we open eyes to the possibility that millions more refugees will now stream into America from the South. The porosity of America’s borders with Mexico will now send shudders into many more minds and hearts.

The decay of America socially, economically and morally seems well on its way. Universities are becoming anti-Jewish; Cities across America are becoming “refuge sanctuary” cities where crimes go ignored; Torrents of illegal migrants are making their way into the heart of the country; The morale and religious backbone of the country is in tatters; Christians are losing their prominence; and “Every Jew is fair game!” shout the mullahs and shmullahs.

But despite the rising threats of invasion and chaos, and despite America's apparent tailspin towards Sodomite values, Jews have every reason to rejoice. True the Redemption picture as of now looks like it's only collectively at work, as some individual lives fall as sacrificial lambs (ה׳ ישמור), the rumblings of the oncoming ultimate Redemption cannot be ignored.

For the very contrary of a broad misery that bleakens the world today is happening in the Jewish quarter. To Jews worldwide the prospect of imminent redemption is palpable. Everywhere Jews exist today they enjoy the freedom to observe their religion to a tee. No longer do Jews suffer persecution under government sanction. Today when police escort Jews, they do so to protect them. Not too long ago the escort of police meant Jews were being transported to gas chambers.

Just as in ancient days just prior to their redemption, Jews were surrounded with God’s “Ananei Shemaya” to protect them against the Egyptian military onslaught, so too - today - in this process of Final Redemption, Jews worldwide (this time) are again protected by God’s “Clouds of Glory”. These clouds may not appear physically as they did back then, but they exist today around every Jew, by divine providence of events wherein he finds himself. The Jew is protected against the rising worldwide evil as evil exposes itself worldwide and as evil itself then swallows evil.

By “tightening the screws” I refer to the phenomenon referred to by the Previous Rebbe, who indicated this was exactly how Geulah will unfold (link). Groups of Jews will be streaming towards the Holy Land. In the end, all Jews will become observant of God’s Torah, only some before others, and the worldwide change in demographics and politics is setting up for Jews just that landscape and avenue to Israel.

That article’s link above starts out like this: “A deep secret every intelligent person must find interest in concerns the final Jewish Redemption and, particularly, the logistics of departure from the diaspora.” I invite you to read it.

As for America, the Rebbe has said, in his booklet “קונטרס בית רבינו שבבל”, that the Beit Hamikdash will first adjoin 770 Eastern Parkway, in Brooklyn NY(!), and therefrom be flown by Clouds of Glory to Jerusalem (however that actually manifests). That scenario itself guarantees America shall remain a safe and powerful haven until Moshiach’s exposition, which bids well for a good future for America, despite the grim outlook as of now with what looks like a Muslim usurper/anarchist having snatched the reins of its highest office.

But it all bodes well for Jews and may this Hakhel year finally bring the march to Jerusalem with upright pride, for every Jewish man, woman and child.

In Support of Yad L'Achim

Modern Jew-Hatred in Spiritual or Physical Mode

Jew-hatred can manifest physically or spiritually. Jew-haters want to either physically harm and/or to cause Jews spiritual grief.

Take, for example, the Arab young man who seeks to marry a Jewish woman, and, as another example, a Christian (“Jews for J”) missionary who seeks to trap Jewish souls to get them to submit to Christian dogma. This parallel of Arabs marrying Jewesses and Christian missionaries fishing for Jewish souls demonstrates a striking resemblance.

A mall in the Jewish non-Jewish state

The Arab man who seeks to marry a Jewish woman loiters where Jewish girls intermingle freely in crowds of various persuasions, as in a university setting or in a mall. He keeps a lookout, and when he spots a good candidate who's hungry for companionship (usually because of a loveless home or because of some crisis situation), he sweet-talks her, makes believe he's Jewish, dates her for weeks and months ostensibly to demonstrate his “goodness”, only to later divulge his real identity, when the girl is already in love. By the time she discovers his true identity she's prone to brush aside such racial “trivialities” and accepts him wholeheartedly. He'll even tell her slyly he did not want to lie at first because he would be rejected for his religion, and therefore “had to” conceal his identity.

Why does the Arab young man do this? He does it out of his intense hatred for the Jew. He seeks to marry her because he hates her. All along he'll keep secret his final intent - to take her into a Muslim enclave where from she cannot escape, where then she can be made to feel worthless, while he can brag to his friends of his dominance over the Jewish soul. He'll marry other women – Muslim, who will regard the 1st wife as a slave. This is his manhood; This is his spirituality.

This demonstrates the extent of his hate. He stalks to marry a woman he wants to hate.

It's much like an Arab mother who sends her child to commit a suicide bombing on the presumption that innocent Jewish victims can be killed as well. The difference is that Arab mother wishes on her enemies physical death, whereas the Arab lover seeks to perpetrate a spiritual, sacrilegious rape.

ימח שמם וזכרם

The Christian missionary who pushes the J figure upon naive Jewish souls also bears, like his Muslim counterpart, this spiritual hateful emotion. The amount of money plowed into missionary work is staggering. In Israel alone they have some 100 “communities”. They are cautious in their use of semantics and therefore call their churches “communities”. They connive even with the color of their blue and white t-shirts. Here too a (Christian) person sets out to deceive the Jew. He'll offer his “friendship” (like the Arab who professes his love to a Jewess), plenty of money, gifts and lodging if necessary, whatever it takes to get this Jew to participate with them. They would rather beguile and “convert” to Christianity one Jew, especially of Hareidi background but not necessarily, than convert the entire continent of Africa! We know this from the stories the "returnees" tell (e.g., link).

The Arab marries the Jewess out of hatred for her. The Christian missionary makes his lifelong preoccupation to subdue Judaism because he envies and begrudges the Jew's connection to God. He wants to provoke God with physical revenge against God's favorite people. Both jealousies are as intense as of those who seek to physically annihilate the Jews, only here the motive is to tear Jews away from God spiritually.

It goes to show, even to one unaware of his Judaism or to him who lacks pride in being Jewish, just how worthy Judaism really is – so much so that so many non-Jewish people actually preoccupy their whole lives stewing in this enmity.

We should be generous to organizations like Yad L'Achim who actively seek (and succeed - e.g., rescue story) to liberate such Jewesses and their children, and spiritually lost souls, from torment. Significantly, not stopping there, they also succeed in educating these repatriated souls with true Yiddishkeit.

Signs of Redemption - Early 5776

After a brief brush with annihilation only 75 years ago, remaining Jews (today’s grandparents) today still feel the heat of that inferno in the form of yet another threat - from the latest, powerful, big Jewish-hater, today’s archetype of the Persian Haman - among others.

But we Jews fear no more such threat of violence or intrusion into our private lives because the leader of this Jewish generation, the Rebbe of Lubavitch, gave us optimistic words that now resonate ever louder.

The word “prophecy” in Hebrew also spells “we will come”, as if the spoken words themselves attest to their own future encore.

From one of our holy sources, the Midrash, of Yalkut-Shimoni, (Isaiah, 499): “R’ Yitschak says, ‘The year in which Moshiach will be revealed ... a Persian king provokes an Arab king ... and says to them [God to the Jews] my sons, fear not, for all that I do I do for you, your era of redemption has arrived.’”

The Midrash continues: “The time when King Moshiach comes, he stands on the roof of the Beit Hamikdash, wherefrom he tells the Jewish People, ‘Modest ones, your era of redemption has arrived!”

Is it not strange for a king to proclaim good tidings from a rooftop?

The Rebbe explains halachically that a rooftop lacks the holiness its abode houses beneath it. By wording it this way the Midrash invokes the rooftop as the appropriate metaphor for an event to transpire outside the Holy Land (a place with less sanctity than Israel). The Rebbe elsewhere asks, similarly, why does the Rambam in his book of halachah say Moshiach will build the Beit Hamikdash “in its place”? Why not just say, “in Jerusalem”; Why the obscure “in its place” terminology? The answer of the Rebbe, again, is that the debut for the redemption begins in the exiled land (in its place) - outside the boundaries of the Holy Land.

Perhaps others will argue with Brooklyn, NY as the optimal venue from where Moshiach makes his announcements, but they too first must answer the above questions at least.

But whatever your belief here, open your eyes to see - that the Redemption is in gear, moving along. (Not as fast as we’d like, to be sure.)

You can see it in the irony playing itself out in Germany, for example. Where once Germany sought to expel an "other" people, they now have the opposite happening to them - an influx of an other people. And to further note God’s ironic hand in this, as it prophecises in Psalms(2:4), “God is mocking them”, Muslims, all of whom supported Hitler and his “final solution”, now have joined together with their German peers. Two peoples who agreed on Jewish extermination now have themselves for bedfellows.

Do you smell Redemption in the air yet?

Yes we haven’t yet been driven down far enough along this entire highway of Redemption because we still witness individuals falling as sacrifices, (חס ושלום), with Jews still made to suffer; But, a global Redemption landscape is clearly visible worldwide. What all can see is evil raising its ugly head, exposed on an internet of windows. We can see how one Jew-hater goes after another Jew-hater, as they swallow each other up. Meanwhile, as Redemption progresses, Jews today can calmly enough lock arms across their chest and sit back and watch. The world is watching evil vanquish itself.

That Iran’s Khamenei is today’s Haman - is obvious. That they both derive from Persia in itself is telling, as is the pronunciation of their names. Both wanted the total physical annihilation of the Jewish People. This is of course the final issue that all peoples of the world will have to reckon with anyhow one day, who is it that will inherit the Earth in the Era of Redemption? The Jews - that’s obvious, but the sectors of Gentiles that will also benefit in this Jewish utopia may well find they have come from fragmented nations.

How about America - how can we account for a stealth outsider who usurped the reins of power in the mightiest of all nations? How is it that Americans now find themselves much as would feel a king forced to cater to his slave? Perhaps it’s God’s way of removing from Americans their haughtiness? Can't be, because most American folk are decent folk, and when they gain wealth they remain modest, knowing God has graced them. I personally cannot figure this one out vis-a-vis Americans.

Vis-a-vis Israelis I do see a clear sign. Israelis for so long have clamored they “need America”, be it for its generosity or culture, so God says “Enough!” because He wants to show the Jews they need rely only on Him and Torah, so He places a despot into the seat of highest USA office, to put a halt to all help to Israel, (significantly - while keeping all the good public of Americans pro-Israeli!). It’s Redemption time Jewish folk, and it’s about time you evidence God’s Hand manipulating the world to this dear end.

Still, if you come from a well-seasoned "naturalist" perspective, you're still seeing Redemption behind a vague curtain. You do not know of the Rebbe's assertions in 1980 that the final war, the one Messiah will fight and is fighting, will be a world war that cannot and will not infringe upon Jewish soul or body. The wars that will rage will be “about Jerusalem” - but Jews will have no concerns of invasion. (link)

Those waiting to see these words exemplified in amplification will soon enough get to see more of that too, because that’s what the Rebbe forecasts.

I take this tzaddik’s word for what it is, words of a prophet, words of the leader of this generation, words by him who represents all his predecessor Rebbes wrapped into one, and, significantly - of King Moshiach!

He created an army of believers spreading the word of Moshiach worldwide. These are his foot soldiers.

During the 6-Day War the Rebbe stood alone and declared Jews will win. In ’73 he told us too. Before the Persian Gulf War he urged that Eretz Yisrael is the safest place for a Jew, and all the bombs that fell caused nothing but concrete to bite the earth. He invoked the Yalkut Shimoni Midrash and introduced the conflict that had the Middle-East riled up then as the debut of the Era of Redemption, telling Jews their time for redemption has arrived and telling them they have nothing to fear.

Just as Abraham began by standing as one alone in the world, so too Moshiach is alone, now, a lone general fighting our battles for us.