The Kiss of Death and the Promise of New Life

In 1950 when Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was in the United States, he warned the Jewish leadership that Judaism in America faced death by a kiss.  
I have written before of the sad state of Judaism in America.  I hate to publish  more; but….

The kiss was the great reception that America was giving the Jews who immigrated here in the 20th century. They were welcomed with open arms and assimilated into our population and culture. Their business people were doing just fine, their comedians were idolized and their religious life….well, it was accepted under our constitutional freedom of religion principle. And, as time wore on, the rabbis were just fine with inter-marriages, and the Reform Jewish rabbis would join with a Christian priest or pastor in performing a Christian-Jewish wedding ceremony. It was a melding process.

As this permissiveness and mixture of the two traditions took place, the younger generations of Jews were losing interest, and the non-Orthodox Jews were diminishing in great numbers.

As one of them in the early 20th century put it, cultural rot had taken place among American Jews. Hayim Nahman Bialik, poet laureate of Zionism said that it was up to the European and American Jews to choose between extinction and redemption.

There were warnings. As I've noted before, today, most American Jews have lost interest in their tradition and religious background.

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President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, married Ivanka Trump after she chose Judaism as her “faith.”  Liberal Judaism exists right there in the household of President Trump. (I wrote of this in last week’s blog.)

Now, the news becomes very clear about Jared Kushner’s push plan for the State of Israel to pull back—to give up the claim for Samaria and Judea. Kushner is a senior White House advisor on the Middle East.

He sees the increasing Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria as a big problem. And his plan….well….is to “save the two state solution” and thus stop Israel from further enlarging its establishment there. “If we kept going with the status quo…ultimately, Israel would have eaten up all the land in the West Bank,” he said. His plan would be to establish a Palestinian state which would unite Gaza and some 70 per cent of the West. 

​This is the plan which would secure the other plan involving the normalizing of relations between the State of Israel and the UAE. Yes, to establish good relations with that Arab nation now means that the annexation plan which was in the works just a few weeks ago, is “on the table.”

That’s the way it’s going because of the family positions in the White House. "All in the family." And the practice of cow-towing to the Palestinians who have rejected every proposal up to now, and have received increasing amounts of cash from Europe and the U. N. (UNWRA).....well, that remains the same. They have been and still are “rejectionists.” As I said in last week’s blog, their firm position is: “Right of Return.” Every Palestinian anywhere in the world must be permitted to return to Palestine before they will become non-aggressors. 

So….as the “Times of Israel” puts it: “The suspension of unilateral annexation plan was one of the main stated conditions of the August 13 Israel-UAE normalization agreement.”  No, no, they can't do that! Well, yes they can, because it IS all in the family. 

How then will Israel acquire the Promised Land—not just a part, but in whole? It won’t be from men emerging from the White House with white shirts and smiles, or any other center of power. It will come from the Lord.  Just, I believe, as the Six-Day War of 1967 was, to me and a slew of other folks, a thing of divine providence. 

Let's hear it straight from the Word:  

                                                                         As He says through the prophet Isaiah:
                                                                             For your maker is your husband,
                                                                               The Lord of Hosts is His name;
                                                                    And the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer.
                                                                        The God of the whole earth, He is called.
                                                                                   For the Lord has called you
                                                                       Like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit,
                                                                        Like a wife of youth when she is cast off,
                                                                                               Says your God.
                                                                                           (Isaiah 54:5-6 ESV)

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