Now Balak the son of Tzippor saw all that Isra'el had done to the Emori. Mo'av was very afraid of the people, because there were so many of them; Mo'av was overcome with dread because of the people of Isra'el. So Mo'av said to the leaders of Midyan, "This horde will lick up everything around us, the way an ox licks up grass in the field." Balak the son of Tzippor was king of Mo'av at that time. He sent messengers to Bil'am the son of B'or, at P'tor by the [Euphrates] River in his native land, to tell him, "Listen, a people has come out of Egypt, spread over all the land and settled down next to me.  Therefore, please come, and curse this people for me, because they are stronger than I am. Maybe I will be able to strike them down and drive them out of the land, for I know that whomever you bless is in fact blessed, and whomever you curse is in fact cursed." (Num 22:2-6)

Throughout our history, especially whenever we have dwelt in other people's lands, the Jewish people have been regarded as intruders and as a threat.

This is still the case. Balak's animosity and paranoia concerning the Jewish people is paradigmatic of the Jewish historical experience.  And for this reason, the survival of the Jewish people and of the Jewish homeland are interrelated.

Who is responsible for this quote, written shortly after World War I?

The Jew in Germany is regarded as only a guest of the people; he has offended by trying to turn himself into the host. There are no stronger contrasts in the world than the pure Germanic and pure Semitic races; therefore, there has been no harmony between the two in Germany; the German has regarded the Jew strictly as a guest, while the Jew, indignant at not being given the privileges of the nation-family, has cherished animosity against his host. In other countries the Jew is permitted to mix more readily with the people, he can amass his control unchallenged; but in Germany the case was different. Therefore, the Jew hated the German people; therefore, the countries of the world which were most dominated by the Jews showed the greatest hatred of Germany during the recent regrettable war. Jewish hands were in almost exclusive control of the engines of publicity by which public opinion concerning the German people was molded. The sole winners of the war were Jews.

This distrust and animosity toward Jews as predatory outsiders is one of the reasons world Jewry had to return to our homeland and found the modern State of Israel.  All over the world, people are saying the same kinds of things as these you just read, written by Henry Ford 1920, and the situation hasn't changed much.

After the Holocaust, there was really nowhere else the Jews could go except Israel.  And somehow, out of all that suffering, in which one out of every three Jews in the world was killed, God brought forth a resurrection of the nation, even as the Prophet Ezekiel said He would, "

Therefore prophesy; say to them that Adonai ELOHIM says, 'My people! I will open your graves and make you get up out of your graves, and I will bring you into the land of Isra'el. Then you will know that I am ADONAI - when I have opened your graves and made you get up out of your graves, my people! I will put my Spirit in you; and you will be alive. Then I will place you in your own land; and you will know that I, ADONAI, have spoken, and that I have done it,' says ADONAI. (Ezek. 37:12-14)

The award-winning documentary, "The Long Way Home," makes it clear that Israel was the only option for Jews after the Shoah.  After the war, when some Jews left Displaced Persons camps and sought to return to their towns, they were resented at the very least. Their former neighbors had been the ones to betray them to the Nazis or to turn the other way while they were led off to slaughter, and these former neighbors had since taken over their homes and property. They didn't want the Jews back. In Poland alone, between 600 and 1500 Jews were killed in the year or so after the war and the liberation of the camps.

Commenting on the film, someone on Amazon.com said this:

In the displaced persons camps, Jews married and had children in unparalleled numbers: these people, who had just crawled out of the jaws of death, wanted a future.  When surveyed, 97% of the survivors wanted to go to Israel, and when asked for a second destination, hundreds wrote "The crematorium" on their applications. . . . The world closed its doors and its eyes and ears while millions of people were slaughtered and barely changed its tune after the War, but as these people proved on their long road home, they were strong enough to survive another round of hardships and never gave up on their dream of going home.

Continued reports from Europe, France, for example, demonstrate that there is still nowhere in the world where Jews can be truly safe and free to be themselves, except Israel.

Even now that Israel is in their own land, the rest of the world views the Jews as the problem in the region.  Natan Sharansky is famous for being imprisoned for nine years by the Soviet Union before coming to Israel where he has served in various public roles. He is a first class thinker, who suggests three tests to determine the presence of anti-Semitism in our time. He calls it the 3-D test.

The first "D" is the test of demonization . Today we must take note when the Jewish state or its leaders are being demonized, with their actions being blown out of all rational proportion.  For example, the comparisons of Israelis to Nazis and of the Palestinian refugee camps to Auschwitz - comparisons heard frequently throughout Europe and on North American university campuses - are clearly anti-Semitic. Those who draw such analogies either are deliberately ignorant regarding Nazi Germany or, more commonly, are deliberately depicting modern-day Israel as the embodiment of evil.

The second "D" is the test of double standards. From discriminatory laws many nations enacted against Jews to the tendency to judge their behavior by a different yardstick, this differential treatment of Jews was always a clear sign of anti-Semitism. Similarly, today we must ask whether criticism of Israel is being applied selectively. In other words, do similar policies pursued by other governments produce similar criticism?

The third "D" is the test of delegitimization. Traditionally, anti-Semites denied the legitimacy of the Jewish religion, the Jewish people, or both. Today, they attempt to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state, presenting it as, among other things, the prime remnant of imperialist colonialism. While criticism of an Israeli policy may not be anti-Semitic, the denial of Israel's right to exist is always anti-Semitic. If other peoples, including 21 Arab Muslim states - and particularly the many states created in the postcolonial period following World War II - have the right to live securely in their homelands, then the Jewish people has that right as well, particularly given the sanction of the United Nations in setting up and recognizing the country at its founding. Questioning that legitimacy is pure anti-Semitism.

As you read your newspapers and listen to rhetoric in the public square, you will find the Sharansky test extremely valuable in clarifying your thinking. Anti-Semitism, under the guise of anti-Zionism, is strongly present in our world.  And it is not really possible to explain the intractable animosity toward the Jews that has persisted for thousands of years, except to say it is a fact, and that together with that intractable hatred, Israel experiences God's irrevocable commitment and love.

The leaders of Mo'av and Midyan left, taking with them the payment for divining, came to Bil'am and spoke to him the words of Balak. He said to them, "Stay here tonight, and I will bring you back whatever answer ADONAI tells me." So the princes of Mo'av stayed with Bil'am. God came to Bil'am and said, "Who are these men with you?" Bil'am said to God, "Balak the son of Tzippor, king of Mo'av, has sent me this message:  'The people who came out of Egypt have spread over the land; now, come and curse them for me; maybe I will be able to fight against them and drive them out.'" God answered Bil'am, "You are not to go with them; you are not to curse the people, because they are blessed."

God asks Balaam a question that he also asks of each one of us: who are you listening to? This is a huge question, one of the most important questions for examining the trajectory of your life, your moral compass, your opinions and plans. Who are you listening to? This is why the first psalm says "Blessed is the person who does not walk in he counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful, but whose delight is in the Torah of Adonai, and upon whose law they meditate day and night,"

Of course if life is simply a learning experience without accountability, then who you listen to is of no real import. But if we are accountable for the kinds of lives we live, then the advice we heed is a crucial matter.

Hashem's word to Balaam is this: You are not to go with them; you are not to curse the people, because they are blessed.

It is instructive to see how Hashem speaks of the Jewish people in the singular-this is because Scripture sees the Jewish people as a unit-as a people.  The term generally used for this is "Clal Yisrael"-the Jewish people considered as a whole.

This is a challenge for Messianic Jews, many of whom are conditioned to consider only those with whom we agree on doctrine to be "us" and all others as "them."  I must say, when it comes to our attitude to our fellow Jews, this is an unscriptural argument-in the name of Scripture, such people violate Scripture.

Hashem Himself tells Balaam not to curse this people, because they are collectively blessed, in all their messy diversity. This is the same people who will bring God's wrath upon themselves a short time later when many of them decide to have a religious orgy with the women of Ba'al Pe'or. Nevertheless, God Himself says that the Jewish people as a whole are a blessed people whom we are to respect and treat with a certain awe.

The Jewish people are one people with one homeland, and the survival of the Jewish people and the land of Israel are interrelated. We should consider all Jews our brothers and sisters and should consider the State of Israel, home, and this people peculiarly the people of God.

This unity of the Jewish people and the Jewish homeland is nicely expressed for us in 2 Samuel 7:23:

Who can be compared with your people, with Isra'el? What other nation on earth did God set out to redeem and make into a people for himself? You made yourself a reputation by doing for your land things that even for you are great and terrifying, for the sake of your people whom you redeemed for yourself from Egypt and from other nations and from their gods. (2 Samuel 7:23)

When I introduced myself a year ago to a group in Israel, I said: "My name is Stuart Dauermann.  My home is in Israel, but I live in the California." These are sentiments many of us would share. But the test of our real convictions is not simply how we behave in Israel, or even how we speak of the Jewish State here in the diaspora.  The real test is how we feel, think, and speak of and to our people, wherever they are scattered, or gathered, and whatever their spiritual condition.

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