Almost Eden

BS"D Parashat Beha'alotcha (in Eretz Yisrael) 5769

Part A: The Hidden Light

Today, in Cairo, the American president made a reconciliatory address to the Moslem people. It was a vision of the impossible where people of diverse histories, cultures and religions all live together in near perfect harmony - just like the Flatbush neighborhood where I grew up in the 40s and 50s, when I played with little Italian and Irish boys.

It was a great valedictorian speech, like the kind which creates momentary feelings of nachat (nachas) from the grandparents and parents of the young promising graduate but have no influence on reality. Within the many ear-pleasing platitudes there were two plans whose realization the US president will be applying his total credibility to.

Follow up:

One: The Sacred Basin of Jerusalem's Old City will be under the united flags of the world's major religions. Read: Not under Jewish sovereignty.

Two: The destruction of little wooden huts on hilltops in Shomron. These little sukka-sized log structures are poisoning the progress towards Middle East peace and eventual world peace.

The Israeli leadership is bewildered where they go from here, and American Jews will soon be thrown in the ring with an opponent they have been trying to escape for sixty years. It will be the moment of deciding where their loyalties lie - with their ancient nation and homeland or with their adopted country. It is not an easy one; and in the face of life's realities, unfortunately, the majority of Jews - including the religious ones - will opt for their adopted land.

Rashi, in this week's parasha, comments that the menorah was designed with its wicks pointing towards the center in order to limit its light, and was lit in the mishkan where no one would benefit from its illumination.

Obviously, the purpose was the fulfillment of HaShem's mitzva and not for any practical application.

The lesson we learn from this is that there is more to reality than what meets the eye. There is the light we see by, but there is also a light beyond human needs, which serves the will of the Creator.

We will return to this.

Part B: Ram-Bo

Not less than a summit-level meeting of the present residents of the American White House was required to decide on what to name the nation's "first puppy". We have no way of knowing the alternative suggestions; but when the white smoke rose aloft, the nation and world knew that a decision had been reached and the lucky puppy would be called "Bo."

Mazal tov!

Some White House observers claim that it is an acrostic of the "ba'al ha'bayit's" pre-Indonesian name "Barry Obama" or his post-Indonesian name "Barak Obama," but my ever-authoritative informants leaked to me the real meaning and source of the name.

It is the Hebrew word for "come", as found in many first-grade readers when mother calls out to the family puppy, "Come Rex, come". According to my information, it was suggested by none other than the White House's own Hebrew expert Ram Emanuel, who had a double motive. He told the "first family" that it means "come" and would help to allay any feelings of Israeli diplomats that there is an anti-Israel wave in the new administration, for what true, red-blooded, continental-born American would ever call his dog a name that does not convey deep fondness?

But there is a more profound, even secretive reason behind Mr. Emanuel's suggestion, one that neither the president nor the CIA would ever be aware of. It is also the name of the third parasha in the Book of Shemot - parashat Bo. When HaShem tells Moshe "Bo el Paro" - come to Paro - and warns him of the imminent plagues which will befall the entire Egyptian people as a result of Paro's anti-Jewish administration's policies.

• Locusts to decimate all the nation's food resources.
• Darkness to implode the national electric grid and leave the nation and its computer-driven society paralyzed.
• Death of the first born where home would escape the scythe of the skeletal-faced angel of death.

It was Ram's personal reminder - Ram-Bo - that he created for himself, of who he is and where his roots lie. When sitting with the President and hearing him coerce some shriveled, humbled Israeli diplomat into not putting a single nail in the wall to hang a picture in any place in the mountain ridge of Eretz Yisrael, Ram will hear one of the President's little girls calling out "Bo". Then Ram will wake up to his responsibility to warn the President that there is a God in Heaven, who is very short on patience with nations that deal unkindly with His children Israel.

This is the Ram-Bo we would wish. However, the one we have sitting in the White House will use his Rambo muscles as an exported model of our very own Meretz Party and Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) in advising the all-too-eager president how to exile Jews from their homes in Eretz Yisrael.

This is very sad for the United States and the world, but not so for us in Eretz Yisrael. Because as dangerous and brittle as the situation might appear here, God in heaven will save us. Something He will not do for any nation that stands in the way of the Jewish nation's unstoppable historical steamroller.

The Jewish people's manifest destiny - the only manifest destiny that ever existed in history - is our return to Eretz Yisrael, according to our Torah's established borders in a land under God and governed by the Torah. There is no room in the Torah's vision of peace in the world of diverse religious beliefs. The Jewish vision is human beings under the wing of HaShem, where most are commanded to abide by 7 Noachide laws and the Chosen people abiding by 613 Torah mitzvot. With the Holy Temple on the Temple Mount serving as the life-giving umbilical connecting the source of all things with the created vessels of this world.

The world is standing on a dangerous precipice in history - more dangerous than living in a house built on the San Andreas fault. The only rational choice for a Jew in the galut is to return as soon as possible to Eretz Yisrael; for when the Quality of Justice begins to manifest itself in the world, it will be too late to make the necessary arrangements to leave the areas of God's heavy hand.

To return to the "Hidden Light". The hostile, unfriendly, contrary, disapproving, dour, hateful, ill-disposed, malicious, malignant, unsympathetic and virulent administration in Washington that we are experiencing today will only worsen. But this is not the true reality behind the smoke-screen of activity with which HaShem has surrounded us.

The near future will be a trying time for those who fear God. We will be walking in the darkness of animosity while holding only a small lantern of belief in HaShem's promise that we are His eternal people.

But that little light can drive away a forest of darkness.

The ongoing debate among the Torah elements of our people as to the nature of Medinat Yisrael as a stage in the final redemption, or merely one more link in the political-social arrangements of man, remains unsolved in the earthly bet din of rabbis. The reality of our lives has created halachic perplexities regarding the responsibility incumbent upon each and every Jew.

The reality we perceive is one of a fractured Torah world. One side claims that to live today in chutz la'aretz is not only the non-performance of a Torah mitzvah but the very sinful negation of HaShem's chessed (compassion).

In the meantime, the other side waits for a message from heaven that the time has arrived to return.

In situations such as this, the matter comes before the heavenly bet din for adjudication, which usually ends with a harsh decision over our inability to resolve these matters with the halachic tools we were given.

I have pity in my heart for what awaits our brothers and sisters in the galut.

Shabbat Shalom
Nachman Kahana
Copyright © 2009 Nachman Kahana