Senator McCain, the Media Moderate Republican Leader?

 

That is the favorite phrase we seem to read whenever the media is about to attack some Republican for some treachery or perceived misdeed. They have been appearing repeatedly in articles when there is a need for a quote of a Republican questioning, disagreeing, criticizing, decrying, denouncing or in some other way disgracing President Trump or those in his administration. Often the article will then point out how President Donald Trump is not a normative Republican or has often contributed to Democrat candidates or some other action which apparently should disqualify him from support by the entirety of the Republican Party. Such articles often then explain that obviously President Trump running for President as a Republican, a false Republican, but a Republican just the same, must be opposed by the Democrats and their final conclusion is always that President Trump must be opposed by everybody because he has forsaken both parties and is a disruptive influence on American politics. What these articles appear to have missed is that the recent political season has been a revolt against politics as usual. The first, and until Trump, the biggest and most obvious sign was the Brexit vote. The European Union was campaigning against any move by the British to leave their ranks and Prime Minister Cameron even went so far as to threaten to resign should the BREXIT vote remove Britain from the European Union. Well, the people were, according to almost every poll, predicted to vote to remain by a small margin and the result was more definitive than predicted but was in favor of leaving. The British are taking a long and winding approach to leaving presumably in order to allow time for reconsideration which is not likely coming. The good news is that Cameron did resign as threatened, or promised depending on your viewpoint, and the British have a Prime Minister who presumably has their confidence as she is in favor of withdrawing from the European Union even if slowly. Then there were rumors of the European right wing parties gaining strength, especially the nationalist parties, and that it was expected that the German elections would replace Chancellor Angela Merkel who was likely to lose and then that French President François Hollande announced he would not seek reelection. Donald Trump winning as President of the United States was just the crowning exclamation point on the dearth of the liberal west which just a few years earlier with the reelection of President Obama was looking as if they would rule for the foreseeable future.

 

Then the media was all over the prediction by Senator Chuck Schumer, the great spokesperson of the Democrat left, where he prognosticated the divorce between the Republican Party, or at least those Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate, and President Trump. His claim was that in four months there would be a splitting between true Republicans and Trump because of his ignoring protocols and not giving them adequate measure in his appointments and his populace stances which they cannot agree with and would rub roughly making them chafe and itch so badly that they would have to disassociate from Trump to remain pure. You have to understand that the media will quote anybody claiming that Donald Trump is making enemies anywhere and with anyone, any group, any political faction or any people holding purist views. They seek anger from any quarter and will attack any crack with crowbars of skepticism trying desperately to turn the slightest crack into a chasm if there is even the remotest of possibilities it will alienate Trump from voters. You see, Donald Trump must be brought low for he is a scoundrel who has bested the media in the game of words. They are used to having all the words coming from them and that their words win in the end and that there be no way around their words. Then there came Trump and the Twitterverse where Tweets are louder than all that the media’s words can carry. His reaching the public directly and telling them exactly what he means and what they should believe about him in 140 characters or less. The media cannot fight Donald Trump even in the Twitterverse because they have never mastered brevity as their trade is wordiness and Trump has mastered cutting to the chase and directly to the chase. The media attacks with lengthy diatribes and Trump replies with 140 characters or less and they have no answer for these tweets. The people get the essence of Trump and the media is powerless to dilute his wisdom, his tweets.

 

Politics has changed and Trump along with the Internet has changed it and never again will campaigns be won by cumbersome political machines and large campaigns. Brevity has become the new watchword and that 140 characters or less limit is the initial cause with short attention spans being the final touch. Campaigns will be held just as much on YouTube as every in person appearance can also be shared with the world in real time and then returned to be viewed again and again. Donald Trump has taken politics out of the hands of the political machines and eventually this revolution could bring down the large political parties. This was the idea of a candidate back during the 2000 elections whose campaign literature and all was on the Web, the Internet, where his supporters had hoped it might catch and go viral, a phrase not even born at that time, or in its infancy. This campaign did benefit from these postings as it gained the campaign the support of a group which was already Internet savvy, the gun rights groups which found his pro-gun stance to their liking and came out solidly behind him. Unfortunately that proved not to quite be sufficient in a rather liberal area but it did give hope that perhaps there would be a future where the Internet would trump, pardon the pun, the regular media and the rest of the structured political monopolies. That day has arrived and this genie will not be put back in its box. This new paradigm scares the likes of Senator McCain, Senator Schumer, the media and the leadership of both parties. Their regular power structure has been toppled by a campaign which utilized the media as their public awareness source having the media carry their water and do their advertising for them while straightening any wrongful reporting or damaging news reports and editorials by going directly to their base online and stating that their positions and responses to accusations and rumors would be made on Twitter, YouTube or their web address. People got used to seeking information refuting news stories, or at least clarifying them, by following Donald Trump on Twitter or finding his actual campaign appearances recorded on YouTube or, as a last resort, going to his web site to find answers.

 

Fake News Galore

 

Where will the media go without political campaigns every four years depending on them carrying their water when there is a firehose called Twitter and a garden hose for a slower and more detailed watering of the public on YouTube and other locations on the Internet? That is a good question and with the way they are currently acting, that question becomes all the more pressing. The torrents of “Fake News” stories are not doing the media any favors. When the people now trust the President more than the media covering him and the President remains trending on Twitter, then this will only trend worse and worse for the media. With every story told about President Trump which he denies and then gives his version in one, two, three or so 140 characters Tweets basically asking, “Who are you going to believe, Donald Trump or the lying media?” Unfortunately for the media the majority of the citizenry, according to a poll, believe Donald Trump over the White House Press Corps, which kind of answers the previous question. The media, if it knows what is good for them and their future, should start speaking straightly and honestly even if the news is not to their liking. With every story which results in the media being shown to have told another set of lies, their credibility sinks lower and further from any ability for redemption. When people have direct access to the seats of power, the actual leaders and their real statements, the media faces a real problem. They no longer filter the information the people receive as the leaders and politicians and the people have direct access to the real stories in the words with which they were spoken. They have little actual choice but to give the truth or face obsolescence as they spiral into irrelevance. Imagine a world with no New York Times, no Wall Street Journal, no Washington Post, no CNN, no Fox News and the remainders of the mainstream media have collapsed into a pool of lies of their own making. In some way it is really a shame that it had to be Donald Trump who brought about this change and gave the media their comeuppance. But then it was always going to take somebody famous, flamboyant and somewhat irregular to bring about such change, so, in a way it needed to be somebody exactly like Donald Trump.

 

We have to face it that there are very few people in this world anything like Donald Trump. He brags like few others. Where he may not be as wealthy as he claims, he sure can play the part even if he has his doubters. He has the brashness to face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Now he is deconstructing the myth of the inviolate media whose words are as pure unvarnished truth as he proves they are more often than not painted tapestries telling fanciful tales and yarns of myth and magic. He has challenged the evening anchors to a war of words and abbreviations and proving that his 140 characters or less are greater than their hour of comic coverage. This will be a battle of the ages and it will be amusing to witness. There is one warning we would like to impart to President Donald Trump. Whatever you do remember that it was the people who made you and should you believe too highly in yourself, they will remind you that you are very little without them and that the last thing they will accept from you is anything short of the truth. Do not for a moment believe that you are smarter or more wise than the people as their collective wisdom and ability to smell a yarn is far greater than any single person’s ability to get away with misleading them or concealing the truth from them. The people will always find out the liar in the end and they will more oft than not do it before the liar gets out of town. Tell them the truth and they will forgive the mistake and even the slightest of misconceptions, but lie and they will roast you like you can never know. Recovery from their anger is impossible and once deceived they will not be won back to your side for they are a mean mistress whose scorn will destroy the strongest of leaders. Keep the people at your side and nothing can stand against you, not even political parties because all political power arises from the people, or at least that is the theory. Trust the people if you ever hope for them to trust you. And if you could, be nicer to the media, please. OK, just kidding.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Unmovable Impediment to Arab-Israeli Peace

 

President elect Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, can produce all the honorable and valued credentials they desire to show that they bring something to the floor different than all others and thus may be the people necessary to bring about Arab-Israeli reconciliations. Everything we have read thus far has lauded their deal making abilities but has yet to make mention of whether or not they have perceived the elephant in the room. There was this little declaration made by the Arab League after their stunning defeat in the Six Day War known as the Khartoum Resolution which contained within it the “three no’s”; no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. This has been the position of the Palestinian Authority from its very beginning as the PLO, the terror organization founded in 1967, three years before there were any Israeli settlements beyond the Green Line as the Six Day War did not occur until June of 1967. So, what was the PLO’s Charter calling for? The PLO Charter called for the same thing the Palestinian Authority (PA) aims at today, the liberation of all of Palestine from the River to the Sea and the replacement of Zionism with Arabism where Arab or Muslim replaces Jews and Judaism in every concept concerning Israel. Until this position can be replaced with a more receptive attitude by the Arab League and thus the Arab world, there can and will be only one other hope for peace, a resounding defeat of all Islam forcing them to forever forget about their dreams of world conquest. The reality behind the Khartoum Resolution which contained within it the “three no’s” is the Quranic edict that Islam must conquer the world and become the sole religion and governance of all mankind in a great Caliphate. That, my friends, is the elephant in the room and it has nothing to do with settlements, nothing to do with occupied lands, nothing to do with Israeli Apartheid claims by the PA and other Arab bodies, nothing to do with Jews or Israel other than while moving towards world domination the Muslim and Arab world are using Israel and the Jews as their smokescreen and, like the magician, concentrating the world to look at Israel while other moves are occurring in their plans for world conquest.

 

Israel is their foil used to mask anything else. The other problem is the Western world is blind to their own weaknesses which are legion when it comes to having a soft belly which is easily sliced and is currently being cut to ribbons starting in Europe and with plans for the rest of the developed world. The war in Syria has presented the Muslim world with an opportunity which they are utilizing to their best ability. The Syrian War had produced a “refugee crisis” which the Muslim nations have decided must be addressed by the good-doers in the West and not a single refugee is to be taken in by the Arab and Muslim worlds. Thus far the Western liberal establishments have fallen for this infiltration by refugee crisis hook-line and sinker. Through this influx of great numbers of barely, if at all, vetted Arab Muslims their plans are to send in an army of trainers, instigators and other operatives as well as massive numbers of fighting age men and young boys with the aim of spreading terrorism throughout the West on a scale today witnessed only in Israel. Imagine if the great plains of the United States were set to fire as the areas within Israel are every spring and fall when the winds are their strongest. We showed maps and other information within the article yesterday. Such an attack would cause a calamity unseen since the Dust Bowl as the dried crops stalks of late summer would serve as waiting timber for a conflagration which would consume the entirety of the midsection of the United States and cause worldwide famine with the loss of crops, harvest and the destruction of farms and their equipment.

 

Arab and Syrian Refugees Entering the Heart of Europe

 

The other secret which is beyond the ability of the majority of the Western political and military elite is that the Islamists are quite willing to destroy the world if they believe they will own and rule in the aftermath. That is the psyche of the enemy the West is facing and they appear thusfar completely unable to grasp that reality. One cannot contain or otherwise deal with such a mentality as there is nothing they are not willing to bring down upon themselves if it will also destroy their enemies. This is the driving force which produces suicide attacks from bombings where the person is the bomb, to truck and car bombings where the driver is sacrificed, to stabbing attacks on groups of IDF soldiers knowing full well that the odds are one will be shot dead. The Arab fighter is assured of a place in Paradise where the rivers flow with wine which does not intoxicate one in excess, grasslands as far as the eye can see, food, beautiful women who remain virgins time after time after time all raven haired beauties. The Arab fighter is guaranteed their family will be honored in this world as the family, especially the mother, of a shahids, a martyr who died for Allah, the highest attribute a soul can have and the highest honor bestowed on one’s family. Such is an instant road to immortality in Paradise and an immortal place in the material world for one’s family. Of course this honor does not last permanently or every Arab and Muslim family would be so honored after fourteen hundred years of wars for conquest, many fought between different belief systems within Islam such as the well-documented Shiite-Sunni war which has raged since the death of Muhammad and the two sides differing choices for lines of succession. As long as Islam believes there is a possibility, or as today a probability, that they will succeed in their war for world conquest if they simply persist against the morally depraved developed world as Allah has promised.

 

Islamism is very much like Nazism and Communism in that they believe they are the chosen to conquer the world. Like the Nazis and communists, the Muslims believe that world conquest is a possibility and that it is assured they will be the people to do exactly that. How one is to negotiate a peace in Israel when the real target is the entire planet escapes our best logic but apparently this chimera refuses to die and as such remains the magicians blind against the developed world seeing the real picture and the growing threat. Should Europe continue to attempt and fill their growth decline by importing Muslims freely and with little if any care as to whom they are and what their intent may be, then Europe is dead and lost to Islam and it is merely a matter of time. The Angela Markel’s and François Hollande’s open borders policies which is being imposed by the European Union and a collection of blind politicians who believe that it is all a game of numbers and there is no difference between a native born European and an imported European from Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Sudan, etc. The fact that they have entire neighborhoods of Islamist supremacy where their police forces are afraid to enter with less than hundreds of officers armed as well as any military brigade on the planet does not awaken them to the fact that importing their own destruction is a poor solution. If importation of Muslims were the solution to their population declining numbers and would be providing them with a working class which would be capable of paying the taxes to support aging populations, would not their Muslim neighborhoods be working and paying taxes and not sitting home plotting while collecting guaranteed wages from the government and costing the governments millions of Euros they do not have? One feels like screaming, “WAKE UP,” but we know they are deaf, dumb and blind to what is happening right before their eyes.

 

The solution to the Arab-Israeli problem has absolutely nothing to do with Israel. It is an attention point being used to force the developed Western world to concentrate on the right hand while the left hand places a knife to their collective throats. It is not too late for Europe to escape their impending fate but it will require a resurgence of something all too many Europeans find distasteful, a return to Judeo-Christian ethics and return to the Churches and Synagogues. Secular Humanism is a poor substitute for Christianity and Judaism and this secular humanism will lead exactly where it has led before, to a great war except the winner of this war is not likely to be the developed world unless they smell and drink some coffee, probably not Turkish but Columbian coffee. One of the reasons that Israel has survived thus far is Torah and the Jewish faith. Yes, we know that the average European and American see Israel as Tel Aviv and look no further than Tel Aviv represents everything they believe is right in this world. Behind Tel Aviv there is Jerusalem; there are numerous religious communities where Judaism is practiced much as it had been for centuries; there are many religious communities spread throughout the population and the majority of Israelis regularly attend Synagogue. Could many Israelis do better, yes, and that includes us, but most are trying. There are those segments of Israeli society stuck in secular humanism, socialism, or any of a number of political isms which are protected because of Judaic culture, religion and inspirations which become evident almost every time that Israel has needed call on the IDF to protect the nation. Also, unlike the Western troops which had been spread through many trouble spots of the Middle East, the Israeli troops are not leaving the ground of Eretz Yisroel because some political promise made in a campaign that will be executed no matter the damage. The IDF has nowhere to retreat to like do the European and American troops outside their borders. This is why Israel is succeeding where the rest of the West fails. We cannot retreat as our mission statement is Zionism and the return and rebuilding of our historic and Hashem given homeland and we will not, can not and must not ever deviate from making our return meaningful and to count for everything it is worth. Soon the Western world will be in a similar place but it would be so much easier and less costly in treasure and lives if the West would awaken to the real threat and face it now while it is still forming because once it has been substantially formed there will be one-billion Muslims all of which convinced the time for their victory and completion of the task Allah placed before them has come. That task is world conquest, universal observance of Islam and the Quran, the eradication of all opposition and the forced conversion or death of every infidel. Allah has promised and unless they can be made to realize that such will never happen, they will continue to strive and slowly be permitted by politicians with agendas that do not include actually measuring the good against the bad of their decisions and who simply believe that all cultures are equally valid. News flash, all cultures are not equally valid as had been proved throughout the twentieth century and that continues to be true today. The West has been defending Judeo-Christian morality and Greco-Roman democratic governance since the beginning of time, or so it would seem. It has only been in the past twenty-five years that doing so has lost its importance and been replaced by anything and everything is fine and there is no right or wrong. The problem is such a belief system itself is wrong on so many levels but that will not matter to those refusing to see.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

One Editorial Nailed Solution for Many Nations’ Problems

 

A Great Awakening or a Rude Awakening: What Will It Be? written by Michael Brown  echoed our feelings on numerous levels and nailed much of the problem we have mentioned for the United States, European countries, Russia and with some adjusting would serve well here in Israel as well. The article pointed out that seeking the solution to national problems through the political front alone was simple folly. The candidates for President in the United States was sufficient proof that politics alone was a futile direction as a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was simply a choice between two massively flawed individuals whose ideas of truth, honesty and dignified stature in leadership leave so much to be desired and make the fact that any political solution will never be inspirational to correct the path of the public as a whole. Michael Brown noted this dilemma and his solution was for the United States to, for lack of a better phrase, to have a collective ‘come to Jesus’ moment. When we have talked of such, we have noted a return to the basic Judeo-Christian ethics upon which Europe and the United States and the rest of the Eurocentric world was based on and served it so well against previous attempts to invade and destroy and take over their areas by Islam in the past twelve-hundred years, that’s around a millennia and one quarter, also known as a very long time. The Judeo-Christian ethos solidified around 1500 through 1700 with the protestant reformation, the turning point in the wars with Islam and leading to the more open society able to embrace science and the progress and political revolutions all this envisioned and eventually produced based on the remnants of the Roman and Byzantine Empires and their adoption of the Greek representative governance which eventually led to the rule by the will of the people. This works for as long as the people are of a religious and forward looking public ready to sacrifice for the good of the community and the future of the nation and its people. That was where the Judeo-Christian ethics paid the societies great dividends. One could predict the health of a community simply by attending the churches on Sunday, and the Synagogues in the Jewish neighborhoods every morning and evening, and if they were being attended by healthy crowds then the society was healthy and if there were a sparse and paltry attendance with empty pews or seats, then the community was on a descent into oblivion. Europe has been followed by the United States by a mere ten to twenty years but inexorably the Americans have been catching up and both societies are showing the signs of ill health and decay.

 

Protestant Reformation Timeline

 

Nobody wants to admit the problem and it can now be measured in the lack of babies in the nurseries of the hospitals, the closing of neighborhood schools due to lack of students and the dwindling reproductive rates where childbearing has dropped below, in some cases precipitously and perilously below, replacement levels demanding that immigrants be found to replace the lack of workers such that the society can afford to support their elderly and aging populations. The problem with this situation is that with time the new immigrants will become the majority of the work force and will resent their being taxed to support an aging population which is unlike them and to which they have no affinity or care. This will lead to a dangerous situation where simply ridding themselves of these old fossils will become an enticing idea and euthanizing these useless relics of the former glory will be the only solution that seems logical and these fossils will be too old, weak and few in number to prevent their slaughter. It may come quickly in a single night starting in one town and spreading across the continent with the blazing speed of an inferno and within a few weeks the problem of those who had become the other will be solved and the new majority will be rid of this burdensome and expensive problem and ready to enjoy their new found financial freedom. Imagine their joy having everything their way and the old once proud people vanquished more by their own hand and selfish “me thinking and lifestyle” than the actions of their final executioners.

 

Where in Europe and Russia things are approaching drastic and may become irreversible and the disastrous end will have become inevitable. Maybe the new peoples will be kind and simply place the “old ones” on reservations and treat them much as they had treated the civilization they replaced when conquering the New World. Perhaps the Native Americans will become an important part of the New America and that will be the perfect role reversal and payback almost in all of history. The United States would be more capable of turning everything around and their salvation would come from the most ignored and considered inconsequential of places politically, fly-over country. The middle of the nation where people, according to President Obama, “… they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” This quote is the perfect example of the problem with society which the political class represents and is indicative of the societies on the two coasts. It is the clinging to their religion and the Bible that just might start the revival necessary for the return to the next golden age in the United States and perhaps bring a reverse tide which might bring the restoration of Europe if it is already not too late for Europe. Britain might have saved themselves and might perhaps allow other nations to also find the path back to their roots and return to religion which is not anti-science as even Albert Einstein believed that there had to be a G0d because the universe was simply too complex but mathematically perfect to have come into existence purely through an accident. His was the G0d which was the harmony and reflection of the order of the universe as he explained once on April 24, 1929, Einstein cabled Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein in German: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” The entity in such beliefs is often referred to as the “Spinoza’s God” named after the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Einstein is not the only science personage who believes strongly in God as many of the earliest theories of our Universe were first proposed by scientists who were also men of the cloth, some even worked from the observatory located within the complexes of Vatican City (see photo below). The Church has come a long way and no longer fights science as they did in the times of Galileo Galilei.

 

Vatican City Observatory

 

The truth which even science will not dispute is that as Europeans and, after them, Americans left their religions and began to live for the day and let tomorrow take care of itself are in many cases childless and their predominance in the populations of the Western World is leading to the death of these nations and their civilization. Islam is ready to take up any slack and turn Europe into a reflection of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and are already arriving with an advanced guard. The vast majority of the “Syrian refugees” are males between the ages of thirteen to eighteen up through forty or fifty. These could easily be classified as the age one could expect of a military expedition including privates, sergeants, captains all the way to generals. The strata of ages are even in close approximation to a military force and their actions depict a group intent on conquest over assimilation. The United States has a somewhat brighter picture as the most readily available immigrants are Mexicans and other Hispanics from Central and South America who are largely Christians. As long as the numbers of MENA refugees and illegal immigrants from MENA nations and keep the immigrants restrained to largely Christians, then the future may not be as drastic a change to the American societal influences while Europe has no real similar alternative unless they choose to import Christian immigrants from central and southern Africa and parts of Asia. This would require a definitive change from their current system where they are importing Muslims with little if any background checks of virtually any depth. Such is a recipe for disaster which has already been starting to crest and appear throughout Western Europe. Even Islamic strategic Imams have already claimed that this is a part of their plan for civilizational jihad and the destruction of the Western World through their own rules of freedoms using them to destroy the entire civil constructs and replacing Christianity as the main religion with Islam and then persecuting the remaining Christians and the secularists giving them the choice of adopt Islam or death. The plan is to gain sufficient numbers and then use the sword to conquer the West just as they have MENA and had conquered Spain and large swaths of Eastern Europe and the Balkans before being pushed back during World War I. That is correct, it was just about one hundred years ago when Islam was pushed from Eastern Europe and their Caliphate Empire, the Ottoman Empire, finally came crashing down at the same time the Austria-Hungarian Empire also collapsed and both were restructured and divided into individual countries by the Sykes–Picot Agreement. That is another clarification which needs correction; the Sykes–Picot Agreement altered the maps of Eastern Europe as well as areas of MENA as it forced the end of two empires, the Ottoman Empire and the Austria-Hungarian Empire.

 

What might be a good idea for the Western World would be to only accept as many Syrian and other MENA refugees in equal numbers as do Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. The claim that Saudi Arabia does not have any accommodations for the refugees is the biggest lie. They have a set of air-conditioned tents with stoves and bathrooms and kitchens and bedding and living space for four to six people which are used to house adherents joining the Haj. As the Haj just ended these tents are still up and empty and could easily hold tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of refugees (see image below). The Saudis are refusing to take the refugees because these are not refugees but the first wave of an invasion and what good would it be to have Muslims invade Saudi Arabia as they are already Islamic. If there is to be an invasion then Europe must be the target, not Saudi Arabia. Western nations importing people who are neither secular nor Christian is opening their world to invasion and steady erosion leading eventually to the complete death of Western civilization.

 

 

There is one nation which has a civilization similar in many ways to the past Western World and their religious Judeo-Christian civilization and that is Israel. Israel has an open democratic parliamentary governance with freedom of religion, freedom of the media, freedom of speech (largely), as well as equality of women and men, no persecution of sexual deviants, freedom of sexual orientations, and most of the other freedoms and equalities as well as an independent judiciary and equality before the law. The difference is instead of a complete Judeo-Christian civilization it has a Judean civilization based on Torah as well as modern free democratic society. The main difference is that Israel is more Judeo than Christian and is moving further in that direction. Israeli population is currently heading in a number of desirable directions. The first and potentially most important is that the nation is becoming more religious. Another is the population is intermarrying which can only improve relations. There have been moves to change from having two separate Chief Rabbis to having a single Chief Rabbi for all Jews. Personally with an Ashkenazi father and a Sephardic mother I am all in favor of the merging of the two main bodies of Judaism. This will also have another effect as the secular members of Israeli society marry more religious members they will more often become more religious themselves rather than tear the other from their faith. As Israel is a young nation it still had an old soul and many are simply giddy with having returned to our homeland after almost a two thousand year exile. Some will claim that we have not been exiled anywhere near that long as we do not look old enough to have been exiled for almost two thousand years. Perhaps it will help if we also inform that every Jew is to believe they were slaves in Egypt, were part of the Exodus from Egypt, received the Law, Torah, at Mount Sinai, witnessed the presence of Hashem on the mountain, and were with the Israelites on their entry into the Promised Lands and experienced every calamity and exhilaration the Jews the world over throughout history have experienced whether that be suffered or celebrated. We have said “Next year in Jerusalem,” at the end of every Seder and after numerous prayers and it has been a dream of generation after generation of Jews. We have been instructed to have lived with every exiled Jewish family as we are a family and all related in some way, some distant, others very much closer. This has steeled us and made the Jew one of more resilient of peoples of the world and this has made the return to Eretz Yisroel all the sweeter. With our religious strength growing, we are going in the opposite direction than the growing secular Western world, and this is to our credit and will serve us well with larger families and greater closeness to Hashem who in return provides miracles large and small for each and all of us at the same time. These miracles only strengthen our faith and begin a growth in faith for some who had none at first. We can tell you that if you wish to see the difference between those who are a part of a growing religious community and those who are forfeiting their faith. One can simply make a study of the religious Jews of Israel and compare their faith with that of the least religious, leftist, progressive, liberal Jews in the United States. One group is growing and the other is heading towards extinction. The loss of our brothers and sisters and the coming of more in the coming months saddens us here in Israel as they were so close to coming home where being Jewish is something so much easier to pursue than it is in the United States which leads to more observance and a closer society which assist one another instead of compete against one another. Israel will grow in strength and religious power as time proceeds and we need not fear as faith increases and Hashem becomes more with us. We will fear no evil even in the shadow of death for Thou art with me.

 

Beyond the Cusp