Let me state from the start this is not “I told you so,” even though I did. You say “I told you so” when there is something to learn for the future, or it is just gloating. I don’t think there is anything here to learn for the future, and gloating is not acceptable by the Torah and usually comes back to bite you.
I have been talking about what is happening today for over two decades, warning about what was going to happen in the coming years. It basically cost me my teaching job at a prominent seminary, whose management gave me the choice of teaching only traditional material, or moving on.
Since others could teach the regular material but almost no one was talking about the “End of Days,” I felt a personal obligation to leave the seminary. I have never looked back since.
It wasn’t just that I was told this. It was also the way I was told it. Without knowing the material I was teaching or where it came from, or how extensively I had done my homework and put everything together, my message was downplayed and I was almost ridiculed. It just made it easier to make my decision to go off on my own and continue my mission.
One of the reasons I had attracted this negative attention was because the last time I taught the material at the seminary, it was standing room only. On a regular night, I had maybe about 10 - 14 girls, with plenty of chairs left to sit in. But when I got to the last class of the semester in my third year teaching this material (I always saved it for the end), people came from other classes and even from the neighborhood around.
When I saw that, I knew it wouldn’t end well. It had not been my intention to teach it to anyone beyond the regular girls with whom I was familiar. I had not advertised or sent out any word of mouth. Yet about ten times the regular amount of people showed up for the class three nights in a row, each night a bit more.
That’s how compelling the material was. Even though the world was still a relatively quiet place, and America still seemed like a safe haven for Jews (9/11 hadn’t happened yet), people listened each time for an entire hour, no one nodding off or arguing any of the points. Like it or not, scary or not, the material resonated and had enough credibility to be heard out in seriousness.
The night that all this happened I had walked up the stairs to my second-floor classroom like every other night, tired and lost in my own thoughts. When I got to the top of the stairs, I was startled to see what was usually an empty hallway lined with women of all ages. My automatic assumption was that they were waiting to get into what I also assumed was the locked classroom of the other rabbi who taught at the same time as me, but usually to a full house.
But after I opened the door to my room, all of them filed in behind me and filled the space. I pretended to be unfazed, but inside I was already uptight. It’s a whole different experience teaching such sensitive material to so many people you know nothing about. I was so much more conscious about every word I said, but that didn’t stop the “plant” from reporting back to my superior, who called me in to “talk.”
Why mention all of this now? Because I was recently told that the other rabbi who taught opposite me at the seminary was recently asked about making aliyah. He happens to be a very popular speaker, a genius of a person, and a great influencer of people. His answer was different than it would have been back then when we taught at the same time, even “different from a week ago.”
In the past, he essentially said, he would have told a family to hold off making aliyah until the children were grown up and in yeshivah or seminary. But given the way things are developing abroad for Jews, he said it was better now to suffer what problems might arise from making aliyah with younger children than to remain in the Diaspora with growing anti-Semitism.
I thought about this for a moment. How many girls had returned to the States since I left the seminary over 20 years ago, went to college, married locally, and built their families outside of Eretz Yisroel? Some of them might be marrying off their own children by now, pushing their roots deeper into foreign soil and making aliyah less of a reality.
It takes years to make aliyah on your own terms, especially if you already have a family and own a house with a mortgage. A house can remain on the market for years before an owner gets their asking price, and then it takes time to find the right community in Eretz Yisroel, and make all the necessary arrangements for parnassah, schooling, etc. And that’s only if you already spent years thinking about it and planning it.
Doing all of that in one year or less means either relying upon a miracle, or giving up on important things, like getting the asking price for your house. It may mean going to a foreign land and working out the details when there, never a great thing anywhere in the world. Worst of all, it might mean getting stuck in the Diaspora and having to deal with bigger problems there instead.
There are still plenty of Diaspora Jews, despite the growing danger for Jews there, who remain unconvinced that their exile has ended and it is time to move on. They don’t deny these are turbulent times, just that they are turbulent enough to make arrangements to get to Israel as soon as possible. They even believe that it is still more dangerous to live in the Middle-East than it is other places in the world.
If you ask them, “What do you have to see to conclude it is time to get out, and as soon as possible?” they usually answer with a high level of danger. In fact, a situation so serious and dangerous that, more than likely, would occur after the time to get out was possible.
The remarkable thing is that without even getting into religion and mystical origins of anti-Semitism, a Jew should always live with one foot in and one foot out. Just knowing history alone should be enough for a Jew, any Jew, to say, “Everywhere we have gone there has been danger and death, regardless of religious commitment. Just being born a Jew has been enough for anti-Semites to justify persecuting Jews. It pays to be cautious and to plan an escape route if it ever becomes necessary.”
What is it about us as a people that we live thinking that the next period will be different? What gives us the ability to assume that this time we will remain safe, maybe suffer only some minute anti-Semitism? How do we forget the lessons of the past and live with the false belief that we will quietly and peacefully end this fourth and final exile, or fifth one if you count Yishmael as well?
I don’t get such letters often, but recently I have received a few from people thanking me for having spoken about these issues decades ago. They made aliyah over the course of years, and have been able to settle down in one community or another. They know firsthand what was involved, and they are grateful that it is behind them now, loving their life in Eretz Yisroel.
It doesn’t mean that they are problem-free. It doesn’t mean that they haven’t suffered hardships over the years unique to life in Eretz Yisroel. All of us have. After all, as the Gemora warns, Eretz Yisroel is acquired through yesurim (Brochos 5a), and many can testify to the truth of that statement.
But so is Torah, and the World to Come. True, that is why some people have run from these as well, but everyone has to agree that is their loss, not the Torah’s or the World to Come’s. Like all the great things in life, it is always better to pay upfront and enjoy what you “purchased” the rest of your life than to wait to pay for it in the future, especially when you might not be able to anymore.
There is just something special and comforting about knowing that you are where you should be when you should be there. It’s even more special and comforting when you realize how much harder it has become to do now what you did when it was easier. It makes a person feel so incredibly fortunate, and sorry for those not in the same boat.
So as I began, there is no “I told you so” here, just tremendous gratitude for having been blessed to deal with the situation earlier, and a lot of prayer for those who have yet to be so fortunate. We are a single people, all brothers and sisters, and my pleasure and comfort is tempered by the fact that others in my “family” don’t share it.
God help us all. He’s the only One Who can.