It’s a very tense stage of modern Jewish history. We’ve had several so far over the last 70 years, but this one is different. It’s the first time since the Holocaust that so many non-Arabs have shown overt hatred of Jews, and it seems to be growing.
True, so much of the fire is from the Arabs themselves, who are everywhere today. True, they know how to use the media to manipulate masses of Westerners, especially young disillusioned and disenfranchised youth. True, the media seems only too willing to add fire to fire to get at the Jews. But the “wood” doesn’t burn if it isn’t fire-ready.
The truth is, I saw the beginning of this in a Newsweek article back in 1982. They were covering the war up north, “Operation Galilee,” fought only because Hizbollah was sending rockets into northern Israel. We didn’t start the war, we didn’t want the war, and we certainly could not afford the war.
We never can, but our enemy, committed to the wanton destruction of the Jewish people always imposes war upon us, and then tells the world we started it. But until that article in Newsweek, I had never seen a “mainstream” news outlet accept it, writing that there was a “statute of limitations on the Holocaust,” and that Israel had to stop using it as an excuse to start wars.
I was thoroughly disgusted by what I read, and incensed, I stopped buying Newsweek immediately. There were so many things wrong with the article, not just from an Israeli Jew’s biased perspective, but from a moral truth perspective. But the main ill, sinking feeling I had when I thought about it was, “Oh-oh. We’re going in that direction again already.”
Because I knew that as moronic and as morally guilty as the writer of the article was, he was just a messenger for God. God chose him to write what he did because he was the kind of person who could, and that’s between him and God. But the message he relayed was between the Jewish people and God, and that deserved a lot more attention than the article itself.
It is the nature of so many Jews to shoot the messenger while ignoring the message. They think that anti-Semitism is manmade and can be dealt with person-to-person. They act as if it is just another version of racism, of the hatred of one human for another, with nothing Divine about it all.
It’s a huge mistake. HUGE. It’s a deadly mistake. Because, if it was only a human issue, it would not come back over and over again. Yes, so many other groups have been discriminated against before, but they have usually found a way to eventually beat it back. Only the Jews suffer the same hatred generation after generation. Every time they think they have overcome it, it comes back for one reason or another.
The perpetrators are evil, to be sure, or at least doing evil. Even if they believe they are doing the “right” thing, it is evil to go so far to impose your opinion without having thoroughly checked out the truth of the matter. Only pure hatred can “justify” that, and that is pure evil, even if they have a job, pay their taxes, and coach little league.
But when things go so far down the anti-Semitic road of upside down truths, illogical conclusions, and ridiculous and baseless hatred, then it is about more than just public safety for a Jew. And that’s the part we don’t seem to get despite all the history about it.
If you’re a Torah Jew who believes in Hashgochah Pratis, you need to know this. (A secular Jew needs to know this equally, but what are the chances they are reading this, and even if they are reading it, believing it?) We may treat all of Jewish history the same, but God doesn’t, and if you don’t want to be caught off guard and left vulnerable, you should learn them.
There are three modes of Hashgochah Pratis. The first is whenGod runs the world quietly. It steps back from the public eye to such an extent that even believers forget about Him in their lives. They may proclaim that God is responsible for everything, but they go about their lives as if nature is a real thing.
In recent times, this was what it was like in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and probably most of the 80s. There were some moments when God seemed to step forward somewhat, but they were short lived and soon forgotten, as people went about their lives as if the Messianic Era had already begun.
Then came the Intifada in 1987, and the birth of fake news. That is when we watched the media manipulate facts to transform Israel from being the David it was into the Goliath it was not. It was the first time since the Holocaust that Jews were forced to feel outrage at the portrayal of Israeli activities and frustration at their inability to mitigate the situation. Anti-Semitism began to increase again.
It didn’t yet make life uncomfortable for the Jewish people, just less comfortable. It didn’t make Diaspora Jews feel as their days within gentile countries were numbered and that they should quickly start planning their escape. On the contrary, Diaspora Jews felt that they could deal with the problem through conventional exile means, like writing to the your congressperson to intervene on behalf of the Jewish community.
That is Mode 2 of Hashgochah Pratis. It is when God starts sending us short messages that change is in the air. It means the current exile is coming to an end, and it is time to start making plans to leave it. Our success among the gentiles is miraculous to begin with, so when it starts to lessen, even just a little, it is a Divine message that God is pulling out, and we should as well.
This has been Jewish history since the early 90s (and the 30s before the Holocaust), and some people have noticed it and acted accordingly, either making aliyah or beginning the process of it. The rest have chosen to rely on hope that the new bad will pass and the old good will return once again, even though history proves that this never happens without some very negative event to kick off the next period of exile.
Then, at some point after that, comes Mode 3, what we call a Gzar Din—Decreed Judgment. All the really terrible things that have happened to Jews at the end of one exile or another falls into this category of Hashgochah Pratis. It’s as if someone shuts a door on us, and all of a sudden we find ourselves trapped in the same room with some incredible anti-Semitic bully. The Holocaust was the last example of that.
When, God forbid, Jewish history reaches that stage of Hashgochah Pratis, the nation is in trouble. All of a sudden, or so it seems all of a sudden, we find ourselves unable to protect ourselves against hostiles, and our ability to run for cover seems to become greatly limited. We become complete “victims” of whatever has been decreed from above.
The backdrop of history during such a chaotic time is usually high levels of anti-Semitism, low moral standards, and falsehood running amok. Life just stops making sense the way it used to, logic goes out the window, and laws start to emerge aimed at the Jewish people, like what happened in Europe in the 1940s and is starting to happen today.
The poster taped to a lamp post in Toronto read, “Imagine being so vile, sneaky and disgusting that laws have to be created to keep normal people from hating and condemning you.” It should have been about Hamas, especially after October 7, but the caricature at the top was right out of a Nazi propaganda handbook, the Jew with the big nose and similar features.
An isolated event? Wishful thinking. Palestinian propaganda? For sure. But while this is going on, so is the case in the Hague accusing Israel of genocide during a war that once again, we did not start, did not want, and can’t afford, not in money and certainly not in blood. But what can be expected from an international body that is addicted to creating resolutions against Israel?
The point is, the only question we ought to have right now is, are we transitioning to Mode 3 Hashgochah Pratis? If yes, and a Divine decree is forming “against” the Jewish people, we have to know against whom, and what they should do about it.
Stopping such decrees is usually out of the question, unless that was God’s intention since Creation. If it wasn’t, then it will happen regardless, and people will have to decide where they want to be when it does. Had it not been for Avraham, Lot would have been left to perish in Sdom. Some people had some kind of merit to escape Europe between 1939-45, even as so many didn’t.
But no one knows who has such merit until after the worst has happened. We already know how many people didn’t make it through the last major decree, some even getting as far as America only having to turn around and suffer the fate they had fled from. Now, as we seeming to be entering Mode 3 one last time in history, you have to wonder how many will survive it this time.