Rabbi Pruzansky's Blog

The simplest way to view the Supreme Court’s decision in the Masterpiece Bakeshop case as a victory for religious liberty is to consider the reaction had the court ruled against Jack Phillips and the assertion of his religious principles. The celebrations over the marginalization of religion in America would still be going on and the glee would have been unrestrained over successfully ramming down the throats of Americans a coerced acceptance of relationships construed by the Bible as immoral. That Phillips won is – or might be – a turning point in the cultural decline of America or at least a momentary halt to the moral slide.

How did he win? Much has been made of the narrowness of the Court’s ruling, basing itself on the meanness of the Colorado Human Rights Commission towards religious faith. That implies, many have noted, that had the Commission been less hostile – e.g., had it told Phillips “you have a beautiful faith that we love and respect but alas we must rule against you” – Phillips would have lost. That seems a flimsy reed on which to resolve a legal dispute, not just regarding the future but particularly for this case.

It is as if the Court realized that there was something just a little off, a little un-American, about forcing an individual to violate his conscience by coercing a personal performance that celebrates a lifestyle he considers abhorrent but the Court did not know how to worm its way out of the legal morass it had created with its decisions over the last decade. Having long abandoned the pretense that its decisions reflect “law,” “precedent” or even “constitutional jurisprudence” and is nothing more than the articulation of the personal sensibilities of its members (and often just one member, Justice Kennedy), the Court had to find a way to justify Phillips and at the same time not antagonize the cultural elites in the American media industry that have no use for religion or respect for its adherents.

So the Court crafted a convoluted decision that vindicated Phillips – justice for one person – while the real substantive arguments and future battlegrounds were fleshed out in the concurrences and dissent. It is hard to escape the conclusion that America on these issues has moved past the tolerance of “live and let live” (itself an achievement) to the recriminations and nastiness of “my way or the highway” (or fines, sanctions, imprisonment and the like). After all, the case did not involve the denial of emergency medical care but the baking of a cake (and, down the road, flowers, caterers, photographers and other personal services).

That Phillips was sincere in his religious belief meant little to the “liberal” justices who insisted, in one way or another, that his rejection of same sex marriage was too similar to racism (and to one Commission member, Nazism). It deserves to be underscored that what is so scorned now is rooted in the Bible and was considered normal, unremarkable morality for several millennia. And note Phillips’ earnestness, from Justice Gorsuch’s concurrence:

“Phillips routinely sacrifices profits to ensure that Masterpiece operates in a way that represents his Christian faith. He is not open on Sundays, he pays his employees a higher-than-average wage, and he loans them money in times of need. Phillips also refuses to bake cakes containing alcohol, cakes with racist or homophobic messages, cakes criticizing God, and cakes celebrating Halloween—even though Halloween is one of the most lucrative seasons for bakeries. These efforts to exercise control over the messages that Master­piece sends are still more evidence that Phillips’ conduct is expressive.”

And for that he was reviled as a bigot.

Kennedy’s meandering decision sidestepped the fundamental freedoms that Phillips has, at least in theory: freedom of speech and religion. Kennedy’s musings in his Obergefell decision – that “the First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons (emphasis mine) are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives” – would be a nullity but for the ruling (not the reasoning) here. He even averred there that there can be heartfelt objections to same sex marriage that should be protected. Again, from the concurrence:
“States cannot punish protected speech because some group finds it offensive, hurtful, stigmatic, unreasonable, or undignified. If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
“The First Amendment gives individ­uals the right to disagree about the correctness of Obergefell and the morality of same sex marriage. Obergefell itself emphasized that the traditional understanding of marriage long has been held—and continues to be held— in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world.”

The remaining question is how these rights can be protected in a commercial context. Much was made of the following conundrum: the same Commission that penalized Phillips for refusing to create a cake celebrating an event that violated his religious beliefs dismissed complaints against three bakers who refused (in Gorsuch’s language) because of their “secular principles” to bake cakes that contained biblical inscriptions opposing same sex marriage.

The Conservative concurrences saw the hypocrisy, at the same time recognizing that if freedom of speech is to have any meaning here, a baker should be able to refuse to service any customer through his personal creativity and energy for purposes he considers offensive. The Liberal concurrences distinguished the two cases with unconvincing logic, opining that Phillips would bake cakes for everyone but not same-sex couples, while the other bakers would not bake cakes they considered repugnant for anyone. But such is really  a distinction without a difference; if freedom of speech is limited, then the baker should not be able to approve one message and reject another. And Phillips would not bake a cake celebrating same-sex marriage even if a band of heterosexuals requested it.

The shame of this whole area is not one of the Jewish justices seems to have spent much time over a daf Gemara because a halachic formula that could resolve these disputes easily presents itself. A merchant who serves the public must accommodate that public but there is a difference between the gavra and the cheftza¸ the person and the object. No merchant should have the right to refuse to sell an object to any customer (aside from totally neutral criteria such as a dress code and the like). If the parties herein wished to purchase a wedding cake off the shelf, well, even Phillips had no objection to that and would have sold them the cake.

Phillips objected to the demands on the gavra – the individual – the requirement that he devote his time and energy to a project that he considered sinful. Any merchant or service provider should have the right to decline to provide that service if he or she so chooses.

But, one might ask, won’t that allow a racist merchant to refuse to serve an ice cream cone to a same sex couple because he personally prepares the cone? The answer to that is no, and here’s why. A reasonable objection can only occur in the context of the furtherance or promotion of the objectionable conduct. A homosexual who buys an ice cream cone is not really a homosexual buying an ice cream cone but a person buying an ice cream cone. His sexual preferences are unrelated and irrelevant to the purchase. This is not so when the purchase or service in question – cakes, flowers, etc. – is intended to advocate or celebrate the lifestyle, such as a wedding or engagement party.

Thus, my formula is this: any action that requires the personal services of an individual in furtherance of some objective, cause or lifestyle that he disdains cannot be mandatory in a free society. Then we say to the aggrieved consumer “go elsewhere.” Just like you wish to celebrate your freedoms unimpeded, so too you must allow others to celebrate their freedoms unimpeded.

With this formula, we respect the right of the religious baker not to be forced to create a cake for a same-sex wedding, the Jewish baker not to be forced to create a cake celebrating Hitler’s birthday, or any provider of a personal service to abstain from doing any act that advances or endorses a particular cause he finds distasteful. Nor does it justify a merchant refusing to serve a black customer on racist grounds – there is no cause there that is being furthered and especially where what is being sought is a product and not a service.

That is the hallmark of a free society.

It all seems so simple, except when we recognize that what antagonizes the new left here is the Mordechai who refuses to bow, i.e., the “Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy.”

I still remember the days when liberals were the tolerant, open ones and conservatives were always lambasted for their reactionary intolerance and narrow-mindedness. Things have changed dramatically! Perhaps this issue, if approached with good will and broadmindedness, will lead to a welcome phenomenon in today’s America: mutual respect. We will know that day has come when these matters cease to be litigated and people patronize the bakers, florists, photographers, caterers and others who sympathize with their causes, and leave the others in peace.

The following was first published as an op-ed at  https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22189)

The ambivalence of many American Jews to President Trump and his support for Israel is puzzling on one hand and downright churlish on the other.

Consider this: Jews have grown very comfortable with American presidents who promised to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the American embassy to Yerushalayim, never fulfilled those promises, and kept making them anyway. It is as if Jews do not expect promises from politicians to be kept (well, maybe that is not so unusual). But Jews have also grown very comfortable with American presidents who criticize the building of settlements in the heartland of Israel, and some who have even threatened to sanction Israel over it. And they accepted the anomaly of Jews being permitted to build in Bethel, New York or Shiloh, Tennessee but not in the original Bethel or Shiloh. That’s just the way it is – but it is strange.

Jews have also grown very comfortable with American presidents who either pay lip service to Israel’s right of self-defense or seek to emasculate it entirely. These presidents routinely decried Israel’s “use of disproportionate force” or urged Israel to accept with equanimity “sacrifices for peace.” The better ones embraced Israel’s right to self-defense in theory but not always in practice, urging “restraint,” caution, and a limited response so as not to offend the terrorists or jeopardize the possibilities for a lasting peace.

And Jews have grown very comfortable with American presidents who have endorsed and even obsessed over the partition of Israel into two states (another partition, it should be added). These presidents have seemed to feel that only the two-state illusion will bring a just and durable peace to the region. That is, only allowing a hostile and irredentist enemy sovereignty over Israel’s heartland and control of its high ground will ensure prosperity and tranquility for the Jews of the truncated State of Israel. Most American Jews were fine with that – because that is what the presidents professed (and some Israeli prime ministers led them to believe) even when the facts on the ground taught the exact opposite.

It bears mentioning that Jews have also grown very comfortable with American presidents who either were troubled by Arab terror (but more troubled by an Israeli response so they drew a moral equivalence between the two) or “understood” Arab terror as emanating from the frustrations of their lives. A State Department spokeswoman once attributed Arab terror to the lack of gainful employment in their communities. So these presidents demanded that Israel should understand it as well, and certainly not “overreact” to the murder and maiming of their own citizens. And we grew very accustomed to the notion that only Israel had to make substantive concessions on the road to “peace,” never the enemy who sought Israel’s dismemberment and dissolution.

We got used to this type of treatment, so used to it that many Jews today are more troubled by an American president who has renounced each of the approaches outlined above than by the presidents who squeezed, cajoled, threatened, criticized, censured, pressured Israel or otherwise failed to keep their promises. It is as if we feel that we do not deserve fair, decent and supportive treatment coming from a friendly president. Too many Jews find it hard to appreciate our good fortune or otherwise express their gratitude to the incumbent president. Of course, not every American Jew is a supporter of Israel and many agree with each of the disquieting and tendentious policies delineated above that were conventional wisdom for decades. But of those who don’t? How do they rationalize their reticence?

However one feels about President Trump, a non-politician to be sure and an individual whose approach to life certainly has its share of idiosyncrasies, the inability of many Jews to show appreciation and gratitude for his current policies towards Israel is inexplicable, even boorish. In their desire to be “super-moral” they have eschewed basic etiquette, something that itself is immoral. And appreciation is also due to his close advisors who share the views of supporters of a strong and proud Israel dwelling in security from sea to river and have been unafraid to promote and implement them.

Finally, American Jews have a president who, holding firm against intense pressure from most other American allies, fulfilled his campaign promise, recognized Yerushalayim as Israel’s capital and moved the American embassy there – abruptly ending Israel’s bizarre status as the only nation on earth not entitled to declare its own capital. The Trump administration has been unabashed in its support of Israel’s right of self-defense as real and substantive, and has steadfastly refused to second-guess or micro-manage Israel’s defense strategies. The Trump administration has muted any objection to Israel’s settlement policy, a marked change from generations of US opposition and occasionally antagonism to Jews living in Judea (of all imaginable paradoxes) and Samaria, and has even expressed occasional support for those endeavors as Israel’s natural right. The Trump administration has abandoned the two-state illusion in favor of the inspired characterization that the United States will support two states “if both parties agree.” Of course… The Trump Administration, and the outstanding Ambassador Nikki Haley, have afforded Israel complete protection from the hypocrisies and inverted reality of the United Nations.

This is in addition to the renunciation of the Obama agreement with Iran and the ramping up of pressure, sanctions and who-knows-what-else down the road – all to halt an Iranian nuclear program whose expressed aim is the destruction of Israel.

It is inconceivable that Hillary Clinton, had she been elected, would have done any of these things.

Have Jews become so partisan, or has support for Israel declined so much among American Jews, that simple recognition of these facts eludes us? Have we forsworn elementary derech eretz because the president is an imperfect man? Are his critics – and were his election opponents – perfect, all paragons of morality and virtue? How have we become so peevish as a people?

Perhaps there is another problem at play here, one that transcends politics and personalities.

The great Musarist Rav Shlomo Wolbe wrote that every person has an erech elyon, a supreme value that transcends all others. What does it mean to have a supreme value? It means a value that is the measure of everything, the barometer by which every consideration in life has to be assessed, and into which all other values have to fit. Think, for a moment, of those Jews more than a century ago who made Communism their highest value. They sacrificed their souls, their families, their interests and their purpose in life to see Communism spread and succeed. In the early years, there were some religious Jews who were Communists – but when the contradictions and the challenges to the integration of Torah and Communism arose, it was the Torah that was abandoned, not Communism. It was the Torah that had to bend or break so that Communism could succeed. Whatever part of Torah did not conform to Communist dogma had to be abandoned.

Communism is dead (except on a few American college campuses and in North Korea) but was replaced by several other  “–isms.” A century ago, secular Zionists made Zionism their primary value, and tossed out parts of the Torah that they felt impeded the realization of the Zionist dream. (That notion still exists but the number of adherents has dramatically fallen) In another iteration of this phenomenon, there are radical feminists today who evaluate and scrutinize every aspect of Torah to ascertain what conforms to feminism and what doesn’t – and the latter has to be discarded. That is their erech elyon, their supreme value. Rav Wolbe wrote that some people make money their erech elyon and for others it is the pursuit of honor or pleasure or children. As if to say, my pursuit of pleasure or my children’s happiness comes first – even above the Torah.

It is so difficult to break away from that mindset; but, Rav Wolbe noted, for the faithful Jew there is nothing in the world that we value as much as we value G-d and our relationship with Him and our fidelity to His will. That is always the erech elyon of the faithful Jew, who posits that G-d and His Torah are the primary values and every other value is subordinate. G-d is always at the top of our ladder of values, or is at least supposed to be, and whatever else a Jew values in life – justice, peace, wisdom, even feminism and Zionism, etc. – must fit into the hierarchy of values that places the Torah as supreme.

For too many Americans, hatred of Donald Trump has become their erech elyon – the one principle that dominates their lives, their every breath, waking moment and productive endeavor. They live to “resist,” whatever that means. As Chazal taught us, both love and hatred “disrupt the normal course of things.” We act differently, uncharacteristically, and sometimes even perversely, when we love or hate something too much, even irrationally.

But hatred of the President should not trump derech eretz, and ingratitude has a way of eventually biting the ingrate. Who’s to say such pro-Israel policies will continue indefinitely – and who’s to say they should, given the ungratefulness of the putative beneficiaries? Many American Jews dreamt that one day a genuinely, no-holds-barred pro-Israel president would emerge and embrace policies that many of us have been advocating for years. And now that it has happened, and while it is happening, isn’t elementary appreciation in order?

Unless we have grown so accustomed to maltreatment and criticism that we believe we deserve nothing but perpetual obloquy, it is. And it behooves us to demonstrate it, especially since G-d’s will is executed in mysterious ways and often through the most unexpected agents.

Here’s one Jew who is immensely grateful to President Trump. May his love of America and Israel continue – to the benefit of both countries.

Rav Soloveitchik’s 1956 address, Kol Dodi Dofek (The Voice of My Beloved Knocks), is legendary for its articulation of the shared destiny and shared fate of every Jew, and the distinctions between the two, but even more for the section on the six divine knocks on the door of history that was occasioned by the establishment of the State of Israel. The Rav began this part of his address as follows, in free translation:

“Eight years ago, in the wake of the night of horrors punctuated by the terrors of Maidanek, Treblinka and Buchenwald, in the night of gas chambers and ovens, the night of concealment of God’s countenance, the night when the Satan of doubt and destruction reigned and sought to drag the Lover from her home to the Christian Church, the night of endless searching  for the Beloved, in that night the Beloved materialized and arose. The Lord who hides in the glorious unknown suddenly appeared and began to knock on the door of the tent of the oppressed and sorrowful Lover that turned in its bed due to the spasms and sufferings of Gehinnom. Out of these beatings, and as a consequence of the knocks of the Beloved, the State of Israel was born. How many times did the Beloved knock? It seems to me we can count at least six knocks.”

And then the Rav listed the six knocks, synopsized here, the modern revelation of      G-d’s hand in history. “First, the knock of opportunity was heard in the political arena… No one can deny that from the standpoint of international relations, the establishment of the State of Israel, in a political sense, was an almost supernatural occurrence. Russian and the Western countries together supported the idea of the establishment of the State of Israel, perhaps the only recommendation on which they united. I tend to believe that  the United Nations was created only for this purpose…”

“Second, the knock of the Beloved could be heard on the battlefield. The small Israeli Defense Forces defeated the powerful armies of the Arab countries. The miracle of the “few defeating the many” happened before our eyes. Even more astonishing, God hardened the hearts of Yishmael and directed it to go to war against the State of Israel…”

         “Third, the Beloved began to knock as well on the door of the theological tent and this might be the strongest knock of all. I have emphasized several times when speaking of the land of Israel that all the claims of Christian  theologians that God deprived the Jewish people of its rights in the land of Israel, and that all the biblical promises regarding Zion and Jerusalem refer, in an allegorical sense, to Christianity and the Christian Church, have been publicly refuted by the establishment of the State of Israel as false assertions that have no substance or root.”

          “Fourth, the Beloved knocked on the hearts of the bewildered and assimilated youth. The divine concealment in the early 1940’s confused the minds of Jews in general and the young in particular. Assimilation grew and the push to escape Judaism and the Jewish people reached its peak. Fear, despair and ignorance caused many to abandon the Jewish people… Suddenly, the Beloved knocked on the hearts of these perplexed youth, and His knock…slowed, at least, the process of escape.”

“The fifth knock of the Beloved is perhaps the most important of all. For the first time in the history of our exile, divine providence has surprised our enemies with the shocking discovery that Jewish blood is not hefker. If the Jew- haters term this “an eye for an eye,” we will agree with them. If we want to preserve our national-historical existence, sometimes we have to interpret “an eye for an eye” literally.”

          “The sixth knock that should not be ignored was heard when the gates of the land were opened. A Jew who flees from an enemy country now knows that he can find a secure refuge in the land of his ancestors. This is a new phenomenon in our times. Until now, when Jewish populations were uprooted from their places, they wandered in the wilderness of the nations without finding a refuge in another land… Now, the situation has changed.”

From the perspective of more than six decades later, the fourth and fifth knocks have proved challenging. Assimilation is as bad or worse today than it was then, and the expression of Jewish identity as having only ethnic but not religious significance has allowed too many Jews to abandon Judaism and still support the State of Israel. Of course, some of Israel’s loudest critics are also Jews.

And recent events have underscored the difficulty the world has with the fifth knock: that Jewish blood is not hefker – ownerless, insignificant and unrequited. Responding to Israel’s forceful defense of its border with Gaza against encroachment by a hostile, bloodthirsty enemy intent on Israel’s destruction, the self-styled moralists who cannot hide their Jew hatred lamented that no Jews were killed, as if some macabre form of chivalry demands casualties on both sides of a conflict. Fortunately, Israeli leaders ignore those calls but such ethical deformations are commonly applied to Israel, and only Israel, by its foes.

*************************************************************************

It has been 62 years since the Rav’s address, time enough to humbly suggest another six divine knocks – six more indications of the hand of G-d in the history of Israel.

First: the capture, trial and execution of Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust. The Mossad tracked him down in Argentina and in an operation whose success still defies comprehension, abducted him in May 1961 off a Buenos Aires street, and hid him for more than a week until they could spirit him out of the country to face trial in Israel. Naturally, the New York Times condemned the operation (as did the United Nations), oleaginously opining that “no immoral or illegal act justifies another.” (The Times failed to acknowledge that it had never saw fit to condemn the Holocaust while it was occurring.)

For sure, the operation was dangerous, heroic and nearly flawless in execution but the broader point was historic. It was a declaration by Israel that the state represents all Jews – and all of Jewish history. Even though Israel did not yet exist during the perpetration of the Holocaust, it saw itself now as the custodian of the history of the Jewish people. When President Yitzchak Ben-Zvi rejected Eichmann’s clemency request, he tellingly cited in the margin of the document the verse from I Samuel (15:33) that described the death of Agag, king of Amalek and tormentor of Jews: “Samuel said: ‘As your sword has bereaved women, so shall your mother be bereaved among women.’ And Samuel decapitated Agag before the Lord at Gilgal.” That Israel defied the world and deputized itself to execute justice against the enemies of the Jewish people was an crucial assertion of its national identity.

Second: the great and stunning victory in the Six Day War of 1967. The Arabs had endeavored to eradicate the State of Israel and drive its citizens into the sea, long before there were any settlements that could serve as the predicate of their current enmity and deceptions. There has been much revisionist history in recent times about Israel’s advantages, including the claims by some that prevailing over the Arabs was a foregone conclusion. Those who remember the mass graves dug in Tel Aviv and Yerushalayim at the time think otherwise. It was an incredible, odds-defying triumph, with Israel handily defeating seven powerful Arab armies while outgunned, outmanned and out armed, and tripling the size of its territory in less than a week.

For sure, most Israeli governments in the ensuing decades celebrated the awesome miracle by attempting to divest itself of the fruits of victory, and most of the land captured has sadly been surrendered already. But that doesn’t detract from the divine gift (that we have failed to fully appreciate). As recorded by Rav Yaakov Filber, a leading disciple of Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook, in his work “Ayelet Hashachar” (1974):  “If the redemption of Israel was just the fruit of our deeds, we would still

be dwelling in the tiny Israel of 1967, just like if it was up to the government alone we would have long ago abandoned our heartland to foreigners.  Anyone who penetrates to the depth of these events will sense, and each day  it becomes clearer, that even as we build the State of Israel, develop its economy… forge its army and play diplomatic games, none of these establish the course of events. Behind them stands the divine might that forces us to advance in accordance with His sublime plans for redemption, as the Midrash states, ‘I am asleep from redemption but God is awake to redeem me.’ As Rav Kook wrote, God is the Master of war.   “The illusion that our fate is only up to us was burst in a number of days…  Divine Providence did not concede that the Temple Mount, Jerusalem, Hevron and  Jericho… should not be within the borders of Israel. And if the government of Israel aborted the redemptive process at the “Green Line,” and no one would give the order to the IDF to advance in all directions, … then Providence emerges to compel those who dwell in Zion to redeem the homeland. No force in the world can arrest the wheel of redemption of Israel, and there is no complete redemption without the complete land of Israel.”

Third: the raid on Entebbe on July 4, 1976, a moment that will never leave those who lived through it. It was another spectacular rescue. The IDF flew several thousand miles through mostly hostile territory to liberate 104 Jewish hostages seized by Arab terrorists on an Air France flight from Paris to Israel. The Jewish hostages were not all Israeli citizens; yet, Israel proclaimed to the world that it saw itself as responsible not only for Jewish history but also for Jews of the present and future – and wherever they might be. I was in Israel then; the sense of unity and love for all Jews was overwhelming. Israel would risk the lives of its own citizens to save Jews anywhere. (Naturally, the UN condemned the feat, with the former Nazi Kurt Waldheim criticizing this “serious violation of the national sovereignty of a UN member state.” He was untroubled by that same UN member state harboring terrorists and their hostages.) The rescue was another divine knock – G-d’s presence was tangible in the unbelievable achievement.

Fourth: the ingathering of the exiles. One of the most breathtaking, and seemingly farfetched, visions of the ancient prophets of Israel has come to pass in our day. The Torah itself referenced it :“Then the Lord your God will restore your captivity and take you back in love. He will bring you together again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, from there He will fetch you. And the Lord your God will bring you to the land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. And He will make you more prosperous and more numerous than your fathers” (Devarim 30:3-5).

Many other prophets, such as Yechezkel (Ezekiel) prophesied similarly: “I will take you from among the nations and gather you from all the countries and I will bring you back to your own land” (Yechezkel 36:24). Seventy years after statehood, Israel boasts the ingathering of Jews from more than 110 countries, from every part of the globe. And since “even the beneficiary of the miracle doesn’t always recognize the miracle” (Masechet Nidda 31a), we don’t often attribute the appropriate significance to this momentous, and divine, act, staggering in its implications. G-d kept His word, and is still engaged in the task of “dragging each Jew by the hand to the land of Israel” (Rashi, Devarim, ibid).

Fifth:  The Torah revolution. If the Rav saw the slowing down of the processes of assimilation, we have seen the renaissance of Torah in the modern era. For all the criticism of Israel from many Haredi circles, the State of Israel remains the largest beneficiary of Torah study on earth, and more Jews today are studying Torah in the land of Israel than at any point in Jewish history since we left the wilderness 3300 years ago. This accords with yet another prophecy of Yechezkel: “I will sprinkle pure water on you and you will be purified, and I will purify you from all your impurities and idols. And I will give you a new heart, and I will place within you a new spirit. I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Yechezkel 36:25-26). What is his “new heart?” Radak comments: “it is a listening heart, a ready spirit to receive God’s words with love.”

This process was even abetted by the “Foundations of Law” adopted by Israel in 1980 during the Menachem Begin years that called upon the courts to decide difficult legal matters without precedent “in the light of the principles of freedom, justice, equity, and peace of Israel’s heritage.” True, the secular objection to “Jewish law” was duly watered down to “Israel’s heritage;” but what is “Israel’s heritage” but Torah? It certainly trumps Ottoman law. The Torah has been reborn, and all modern questions can be perceived through its prism.

The sixth knock: Israel as the Start-Up Nation. To the consternation of the world (and its neighbors), Israel has become an economic and technological powerhouse, and even an exporter of energy. Again, Yechezkel envisioned this day: “But you, O mountains of Israel, shall yield your produce and bear your fruit for My people Israel, for their return is near. For I will care for you: I will turn to you, and you shall be tilled and sown. I will settle a large population on you, the whole House of Israel; the towns shall be resettled, and the ruined sites rebuilt. I will multiply men and beasts upon you, and they shall increase and be fertile, and I will resettle you as you were formerly, and will make you more prosperous than you were at first. And you shall know that I am the Lord” (ibid 36:8-11). As the Talmud (Masechet Sanhedrin 98a) notes, “there is no more explicit manifestation of the end of days than this, as it is stated: “But you,  O mountains of Israel, shall yield your produce and bear your fruit for My people Israel, for their return is near.” Maharsha adds: “As long as the Jews are not on their land, the land does not yield its produce accordingly, but when it begins again to yield its produce in abundance, it is a sign that redemption is near and that Israel has returned to its land…In the future trees will yield its fruit daily… And this is something miraculous…”

Certainly this means more than oranges. Rav Kook wrote that we have to expand and innovate appropriately in all worldly matters, both in natural things and in labor, because “God made everything for a purpose.’ Our national life is only complete when we are able to harmonize technology and Torah. It could be no other way. The return of the Jewish people to our natural habitat enables us to bring the Torah to its full expression, which benefits the world immeasurably. Soon, the world will realize that as well.

If the hand of G-d re-entered history in a dramatic way in 1948, its visibility has only increased in the ensuing 70 years. There have been setbacks, to be sure, and almost all self-inflicted, but the settlement and flourishing of the land of Israel, the proliferation of Torah and the ingathering of the exiles, and the recognition by the world of Israel’s role as the repository of Jewish history and the place of Jewish destiny, has sanctified G-d’s name and blessed our generation.

May we appreciate our blessings and our Benefactor and always do our share in furthering His will and our national destiny until the era of complete redemption dawns.