The Voice of Yehuda

By Pinchas David

“And Yehuda stepped forward”

In this week’s Torah portion, we read about the response of Yehuda when confronted by the designs of Josef towards his brothers.  Joseph entrapped Benjamin by having his servants place his personal goblet in Benjamin’s sack prior to their departure back to the land of Canaan.  Josef then arrested Benjamin, separating him from his brothers, when the goblet was found in Benjamin’s sack.  Yehuda made a vow to his father Yaakov to return Benjamin, and then stood forcefully at risk to his life before Josef to put a stop to Josef’s intentions.

Here you have the beginning of two kings within Israel confronting each other.  Two kings from two different worlds within the same family.  Josef, the king of a pagan dynasty ruling the physical world, and Yehuda, designated the ruler of his brothers by his Father, representing the embryonic spiritual legacy of the Jewish people.

Yehuda, when confronted with failing to fulfill his vow to his father, totally disregarded the threat to his life.  Yehuda brazenly related to Josef, who was like Pharaoh in every respect in the affairs of Egypt, the irrational demands and bizarre circumstances during their encounters.  Yehuda related to Josef that his unreasonable demands were fulfilled and nothing but false accusations and charges where received in return.  In addition, he warned Josef that actions towards Benjamin would cause the death of his father.  Yehuda related everything to Josef truthfully, not deviating or flinching from being explicit about the unfair treatment the brothers had received from them.

Today the remnants of Yehuda must act according.  Yehuda must stand up before the authorities, rulers, conspirators, and haters of the descendents of Yaakov, and say the truth brazenly and forcefully.  We learn from Yehuda that when a Jew stands up and speaks up before the leaders of the world, without shame and without diminishing the truth, they will listen.   The Jewish world today does not have the luxury to follow the logic and designs of the nations of the world.  That logic is forcing the world into certain destruction, a world order that simply cannot sustain itself.  The false logic governing world affairs is doomed not simply because it is wrong, but because it is contrary to the Divine Will.  We see it constantly in world events.  No matter how generous or bold the Israeli government tries to appease the haters, the situation deteriorates.   No matter how hard the world’s governments attempt to impose a solution on the Middle East, the world sinks into more instability and becomes afflicted by greater and greater natural disasters.  The argument that needs to be presented should not be watered down for fear of sounding unreasonable, fanatic, religious, selfish, or arrogant.  The argument should simply be what we are here in this worldly existence to testify to.

Dear UN, World Bank, Leaders of all Nations, Religious Leaders of all Faiths:

“We stand before you accused of every crime known to man.  When we were homeless, exiled from our land, you accused us of stealing your wealth, conspiring with your enemies, killing your prophets and gods, bringing you disease, drinking the blood of your children, perverting your society, and seeking to rule over you.  It didn’t matter if there were thousands of us or ten, you obsessed continually about a threat by our mere presence.  You distained us, stole everything we owned, you coveted and took everything from us, and then declared us too morally perverse to grace your societies.  You took our Torah, you claimed our prophets, you claimed our destiny, and you claimed our covenant with G-d for yourself.   You loathed us and would give us no peace because you claimed it was divinely ordained.  You spoke of ‘turn the other cheek’ and a ‘Merciful G-d’, yet you showed none of that towards us.

Now the world has changed, the religions in the past you created from our prophetic writings no longer hold the keys to leadership over the lands you once dominated.  Due to the failures of your governing powers, your religions have given birth instead to G-dless social ideologies, democracy, socialism, and global government.  As you blamed us for the failures of your religious aspirations, you of course blamed us for the failures of your contemporary social systems.  Considering that we never exceed 16 million scattered Jews, it is quite an accomplishment to be awarded such influence by your biased version of events, in a state of servitude and oppression no less for two thousand years.

Then you turned a blind eye to yet another ‘final solution’ to your problems.  The inevitable happened after two thousand years of demonizing us and blaming us for all your failures: Nazi Germany.  The Nazis would make the world a place for only the decent; they would eliminate the cancer that has been the cause of all the world troubles, the Jew.  After two thousands years of accumulated hatred, murder of Jews became a moral obligation, taught to school children and glorified as a sign of the most noble behavior expected of a true self-respecting human being, exemplified by “the perfect race.”

Few escaped your evil to join their brethren in the only place where they still had faith that the generations of terror would end - their homeland.  The land that great pagan Rome leveled to the ground.  There was no choice.  Every nation on earth, barring a few, denied us safe haven on their shores.

The truth is we have no choice but to see the hand of G-d, while most of you cannot.  Your vision is too corrupt after generations of falsehood and weaving historical narratives.  G-d has returned us to our land in a miracle parallel to the great miracles of old.  He returned us to our land, amidst a small hateful population, who deny the G-d of Israel, and our prophets.  These descendents of Ishmael harassed and murdered us because we were returning, not in a state of diminution, but as free people willing to reassert our physical and spiritual independence from your brutality.  These people forced wars upon us and G-d gave us victory, after victory.  Not because we out-numbered them, or because we out-gunned them, but because G-d owns this land.  He took it away from others for the 52^nd time, and returned it to the descendents of Yaakov.  Not because of our righteousness, but because of the glory of His Great Name, of which the nations said, “Where is this G-d of the Jews now?”

Now you are asking us to be ‘reasonable’, defy our G-d, reject the vision of our prophets, and betray our Torah.  You are asking us, those to whom G-d gave the land of Israel, to give it to another people.  What is your motive?  Why would you demand something like that?  Why would you, the haters who contributed to our slaughter in Europe, demand we endanger ourselves once again?   Why would you support the lies and thirst for blood from those who demand for themselves, and behave in the footsteps of clear and obvious evil?  We watch as once again you devise ‘advanced’ interpretations to label ‘evil’, a just international concern.  You have come up with words such as oppression, disadvantaged, occupied, unfairly treated, or deprived to re-label evil into some benign societal aberration.  We know evil, because evil always turns its destructive face towards us first.  The rallying call for those with lust for power, and a deteriorated moral perspective, always contains the word ‘Jew’,  You know deep in your hearts that your “solutions” are an attempt to destroy us once and for all.

And now that you see that we are not able to be murdered en masse, you are attempting the tactics of the Midianites of old, who seduced us into betraying our G-d.  Every secular, moral justification we have to be on our homeland you are attacking.  You are denying that we were never murdered by Germans.  You are claiming we never lived on this Holy Land.  You are claiming we never had a Temple.   You are claiming we are violent oppressors and a threat to world security.  The list is endless.  We are all those things in your eyes, not because of our actions, but because of your generations of distorted perceptions and moral depravity.

We can no longer play your game to survive.  We have only our G-d, our Land, and our Torah.  Not one inch of land will we surrender; we do not wish to partake in your schemes to separate us from our mission.    The plans you have imposed on us, and those plans which our secular, g-dless government has embraced, are today null and void.   We extend peace to our neighbors if they accept the basic decency long accepted universally by mankind.  The laws given after the Flood to Noach and his descendents:   You must not murder, no stealing, no eating living animals, no sexual deviancy; no defamation, and to believe in the one true will of G-d, who gave mankind the Torah.  There is can be no world peace outside the Torah, the blueprint of creation.

The one thing we’ve learned apart that from all the above, is that our G-d is a G-d who demands proper behavior above all else.  There is no greater way to honor Him except through behavior that conforms to His will.  Our G-d commanded us in the Torah to love and respect the place where He chose to dwell; that place is the Holy Land and particularly Jerusalem.  He entrusted us to protect His home, and that is what we must do.  We will not give the land away, not for peace, nor acceptance, nor for a ‘respected seat’ in your one world government.  History has proven that here is nothing we can ever do to appease you.  Once we betray our G-d, you will smell our weakness and move in for the kill.  Sorry, but the time has come for us to return to our G-d and to the ways of our forefathers.  One G-d, one Torah, one undivided Land.  If you wish to come alongside and assist us in rebuilding the Temple for G-d’s Presence to once again dwell upon the earth, fine; otherwise, leave us be, we have a job to complete.”