Here and there in America, a tiny smattering of Rabbis are telling their congregations that the “clock is ticking” and that the time has come to start making plans for Aliyah. Boker tov! Not that anyone will act on it. Why should they? Israel is at war and no one wants their sons drafted into the Israeli army. For the time being, the “good life” still continues in Monsey, Boca, and Dallas, Texas – why give it up? As long as the Jews of Denver can find tiny OU’s on supermarket shelves they are in Colorado to stay.
The two or three Rabbis who have found the courage to finally tell the truth say that in the wake of the anti-Semitism which has erupted since October 7, it is time to get out of America. Of course, the clock began ticking nearly 2000 years ago, the day we were cast out of our Jewish Homeland into exile in foreign lands. The time to get out of alien countries started back then. After all, the horror of October 7 is dwarfed in comparison to the thousands of bloody pogroms we suffered throughout our wanderings in which hundreds of thousands perished, not to mention the Holocaust and the millions lost to assimilation. The clock has been ticking not only through all the bad years, the clock has been ticking during all of the “good years” in Spain and Germany and Russia and France and America as well. Exile is a curse even when Jews can wear tuxedos and elegant gowns and rub elbows with the goyim at the opera, ballet, or Academy Awards. The Diaspora is a curse even when new glatt-kosher steakhouses open in Boca, Lakewood, and Woodmere and when a new Orthodox shul is opened in Vegas.
In effect, the “good years” are really “bad years.” It is bad for the Jews when Rabbis have salaries of $300,000 a year and think twice before encouraging Aliyah when it will cost them their jobs. It is bad for the Jews when their children can go to college at Harvard and Columbia and intermarry with Cindy’s and Sally’s looking for rich Jewish husbands. It is bad for Jews when they can buy a kosher hot dog in Yankee Stadium and believe they are just as American as everyone else. It is bad for the Jews when they are ensconced in an alien gentile culture which eats away at Jewish Identity until only a love for bagels remains. It is bad for the Jews when “Next year in Jerusalem” and daily prayers for the ingathering become empty slogans that no one takes seriously. It is bad for the Jews when the “good years” cause them to fall passionately in love with places they don’t belong.
Yes, the clock is ticking, just as it has been for the past 2000 years.
