THE JEWISH IDEA OF GOD 1995

T H E    J E W I S H   I D E A  O F   G O D

BY

Prof.  Robert  Sandler

1995

Among the many issues and problems in Jewish life today about which Jews disagree, sometimes very sharply, is the elusive but extremely important subject of the idea of God: specifically the definition of God, the attributes and capabilities of God, and what it means when a person says he”believes in God.” Although the idea of God has been, from the beginning of Judaism, a central element in Jewish thought, the reality is that there have been, and still are, different and conflicting views as to what constitutes the Essence of the original and continuing creative energy in the universe - i.e., God.

It is interesting to note that there are several different words that Jewish thinkers and writers throughout the ages have used to denote the original and continuing creative energy in the universe: Elohim, the Yud-Hay-Vov-Hay word (transliterated into English as Jehovah, or Yahveh),  The Most  High,  The Holy One Blessed Be He, The King of Kings, The Almighty, Adonai, King of the Universe, Master of the Universe, among others.  The Hebrew Bible itself clearly reveals a progressive development from the idea of a tribal, jealous wrathful God, in Exodus for example, to a universal, compassionate God in the books of the Prophets several hundred years later.

Textual evidence from the Torah itself would seem to indicate that even Biblical writers disagreed as to whether Elohim or Jehovah (YHVH) should predominate. A compromise of sorts was apparently reached when the final text of the Torah came to be written (about 450 B.C.E.) which included the use of both of those “names.” In Genesis, from Chapter 1:1 to Chapter 2:3 for example, Elohim is used exclusively to relate the first version of Creation. From Chapter 2:4, in the second version of Creation, God is referred to as Jehovah (YHVH) Elohim. From then on, both terms are used, sometimes alone, sometimes together, although as the Torah continues, the term Jehovah (YHVH) is used alone more often than Elohim.

In Judaism, there is no authority that is empowered to make any official pronouncement about the nature, definition, or capabilities of God that is binding on all Jews. (No one speaks for all Jews on any  issue !)  As to the idea of God, however, most Jews would agree that any idea of God must not refute, nor conflict with the IDEA of a Monotheistic, Non corporeal Creative Energy or Force in the Universe. Although that point of agreement is an extremely important one, that is where agreement ends.

Somre Jews believe in a supernatural, all-knowing (Omniscient) Being who can hear and understand human prayers. Many other Jews, however, do not believe that. Many other Jews believe that a Monotheistic Non-corporeal God is Omnipotent, that He has the power to control all natural and human events on the planet Earth or anywhere in the cosmos. Many other Jews do not believe that. Some Jews believe, on the basis of a literal reading of numerous passages in the Tanach, that a God exists who is both Benevolent and Just and that that God can and does reward or punish a person or a nation as He chooses. Many other Jews do not believe that.

Some Jews believe that God not only spoke to Moses 3,300 years ago in Egypt and in the Sinai Desert, but that He also spoke with Adam and with Abraham and with many others, as is literally recorded in the Tanach. Some Jews believe that God, the Univeral Creator, actually revealed Himself to Moses at Sinai and that He chose the Israelites to be His special people.

Many other Jews, however, who admire with reverence the profound wisdom and insight of the human writers of the Tanach, as well as the brilliant authors of post-Biblical Jewish writings, and who are pround to identify with their Jewish heritage, do not believe those things literally at all.

We Jews may be one people, but we certainly have different views about how this vast cosmos of time, space, matter and life came into being and by that rules or laws this Creation continues to function.

Having different views about the original and continuing creative energy in the universe is not unique to Judaism. Hundreds of different theologies and beliefs have existed , and still exist, among human beings here on our little planet Earth. To help put matters into perspective, we should remember that the planet Earth is only one of nine satellite planets orbiting our parent star, the Sun, which is only one of billions of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is only one of billions of galaxies !

It would appear to be appropriate for all human beings on this planet to be extremely careful about any claims of certainty or absolute truth of their beliefs concerning the manner in which the entire Universe came into existence, especially if those beliefs contravene the known laws of nature. Unfortunately, many people who appear to be otherwise sane and “educated” are often inclined to believe the strangest, weirdest, most unbelievable things about Creation, etc., even if those things do not at all conform to reason and common sense.

About 250 years ago, someone asked Israel Ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tove (founder of modern Hassidism in the eighteenth century) why in the Siddur at the beginning of the Amidah, we say “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob,” instead of simply “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” What the original writer of the Siddur intended when he wrote that passage many centuries earlier is not known. For his part, however, the Baal Shem Tov obviously wanted to make a particular and very meaningful point when he responded that “Isaac and Jacob did not feel bound to adhere to the idea of God as Abraham conceived of God; each had to search for God and to conceptualize God in his time and in his own way.”

While many Jewish writers, teachers, rabbis, and scholars throughout Jewish history have embraced, and have continued to cling to, a supernatural personal God as a static concept, many other writers, teachers, rabbis and scholars, especially since Biblical times, conceptualized God as the Baal Shem Tov did: that is, as a developing idea based on newer and deeper insights which come to light from time to time. Many Jewish scholars have incorporated that concept of progressivity into their own contributions to the halachic record on many other matters as well. (One wonders how many Hassidim today agree with the Baal Shem Tov on that point.)

Jews are taught never to utter phonetically the Hebrew Yud-Hay-Vov-Hay word denoting God, which is transliterated into English as noted above, as Jehovah, or Yahweh. The whole of Creation was considered to be so awesome, so reverential, so vast, so majestic that no mere man-made name was considered to be adequate to describe the unimaginable power, mystery, and sheer enormity of all of creation. This Hebrew word may actually be the infinitive of the verb, to be, or Being, as if to say that the closest our ancient sages felt they could come to a word for the original creative energy of the Cosmos was a word that acknowledged the existence of  an original and continuing energy !

In the Book of Exodus, the unknown author writes that, after God instructs Moses, atop Mt. Sinai, to tell the people of Israel that he must go to Pharoah in Egypt and tell him to “let my people go,” Moses says to God, “The people will ask me what your name is; what shall I say?” The writer of Exodus has God answer, “Tell them, ‘I am that which I am sent me,’ which again implies the idea of Being.  Rashi translated those words, “I shall be that which I shall be,” implying that as time passes, new ideas and concepts about the nature of the Original Creative power in the Universe may find their way into the realm of Jewish thought.

In recent years in the United States, the idea of stimulating a deeper sense of “spirituality” among Jews has been receiving a great deal of attention. Many Jews around the country are still not quite sure, however, what the various writers and speakers mean by the term, “spirituality.” Does it mean that, in the event of whatever calamity or tragedy may befall us, we are to conclude that “It is God’s Will,” and then go acceptingly to the days that follow ?” Does becoming more spiritual mean that we are to try to develop a more reverential feeling toward the beauty and majesty of all living things in nature ? Does becoming more spiritual require a belief in the existence of a supernatural Deity who is Omniscient (knows everything) and Omnipotent (controls everything that is done or not done) and Benevolent (acts justly to the deserving) ?

Although some people would answer “yes” to these questions, many others would answer “no.” Would a Naturalist Jew who is suffused with awe at the magnificence of creation, who devotes his life to the doing of Mitzvot, but who cannot rationally accept the existence of a supernatural personal deity be considered sufficiently “spiritual ?”

For many of those who are speaking and writing about spirituality, the desideratum seems to be, simply, that Jews should have a stronger belief in and a deeper feeling for God and let it go at that, without asking any probing questions about what exactly is meant by “God.” I would suspect that many, perhaps most, Jews are not likely to accept that. Too many Jews resemble Job in one respect. Even as he was suffering, Job yielded to no one in the depth of his faith in the existence of an awesome Creative Energy - God. Job could accept suffering and misfortune as part of the vicissitudes of life, but not as punishment for having done bad things. Job maintained that he was innocent, that he had not sinned and did not deserve to be suffering.

Job’s passive, non-thinking friends, however, criticized him, even ridiculed him.  “Who ever suffered being innocent ?” they taunted him.  Job vigorously defended his position, however, explaining to his friends that he too had been given a mind, that he would think for himself, and that he had not only the freedom but the responsibility to question - yes, even to question God Himself !  “Make me to know my transgression and my sin,” Job says to God.  It is interesting - and very important - to note that in this great dramatic allegory, after Job questioned God and respectfully challenged God to answer him, God spoke to Job “out of the whirlwind.”  Job is duly awed; he is overjoyed ! He is now satisfied that a universal creative energy - God - did exist, even though he is not given a reason for his suffering.

It is very significant that God later rewarded Job because “God liked the way Job spoke.” God restores Job’s family and possessions.  Job’s non-thinking  friends, on the other hand, who blindly accepted ideas from the past - that suffering and catastrophe are God’s punishment for sin - are themselves punished.  The author of Job writes that God did not like the way they spoke.  The message is clear and simple: honest sincere questioning and searching for the universal creative power is good; unquestioned acceptance of old ideas is not good.

As for suffering and catastrophe, the reader is left to infer that misfortune and tragedy, especially misfortune and tragedy that are random and capricious, just “happen” in nature and in the lives of human beings. One of the central points the writer of the story of Job may well have intended to convey to the reader is his refutation of the idea that tragedy and catastrophe and even personal suffering are punishment by a God who has the power to punish for sin and wrongdoing.

That idea, that suffering and tragedy are God’s punishment for sin and wrongdoing, is still present in the thinking of many Jews and hundreds of millions of believers of other religions  “umip-nay  chata-aynu galeenu may-artsaynu”  (because of our sins we were exiled from our homeland) is still found in many Siddurim.  In his autobiographical memoir, NIGHT,  Elie Wiesel recalls that in Auschwitz - IN AUSCHWITZ !! - “Men sat around discussing the sins of the Jewish people.”

It has been suggested, in this post-Holocaust age, that anyone who feels the inclination to explore the idea of God, especially in the context of human suffering, should not rush to a clear and definite conclusion until he can imagine himself standing between the gas chambers and the crematoria in Auschwitz in 1943 or 1944 and watching what was taking place.

“I am the Lord thy God,” wrote the unknown writer of the Book of Exodus; “Thou shalt not have any other gods before me.” The passage which begins with those words is known as the Ten Commandments, literally the Ten Sayings, which Moses, according to tradition, presented to the Israelites in the Sinai wilderness after the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. At that time, aabout 3,300 years ago, when most tribes and nations worshipped an assortment of visible andor tangible deities, such as idols, statues, animals, planets, stars, etc., the Monotheistic idea of God as a singular Invisible, Non-corporeal Creative Energy or Power in the Universe must have seemed very strange.

Neighbors of our Israelite ancestors often taunted them by asking, “How can you believe in a God you cannot even see ?”  Even among the Israelites there were those who were skeptical. Some Israelites simply could not understand the idea of One Invisible, non-corporeal Creative Energy in the universe. At the foot of Mt. Sinai, many Israelites, unwilling to wait any longer for Moses to return from the top of the mountain, prevailed upon Aaron himself, the High Priest and the brother of Moses, to fashion for them a Golden Calf so that they could have something visible to worship. When Moses returned and saw what happened, he was furious.

With the help of the Levites, Moses led a military action that crushed the idolatrous rebellion. The author of Exodus writes that “three thousand men were killed that day.” In subsequent centuries, other groups of Israelites succumbed to the lure of idolatrous worship. Judaism, as always, continued without them.

Some time in or about 620 B.C.E., the writer of the fifth of the first Five Books, the Book of Deuteronomy, wrote, as part of a long oration by Moses, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” This idea, this mental concept of one God, one original and continuing cosmic creative energy, that gave rise in all matter and all life, is never described or defined in human or physical terms. Perhaps  more importantly, however, it did clearly imply that no idols, no images, no statues, no animals, no human beings, etc., can properly be worshipped as the real Creator of all life, of the planets, of the stars, of the galaxies, of everything !

The simple fact is that no human being - not Moses then, nor any scientist or theologian now - knows with absolute certitude, the source, the explicit origin of the Original Cosmic Creation. In Judaism, the worship of any thing, object or person other than that unknown, perhaps unknowable, idea of a non-corporeal, Inscrutable Cosmic Creative Energy is idolatry ! Such idolatrous worship, it was felt, would actually prevent the human mind from freely contemplating the enormous scope and grandeur of that Creation

We now refer to that short paragraph in Deuteronomy as the “Sh’ma,” the Jewish Declaration of Faith. Millions of Jews throughout the centuries who were brutally murdered at the hands of assorted tyrants only because they were Jewish died with the words of the “Sh’ma” on their lips.

One Original invisible, non-corporeal God, One Continuing Creative Energy in the vast universe ! The idea is awesome ! To this awesome idea, Moses and later writers and teachers attached the idea that the Creation which emanated from this Energy: time, space, matter and life, was essentially good, that it was meaningful, that it was what the human  mind could conceptualize as holy, and that human beings, as the most highly developed species, has the responsibility to develop themselves to their fullest extent, and to live their lives on the basis of the highest possible ethical and moral principles.

No human being, as noted above, knows exactly and precisely what the original and continuing creative energy in the universe is. We look out upon this vast cosmos, and we see it to be, at times, so majestic, so magnificent and so comforting, yet at other times so powerful and destructive. At still other times, we see the forces of God’s Nature to be utterly indifferent both to the suffering of innocent people and to the good fortune of evil people.  We are, at one and the same time, filled with awe and troubling sense of frustration.  On the one hand, we are programmed to participate in what appears to be a miraculous continuum of life that began billions of years ago with one cell.  On the other hand, we now contemplate the fantastic nature and incredible capabilities and potentialities, for good or evil, of the human brain.

One thing those wise Hebrew sages of old did not want to do, as so many other tribes, races, and nations had done over the centuries, was to trifle with so awesome and majestic a phenomenon as the original creative energy that was and still is, responsible for this whole creation, the land masses and the oceans, the sun, the moon, the stars, planets and galaxies.  The Hebrew thinkers did not want to use a human-like name to denote the Creative Essence.  They certainly did not want to attribute such Awesome power and Cosmic Majesty to any object or to any person, however prominent.  Doing so would have violated their empirical understanding of what they knew about life and creation and what they knew they did not know about how and why ccreation really began.  As a consequence, they opted for a word that simply acknowledged the existence, the being of that creator, using one of the verbs to be.

One may ask:  how are we to understand the hundreds of references to God in the Tanach and in the liturgy which describe God in human-like perosnal terms ? The answer: ancient Jewish writers used the same anthropomorthic, mythological and metaphorical writing techniques that both religious and secular writers of ancient (and modern) times have used in their writings.  These references, wrote Maimonides, 800 years ago, “are all of them metaphorical and figurative...the Torah speaks in the language of men.”

Clearly, our exploration of the “nature of God,” should evoke in all of us, irrespective of our individual nuances of belief, feelings of humility and spirituality as we contemplate the vastness of the cosmos, the sublime majesty of our solar system, and the seemingly miraculous emergence and evolution of human life and human civilization our little planet Earth.

Our exploration of the “nature of God” should also induce in all of us a healthy dose of tolerance when we learn that mankind’s most brilliant minds have wrestled strenuously with this “nature of God” question and reached a variety of different conclusions.  Even as we are frustrated, however, we Jews are admonished to fulfill our human responsibilities with compassion for our fellow human beings and to respect those whose ideas about the original and continuing creative energy in the universe may be different from our own.




(note: This article can also be read and printed here.)

THE LAND OF ISRAEL BY ROBERT SANDLER

THE LAND OF ISRAEL

A HISTORICAL VIEW

by

Prof. Robert Sandler 2008

It has been many years since Yasser Arafat stormed out of a meeting in Washington with then President Clinton and Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, and hurriedly fled back to Gaza. That hasty departure was Arafat’s tacit rejection of the proposals Prime Minister Barak presented to him. At that meeting, Barak surprisingly had placed on the table for discussion, almost everything that Arafat had said he wanted from the Israelis as they approached what they called “final stage of negotiations.” Whether the Israeli Knesset and the Israeli people would have accepted and ratified the views of Barak is now moot. In the light of the event that occurred soon after Arafat’s return to Gaza and in light of the higher level of Muslim suicide violence against innocent Israelis that was launched on Arafat’s return, the landscape of the Arab-Israeli problem changed dramatically.

It is important to note that the current predicament involving Israel and the Arab countries did not begin when Arafat spurned Barak’s offer in the late summer of 2000. It did not begin after the Six-Day War in 1967; nor did it begin when the State of Israel was re-established in May of 1948, or when the United Nations passed a Partition Resolution in November, 1947.

The saga of the land of Israel and its long and profound relationship with the Jewish people goes back 3000+ years. Many people do not know that. The Muslim world (with some exceptions, I’m sure) generally lacks an accurate historical awareness of the strong and deep connection between the Land of Israel and the Jewish people. It is the opinion of this writer that it is important for those fair-minded people who are interested in the present conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians to know that an authentic historical record exists of who has lived and governed on that land during the last 3000 years.

Three thousand years ago, King David of the Israelites (Jews) and his son, King Solomon after him, established the land of Israel, with Jerusalem as its Capital on the land that now comprises Israel, Jordan and Lebanon. From 1000 B.C.E. (before the Common Era) to the year 70 C.E. (the Common Era=A.D.) - almost 1100 years - the Israelites (the Jewish people) lived on that land. They had their own government; they engaged in trade with other countries and fought wars; they some and lost some. Only for 48 years, from the years 586 to 538, was there no Jewish government in Jerusalem.

In the year 536, B.C. E., the Babylonians (modern day Iraqis) led by Nebuchadnessar, attached and conquered Jerusalem. They destroyed the revered Temple of the Jews (Temple of Solomon) and forced thousands of Jews into exile in Babylonia. In the year 538 B.C.E., forty-eight years later , a very fortuitous event occurred; King Cyrus and his Persian army (modern Iranians) attacked and defeated the Babylonian forces and allowed the Jews to return to their country, where, by the year 521 B.C.E., they had rebuilt their beautiful Temple and re-established their government in their Capital, Jerusalem.

In the year 63 B.C.E., 458 years later, the Romans conquered the Land of Israel. For 521 years, the Jews were allowed to maintain their religious freedom and culture so land as they paid taxes to the Roman government. Many years later, after Pontius Pilate was sent to be governor of Judea, serious long-term trouble developed. Pontius allowed i men to defile the Jewish Temple and in general make the lives of the Jews unlivable. From time to time, Jews rose up in revolt. Three years later, in the fateful year 70 A.D.,, an overwhelming military force was sent from Rome to put down the revolt. The fighting was fierce; it was reported that blood ran ankle-deep in Jerusalem. The result was that the Jewish government was crushed. large numbers of Jews fled in all directions, mainly to cities in North Africa and southern Europe Although it was reported that the Roman General Titus had been given orders not to damage the Temple, the nature of war, historically-then and now-is that war develops its own momentum of attack, counter attack and destruction. The Roman soldiers destroyed the Jewish Temple. Only the outer Western Wall remained...as it does to this day. At that time, the Romans believed that they had destroyed Judaism.

In the year 401 A.C.E. = A.D., however the Roman Empire itself fell to the Goths, et al. After the Romans left Palestine, small groups of Jews trickled back to their cherished homeland. As the centuries passed, the country fell into ta state of neglect. Nevertheless, small groups of Jews, now and then, over the centuries, did find their way to the Land of their Fathers and managed as best they could to survive.

In the ear 632 A.C.E., Muhammad, a well-meaning, deeply spiritual Arabian, died. He had concluded that both Christianity and Judaism were somehow flawed. A collection of his ideas was written by his friends and followers. This book, the Koran, became the basis of a new monotheistic religion - Islam - like Christianity, an offshoot from Judaism. There is no authentic specific evidence existing that connects Muhammad with the Land of Israel.

In the 11th century - a thousand years ago - when Muslim forces gained control of the Christian holy places in Jerusalem, Pope Urban II, in Rome authorized a crusade in order to retake control of those Christian holy places. After 200 years and several additional crusades, and much bloodshed, the Christian holy places remained in Muslim hands until modern times.

Throughout the middle ages, Jews in Europe had a very difficult time. They were expelled from country after country. They were persecuted and humiliated by Christians wherever they went. Father Edward H. Flannery, a well-known Roman Catholic priest (now a resident of Rhode Island) who in his career has been very interested in Christian anti-semitism, estimated that from the beginning of Christianity to 1933, the year Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, Christians murdered between 7 million and 10 million Jews. The Jews who have survived have clung to their traditional beliefs and values. Throughout their difficulties, they never abandoned hope for a better future. From the moment Jews fled their homeland of Israel to escape the onslaught in the year 70 A.C.E., they incorporate into their thinking - even into their liturgy - the hope for one day, somehow, returning to Jerusalem, to Eretz Yisrael, to the Land of Israel.

Many centuries earlier, during the above mentioned 48 year forced exile of Jews to Babylonia, a psalmist had written in Psalm 137:

“By the river of Babylon,
There we sat and wept,
When we remember Zion,
If I forget thee O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget its cunning,
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
If I remember you not.
If I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy.”

It is interesting to note that the word, “Jerusalem” does not occur even once in the Islamic holy book, the Koran. The work “Jerusalem” occurs 676 times in the Hebrew Bible. Soon after the year 70, when the Temple and the Jewish government were destroyed, and the Jews were scattered all over the map, the Jewish sages had written in the Haggadah on the last page: ‘NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM’ - words which have been spoken year after year, century after century by everyone sitting around the Seder table. Those words are still written in Haggadahs today in very place where Jews celebrate Passover. Also, at the end of the 24 hour fast and meditative reading on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, the ancient sages had added, again on the last page of the Yom Kippur Prayer Book, the words “NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM.”

From time to time, in the 10th and 11th centuries and again in the 15th and 16th centuries, there were many places in Palestine where significant numbers of Jews, poor, strongly dedicated Jews, eked out a living. They built small synagogues in Jerusalem, in Safed, in Hebron, in Tiberias and other places. “Palestine” was the name that the Romans had used instead of Jdea, after they crushed the Jewish revolt, as if to imply that Israel, or Judea no longer existed. Throughout those centuries of the middle ages, the countries of the Middle East were ruled by various empires: at times by the Egyptian Empire, at times by the Syrian Empire, among others. For most of the later centuries, the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire was the controlling power. It is very significant to note, however, that throughout those centuries, no group of people, no army, and no empire ever attempted to establish a country or a state on the Land of Israel. That Land was tacitly acknowledged, world-wide, that Palestine was the Land of the Hebrew Bible, the Land of the Jews. Non-Jews referred to it, as some still do today, as the Holy Land.

In the early years of the 19th century, Erope experience an Enlightenment. Napoleon’s French armies were toppling dictators, and the concepts of feedom and democracy wre in the air. In several European countries, Napoleon’s armies in course of the military victories, broke down the ghetto walls behind which Jews had been forced to live. For the first time, Jews were able to attend universities and participate in the main stream of the cultural life of Germany, Austria, England and France, et.al. Jews in Europe were now able to finance settlements in Palestine.

Sir Moses Montefiore, a Jewish Philanthropist in England (1784-1885) first visited Palestine in 1827. He subsequently visited Palestine many times. He bought large tracts of land. He financed agricultural settlements in Safed, Tiberias and Jaffa; he established a girls’ school in Jerusalem and built many housing complexes. During his visits to Palestine, he learned that the Jewish popultion of Palestine was about 10,000. Jerusalem had 5,000; Safed had 1,500; Hebron had 750; Tiberias had 600 and 400 were living other villages.

Later in the century, the affluent Rothschild family financed an ardent group of hightly motivated young pioneers, the Lovers of Zion, who emigrated from Poland and Russia to Palestine, where they began the laborious task of reclaiming the Land from its historic neglect. The return to the Land of Israel as on its way. It is significant to note tht in 1800 there were very few Arabs in what is now Israel. As the 1800’s progressed, some Arabs in neighboring countries - generally nomads -were attracted to what the Jewish pioneers and new settlers were doing. Result ? They were willing to work for the Jewish pioneers and earn some money.

In the mid-1890’s, an educated, articulate Austrian journalist, Theodore Herzl, developed a profound appreciation for his own Jewishness when he began to notice the virulent anti-Semitism that burst forth in Europe during the Dreyfus case in France. Stirred to action, Herzl embarked on a mission of propounding the cause of the re-establishment of the Jewish state. Herzl met with several heads of state in Europe to lobby for that cause.

In 1897, in Basel, Switzerland, Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress, which effectively announced to the world that the restoration of the Land of Israel had already begun and that, within the foreseeable future, a State of Israel would be a reality. “If you will it,” Herzl said, “it is dream.”

Money, in small amounts and in large amounts, from Jews all around the world started to pour into the Jewish National Fund, which was set up to buy land in Palestine and to pay for whatever was needed to achieve a restored Land of Israel.

During World War 1,British forces defeated the army of the Ottoman Empire and gained control of almost all of North Africa, including the area of ancient Israel. In 1917, the British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour, aware of the progress that the Jewish pioneers had already made in Palestine, issued the famous “Balfour Declaration,” which announced to the world that “His Majesty’s government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object .” In 1921 the newly-formed League of Nations ratified the Balfour Declaration and named England to be the mandate country to, in effect, monitor the growth and development of the Jewish settlers until the time when the Jewish Agency was capable to govern itself as a modern state The Grand Mufti, an Arab Muslim leader in Amman (now the capital of Jordan) complained to the League of Nations that if a Jewish state was to be established, an Arab state should also be created. With the authority of the League of Nations, England agreed to lop off 70 percent of the land of Biblical Israel, which consisted of all of the land east of the Jordan River, in order to create a new Arab state. This new state was called TransJordan, which came into being in 1923. Some people suggested that the name of the new state be “Palestine.” Perhaps, unfortunately, that name was rejected. In the meantime, the hard work of reclaiming the land which had lain fallow for so long, continued on the west side of the Jordan River, as did the building of Jewish villages, schools and housing, etc.

After Hitler came to power in 1933, many German Jews, and others, left Europe and went to Palestine. The Arabs, who supported the Nazi Germans, complained to the British government. The British, unfortunately (for Jews), issued the infamous White Paper banning further immigration of Jews to Palestine - in effect condemning untold numbers of Jews to death in the gas chambers of the Holocaust.

World War II, the military war, started on September 1, 1939. The world soon became aware of another war, a one-sided war, against the Jews. When World War II ended in 1945, many of the survivors - their family and assets gone - made their way to Palestine to start a new life. Even while TransJordan, an Arab state, consisted of 70 percent of Biblical Israel, the Arab  states pressured the newly-formed United Nations not to allot the entire 30 percent of the remaining land of the west side of the Jordan River to the Jews. Commissions and investigations debated and argued; convoluted maps of the Jewish settlements and Arab villages were put forth. In the meantime, the horror of what had happened to the Jews during that war produced enough moral backbone among the movers and shakers of the world to get something done.

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a Partition Plan providing for a Jewish state and an Arab state with the 30 percent. At the time, there was no organized ethnic  Palestinian state. Although neither side was completely satisfied with the Partition Plan, the Jewish Agency accepted the Partition Resolution. The Arab countries rejected the Resolution - and began preparing for war.

On May 14, 1948 the Jewish Agency, led by their first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, declared the re-establishment of the State of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital Jews around the world rejoiced...after almost 2000 years. !!

On May 15, 1948, the armies of Egypt, TransJordan, Lebanon and Syria, with units from Iraq and Saudi Arabia, attacked Israel from the north, south and east and announced to the world, that they were going to eradicate the “Zionist prescence” and that they were going to “drive the Israelis westward into the Mediterranean Sea.” That ws the objective of the Arab states in 1948, and as they have been telling the orld since 1948, (although the world refuses to listen). That is still their objective to this day.

In 1948-49, the fledgling State of Israel held off their attackers until the Arabs settled for a truce. In that war, TransJordan occupied East Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, the Western Wall and the provinces of Judea and Samaria on the west bank of the Jordan River. They occupied - and defiled shamefully - other Jewish and Christian holy places and then changed their country’s name to Jordan. The fact is that on one ever gave TransJordan the right to occupy Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem.

In June 1967, the Arab States bordering Israel tried again to defeat the Israelis on the battlefield. They urged those Arabs who lived in Israel to leave their homes so that Arab military forces could concentrate on killing Jews without having to worry about killing Arabs. In that war, which lasted all of six days, Israeli forces overran East Jerusalem, recaptured the Western Wall, the Temple Mount and the entirety of Judea and Samaria, as well as the Golan Heights (from which Arab snipers used to take target practice, killing Jewish farmers below.) To the south, Israel conquered the entire Sinai Peninsula, which the Israelis willingly returned to Egypt when Egypt and Israel signed a peace agreement in 1979. Israel offered the Gaza Strip to Egypt; Egypt refused it.

The Arab state tried again to defeat the Israelis when they lunched a surprise attack against Israel in 1973 on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jesish calendar. In the Yom Kippur war they were once again defeated. Having been defeated three times on the battlefield, the Arab leaders met in Cairo and decided first, that Yasser Arafat the the newly-formed Palestine Liberation Organization would represent the Palestinian interests. They had teenagers throw stones at both Israeli soldiers and civilians hoping that Israel would give them some land. That did not work. They eventually began to have terrorists blow themselves up in crowds, killing many innocent people. When Israelis would retaliate, they would  hide among children and then charge Israelis for hurting their people. Large numbers of innocent Israelis have been killed by Palestinians.

The Israelis have managed to make peace with the Egyptian government and with the Jordan government.

Actually, the Palestinians do have a state. The name of the state is Jordan. The vast majority of Jordanians are Palestinians. Jordan is three times as large as Israel. In any event, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will end when the Palestinians learn about the real history of the Jewish peiople and the Land of Israel...and when they recognize the existence and legitimacy of the State of Israel.