The Prophecies of the Exile

According to the course, Deuteronomy 28 describes three characteristics of the enemy who would destroy the Second Temple: “he will come from afar” (מֵרָחוֹק), “like the eagle that swoops” (כַּנֶּשֶׁר יִדְאֶה), and “a nation whose language you will not understand.”

All of Israel's previous enemies were neighbors (Egypt, Moab, Ammon, the Philistines) with similar languages. The Romans came from very far, spoke Latin, incomprehensible to the Jews, and had the eagle as their imperial emblem.

After the destruction of the Temple, according to the course, the Romans decided to sell the Jews as slaves, destination Egypt. Deuteronomy 28:68: “The Eternal will bring you back to Egypt on ships, by the way of which I said to you: you shall never see it again.”

The course stresses that, logically, millions of slaves would have been brought on foot, as to Babylon: cheaper, simpler, faster. Yet the Romans reportedly brought thousands of ships, an economically irrational expense, exactly as prophesied 1300 years earlier.

Continuation: “And there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as slaves and maidservants, but no one will buy.” According to the course, the slave markets of Hebron and Gaza were saturated, prices collapsed.

Mystery 1: the people remains eternal. According to the course, no people remains in exile more than 100 to 200 years without disappearing; the Jewish people, after 2000 years of exile, is still here. The course cites Mark Twain: “The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with noise and splendor, then vanished like a dream. […] All things are mortal but the Jew. What is the secret of his immortality?” Leviticus 26:44: “I will not have rejected them or abhorred them so as to destroy them.”

Mystery 2: the people remains small in number. Religious Jews have many children (8, 10, 12); logically, after 2000 years, they would be billions. Reality, according to the course: never more than 16 million throughout the exile, with a period of nearly 800 years at half a million. Deuteronomy 28:62: “And you shall be left few in number, after having been as numerous as the stars of heaven,” “because you did not listen to the voice of the Eternal your G-d.”

Mystery 3: the people scatters everywhere. Practicing Torah requires a rabbi, a minyan, a synagogue: one would expect clusters. Reality: Jews everywhere, in France, England, Germany, Canada, Thailand. Deuteronomy 28:64: “The Eternal will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other.” The course cites an observation: “The Jewish people, the oldest in the world, is in reality the youngest if we consider the country beneath its feet. 90% of the large Jewish colonies are only 50-60 years old in each country.”

The Rav asks: why is there so much talk about the Jews? He cites Mark Twain: “If the statistics are to be believed, the Jews constitute 0.3% of the human race. A speck of star dust lost in the Milky Way. One should hardly hear of the Jew, yet one hears of him. His influence is out of proportion to his numerical importance.”

A remarkable text, according to the course, describes the irrationality of antisemitism: “If the Jews are rich, they are robbed. If they are poor, they are rejected. If they go to war, it is to profit. If they do not, they are cowards. If they side with the country, they are traitors. If the Jew lives in a foreign country, he is persecuted and expelled. If he dreams of returning to his own land, it is opposed.”

According to the course, Deuteronomy 28:37 uses three terms: שמה (shama): you will be hated, antisemitism; למשל (lemashal): you will be made a caricature; ולשנינה (velishnina): you will be talked about constantly, “among all the peoples where the Eternal will scatter you.”

Why all this: the exile, antisemitism, dispersion, small numbers? According to the Rav: because we did not keep the contract. Not because we did not know how to do politics, nor for lack of military strategy, nor for lack of intelligence, but because we abandoned the covenant with the Creator.

If all the curses came true with perfect precision when we abandoned the Torah, then, according to the course, the blessings will come true as well. Just as G-d kept His commitments in the curses, He will keep His commitments in the blessings: if we return to the covenant, if the leadership of Israel returns to the Torah, all of history can be transformed.