JONAH AND THE NATION OF ISRAEL

Just as Jonah fled God’s order to prophesy to the empire of Nineveh, so too, the Jewish people fail to comply with God’s order to be God’s messengers to the people of the earth. In the case of Jonah, the ship’s crew and sailors suffered material loss due to Jonah’s intransigence. After they had thrown their cargo overboard and supplicated their respective gods to keep the ship afloat in the tempest, they found Jonah asleep in the bowels of the ship. Awakening him, they wanted to know what he had done, for they had cast lots to know for whom this dangerous storm was unleashed. Jonah acknowledged his refusal to comply with God’s command and insisted that only by throwing him overboard into the raging storm, would the seas be calmed.

Israel’s selection as God’s messenger to the people of the world was to have the same effect that Jonah’s message had on the ruler of Nineveh and his subjects. Nineveh repented and God spared the nation. Whether the world would have repented had Israel followed the commandments which were given in the wilderness of Sinai is a moot point. The sad truth is simply that Israel has never begun to fulfill its national obligations to comply with the written Covenant. As a result, the world goes from one sort of tempest to another and the people of the world don’t need to cast lots to pick the nation responsible for the world’s tempestuous history. The Bible is printed in every language and dialect on the planet. And the people charged with bringing God’s message to the world are clearly visible, not for their compliance, but for their consistent history of non – compliance.  The world hasn’t yet thrown Israel into the sea, though every other conceivable horror has been inflicted on this sleeping, dormant people. And yes the Islamic world’s ultimate goal has been and remains the throwing of Israel into the sea. So far their never – ending efforts have been thwarted. 

How would the course of history be changed if Israel awakens to its mission ?

Let’s first look at the purpose of the nation of Israel : God chose the nation to demonstrate how the highest imaginable quality of life is obtained. So Israel was situated in a home land on the cross roads of the world’s warring empires. In addition its position in the African Rift Valley makes the land susceptible to severe earthquakes. Other than these existential dangers, the land is gifted with all manner of  prized natural blessings. The mission was and remains the establishment of a national life based upon ethics, morals and spirituality as taught by God’s Torah, which is Israel’s eternal Covenant. This immortal Divine Constitution was never institutionalized except for the one brief moment in the reign of King Josiah.

When the rabbis of Israel secured their position as Israel’s guides following the horrors of the Roman conquest, it was their rules that superseded those of God and Moses. As a result the nation became burdened with laws and stylized behaviors which tangentially followed biblical ones, but never satisfied the actual Divine Contract nor its Author. The results were a never ending cascade of curses which one will quickly recognize from a reading of Leviticus, chapter 26 and Deuteronomy, chapter 28. The horrific history of a nation whose prophesies for punishment overtook it as every wave of human savagery struck it, was explained away by these rabbis as God’s way of proving Israel’s loyalty.  The absence of the prophesied blessings for the nation’s obsessive observance of the rabbis’ fabricated laws was similarly explained away : The blessings come in the world to come, when the messiah governs Israel and the nations of the world from Jerusalem. This, of course, kept rabbis in good stead with their constituencies for many hundreds of years and provided them with sustenance and abundance as well. The Hasidic revolution of the 17^th century which is presented in modern times as the apogee of Torah observance, became degenerated into a travesty of its founder’s intent. Instead of individuals coming before God themselves, the people brought their supplications and queries to rebbes,  who acted on their behalf, as intermediaries between each person and God. This has certainly been good for the material well being of the successive dynasties of rebbes, but, as history tragically proved, the practice never proved acceptable to God.

It is now 2014 and the world has entered a sphere of the endless tempest even more dangerous than fury of the last world war and Holocaust. Israel is again identified as the culprit for the severity of these storms. And the people of Israel remain shockingly asleep as to what the existential dangers require of them. No one, neither cleric, nor statesman, nor military leader, nor news analyst grasps what must be their duty and their nation’s duty to calm this tempest. It is not just that Israel fails to recognize God’s simple written Torah and observe it faithfully. The nation cannot even manage to fulfill the most basic encapsulation of prerequisites as stated so simply by the Prophet Micah in his chapter 6 : 8 : “He has told you, man, what is good and what the Lord demands of you, but to manifest justice, and to love grace and mercy, and to walk humbly with your God”.

I fear that until this last basic becomes Israel’s calling card, the nations of the world are programmed to throw her into one tempest after another. It is a travesty that rabbis have endeavored to make the nation of Israel distinguishable from other travelers on the planet by their dress, their mannerisms, their formal prayers, their celebrations, their idiosyncrasies and their general behaviors. The truth is that it was God who intended to distinguish Israel by bestowing His entire treasury of blessings upon the nation.  The obvious blessings in real time and in the material world would indeed be a strong influence on a world in need of a genuine light and true guidance.

This day will come as it has been prophesied. The question is whether Israel can muster the good sense to return to her God, before the current tempests wash away the lives of most of her people as the Prophets Zachariah and Isaiah have warned.

May the God of Israel take pity on His inheritance for they are heavily brainwashed and apparently incapable of understanding what it means to be faithful Jews.