Fear of the Nations is holding back the Redemption!

 In this week’s Torah reading Balak, we are told that the Jewish People already stood on the banks of the Jordan River. All that remained was to cross the Jordan and enter into Eretz Israel. 

The very same is true of our time. We find ourselves at the final moments of the Exile, truly just before the Redemption. We must not be intimidated by the enticements and devious claims of the Nations and of Jews; it is imperative that we keep the Land intact. Due to their perverse and dishonest reasoning, they have not yet comprehended the truth, that the entire Land of Israel with all of her borders belongs to the entire Jewish People. 

Even according to international law, not one of them has the domination, the ability nor the right to enforce us to abandon parts of the Land of Israel. If this Jew imagines that by hiding the truth (regarding the connection of Eretz Israel to the Jewish People) he is fooling anybody, he should know that aside from himself he is not deceiving anyone. 

Already since the prophecy of Bilam, the nations of the entire world know that in the end of days the Land of Israel will belong to the Jewish People. They see without doubt that we find ourselves already at ‘End of Days’ by G-d performing open miracles in the Holy Land. Had we merited, the Exile would have ended and the true and final Geula would have begun after the victory of the Six Day War. 

Since however we have not merited, there have come along men of timid hearts, fearful-ones, who have an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the nations. They immediately sent a delegation to Washington to inform them of their preparedness to give back the conquered territories because they do not want to incite the ‘gentile’ (USA), rather, only to please them. This prevented the Redemption! In the meantime the multi-fold darkness of the Exile continues its path because these faint-hearted ones do not have the tenacity to hold on to the open gift G-d gave to them. They only have the strength to weaken the hearts of Jewish People as their own hearts are weak. G-d has bestowed on the Jewish people all the available strength. He has also given them the power to choose how to use it and not to be ashamed before those that mock. This was meant among Jewish People, how much more so not to be ashamed before gentiles that mock. ‘The Gentiles storm and plot’ all of which will come ‘to naught’. 

Instead, they use these G-d-given powers to weaken other Jews! The fear of the gentiles is the very factor which has prolonged this difficult and bitter Exile and the multi-fold darkness for so many years!  

                                                          Public address Moitzo’ei Shabbos Parshas Balak 1978