Post by kriss on Jul 4, 2018 13:37:22 GMT -5
If you listen to the Media today you would think that Israel before 1948 was a thriving metropolis that the Jews took from the Palestinians, nothing could be further from the truth. Mark Twain wrote of his experience in Israel.
Riding on horseback through the Jezreel Valley, Twain observed,
“There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent – not for 30 miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation.
One may ride 10 miles, hereabouts, and not see 10 human beings.”
He continues, “Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery I think Palestine must be the prince... Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land? “Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.”
Twain was not alone in his poor impression of the land of milk and honey. Historians and travelers alike made similarly dreary observations over the centuries.
Six hundred years before Twain’s visit, another famous visitor with a nom de plume was struck by Jerusalem’s desolation. Rabbi Moses ben Nachman, known as Nachmanides (1194-1270), fled Christian Spain for the Land of Israel. After a long and perilous journey, Nachmanides arrived at the Port of Acre before traveling to Jerusalem in 1267, where he couldn’t even find nine other Jews to pray with.
He wrote to his son, “Many are Israel’s forsaken places, and great is the desecration. The more sacred the place, the greater the devastation it has suffered. Jerusalem is the most desolate place of all.”
Nevertheless, the sage, whose Torah commentary is still studied, had an altogether surprising interpretation of the desolation he encountered. He saw it as a blessing in disguise.
Commenting on a verse in Leviticus that describes the curses that will befall the land of Israel, Nachmanides wrote that the devastation “constitutes a good tiding, proclaiming that during all our exiles, our land will not accept our enemies... Since the time that we left it, [the land] has not accepted any nation or people, and they all try to settle it... This is a great proof and assurance to us.”
The 13th-century scholar wrote that Israel will remain desolate until the Jewish People assume control.
But when the people of Israel finally return to the land of Israel, the region will once again flourish thanks to Divine providence.
As the most famous eyewitness to the 19th-century desolation of Palestine, Twain was an unwitting collaborator of Nachmanides. Innocents Abroad brought global attention to the sorry state of Palestine and proved that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land just 15 years before the First Aliya and subsequent waves of Jewish immigration.
Half a century after Twain’s visit, the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917. Fifty years later the Six Day War was won. And today, in 2017 – 50 years after that – Israel continues to flourish, moving in leaps and bounds away from Twain’s “sackcloth and ashes.”
www.jpost.com/Opinion/Unto-the-nations-505760
Riding on horseback through the Jezreel Valley, Twain observed,
“There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent – not for 30 miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation.
One may ride 10 miles, hereabouts, and not see 10 human beings.”
He continues, “Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery I think Palestine must be the prince... Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land? “Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies.”
Twain was not alone in his poor impression of the land of milk and honey. Historians and travelers alike made similarly dreary observations over the centuries.
Six hundred years before Twain’s visit, another famous visitor with a nom de plume was struck by Jerusalem’s desolation. Rabbi Moses ben Nachman, known as Nachmanides (1194-1270), fled Christian Spain for the Land of Israel. After a long and perilous journey, Nachmanides arrived at the Port of Acre before traveling to Jerusalem in 1267, where he couldn’t even find nine other Jews to pray with.
He wrote to his son, “Many are Israel’s forsaken places, and great is the desecration. The more sacred the place, the greater the devastation it has suffered. Jerusalem is the most desolate place of all.”
Nevertheless, the sage, whose Torah commentary is still studied, had an altogether surprising interpretation of the desolation he encountered. He saw it as a blessing in disguise.
Commenting on a verse in Leviticus that describes the curses that will befall the land of Israel, Nachmanides wrote that the devastation “constitutes a good tiding, proclaiming that during all our exiles, our land will not accept our enemies... Since the time that we left it, [the land] has not accepted any nation or people, and they all try to settle it... This is a great proof and assurance to us.”
The 13th-century scholar wrote that Israel will remain desolate until the Jewish People assume control.
But when the people of Israel finally return to the land of Israel, the region will once again flourish thanks to Divine providence.
As the most famous eyewitness to the 19th-century desolation of Palestine, Twain was an unwitting collaborator of Nachmanides. Innocents Abroad brought global attention to the sorry state of Palestine and proved that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land just 15 years before the First Aliya and subsequent waves of Jewish immigration.
Half a century after Twain’s visit, the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917. Fifty years later the Six Day War was won. And today, in 2017 – 50 years after that – Israel continues to flourish, moving in leaps and bounds away from Twain’s “sackcloth and ashes.”
www.jpost.com/Opinion/Unto-the-nations-505760
