The Ingathering

INGATHERING OF THE EXILES (Heb. קִבּוּץ גָּלֻיּוֹת kibbutz galuyyot). In biblical Hebrew galut serves as the abstract "exile," as in the phrase "in the 37th year of Jehoiachin's exile" (le-galut Yehoyakhin; Jer. 52:31), or the concrete "exiles," as in the clause "he will release my exiles" (galuti; Isa. 45:13). The verb kibbez ("gathers") is frequently used of God's ingathering of Israel's dispersion (e.g., Jer. 29:14; Ezek. 11:17; Isa. 56:8; Ps. 106:47); yet the phrase kibbutz galuyyot is first found only in rabbinic literature (e.g., Pes. 88a). The belief, however, in the ingathering of the exiled communities is nevertheless repeated time and again, especially in the prophecies of Isaiah (11:12; 27:13; 56:8; 66:20), Jeremiah (16:15; 23:3, 8; 29:14; 31:8; 33:7), and Ezekiel (20:34, 41; 37:21). It is first mentioned in Deuteronomy 30:3–5. After the details of the destruction and exile are described (Deut. 28:63–64; 30:1), the promise is given that "the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the peoples, whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. If any of thine that are dispersed be in the uttermost parts of the heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee, and… bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed."

The ingathering started before the advent of Zionism with the influx of immigrants into the Land of Israel during the years 1882-1903 (Russian Pogroms) is known as “The First Aliyah.” During these years some 25,000 Jews emigrated from Russia and Rumania, and 2,500 arrived from Yemen.

Before I continue, I believe we should review the history of the First and Second Temples.

A Leyden jar (or Leiden jar, or archaically, sometimes Kleistian jar) is an electrical component which stores a high-voltage electric charge (from an external source) between electrical conductors on the inside and outside of a glass jar. It typically consists of a glass jar with metal foil cemented to the inside and the outside surfaces, and a metal terminal projecting vertically through the jar lid to make contact with the inner foil. It was the original form of the capacitor (also called a condenser).

Its invention was a discovery made independently by German cleric Ewald Georg von Kleist on 11 October 1745 and by Dutch scientist Pieter van Musschenbroek of Leiden (Leyden), Netherlands in 1745–1746. The invention was named after the city.

The Leyden jar was used to conduct many early experiments in electricity, and its discovery was of fundamental importance in the study of electrostatics. It was the first means of accumulating and preserving electric charge in large quantities that could be discharged at the experimenter's will, thus overcoming a significant limit to early research into electrical conduction. Leyden jars are still used in education to demonstrate the principles of electrostatics.

The ark had no feet; it rested directly on the ground. Rings were fastened to each of its four corners, through which gold-plated wooden poles were threaded. The poles, which were never to be removed, were used by the priests from the Kehot house to carry the ark, for it was forbidden to transport it by wagon.

The “kaporet,” a golden cover one handbreadth thick, covered the outer box. Atop the cover, fashioned from the same piece of metal, sat the “keruvim,” cherubs—two childlike sculptures that faced each other, their wings towering above the ark.

The kings of the Kingdom of Israel practiced idolatry, but so did many of the kings of the Kingdom of Judah. G‑d sent prophets repeatedly to admonish the Jews, but they refused to change their ways, choosing instead to deride these prophets as false messengers coming to discourage them with predictions of destruction. 

In one egregious example, in 661 BCE, the prophet Zechariah ben Jehoiada chastised the nation for their sins, warning them of the grave punishments that would befall them if they would not change their ways. Rather than accept his rebuke, the nation stoned Zechariah to death in the Temple courtyard. Incredibly, this occurred on Yom Kippur. 

Divrei Hayamim II - II Chronicles - Chapter 24

17 And after the death of Jehoiada, the princes of Judah came and prostrated themselves to the king; then the king hearkened to them.

18 And they forsook the House of the Lord, the God of their fathers, and they worshiped the asherim and the idols, and there was wrath upon Judah and Jerusalem because of this, their guilt.

19 And He sent prophets among them, to return them to the Lord, and they warned them, but they did not incline their ears.

20 And the spirit of God enveloped Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, and he stood above the people and said to them, "So said God: Why do you transgress the commandments of the Lord? You will not succeed because you have forsaken the Lord, and He has forsaken you."

21 And they conspired against him and stoned him by the king's command, in the forecourt of the House of the Lord.

22 And King Joash did not remember the loving-kindness that Jehoiada his father had done with him, but he killed his son, and upon his death he said, "May the Lord see and requite."

23 And it came to pass at the turn of the year that the army of Aram marched upon him, and they came to Judah and Jerusalem, and they destroyed all the princes of the people from among the people, and all their plunder they sent to the king of Damascus.

24 For, with few men the army of Aram came, and the Lord delivered into their hands an exceedingly large army, for they had forsaken the Lord, the God of their fathers; and they dealt out punishment to Joash.

25 And when they went away from him, for they left him with many ailments, his servants conspired against him for the blood of the sons of Jehoiada the priest, and they slew him on his bed, and he died, and they buried him in the City of David, but they did not bury him in the graves of the kings.

26 And these were the ones who conspired against him: Zabad the son of Shimeath the Ammonitess, and Jehozabad the son of Shimrith the Moabitess.

27 And concerning his sons, and the many prophecies about him, and the foundation of the House of God-behold they are inscribed in the midrash of the book of the kings; and Amaziah his son reigned in his stead.

Rather than allowing Zechariah's blood to settle into the earth, G‑d caused it to bubble up. The people tried to cover it with earth, but it continued to seethe for the next 252 years, until the Destruction of the Temple (more on this later on).

As a result of the disobedient and corrupt behavior of the Jews, G‑d did not provide either kingdom with the peace and security that the united kingdom had enjoyed under Solomon's reign. Their common enemy was the Assyrian empire to the north.

In 555 BCE, Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom, fell to the Assyrians, and the Kingdom of Israel came to an end. Scores of thousands of the conquered people were led into captivity. They were transported to distant provinces of the Assyrian empire, and they disappeared completely. The Assyrians repopulated the land with exiles that had been uprooted from other countries, whose descendants came to be called the Samaritans or Kuttim. No trace has been found of the Ten Tribes.

The Kingdom of Judah miraculously survived the Assyrian threat and lasted another 150 years. Their kings were not uniformly evil as the kings of the Kingdom of Israel had been; they had several truly righteous monarchs – notably among them Hezekiah and Josiah – and enjoyed occasional bouts of resurgent spiritual health. But eventually, they would fall victim to the Babylonians.

The Book of Lamentations

Beginning in 463 BCE, Jeremiah prophesized about the Babylonian threat and warned the Jews of the terrible devastation they would incur if they did not stop worshipping idols and mistreating each other. But his melancholic prophecies, recorded in the Book of Jeremiah, went largely unheeded by the Jews, who mocked and persecuted him, (Yirmiyahu - Jeremiah - Chapter 20).

Some eighteen years before the destruction of the Temple, Jeremiah was imprisoned by King Jehoiakim (apparently due to his persistent prophecies foretelling the fall of Jerusalem). 

G‑d then spoke to Jeremiah 

Yirmiyahu - Jeremiah - Chapter 36

1 And it came to pass in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah the king of Judah, that this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying:

2 Take for yourself a roll of a book and write upon it all the words that I have spoken to you concerning Israel, concerning Judah, and concerning all the nations, since the day that I spoke to you from the days of Josiah until this day.

3 Perhaps the house of Judah will hear all the evil that I plan to do to them, in order that they should repent, each man of his evil way, and I will forgive their iniquity and their sin.

Jeremiah summoned his devoted disciple, Baruch ben Neriah, and dictated to him a heart-rending and graphic warning of the coming doom; this prophecy eventually became known as the Book of Lamentations ("Eichah").

In this scroll, Jeremiah described and mourned the devastation that G‑d would wreak upon Jerusalem and the Holy Land: children starving; cannibalism on the part of hunger-crazed mothers, the city abandoned.

Baruch ben Neriah followed Jeremiah's instructions. He publicly read the scroll in the Holy Temple.

When the king was informed of this event, he asked that the scroll be read to him. After hearing but a few verses, the king grabbed the scroll and callously threw it into the fireplace.

When Jeremiah was informed of the king's actions, he sat and composed another chapter that he added to the book. This Book of Lamentations is read in the synagogue every year on the eve of the Ninth of Av.

The Babylonians Are Coming

The Assyrians had long dominated the Middle East, but their power was waning. Even with the help of the Egyptians, who were getting stronger, they were not able to fight off the Babylonians. These three empires were engaged in a power struggle, and the Kingdom of Judah was caught in the middle.

In 434 BCE, the Kingdom of Judah tried to form an alliance with Egypt. The Jews thought, despite Jeremiah's prophecies, that this would keep them safe. But instead, the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, marched on Judah. He pillaged Jerusalem and deported tens of thousands of Jews to his capital in Babylon; all the deportees were drawn from the upper classes, the wealthy, and craftsmen. Ordinary people were allowed to stay in Judah, and Nebuchadnezzar appointed a puppet king over Judah, Zedekiah.

But Zedekiah, though G‑d fearing and righteous, was foolishly courageous, and (despite Jeremiah's repeated admonitions not to) he tried to break free from the Babylonians. So Nebuchadnezzar marched on Jerusalem again. This time he would not be content with making Judah into a vassal state. On the tenth of Tevet, 425 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar began the siege of Jerusalem.

According to some sources, Josiah, one of the final kings to reign in the First Temple period, learned of the impending invasion of the Babylonians and hid the Ark. Where he hid it is also questionable – according to one midrash, he dug a hole under the wood storehouse on the Temple Mount and buried it there (Yoma 53b). Another account says that Solomon foresaw the eventual destruction of the Temple, and set aside a cave near the Dead Sea, in which Josiah eventually hid the Ark (Maimonides, Laws of the Temple, 4:1).

The Destruction of the First Temple

Thirty months later, in the month of Tammuz, after a long siege during which hunger and epidemics ravaged the city, the city walls were breached. King Zedekiah tried to escape through an eighteen-mile long tunnel, but he was captured in the plains of Jericho by enemy soldiers who, while chasing a deer, saw him emerging. He was brought before Nebuchadnezzar in Riblah. There Zedekiah's sons and many other Jewish personages were slain before his eyes; then his eyes were put out, and he was led in chains to Babylon. 

Yirmiyahu - Jeremiah - Chapter 39

1 In the ninth year of Zedekiah the king of Judah, in the tenth month, Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon and all his army came to Jerusalem and besieged it.

2 In the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month on the ninth of the month, a breach was made in the city.

3 And all the officers of the king of Babylon came and sat in the middle gates Nergal-sarezer, Samgar-nebo, Sarsachim Rab-saris, Nergal-Sarezer Rab-mag, and all the rest of the officers of the king of Babylon.

4 And it came to pass when Zedekiah the king of Judah and all the men of war saw them, that they fled and went out at night from the city by way of the king's garden by the gate between the two walls, and he went out by way of the Arabah.

5 And the army of the Chaldees pursued them, and they overtook Zedekiah on the plains of Jericho, and they took him and brought him up to Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath, and he called him to account.

6 And the king of Babylon slaughtered Zedekiah's sons in Riblah before his eye, and the king of Babylon slaughtered all the nobles of Judah.

7 And he blinded Zedekiah's eyes, and he bound him with copper chains to bring him to Babylon.

8 And the king's palace and the houses of the people the Chaldeans burnt with fire, and they demolished the walls of Jerusalem.

9 And the rest of the people who remained in the city, and the defectors who had defected to him, and the rest of the remaining people, Nebuzaradan, the chief executioner, exiled to Babylon.

10 And the poor of the people who had nothing, Nebuzaradan the chief executioner left in the land of Judah, and he gave them vineyards and fields on that day.

11 And Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon gave charge concerning Jeremiah in the custody of Nebuzaradan the chief executioner, saying,

12 "Take him and look after him and do no harm to him, but whatever he speaks to you, do so with him."

13 And he sent Nebuzaradan the chief executioner and Nebushazban Rab-saris and Nergal-sarezer Rab-mag and all the officers of the king of Babylon.

14 And they sent and took Jeremiah from the prison yard and gave him over to Gedaliah the son of Ahikam the son of Shaphan to take him out to the house, and he dwelt among the people.

15 And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah when he was imprisoned in the prison yard, saying:

16 Go and say to Ebed- melech the Cushite, saying: So said the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel; Behold I bring My words upon this city for evil and not for good, and they shall be before you on that day.

17 And I will save you on that day, says the Lord, and you shall not be given into the hand[s] of the men whom you fear.

18 For I will surely deliver you, and you shall not fall by the sword, and your life shall be to you for prey for you have trusted Me says the Lord.

On the seventh day of Av, the chief of Nebuchadnezzar's army, Nebuzaradan, began the destruction of Jerusalem. The walls of the city were torn down, and the royal palace and other structures in the city were set on fire.

Our Sages say that when Nebuzaradan entered the Temple he found the blood of Zechariah seething. He asked the Jews what this phenomenon meant, and they attempted to conceal the scandal, but he threatened to comb their flesh with iron combs. So they told him the truth: "There was a prophet among us who chastised us, and we killed him. For many years now his blood has not rested."

Nebuzaradan said, "I will appease him." He then killed the members of the Great and Small Sanhedrins, then he killed youths and maidens, and then school-children. Altogether, he killed 940,000 people. Still the blood continued to boil, whereupon Nebuzaradan cried: "Zechariah, Zechariah! I have slain the best of them; do you want all of them destroyed?" At last the blood sank into the ground (Talmud, Gittin 57b).

Yirmiyahu - Jeremiah - Chapter 52

12 And in the fifth month, on the tenth of the month- that was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon-Nebuzaradan the chief executioner, came [and] stood before the king of Babylon in Jerusalem.

13 And he burnt the house of the Lord and the king's palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem and all the houses of the dignitaries he burnt with fire.

14 The entire army of the Chaldeans that was with the chief executioner demolished all the walls of Jerusalem around.

15 And Nebuzaradan the chief executioner exiled some of the poorest of the people and the remnant of the people who remained in the city, and the defectors who defected to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the populace.

16 Now the chief executioner left over some of the poorest of the land as vine-dressers and farmers.

17 And the Chaldeans broke the copper pillars that were in the house of the Lord and the bases and the copper sea that was in the house of the Lord, and they carried off all their copper to Babylon.

18 And they took the pots and the shovels and the musical instruments and the basins and the spoons and all the copper vessels with which they served.

19 And the chief executioner took the pitchers, the censers, the basins, the pots, the candelabra, the spoons, and the frames both of gold and of silver.

20 The two pillars, the one sea, and the cattle that were beside the bases that Solomon had made for the house of the Lord; there was no weight for the copper of all these vessels.

21 And the pillars-the height of one pillar was eighteen cubits and a thread of twelve cubits would encircle it, and its thickness was four fingers, hollow.

22 And there was a capital of copper upon it, and the height of the one capital was five cubits, and a net, and pomegranates on the capital around, all was copper. And such did the second pillar have, and pomegranates.

23 And the pomegranates were ninety-six to the outside; all the pomegranates were one hundred on the net all around.

24  And the chief executioner took Seraiah the head priest and Zephaniah the priest of second rank, and the three keepers of the utensils.

25 And from the city he took one eunuch who was appointed over the men of war, and seven men of those who saw the king's face, who were found in the city, and the scribe of the general of the army, who would muster out the people of the land, and sixty men of the people of the land who were found in the midst of the city.

26 And Nebuzaradan the chief executioner took them and brought them to the king of Babylon, to Riblah.

27 And the king of Babylon struck them down and killed them in Riblah in the land of Hamath, and Judah went into exile off its land.

28 This is the people whom Nebuchadrezzar exiled in the seventh year: Jehudahites three thousand and twenty-three.

29 In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar, [he exiled] from Jerusalem eight hundred and thirty-two people.

30 In the twenty-third year of Nebuchadrezzar, Nebuzaradan the chief executioner exiled [of the] Jews seven hundred and forty-five souls, all the souls [totaled] four thousand and six hundred.

31 And it was in the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, that Evil-merodach, king of Babylon, in the year of his coronation, lifted up the head of Jehoiachin, king of Judah and released him from prison.

32 And he spoke with him kindly and placed his throne above the throne of the kings who were with him in Babylon.

33 And he changed his prison garb, and he ate meals before him regularly all the days of his life.

34 And his meals, regular meals were given him from the king of Babylon, each day's need in its day, all the days of his life.

Our Sages taught: When the first Holy Temple was destroyed, groups of young priests gathered with the keys to the Sanctuary in their hands. They ascended the roof and declared: "Master of the World! Since we have not merited to be trustworthy custodians, let the keys be given back to You." They then threw the keys toward Heaven. A hand emerged and received them, and the priests threw themselves into the fire (Talmud, Ta'anit 29b).

Everything of gold and silver that still remained was carried off as loot by the Babylonian soldiers. All the beautiful works of art with which King Solomon had once decorated and ornamented the holy edifice were destroyed or taken away. The holy vessels of the Temple that could be found were brought to Babylon. The high priest Seraiah and many other high officials and priests were executed. In addition to the 940,000 people killed in the aforementioned incident, millions more were killed inside and outside of the city. Many thousands of the people that had escaped the sword were taken prisoner and led into captivity in Babylon, where some of their best had already preceded them. Only the poorest of the residents of Jerusalem were permitted to stay on to plant the vineyards and work in the fields.

Thus ended the empire of David and Solomon; thus the magnificent city and Holy Temple were destroyed. Thus G‑d punished His people for deserting Him and His laws. All this had been predicted in the Torah, and it truly came to pass with all the horror of which Moses had warned. 

For this our heart has become faint, for these things our eyes have grown dim.

For Mount Zion, which has become desolate; foxes prowl over it.

But You, O G‑d, remain forever; Your throne endures throughout the generations.

Why do You forget us forever, forsake us so long?

Restore us to You, O G‑d, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old.

—Lamentations 5:17-2

There are significant archaeological remains from the Second Temple period, including the Kidron Valley tombs, the Western Wall, Robinson’s Arch, the Herodian residential quarter, numerous other tombs, and walls. 

Esther - Chapter 2

16 So Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus, to his royal house in the tenth month, which is the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign.

17 And the king loved Esther more than all the women, and she won grace and favor before him more than all the maidens, and he placed the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti.

18 And the king made a great banquet for all his princes and his servants, even Esther's feast, and he granted a release to the provinces and gave gifts according to the bounty of the king.

19 And when the maidens were gathered a second time, and Mordecai was sitting in the king's gate

20 Esther would not tell her lineage or her nationality, as Mordecai had commanded her, for Esther kept Mordecai's orders as she had when she was raised by him.

21 In those days, when Mordecai was sitting in the king's gate, Bigthan and Teresh, two of the king's chamberlains, of the guards of the threshold, became angry and sought to lay a hand on King Ahasuerus.

22 And the matter became known to Mordecai, and he told [it] to Queen Esther, and Esther told [it] to the king in Mordecai's name.

23 And the matter was investigated and found [to be so], and they were both hanged on a gallows, and it was written in the diary [that was read] before the king.

The return to Zion (Hebrew: שִׁיבָת צִיּוֹן or שבי ציון, Shivat Tzion or Shavei Tzion, lit. 'Zion returnees') is an event recorded in Ezra–Nehemiah of the Hebrew Bible, in which the Jews of the Kingdom of Judah—subjugated by the Neo-Babylonian Empire—were freed from the Babylonian captivity following the Persian conquest of Babylon. After their release, the Persian king Cyrus the Great issued a proclamation known as the Edict of Cyrus that enabled the freed Jewish populace, exiled from the Kingdom of Judah, to return to Jerusalem and the Land of Judah, which had begun to function as a self-governing Jewish province under the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Ezra - Chapter 1

1 And in the first year of Cyrus, the king of Persia, at the completion of the word of the Lord from the mouth of Jeremiah, the Lord aroused the Spirit of Cyrus, the king of Persia, and he issued a proclamation throughout his kingdom, and also in writing, saying:

2 "So said Cyrus, the king of Persia, 'All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord God of the heavens delivered to me, and He commanded me to build Him a House in Jerusalem, which is in Judea.

3 Who is among you of all His people, may his God be with him, and he may ascend to Jerusalem, which is in Judea, and let him build the House of the Lord, God of Israel; He is the God Who is in Jerusalem.

4 And whoever remains from all the places where he sojourns, the people of his place shall help him with silver and with gold and with possessions and with cattle, with the donation to the House of God, which is in Jerusalem.'

5 And the heads of the families of Judah and Benjamin and the priests and the Levites arose, with all whom God inspired to ascend to build the House of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem.

6 And all those around them strengthened their hands with vessels of silver, with gold, with possessions, with cattle, and with precious things, besides all that was donated.

7 And King Cyrus took out all the vessels of the House of the Lord, which Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of Jerusalem and had placed them in the temple of his god.

8 Now Cyrus, the king of Persia, took them out by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and he counted them out to Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah.

9 And these are their number: thirty basins of gold, a thousand basins of silver, twenty-nine knives,

10 Thirty bowls of gold, secondary silver bowls four hundred and ten, a thousand other vessels.

11 All the vessels of silver and gold were five thousand, four hundred; Sheshbazzar brought up everything when the exiles were brought up from Babylon to Jerusalem.

Zerubbabel’s temple 

Ezra - Chapter 3

1 The seventh month arrived, and the Children of Israel [were] in the cities, and the people gathered like one man to Jerusalem.

2 And Jeshua the son of Jehozadak arose, and his brethren the priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and his brethren, and they built the altar of the God of Israel, upon which to offer up burnt offerings, as it is written in the Torah of Moses, the man of God.

3 And they set the altar on its bases, for because of the fear that was upon them from the people of the lands, they offered up burnt offerings to the Lord, burnt offerings for the morning and for the evening.

4 And they observed the feast of Succoth as is written, and the burnt offering of each day in its day, in the number, as the ordinance of each day in its day.

5 And afterwards [they offered] the daily burnt offering, and for the New Moon and for all the appointed seasons of the Lord that were hallowed, and for everyone who willingly offered a free-will offering to the Lord.

6 From the first day of the seventh month they commenced to offer up burnt offerings to the Lord, but the foundation of the Temple was not yet laid.

7 And they gave money to the quarriers and to the artisans, and food and drink and oil to the Zidonians and to the Tyrians to bring cedar wood from Lebanon to the sea of Jaffa, by the sanction of Cyrus the king of Persia upon them.

8 And in the second year of their coming to the House of God, to Jerusalem, in the second month, Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua, the son of Jozadak, and the rest of their brethren, the priests, the Levites, and all who came from the captivity to Jerusalem commenced, and they stationed the Levites from twenty years old and above to conduct the work of the House of the Lord.

9 And Jeshua, his sons, and his brothers, Kadmiel and his sons, the sons of Judah, stood together to conduct the ones who did the work in the House of God, the children of Henadad, their sons, and their brothers, the Levites.

10 And the builders laid the foundation of the Temple of the Lord, and they stationed the priests in their attire with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord through David the king of Israel.

11 And they sang aloud with praise and with thanks to the Lord for it is good, for His kindness is eternal over Israel, and the entire people shouted with a great shout with praise to the Lord because the foundation of the House of the Lord was laid.

12 And many of the priests and the Levites and the heads of the fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first Temple when its foundation was laid, [when they saw] this Temple with their eyes, were weeping with a loud voice, and many with a shout of joy to raise [their] voice.

13 And the people did not recognize the voice of the shout of joy because of the voice of the people's weeping, for the people were shouting a great shout, and the voice was heard from afar.

A little more than fifty years after the destruction of the First Temple, the Babylonians, who had destroyed the First Temple, were vanquished by the rising Persian Empire. The Persian king, Cyrus the Great, soon authorized the Jews to rebuild the Temple, but construction ground to a halt due to interference by the Samaritans. In 353 BCE, exactly seventy years after the destruction of the First Temple, the Jews began building again—at first independently, but King Darius soon ratified their effort. The Second Temple was completed in 349 BCE. Under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, the community in Judea became vibrant and secure.

The Second Temple era spanned 420 years, ending with the Romans' destruction of the Holy Temple in 70 CE.1 For much of this period, Judea was under foreign domination. First the Jews were ruled by the Persians, and then, after the conquests of Alexander the Great, they were ruled by the Greeks. The Hasmonean revolt in 140 BCE brought about a period of Jewish monarchy. But the Hasmoneans did not rule for long.

Glory of the Lord 

Glory of the Lord had not returned to Zion. Nowhere is there any passage corresponding to 1 Kings 8. According to which, when Solomon’s temple had been finished, ‘a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.’”

Melachim I - I Kings - Chapter 8

9 There was nothing in the ark save the two tablets of stone which Moses put there at Horeb, when the Lord made (a covenant) with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt.

10 And it came to pass, when the priests came out of the holy (place), and the cloud filled the house of the Lord.

11 And the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.

12 Then Solomon said, "The Lord said that He would dwell in the thick darkness.

13 I have surely built You a house to dwell in; a settled place for You to dwell in forever."

14 And the king turned his face about, and blessed all the congregation of Israel, and all the congregation of Israel stood.

“Yet when the temple is dedicated under Zerubbabel and Joshua (Ezra 6:13–18), there is no indication that God’s glory fills it. … There is no sign that God’s glorious presence returns to the rebuilt temple.”

The Second Temple did not have the Ark of the Covenant. In fact, this was one of a number of items which the Talmud (Yoma 21b) states the Second Temple lacked.

The Second Temple lacked the following holy articles:

§ The Ark of the Covenant containing the Tablets of Stone, before which were placed the pot of manna and Aaron's rod.

§ The Urim and Thummim (divination objects contained in the Hoshen)

§ The holy oil.

§ The sacred fire.

The prophets spoke of a worldwide and supremely intense manifestation of God’s presences as prophecies are fulfilled.

Chaggai - Haggai - Chapter 2

1 In the seventh [month], on the twenty-first of the month, the word of the Lord came through Haggai the prophet, saying:

2 Say now to Zerubbabel the son of Shaltiel, the governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak the High Priest, and to the remnant of the people, saying:

3 Who among you is left, who saw this house in its former glory? And as you see it now, is it not as nothing in your eyes?

RASHI'S COMMENTARY

Who among you is left: who was of the exiles and is still alive?

who saw, etc.: Who saw the first one this [one] is of no esteem in his eyes.

is it not as nothing: I know that to one who saw the first one, this one is but nothing in his eyes.

is it… as nothing: It and nothing are equal, as in (Hos. 4:9) “And it shall be like people like priest” Here, too, כָמֹהוּ כְּאַיִן; it [the Second Temple] and nothing are equal.

4 And now, be strong, Zerubbabel, says the Lord; and be strong, Joshua the son of Jehozadak the High Priest; and be strong, all the people of the land, says the Lord. And (for I am with you, says the Lord of Hosts) do the thing that I set up with you when you left Egypt. And My spirit stands in your midst; fear not.

The Shechinah resides within the Temple mount because it is believed that the Ark of The Covenant is hidden in the Temple Mount, but it did not reside within the Second Temple.   

6 For so said the Lord of Hosts: [There will rise] another one, and I will shake up the heaven and the earth and the sea and the dry land [for] a little while.

During the time of Ikvot Meshicha there will be earthquakes, storms, and volcanoes.

7 And I will shake up all the nations, and they shall come [with] the precious things of all the nations. And I will fill this House with glory, said the Lord of Hosts.

Zechariah - Chapter 8

23 So said the Lord of Hosts: In those days, when ten men of all the languages of the nations shall take hold of the skirt of a Jewish man, saying, "Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you."

“And I will fill this House with glory, said the Lord of Hosts.”

It is said in verse (9) “The glory of this last House shall be greater than the first one”

The Third Temple will be the LAST HOUSE!

8 The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine, says the Lord of Hosts.

9 The glory of this last House shall be greater than the first one, said the Lord of Hosts. And in this place I will grant peace, says the Lord of Hosts.

The Last House will be the Third Temple, The Moshiach will establish an ever-lasting peace throughout the Earth.

Herod’s Temple

Zerubbabel’s Temple stood until the beginning of Herod the Great’s new temple in 19 B.C.

When the Romans replaced the Seleucids as the great power in the region, they granted the Hasmonean king, Hyrcanus II, limited authority under the Roman governor of Damascus. The Jews were hostile to the new regime, and the following years witnessed frequent insurrections. A last attempt to restore the former glory of the Hasmonean dynasty was made by Mattathias Antigonus, whose defeat and death brought Hasmonean rule to an end (40 BCE), and the Land became a province of the Roman Empire.

The temple of Herod was built on massive quarried blocks still visible today at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. 

Herod the Great also known as Herod the Great and Herod I; He was the second son of Antipater the Idumaean, a high-ranked official under ethnarch Hyrcanus II, and Cypros, a Nabatean. Herod's father was by descent an Edomite whose ancestors had converted to Judaism. King Herod was a Roman client king; client King means he was appointed by Rome, not by G-d as the king of Israel) of Judea, referred to as the Herodian kingdom. He has been described as "a madman who murdered his own family and a great many rabbis", "the evil genius of the Judean nation”, "prepared to commit any crime in order to gratify his unbounded ambition". Vital details of his life are recorded in the works of the 1st century CE Roman–Jewish historian Josephus. (Herod’s tyrannical authority has been demonstrated by many of his security measures aimed at suppressing the contempt his people, especially Jews, had towards him. For instance, it has been suggested that Herod used secret police to monitor and report the feelings of the general populace towards him. He sought to prohibit protests, and had opponents taken away by force.

Politically Herod wanted to gain the favor of his Jewish subjects, so he rebuilt the temple by combining the requirements of the Jewish religion with elements of the Graeco-Roman style. He extended the area of the temple to its present size of 985 feet by 1,575 feet.

When it came to building the Temple Herod truly outdid himself, and even the Talmud acknowledges that the end-result was spectacular. "He who has not seen Herod's building, has never in his life seen a truly grand building." (Talmud-Bava Basra 4a)

Herod saw fit however, to place at the main entrance a huge Roman eagle, which the pious Jews saw as a sacrilege. A group of Torah students promptly smashed this emblem of idolatry and oppression, but Herod had them hunted down, dragged in chains to his residence in Jericho, where they were burned alive.

Having built the Temple, Herod took pains to make sure it would be run without future problems of the Jewish people that objected to the corruption of the Temple. He appointed his own High Priest, having by then put to death forty-six leading members of the Sanhedrin, half of the rabbinical court. The other half were intimidated by king Herod and towed the line.

Ten years after Herod's death (4 BCE), Judea came under direct Roman administration. Growing anger against increased Roman suppression of Jewish life resulted in sporadic violence which esclated into a full-scale revolt in 66 CE. Superior Roman forces led by Titus were finally victorious, razing Jerusalem to the ground (70 CE) and defeating the last Jewish outpost at Masada (73 CE).

The total destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple was catastrophic for the Jewish people. According to the contemporary historian Josephus Flavius, hundreds of thousands of Jews perished in the siege of Jerusalem and elsewhere in the country, and many thousands more were sold into slavery.

How are the people of Israel to atone for their sins without a sacrificial system during their long exile until the messianic age, what are we to use instead? How are the Jewish people to atone for unintentional sin without a blood sacrifice during their bitter exile? What about all the animal sacrifices prescribed in the Book of Leviticus? Can the Jewish people get along without animal offerings?

Finally, the prophets loudly declared to the Jewish people that the contrite prayer of the penitent sinner replaces the sacrificial system. Therefore, atonement for unintentional sins today is expiated through devotional supplication to God, the Merciful One.

In fact, in the third chapter of Hosea, the prophet foretold with divine exactness that the nation of Israel would not have a sacrificial system during the last segment of Jewish history until the messianic age. Hosea declares,

Hoshea -

Hoshea - Hosea - Chapter 3

4 For the children of Israel shall remain for many days, having neither king, nor prince, nor sacrifice, nor pillar, nor ephod nor teraphim.

5 Afterwards shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and they shall come trembling to the Lord and to His goodness at the end of days.

Who can argue with verse 5?

For this reason, the teaching highlighted in Hosea 14:2-3 is crucial. In these two verses, Hosea reveals to his nation how they are to replace the sacrificial system during their protracted exile. The prophet declares that the Almighty wants us to “render for bulls the offering of our lips.” Prayer is to replace the sacrificial system. Hosea states,

Hoshea -

Hoshea - Hosea - Chapter 14

2 Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled in your iniquity

3 Take words with yourselves and return to the Lord. Say, "You shall forgive all iniquity and teach us [the] good [way], and let us render [for] bulls [the offering of] our lips. It is the prayers of the sinner that would become as bulls of the sin offerings.

King Solomon echoes this sentiment as well.

Melachim I - I Kings - Chapter 8

46 If they sin against You, for (there is) no man who does not sin, and You will be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, and their captors will carry them away captive to the land of the enemy, far or near.

47 And they shall bethink themselves in the land where they were carried captive, and repent, and make supplication to You in the land of their captors, saying, 'We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness.'

48 And they shall return to You with all their heart, and with all their soul, in the land of their enemies, who led them away captive, and pray to You toward their land, which You gave to their fathers, the city that You have chosen, and the house which I have built for Your Name.

49 And you shall hear their prayer and their supplication in heaven, Your dwelling place, and maintain their cause.

50 And forgive Your people what they have sinned against You, and all their transgressions that they have transgressed against You, and give mercy before their captors, that they may have mercy on them.

A last brief period of Jewish sovereignty in ancient times followed the revolt of Shimon Bar Kokhba (132 CE), during which Jerusalem and Judea were regained. However, given the overwhelming power of the Romans, the outcome was inevitable. Three years later, in conformity with Roman custom, Jerusalem was "plowed up with a yoke of oxen," Judea was renamed Palaestinia and Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina.

Although the Temple had been destroyed and Jerusalem burned to the ground, the Jews and Judaism survived the encounter with Rome. The supreme legislative and judicial body, the Sanhedrin (successor of the Knesset Hagedolah) was reconvened in Yavneh (70 CE), and later in Tiberias. Without the unifying framework of a state and the Temple, the small remaining Jewish community gradually recovered, reinforced from time to time by returning exiles. Institutional and communal life was renewed, priests were replaced by rabbis and the synagogue became the focus of Jewish settlement, as evidenced by remnants of synagogues found at Capernaum, Korazin, Bar'am, Gamla and elsewhere. Halakhah (Jewish religious law) served as the common bond among the Jews and was passed on from generation to generation.

Devarim - Deuteronomy - Chapter 28

62 And you will remain few in number, whereas you were once as numerous as the stars of the heavens because you did not obey the Lord, your God.

63 And it will be, just as the Lord rejoiced over you to do good for you and to increase you, so will the Lord cause to rejoice over you to annihilate you and to destroy you. And you will be uprooted from the land which you enter therein, to possess it.

64 And the Lord will scatter you among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you will serve other deities unknown to you or your forefathers, [deities of] wood and stone.

65 And among those nations, you will not be calm, nor will your foot find rest. There, the Lord will give you a trembling heart, dashed hopes, and a depressed soul.

66 And your life will hang in suspense before you. You will be in fear night and day, and you will not believe in your life.

67 In the morning, you will say, "If only it were evening! " and in the evening, you will say, "If only it were morning!" because of the fear in your heart which you will experience and because of the sights that you will behold.

68 And the Lord will bring you back to Egypt in ships, through the way about which I had said to you, You will never see it again. And there, you will seek to be sold to your enemies for slaves and handmaids, but there will be no buyer.

69 These are the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made with them in Horeb.

During the Middle Ages, due to increasing migration and resettlement, Jews divided into distinct regional groups which today are generally addressed according to two primary geographical groupings: the Ashkenazi of Northern and Eastern Europe, and the Sephardic Jews of Iberia (Spain and Portugal), North Africa and the Middle East. These groups have parallel histories sharing many cultural similarities as well as a series of massacres, persecutions and expulsions, such as the expulsion from England in 1290, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, and the expulsion from Arab countries in 1948–1973. Although the two branches comprise many unique ethno-cultural practices and have links to their local host populations (such as Central Europeans for the Ashkenazim and Hispanics and Arabs for the Sephardim), their shared religion and ancestry, as well as their continuous communication and population transfers, has been responsible for a unified sense of cultural and religious Jewish identity between Sephardim and Ashkenazim from the late Roman period to the present.

The Inquisition

The Inquisition was a Roman Catholic tribunal for discovery and punishment of heresy, which was marked by the severity of questioning and punishment and lack of rights afforded to the accused.

While many people associate the Inquisition with Spain and Portugal, it was actually instituted by Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) in Rome. A later pope, Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition, in 1233, to combat the heresy of the Abilgenses, a religious sect in France. By 1255, the Inquisition was in full gear throughout Central and Western Europe; although it was never instituted in England or Scandinavia.

Initially a tribunal would open at a location and an edict of grace would be published calling upon those who are conscious of heresy to confess; after a period of grace, the tribunal officers could make accusations. Those accused of heresy were sentenced at an auto de fe, Act of Faith. Clergyman would sit at the proceedings and would deliver the punishments. Punishments included confinement to dungeons, physical abuse and torture. Those who reconciled with the church were still punished and many had their property confiscated, as well as were banished from public life. Those who never confessed were burned at the stake without strangulation; those who did confess were strangled first. During the 16th and 17th centuries, attendance at auto de fe reached as high as the attendance at bullfights.

In the beginning, the Inquisition dealt only with Christian heretics and did not interfere with the affairs of Jews. However, disputes about Maimonides’ books (which addressed the synthesis of Judaism and other cultures) provided a pretext for harassing Jews and, in 1242, the Inquisition condemned the Talmud and burned thousands of volumes. In 1288, the first mass burning of Jews on the stake took place in France.

In 1481 the Inquisition started in Spain and ultimately surpassed the medieval Inquisition, in both scope and intensity. Conversos (Secret Jews) and New Christians were targeted because of their close relations to the Jewish community, many of whom were Jews in all but their name. Fear of Jewish influence led Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to write a petition to the Pope asking permission to start an Inquisition in Spain. In 1483 Tomas de Torquemada became the inquisitor-general for most of Spain, he set tribunals in many cities. Also heading the Inquisition in Spain were two Dominican monks, Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martin.

First, they arrested Conversos and notable figures in Seville; in Seville more than 700 Conversos were burned at the stake and 5,000 repented. Tribunals were also opened in Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia. An Inquisition Tribunal was set up in Ciudad Real, where 100 Conversos were condemned, and it was moved to Toledo in 1485. Between 1486-1492, 25 auto de fes were held in Toledo, 467 people were burned at the stake and others were imprisoned. The Inquisition finally made its way to Barcelona, where it was resisted at first because of the important place of Spanish Conversos in the economy and society.

More than 13,000 Conversos were put on trial during the first 12 years of the Spanish Inquisition. Hoping to eliminate ties between the Jewish community and Conversos, the Jews of Spain were expelled in 1492..

The next phase of the Inquisition began in Portugal in 1536: King Manuel I had initially asked Pope Leo X to begin an inquisition in 1515, but only after Leo's death in 1521 did Pope Paul III agree to Manuel's request. Thousands of Jews came to Portugal after the 1492 expulsion. A Spanish style Inquisition was constituted and tribunals were set up in Lisbon and other cities. Among the Jews who died at the hands of the Inquisition were well-known figures of the period such as Isaac de Castro Tartas, Antonio Serrao de Castro and Antonio Jose da Silva. The Inquisition never stopped in Spain and continued until the late 18th century.

By the second half of the 18th century, the Inquisition abated, due to the spread of enlightened ideas and lack of resources. The last auto de fe in Portugal took place on October 27, 1765. Not until 1808, during the brief reign of Joseph Bonaparte, was the Inquisition abolished in Spain. An estimated 31,912 heretics were burned at the stake, 17,659 were burned in effigy and 291,450 made reconciliations in the Spanish Inquisition. In Portugal, about 40,000 cases were tried, although only 1,800 were burned, the rest made penance.

The Inquisition was not limited to Europe; it also spread to Spanish and Portugese colonies in the New World and Asia. Many Jews and Conversos fled from Portugal and Spain to the New World seeking greater security and economic opportunities. Branches of the Portugese Inquisition were set up in Goa and Brazil. Spanish tribunals and auto de fes were set up in Mexico, the Philippine Islands, Guatemala, Peru, New Granada and the Canary Islands. By the late 18th century, most of these were dissolved.

Ha-Shoah

The Holocaust (also called Ha-Shoah in Hebrew) refers to the period from January 30, 1933 - when Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany - to May 8, 1945, when the war in Europe officially ended. During this time, Jews in Europe were subjected to progressively harsher persecution that ultimately led to the murder of 6,000,000 Jews (1.5 million of these being children) and the destruction of 5,000 Jewish communities. These deaths represented two-thirds of European Jewry and one-third of all world Jewry.

The Jews who died were not casualties of the fighting that ravaged Europe during World War II. Rather, they were the victims of Germany’s deliberate and systematic attempt to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe, a plan Hitler called the “Final Solution” (Endlosung).

Background

After its defeat in World War I, Germany was humiliated by the Versailles Treaty, which reduced its prewar territory, drastically reduced its armed forces, demanded the recognition of its guilt for the war, and stipulated it pay reparations to the allied powers. With the German Empire destroyed, a new parliamentary government called the Weimar Republic was formed. The republic suffered from economic instability, which grew worse during the worldwide depression after the New York stock market crash in 1929. Massive inflation followed by very high unemployment heightened existing class and political differences and began to undermine the government.

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party, was named chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg after the Nazi party won a significant percentage of the vote in the elections of 1932. The Nazi Party had taken advantage of the political unrest in Germany to gain an electoral foothold. The Nazis incited clashes with the communists and conducted a vicious propaganda campaign against its political opponents – the weak Weimar government and the Jews whom the Nazis blamed for Germany’s ills.

Propaganda: “The Jews Are Our Misfortune”

A major tool of the Nazis’ propaganda assault was the weekly Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer (The Attacker). At the bottom of the front page of each issue, in bold letters, the paper proclaimed, “The Jews are our misfortune!” Der Stürmer also regularly featured cartoons of Jews in which they were caricatured as hooked-nosed and ape-like. The influence of the newspaper was far-reaching: by 1938 about a half million copies were distributed weekly.

Soon after he became chancellor, Hitler called for new elections in an effort to get full control of the Reichstag, the German parliament, for the Nazis. The Nazis used the government apparatus to terrorize the other parties. They arrested their leaders and banned their political meetings. Then, in the midst of the election campaign, on February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building burned. A Dutchman named Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested for the crime, and he swore he had acted alone. Although many suspected the Nazis were ultimately responsible for the act, the Nazis managed to blame the Communists, thus turning more votes their way.

The fire signaled the demise of German democracy. On the next day, the government, under the pretense of controlling the Communists, abolished individual rights and protections: freedom of the press, assembly, and expression were nullified, as well as the right to privacy. When the elections were held on March 5, the Nazis received nearly 44 percent of the vote, and with 8 percent offered by the Conservatives, won a majority in the government.

The Nazis moved swiftly to consolidate their power into a dictatorship. On March 23, the Enabling Act was passed. It sanctioned Hitler’s dictatorial efforts and legally enabled him to pursue them further. The Nazis marshaled their formidable propaganda machine to silence their critics. They also developed a sophisticated police and military force.

The Sturmabteilung (S.A., Storm Troopers), a grassroots organization, helped Hitler undermine the German democracy. The Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, Secret State Police), a force recruited from professional police officers, was given complete freedom to arrest anyone after February 28. The Schutzstaffel (SS, Protection Squad) served as Hitler’s personal bodyguard and eventually controlled the concentration camps and the Gestapo. The Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS (S.D., Security Service of the SS) functioned as the Nazis’ intelligence service, uncovering enemies and keeping them under surveillance.

With this police infrastructure in place, opponents of the Nazis were terrorized, beaten, or sent to one of the concentration camps the Germans built to incarcerate them. Dachau, just outside of Munich, was the first such camp built for political prisoners. Dachau’s purpose changed over time and eventually became another brutal concentration camp for Jews.

By the end of 1934 Hitler was in absolute control of Germany, and his campaign against the Jews in full swing. The Nazis claimed the Jews corrupted pure German culture with their “foreign” and “mongrel” influence. They portrayed the Jews as evil and cowardly, and Germans as hardworking, courageous, and honest. The Jews, the Nazis claimed, who were heavily represented in finance, commerce, the press, literature, theater, and the arts, had weakened Germany’s economy and culture. The massive government-supported propaganda machine created a racial anti-Semitism, which was different from the long­standing anti-Semitic tradition of the Christian churches.

The superior race was the “Aryans,” the Germans. The word Aryan, “derived from the study of linguistics, which started in the eighteenth century and at some point determined that the Indo-Germanic (also known as Aryan) languages were superior in their structures, variety, and vocabulary to the Semitic languages that had evolved in the Near East. This judgment led to a certain conjecture about the character of the peoples who spoke these languages; the conclusion was that the ‘Aryan’ peoples were likewise superior to the ‘Semitic’ ones”

The Jews Are Isolated from Society

The Nazis then combined their racial theories with the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin to justify their treatment of the Jews. The Germans, as the strongest and fittest, were destined to rule, while the weak and racially adulterated Jews were doomed to extinction. Hitler began to restrict the Jews with legislation and terror, which entailed burning books written by Jews, removing Jews from their professions and public schools, confiscating their businesses and property and excluding them from public events. The most infamous of the anti-Jewish legislation were the Nuremberg Laws, enacted on September 15, 1935. They formed the legal basis for the Jews’ exclusion from German society and the progressively restrictive Jewish policies of the Germans.

Many Jews attempted to flee Germany, and thousands succeeded by immigrating to such countries as Belgium, Czechoslovakia, England, France and Holland. It was much more difficult to get out of Europe. Jews encountered stiff immigration quotas in most of the world’s countries. Even if they obtained the necessary documents, they often had to wait months or years before leaving. Many families out of desperation sent their children first.

In July 1938, representatives of 32 countries met in the French town of Evian to discuss the refugee and immigration problems created by the Nazis in Germany. Nothing substantial was done or decided at the Evian Conference, and it became apparent to Hitler that no one wanted the Jews and that he would not meet resistance in instituting his Jewish policies. By the autumn of 1941, Europe was in effect sealed to most legal emigration. The Jews were trapped.

On November 9-10, 1938, the attacks on the Jews became violent. Hershel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Jewish boy distraught at the deportation of his family, shot Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary in the German Embassy in Paris, who died on November 9. Nazi hooligans used this assassination as the pretext for instigating a night of destruction that is now known as Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass). They looted and destroyed Jewish homes and businesses and burned synagogues. Many Jews were beaten and killed; 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

The Jews Are Confined to Ghettos

Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, beginning World War II. Soon after, in 1940, the Nazis began establishing ghettos for the Jews of Poland. More than 10 percent of the Polish population was Jewish, numbering about three million. Jews were forcibly deported from their homes to live in crowded ghettos, isolated from the rest of society.

This concentration of the Jewish population later aided the Nazis in their deportation of the Jews to the death camps. The ghettos lacked the necessary food, water, space, and sanitary facilities required by so many people living within their constricted boundaries. Many died of deprivation and starvation.

The “Final Solution”

In June 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union and began the “Final Solution.” Four mobile killing groups were formed called Einsatzgruppen A, B, C and D. Each group contained several commando units. The Einsatzgruppen gathered Jews town by town, marched them to huge pits dug earlier, stripped them, lined them up, and shot them with automatic weapons. The dead and dying would fall into the pits to be buried in mass graves. In the infamous Babi Yar massacre, near Kiev, 30,000-35,000 Jews were killed in two days. In addition to their operations in the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen conducted mass murder in eastern Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. It is estimated that by the end of 1942, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered more than 1.3 million Jews.

On January 20, 1942, several top officials of the German government met to officially coordinate the military and civilian administrative branches of the Nazi system to organize a system of mass murder of the Jews. This meeting, called the Wannsee Conference, “marked the beginning of the full-scale, comprehensive extermination operation [of the Jews] and laid the foundations for its organization, which started immediately after the conference ended.”

While the Nazis murdered other national and ethnic groups, such as a number of Soviet prisoners of war, Polish intellectuals, and gypsies, only the Jews were marked for systematic and total annihilation. Jews were singled out for “Special Treatment” (Sonderbehandlung), which meant that Jewish men, women and children were to be methodically killed with poisonous gas. In the exacting records kept at the Auschwitz death camp, the cause of death of Jews who had been gassed was indicated by “SB,” the first letters of the two words that form the German term for “Special Treatment.”

By the spring of 1942, the Nazis had established six killing centers (death camps) in Poland: Chelmno (Kulmhof), Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Maidanek and Auschwitz. All were located near railway lines so that Jews could be easily transported daily. A vast system of camps (called Lagersystem) supported the death camps. The purpose of these camps varied: some were slave labor camps, some transit camps, others concentration camps and their subcamps, and still others the notorious death camps. Some camps combined all of these functions or a few of them. All the camps were intolerably brutal.

The major concentration camps were Ravensbruck, Neuengamme, Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt, Flossenburg, Natzweiler-Struthof, Dachau, Mauthausen, Stutthof, and Dora/Nordhausen.

In nearly every country overrun by the Nazis, the Jews were forced to wear badges marking them as Jews, they were rounded up into ghettos or concentration camps and then gradually transported to the killing centers. The death camps were essentially factories for murdering Jews. The Germans shipped thousands of Jews to them each day. Within a few hours of their arrival, the Jews had been stripped of their possessions and valuables, gassed to death, and their bodies burned in specially designed crematoriums. Approximately 3.5 million Jews were murdered in these death camps.

Many healthy, young strong Jews were not killed immediately. The Germans’ war effort and the “Final Solution” required a great deal of manpower, so the Germans reserved large pools of Jews for slave labor. These people, imprisoned in concentration and labor camps, were forced to work in German munitions and other factories, such as I.G. Farben and Krupps, and wherever the Nazis needed laborers. They were worked from dawn until dark without adequate food and shelter. Thousands perished, literally worked to death by the Germans and their collaborators.

In the last months of Hitler’s Reich, as the German armies retreated, the Nazis began marching the prisoners still alive in the concentration camps to the territory they still controlled. The Germans forced the starving and sick Jews to walk hundreds of miles. Most died or were shot along the way. About a quarter of a million Jews died on the death marches.

Jewish Resistance

The Germans’ overwhelming repression and the presence of many collaborators in the various local populations severely limited the ability of the Jews to resist. Jewish resistance did occur, however, in several forms. Staying alive, clean, and observing Jewish religious traditions constituted resistance under the dehumanizing conditions imposed by the Nazis. Other forms of resistance involved escape attempts from the ghettos and camps. Many who succeeded in escaping the ghettos lived in the forests and mountains in family camps and in fighting partisan units. Once free, though, the Jews had to contend with local residents and partisan groups who were often openly hostile. Jews also staged armed revolts in the ghettos of Vilna, Bialystok, Bedzin-Sosnowiec, Krakow, and Warsaw.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the largest ghetto revolt. Massive deportations (or Aktions) had been held in the ghetto from July to September 1942, emptying the ghetto of the majority of Jews imprisoned there. When the Germans entered the ghetto again in January 1943 to remove several thousand more, small unorganized groups of Jews attacked them. After four days, the Germans withdrew from the ghetto, having deported far fewer people than they had intended. The Nazis reentered the ghetto on April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover, to evacuate the remaining Jews and close the ghetto. The Jews, using homemade bombs and stolen or bartered weapons, resisted and withstood the Germans for 27 days. They fought from bunkers and sewers and evaded capture until the Germans burned the ghetto building by building. By May 16, the ghetto was in ruins and the uprising crushed.

Jews also revolted in the death camps of Sobibor, Treblinka and Auschwitz. All of these acts of resistance were largely unsuccessful in the face of the superior German forces, but they were very important spiritually, giving the Jews hope that one day the Nazis would be defeated.

Liberation

The camps were liberated gradually, as the Allies advanced on the German army. For example, Maidanek (near Lublin, Poland) was liberated by Soviet forces in July 1944, Auschwitz in January 1945 by the Soviets, Bergen-Belsen (near Hanover, Germany) by the British in April 1945, and Dachau by the Americans in April 1945.

At the end of the war, between 50,000 and 100,000 Jewish survivors were living in three zones of occupation: American, British and Soviet. Within a year, that figure grew to about 200,000. The American zone of occupation contained more than 90 percent of the Jewish displaced persons (DPs). The Jewish DPs would not and could not return to their homes, which brought back such horrible memories and still held the threat of danger from anti-Semitic neighbors. Thus, they languished in DP camps until emigration could be arranged to Palestine, and later Israel, the United States, South America and other countries. The last DP camp closed in 1957

Below are figures for the number of Jews murdered in each country that came under German domination. They are estimates, as are all figures relating to Holocaust victims. The numbers given here for Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania are based on their territorial borders before the 1938 Munich agreement. The total number of six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, which emerged from the Nuremberg trials, is also an estimate. Numbers have ranged between five and seven million killed. The exact number will never be known because of the many people whose murders were not recorded and whose bodies have still not be found.

This is a special edition that has the interview my father had with the AETN television network concerning his experiences while acting as an interpreter for his commanding officer during the liberation of the Dachau.

Holocaust survivors sing the Israeli national anthem, knowing they would be arrested for trying to enter British-mandated Palestine and the future Jewish state

It’s 1945. Passengers on a ship called the “Unafraid,” filled with Buchenwald concentration camp survivors, had just been informed that they would be arrested for trying to enter the Land of Israel.

The passengers come out of hiding, raise the Israeli flag and sing Hatikva, the future national anthem of the future State of Israel.

This video, from the film The Illegals, is so inspiring!

As Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly stated, there will never be another Holocaust – the State of Israel and the IDF will make sure of it!

The Exodus 1947

The Exodus 1947 was a worn-out US-owned coastal freight passenger ship launched in 1928. Originally called the SS President Warfield, it sailed the Chesapeake Bay between Baltimore, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia, for over a decade. Transferred to the British under the Lend-Lease agreement as part of a group of shallow-draft ships, the President Warfield was later deployed in the Normandy invasion (June 1944). After World War II it returned to US waters.

Yet the ship was to take part in one more event which ensured its place in history, symbolizing the struggle for unrestricted immigration into Palestine.

Initially sold as scrap for slightly more than $8,000, the ship was acquired by the Hagana (an underground Jewish military organization). Hagana personnel arranged to dock the ship in Europe in order to transport Jews who sought to illegally immigrate into Palestine. The plight of the ship's passengers would capture the world's attention.

In July 1947, the President Warfield left Sète, France, for Palestine. It carried over 4,500 Jewish men, women, and children, all displaced persons (DPs) or survivors of the Holocaust. Even before the ship (by then renamed the Exodus 1947) reached Palestine's territorial waters, British destroyers surrounded it. On July 18 a struggle ensued between British naval forces and passengers on the ship. A Jewish crew member and two passengers were killed. Dozens suffered bullet wounds and other injuries.

Attempting to make an example of the Exodus 1947, the British towed the ship to Haifa and transferred the passengers onto three navy transports which returned to Europe. The ships first landed at Port-de-Bouc, France, where the passengers were ordered to disembark. When the French authorities refused to forcibly remove the refugees, British authorities, fearing adverse public opinion, sought to wait until the passengers disembarked of their own accord. The passengers, including many orphaned children, forced the issue by declaring a hunger strike which lasted 24 days. Mounting pressure from international media coverage pressed British authorities to find a solution.

The ships sat for three weeks in the sweltering summer heat, but the passengers refused to voluntarily disembark and the French authorities were unwilling to force them to leave. The British government then transported the passengers to Hamburg, where they were interned in camps in the British zone of occupation in Germany.

Displaced persons in camps all over Europe protested vociferously and staged hunger strikes when they heard the news. Large protests erupted on both sides of the Atlantic. The ensuing public embarrassment for Britain played a significant role in the diplomatic swing of sympathy toward the Jews and the eventual recognition of a Jewish state in 1948.

Following the war, Berihah ("escape"), an organization of former partisans and ghetto fighters was primarily responsible for smuggling Jews from Poland and Eastern Europe to the Italian ports from which they traveled to Mandatory Palestine. Despite British efforts to curb the illegal immigration, during the 14 years of its operation, 110,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine. In 1945 reports of the Holocaust with its 6 million Jewish killed, caused many Jews in Palestine to turn openly against the British Mandate, and illegal immigration escalated rapidly as many Holocaust survivors joined the Aliyah.

At the beginning of the immigration wave, most of the immigrants to reach Israel were Holocaust survivors from Europe, including many from displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy, and from British detention camps on Cyprus. Large sections of shattered Jewish communities throughout Europe, such as those from Poland and Romania also immigrated to Israel, with some communities, such as those from Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, being almost entirely transferred. At the same time, the number of immigrants from Arab and Muslim countries increased. Special operations were undertaken to evacuate Jewish communities perceived to be in serious danger, such as Operation Magic Carpet, which evacuated almost the entire Jewish population of Yemen, and Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, which airlifted most of the Jews of Iraq to Israel. Nearly the entire Jewish population of Libya left for Israel around this time.

This resulted in a period of austerity. To ensure that Israel, which at that time had a small economy and scant foreign currency reserves, could provide for the immigrants, a strict regime of rationing was put in place. Measures were enacted to ensure that all Israeli citizens had access to adequate food, housing, and clothing. Austerity was very restrictive until 1953; the previous year, Israel had signed a reparations agreement with West Germany, in which the West German government would pay Israel as compensation for the Holocaust, due to Israel's taking in a large number of Holocaust survivors. The resulting influx of foreign capital boosted the Israeli economy and allowed for the relaxing of most restrictions. The remaining austerity measures were gradually phased out throughout the following years. When new immigrants arrived in Israel, they were sprayed with DDT, underwent a medical examination, were inoculated against diseases, and were given food. The earliest immigrants received desirable homes in established urban areas, but most of the immigrants were then sent to transit camps, known initially as immigrant camps, and later as Ma'abarot. Many were also initially housed in reception centers in military barracks. By the end of 1950, some 93,000 immigrants were housed in 62 transit camps. The Israeli government's goal was to get the immigrants out of refugee housing and into society as speedily as possible. Immigrants who left the camps received a ration card, an identity card, a mattress, a pair of blankets, and $21 to $36 in cash. They settled either in established cities and towns, or in kibbutzim and moshavim. Many others stayed in the Ma'abarot as they were gradually turned into permanent cities and towns, which became known as development towns, or were absorbed as neighborhoods of the towns they were attached to, and the tin dwellings were replaced with permanent housing.

In the early 1950s, the immigration wave subsided, and emigration increased; ultimately, some 10% of the immigrants would leave Israel for other countries in the following years. In 1953, immigration to Israel averaged 1,200 a month, while emigration averaged 700 a month. The end of the period of mass immigration gave Israel a critical opportunity to more rapidly absorb the immigrants still living in transit camps. The Israeli government built 260 new settlements and 78,000 housing units to accommodate the immigrants, and by the mid-1950s, almost all were in permanent housing. The last ma'abarot closed in 1963.

In the mid-1950s, a smaller wave of immigration began from North African countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt, many of which were in the midst of nationalist struggles. Between 1952 and 1964, some 240,000 North African Jews came to Israel. During this period, smaller but significant numbers arrived from other places such as Europe, Iran, India, and Latin America. In particular, a small immigration wave from Poland, known as the "Gomulka Aliyah", took place during this period. From 1956 to 1960, Poland permitted free Jewish emigration, and some 50,000 Polish Jews immigrated to Israel.

Since the founding of the State of Israel, the Jewish Agency for Israel was mandated as the organization responsible for aliyah in the diaspora.

Ikvot Meshicha: The Time Immediately Before Mashiach 

I believe we’re living in the time of Ikvot Meshicha.

The word Moshiach in Hebrew actually means “anointed.” In Biblical Hebrew, the title Moshiach was bestowed on somebody who had attained a position of nobility and greatness. For example, the high priest is referred to as the kohen ha-Moshiach.

In Talmudic literature the title Moshiach, or Melech HaMoshiach (the King Messiah), is reserved for the Jewish leader who will redeem Israel in the End of Days.

Yirmiyahu - Jeremiah - Chapter 23

1. Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the flocks of My pasture! says the Lord.

Flocks of my pasture are the people of Israel.

2. Therefore, so says the Lord God of Israel concerning the shepherds: You who pasture My people, you have scattered My flocks and have driven them away and have not taken care of them; behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your deeds, says the Lord.

3. And I will gather the remnant of My flocks from all the lands where I have driven them, and I will restore them to their dwellings and they shall be fruitful and multiply.

4. And I will set up shepherds over them and they shall pasture them, and they shall no longer fear nor shall they be dismayed, nor shall [any of them] be missing, says the Lord.

This started in 1948 with the modern state of Israel, but many of the flock is still scattered. I hope soon to join my flock in Israel.

5. Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will set up of David a righteous shoot, and he shall reign a king and prosper, and he shall perform judgment and righteousness in the land.

The new king of Israel, that will come from the House of David will be the The Moshiach.

The Moshiach will be well-versed in Jewish law, and observant of its commandments.

Hashem promised that when his people returned to the Land of Israel, they would no longer be two nations, or divided into two kingdoms. 

Yechezkel - Ezekiel - Chapter 37

15 And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:

16" And you, son of man, take for yourself one stick and write upon it, 'For Judah and for the children of Israel his companions'; and take one stick and write upon it, 'For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim and all the house of Israel, his companions.'

17 And bring them close, one to the other into one stick, and they shall be one in your hand.

18 And when the children of your people say to you, saying, 'Will you not tell us what these are to you?'

19 Say to them, So says the Lord God: Behold I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim and the tribes of Israel his companions, and I will place them with him with the stick of Judah, and I will make them into one stick, and they shall become one in My hand.

More of Hashem's promise to his people, my servant David shall be king over them.

20 And the sticks upon which you shall write shall be in your hand before their eyes.

21 And say to them, So says the Lord God: Behold I will take the children of Israel from among the nations where they have gone, and I will gather them from every side, and I will bring them to their land.

22 And I will make them into one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be to them all as a king; and they shall no longer be two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms anymore.

We will know that Moshiach has arrived when the House of Judah and the House of Israel has reunited.

However, the House of Israel, which was made up of the Ten Lost Tribes, have been lost and scattered around the world since the fall of the Northern Kingdom around 721 B.C.E.. The House of Israel, the Ten Lost Tribes, cannot be re-united with the House of Jacob, because the House of Israel has not been around for thousands of years, that is why they are called the Ten LOST Tribes. This passage in Ezekiel is describing a Jewish People where all of the descendants of every tribe thrives and has made their way to the Promised Land. Because it speaks of both the House of Israel and the House of Judah together, with Hashem, in a single new covenant, and since the House of Israel cannot be unified with the House of Judah, this entire passage has not happened YET, because the house of Israel is still lost.

23 And they shall no longer defile themselves with their idols, with their detestable things, or with all their transgressions, and I will save them from all their habitations in which they have sinned, and I will purify them, and they shall be to Me as a people, and I will be to them as a God.

24 And My servant David shall be king over them, and one shepherd shall be for them all, and they shall walk in My ordinances and observe My statutes and perform them.

That His servant David would be their Prince forever. 

25 And they shall dwell on the land that I have given to My servant, to Jacob, wherein your forefathers lived; and they shall dwell upon it, they and their children and their children's children, forever; and My servant David shall be their prince forever. 

This portion of the prophecy takes us into the future, it has not as yet been fulfilled.

26 And I will form a covenant of peace for them, an everlasting covenant shall be with them; and I will establish them and I will multiply them, and I will place My Sanctuary in their midst forever.

27 And My dwelling place shall be over them, and I will be to them for a God, and they shall be to Me as a people.

28 And the nations shall know that I am the Lord, Who sanctifies Israel, when My Sanctuary is in their midst forever."

1.   Ephraim and Judah will be joined together with Judah as the lead. (16-19)

2.   This leader will be David’s descendant. He is called the king, prince and leader of that time. (24-25)

3.   There will be a sanctuary (temple). (28)

Divrei Hayamim I - I Chronicles - Chapter 22

David had decided to build a house for God, to contain the Ark of the Covenant which was still in a tent.

7 And David said to Solomon, "My son, as for me, it was in my heart to build a House in the name of the Lord my God.

David was told that he could not build a house because of his bloody hands.

8 But the word of the Lord was upon me, saying: 'You have shed much blood, and you have waged great wars; you shall not build a House in My Name because you have shed much blood to the ground before Me.

A son from his seed.

9 Behold a son will be born to you; he will be a man of peace, and I shall give him peace from all his enemies around about, for Solomon will be his name, and I shall give peace and quiet to Israel in his days.

One who will rule over Israel forever.

10 He shall build a House in My Name, and he shall be to Me as a son, and I to him as a Father, and I shall prepare the throne of his kingdom forever.'

Throughout the Tanakh many prophets have alluded to this promise of Hashem to David.

Yeshayahu - Isaiah - Chapter 9

6 To him who increases the authority, and for peace without end, on David's throne and on his kingdom, to establish it and to support it with justice and with righteousness; from now and to eternity, the zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall accomplish this.

Restoration of the Land

The land of Israel lay desolate for almost two thousand years. Her people were dispersed by the Romans all over the world in 70 A.D. By the turn of the twentieth century, the whole land of Israel was desolate! The part that was not desert was mostly malaria-infested swamps.

Yechezkel - Ezekiel - Chapter 36

24 For I will take you from among the nations and gather you from all the countries, and I will bring you to your land.

25 And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be clean; from all your impurities and from all your abominations will I cleanse you.

26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the heart of stone out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.

27 And I will put My spirit within you and bring it about that you will walk in My statutes and you will keep My ordinances and do [them].

28 Then will you dwell in the land that I gave your fathers, and you will be a people to Me, and I will be to you as a God.

29 And I will save you from all your uncleannesses, and I will call to the corn and will multiply it, and I will not decree famine again over you.

30 And I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field, so that you shall no more have to accept the shame of famine among the nations.

31 And you shall remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves in your own eyes on account of your sins and on account of your abominations.

32 Not for your sake do I do it, says the Lord God, may it be known to you; be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel.

33 So says the Lord God: On the day that I will have cleansed you from all your iniquities, and I will resettle the cities, and the ruins shall be built up.

34 And the desolate land shall be worked, instead of its lying desolate in the sight of all that pass by.

35 And they shall say, 'This land that was desolate has become like the Garden of Eden, and the cities that were destroyed and desolate and pulled down have become settled as fortified [cities].'

36 And the nations that are left round about you shall know that I, the Lord, have built up the ruined places and have planted the desolate ones; I, the Lord, have spoken, and I will perform [it].

37 So says the Lord God: I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel to do for them; I will multiply them-the men-like a flock of sheep.

38 Like the flocks appointed for the holy offerings, like the flocks of Jerusalem on its festivals, so will these cities now laid waste be filled with flocks of men, and they shall know that I am the Lord."

Mark Twain visited Israel in 1867 and wrote in his resulting diary, Innocence Abroad, “There was hardly a tree or a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds the approaches to Jerusalem. The only difference between the roads and the surrounding country, perhaps, is that there are rather more rocks in the roads than in the surrounding country”. (Innocence Abroad, chapter LII, page 555).

Since the return of the Jewish people, the swamps have been drained and some of the best agriculture technology has been applied. Today, one can drive through the valleys and hills of Israel and see something very different than Mark Twain saw in 1867. Much of the land today has some of the most beautiful crops growing. The variety of crops is astounding!

Isaiah tells us the day would come when Israel would “blossom and sprout” and “fill the whole world with fruit” (Isaiah 27:6).

Yeshayahu - Isaiah - Chapter 27

6 Those who came, whom Jacob caused to take root, Israel flourished and blossomed and they filled the face of the world with fruitage.

This prophecy is definitely being fulfilled as Israel has become one of few net food-exporting countries in the world, which means they export more than they import. As of the writing of this booklet in 2016, Israel is exporting food products to over ninety countries.

Writing about Israel, Amos 9:14-15 calls for the plowman to overtake the reaper. In other words, Israel would become a land of thriving agriculture. In spite of much political turmoil, and against all odds, Israel today is an agricultural wonder!

The War of Gog and Magog

The prophet Ezekiel (chapters 38-39) describes a climactic war that will be instigated by Gog and/or Magog, and will be waged against Israel and G‑d. The defeat of Gog and Magog will precipitate the Messianic Redemption.

Yechezkel - Ezekiel - Chapter 38

2 "Son of man, set your face toward Gog, [toward] the land of Magog, the prince, the head of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy concerning him.

3 And you shall say; So said the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, Gog, the prince, the head of Meshech and Tubal.

4 And I shall unbridle you, and I shall put hooks into your jaws and bring you forth and all your army, horses and riders, all of them clothed in finery, a great assembly, with encompassing shield and buckler, all of them grasping swords.

5 Persia, Cush, and Put are with them; all of them with buckler and helmet.

6 Gomer and all its wings, the house of Togarmah, the utmost parts of the north and all its wings, many peoples with you.

Iran from the North and Russia from the utmost north!!!!! Now, for those who have been keeping up on world events, Russia, form utmost North has joined with Iran from the north and are in Syria, which was Assyria. Looks to me to be prophesy coming true right before our eyes!!!

7 Be prepared and make ready for yourself, you and all your assembly who are gathered about you, and you will be to them for a guardian.

8 From many days you will be remembered; at the end of the years you will come to a land [whose inhabitants] returned from the sword, gathered from many peoples, upon the mountains of Israel, which had been continually laid waste, but it was liberated from the nations, and they all dwelt securely.

9 And you will ascend; like mist you will come; like a cloud to cover the earth you will be; you and all your wings and many peoples with you.

10 So said the Lord God: It will come to pass on that day that words will enter your heart and you will think a thought of evil.

11 And you will say, "I shall ascend upon a land of open cities; I shall come upon the tranquil, who dwell securely; all of them living without a wall, and they have no bars or doors.

12 To take spoil and to plunder loot, to return your hand upon the resettled ruins and to a people gathered from nations, acquiring livestock and possessions, dwelling on the navel of the earth.

13 Sheba and Dedan and merchants of Tarshish and all its magnates will say to you, "Are you coming to take spoil? Have you assembled your assembly to plunder loot, to carry off silver and gold, to take livestock and possessions, to take much spoil?"

14 Therefore, prophesy, O son of man, and say to Gog, So said the Lord God: Surely on that day, when My people dwells securely, you will know.

15 And you will come from your place, from the utmost north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding horses; a great assembly and a mighty army.

16 And you will ascend upon My people Israel like a cloud to cover the earth; at the end of days it will be, and I shall bring you upon My land in order that the nations recognize Me when I am sanctified through you before their eyes, O Gog.

17 So said the Lord God: Are you he about whom I spoke in ancient days through My servants, the prophets of Israel who prophesied in those days many years ago, to bring you upon them.

18 And it will come to pass on that day, when Gog comes against the land of Israel, declares the Lord God, that My blazing indignation will flame in My nostrils.

"that My blazing indignation will flame in My nostrils." volcanoes

La Palma, Canary Islands: eruption Sep 2021

Updated: Dec 10, 2021 01:23 GMT

The eruption continues along a very slowly decreasing path. Activity today has been more or less as yesterday, but a bit weaker at the vents. Only sporadic explosive activity occurred, occasionally producing ash plumes that rose a few hundred meters.

21 And I will call the sword against him upon all My mountains, says the Lord God: every man's sword shall be against his brother.

22 And I will judge against him with pestilence and with blood, and rain bringing floods, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone will I rain down upon him and upon his hordes and upon the many peoples that are with him.

Hurricanes one right after the other. The most active season on record was 2020, during which 30 named tropical cyclones formed. Despite this, the 2005 season had more hurricanes, developing a record of 15 such storms. The least active season was 1914, with only one known tropical cyclone developing during that year. 

As I’ve said earlier, I truly believe we’re living in the time of Ikvot Meshicha. There is a decline of decency in this so-called modern woke society! Exposing our children to perversion such as drag queens in our schools! Little boys are now little girls, little girls are now little boys, and due to warped wokeness, many don't know what gender they are. Parents no longer interact with their children; give them a cell phone and they'll be quite all day. No more playing outside, no more dodgeball, a poor little kid might get hurt.

Yeshayahu - Isaiah - Chapter 5

20 Woe to those who say of the evil that it is good and of the good that it is evil; who present darkness as light and light as darkness, who present bitter as sweet and sweet as bitter.

People will begin to despise the values of decency in the generations preceding the coming of the Mashiach. Since in a period of such accelerated change parents and children will grow up in literally different worlds, traditions handed down from father to son will be among the major casualties. Our sages thus teach us that neither parents nor the aged will be respected, the old will have to seek favors from the young. Insolence will increase, people will no longer have respect, and none will offer correction. Religious studies will be despised and used by nonbelievers to strengthen their own claims; the government will become godless, academies places of immorality, and the pious denigrated.

This is the meaning of the prophecy, "Truth will fail" (Isaiah 59:15).

Yeshayahu - Isaiah - Chapter 59

13 Rebelling and denying the Lord, and drawing away from following our God, speaking oppression and perverseness, sprouting and giving forth from the heart words of falsehood.

14 And justice has turned away backward, and righteousness stands from afar, for truth has stumbled in the street, and straightforwardness cannot come.

15 And truth is lacking, and he who turns away from evil is considered mad, and the Lord saw and was displeased for there is no justice.

It has been predicted that a great wave of atheism would sweep the world. This is how our sages interpret the prophecy, "Many will purify themselves… and be refined. But the wicked will do evil; not one of them will understand. Only the wise will understand" (Daniel 12:10). That is, only the wise will understand that this is a test from heaven and that they must stand firm in their faith.

There will be a population explosion prior to the coming of the Mashiach. Population of the Earth at present; 7.97 billion People. Everyone on the earth wants a healthy comfortable life; this requires shelter, food, water, transportation, and energy. The world population will grow from 7.97 billion to 9.8 billion by 2050. Farmers will need to double food production by 2050 to keep pace.

As the holiest spot in the Land of Israel, Jerusalem is the most important city that must be rebuilt there. There is a tradition that the ingathering of the exile and the rebuilding of Jerusalem will go hand in hand as the two most important preludes to the coming of the Messiah. According to this tradition, first a small percentage of the exile will return to the Holy Land, and then Jerusalem will come under Jewish control and be rebuilt. Only then will the majority of Jews in the world return to their homeland. It is thus written, "God is rebuilding Jerusalem; [then] He will gather the dispersed of Israel" (Psalms 147:2).

There is a tradition that the Land of Israel will be cultivated at that time, after a long period of desolation. This is based on the prophecy, "O mountains of Israel, let your branches sprout forth; yield your fruit to My people Israel, for they are at hand to come" (Ezekiel 36:8).

One of the most important events in the Messianic Era will be the rebuilding of the Holy Temple (Beit HaMikdash). Indeed, according to Maimonides, it is the act of building the Temple which will establish the identity of the Messiah beyond any shadow of a doubt. There are, however, many things involving the Temple which can only be ascertained prophetically, such as, for example, the precise location of the Altar. When Ezra rebuilt the Temple after the Babylonian exile, the place of the Altar had to be revealed prophetically, and the same will apparently be true when the Temple is rebuilt in the Messianic Ages.

Regarding the conquest of the Land of Israel, the Torah states, "Clear out the land and live in it" (Numbers 33:53). Many authorities maintain that this commandment remains in full force today.

There is a tradition that the Land of Israel will only be regained through great suffering. This has been fulfilled to obtain that part of the Land which we possess today.

Mashiach ben Yosef (Mashiach the descendant of Joseph) of the tribe of Ephraim (son of Joseph), is also referred to as Mashiach ben Ephraim, Mashiach the descendant of Ephraim. He will come first, before the final redeemer, and later will serve as his viceroy. [The harmony and cooperation between Mashiach ben David and Mashiach ben Yosef signify the total unity of Israel, removing the historical rivalries between the tribes of Judah and Joseph.]

The essential task of Mashiach ben Yosef is to act as precursor to Mashiach ben David: he will prepare the world for the coming of the final redeemer. Different sources attribute to him different functions, some even charging him with tasks traditionally associated with Mashiach ben David (such as the ingathering of the exiles, the rebuilding of the Bet HaMikdash, and so forth).

The principal and final function ascribed to Mashiach ben Yosef is of political and military nature. He shall wage war against the forces of evil that oppress Israel. More specifically, he will do battle against Edom, the descendants of Esau. Edom is the comprehensive designation of the enemies of Israel, and it will be crushed through the progeny of Joseph. Thus, it was prophesied of old, "The House of Jacob will be a fire and the House of Joseph a flame, and the House of Esau for stubble": "the progeny of Esau shall be delivered only into the hands of the progeny of Joseph."

Now if we look back at:

Yirmiyahu - Jeremiah - Chapter 33

5. They come to war with the Chaldeans and to fill them with the corpses of the men whom I have smitten with My anger and with My wrath, and that which I have hidden My face from this city because of all their evil.

Now Chaldeans is Assyria and Babylon, there are historical connections of Syria to ancient Assyria, and Babylon is now in Iraq. Look at what's happening today. The signs are there.

Iran, and Russia are in Syria, Israel has been conducting airstrikes against weapons shipments to Hezbollah almost daily. So far Putin has been looking the other way.

The Gog-Magog war of Ezekiel 38–39 is a prophecy that predicts a powerful confederacy that may be led by Russia, that is destined to someday invade Israel.  Some think that its fulfillment is even knocking at our door.

Psalm 83, a lesser known prophecy is pointing at a different confederacy which wishes to wipe out Israel.

This psalm seems to be addressing current issues in the Middle East—nations conspiring to destroy Israel.

Asaph’s Vision of a Future War

Tehillim - Psalms - Chapter 83

1 A psalm, a song of Asaph.

2 O God, have no silence, do not be silent and do not be still, O God.

3 For behold, Your enemies stir, and those who hate You raise their heads.

4 Against Your people they plot cunningly, and they take counsel against Your protected ones.

5 They said, "Come, let us destroy them from [being] a nation, and the name of Israel will no longer be remembered."

6 For they have taken counsel with one accord; against You they form a pact.

7 The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, Moab and the Hagrites.

8 Gebal, Ammon, and Amalek, Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre.

9 Also Assyria joined them; they were the arm of the children of Lot forever.

Psalm 83 is more than a prayer or a plea to God for vengeance on Israel’s enemies; it reveals that a 10-member confederacy wants to destroy the Chosen People and possess the Promised Land.

This psalm, however, was not written during a time of war.  It was written some 3,000 years ago by King David’s worship leader, Asaph, during a time of great prosperity, liberty, and peace.

But Asaph was not just a worshiper; according to 2 Chronicles 29:30, he was also a chozeh (seer or prophet).

As a prophet, Asaph saw beyond this period of peace, to a time when this confederacy would seek the utter destruction of Israel.  That time now seems to be nearing.

“Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation, so that Israel’s name is remembered no more.”  (Psalm 83:4)

Even though Asaph’s vision was received in a time of peace, it must have been cause for some concern since many named in the confederacy had previously demonstrated their hatred.

Of course, even today, conspiring against the Jewish People is considered nothing new.  From the Philistines to the Nazis, the Jewish People have been plotted against.

· Tents of Edom: Palestinians and Southern Jordanians

· Ishmaelites: Saudis (Ishmael is the father of the Arabs)

· Moab: Palestinians and Central Jordanians

· Hagrites: Egyptians (Hagar is the matriarch of Egypt)

· Gebal(Byblos): Hezbollah and Northern Lebanese

· Ammon: Palestinians and Northern Jordanians

· Amalek: Arabs of the Sinai area

· Philistia: Hamas of the Gaza Strip

· Tyre: Hezbollah and Southern Lebanese

· Assyria: Syrians and Northern Iraqi’s

Salus has worked to identify some of these ancient groups based upon their ancient locations and others by where they migrated.

I thought it was important to add this Psalm 83, because it makes clear as to who Edom is, the battle that Mashiach Ben Yosef will be killed. Now we’ll continue

Mashiach Ben Yosef is the one who starts the redemption. He is the central figure in the process preceding the final and complete redemption in which a king from David’s house is eventually anointed – and this is “Mashiach Ben David”. Mashiach Ben Yosef fights the wars of Hashem. And since it is he who STARTS the redemption, he is also called “Mashiach HaAtchalta” – the Mashiach who begins the redemption. He is responsible for the physical, material redemption which precedes the spiritual one. The physical redemption is the ingathering of the exiles, the conquering of the Land of Israel and wars against the forces of evil (and for this reason he is also coined by many midrashim as the “Mashiach Milchama” – the anointed for war). Mashiach Ben Yosef

The immediate results of this war will be disastrous: Mashiach ben Yosef will be killed. This is described in the prophecy of Zechariah, who says of this tragedy that:

Zechariah - Chapter 12

10 And I will pour out upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplications. And they shall look to me because of those who have been thrust through [with swords], and they shall mourn over it as one mourns over an only son and shall be in bitterness, therefore, as one is embittered over a firstborn son.

His death will be followed by a period of great calamities. These new tribulations shall be the final test for Israel, and shortly thereafter Mashiach ben David shall come, avenge his death, resurrect him, and inaugurate the Messianic era of everlasting peace and bliss