The Jews

by *ahermin

marita

Artist’s Comments

on May 14, 1948 at 4:00 p.m., Hay Iyar, the 5th of Iyar, Israel declared itself a state. After 2,000 years, the land of Israel was once more in the hands of the Jews. David Ben Gurion read the Declaration of Independence over the radio.

“The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here the spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world… “

The armies of seven Arab nations (whom they did not get along very well, but merely had one common enemy) marched into the new state, boasting that they would “push the Jews into the sea.” Outnumbered 100 to 1, it was a devastating moment, and every one at the time thought it would be another holocaust.
The War of Independence held out 13 months. Nearly 6,000 Israelis died or a full 1% of the Jewish population at that time.

Never before has a nation been destroyed, its people dispersed to the ends of the earth, and then, nearly two thousand years later, re-gathered to their homeland and re-established as a nation.
Was this a miracle? Clearly. But it was also a fulfillment of prophecy.
“And the Lord, your God, shall return you from your captivity, and have compassion upon you. He shall return and gather you from amongst all the nations. And the Lord, your God will bring you back into the land your fathers inherited. He will make you even more prosperous and numerous than your fathers”. (Deut. 30:3-5)

The very survival of the Jewish people through recorded time is nothing short of miraculous. The very fact that Jews exist as a nation today stands in testimony to the existence of God who acts in history. By any historical measure, the Jewish people should have disappeared long ago.

After 2,500 years of persecution, massacres, pogroms, mass murder, gazed and bloodsheds the Jewish nation still remains strong and vibrant. Accounting to all laws of nature Jews should have been vanished long ago.
Can a nation that has been targeted for final destruction so many times manage to survive?

When the Holy Temple was destroyed and the Jews were exiled, who would have expected the survival of thispeople. Yet the Jews are still thriving, nearly 2,500 years later.

The Assyrians conquered and exiled half of the Jews and almost sacked Jerusalem. Not too long after, the Babylonians succeeded in conquering Jerusalem and exiling the rest of the Jews. They were attacked nearly just by everyone, the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Holy Roman Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Philistines.
And yet tragedy after tragedy, destruction after destruction the Jewish nation continues. This screams out that there is a divine power in watching his chosen nation.

The History continues and there were more pogroms and massacres. Almost every major European country expelled the Jews at some point. Murders, inquisitions, blood libels and much more were inflicted on the Jews.

But here we are today, little more than 60 years after the most brutal, calculated, and organized massacre of the so-called “The Final Solution,” and the Jewish people is still remain strong and vibrant.

Sociologists and historians cannot adequately explain the phenomenon of Jewish survival. While they may try, their theories ring hollow when compared to the sheer improbability of 3500 years of survival against the fiercest of foes. The only adequate theory is that God has save His people.

Over 300 years ago King Louis XIV of France asked Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher, to give him proof of the supernatural. Pascal answered: “Why, the Jews, your Majesty — the Jews.”

Mark Twain, “Concerning the Jews,” Harper’s Magazine, 1897:
“The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal, but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

Leo Nikolaivitch Tolstoy, unlike Twain, was not an agnostic. He was a very religious, Russian Orthodox Christian. He is also a very famous Russian author from the last century, perhaps best known for his War and Peace. He wrote this in 1908.

“The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He who neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy, he who neither fire, nor sword, nor Inquisition was able to wipe off the face of the earth. He who was the first to produce the Oracles of God. He who has been for so long the Guardian of Prophecy and has transmitted it to the rest of the world. Such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is as everlasting as Eternity itself.”