Shalom.
The period of the first two weeks of November have important events which all come together in a very significant way to teach us vital lessons about the world.
First, November 2nd, we just had the 90th anniversary of the commemoration of the Belford Declaration which is Lord Belford, the British empire in the early part of the 20th century stating the British empire was in support of the Jewish people’s right to have a piece of land in Palestine and this of course gives credence to the age of thousand of year old of claim of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.
Second of all, we have Kristallnacht which is commemorated every year on November 9th. The night of broken glass when November 9th and 10th in 1938 in Germany, there were semi-official programs where the German people unleashed its furry on the Jewish community, destroyed shops and vandalized the synagogues and killing people and maiming people and them having the audacity to sue the Jewish community to pay for the damage. This is really the beginning event of the final solution culminating the death of 6 million Jews. In addition to that, under that same weekend, we commemorate and celebrate the heroism of the American soldiers in Veterans Day which begin as Armistice Day after World War I, but now, it is our opportunity to really thank our soldiers for their support and their putting of their lives in the line of defense and freedom.
Around this time of the year, each year, we read in the Torah portion the story of Toldot where Isaac re-dug the wells of his father and then dug new wells. In the ancient world and then through the Middle Ages and to protect your well, you often had to dig a tunnel to the well to keep it safe. And I wanted to tell you about some tunnels that were in the news in this November and October, late October of 2007 which corresponded to the ideas that I just mentioned.
First of all, a lady named Vos died at the age of 97 and she need to be commemorated because she was a righteous gentile and one of the things about her life was that she and her husband as they save Jewish lives. They let them stay in their farm, when the constable came to catch Jews, she would stall while her husband would take them through a tunnel to safety in the woods behind. And so, there is a tunnel which brought people to safety. But then there were tunnels that create mayhem and murder like the Hamas. The tunnels they build between Egypt and Gaza smuggling all kinds of weapons and they kill Israelis and the American are trying to put pressure as I speak on Egypt to stop, seal off the Egyptian place were those were smuggled in. last week Israel found seven large tunnels meant with procuring firearms to kill Jews through the Gaza strip.
Then of course, we think about other kinds of tunnels like the magnificent Rabbi tunnels that go 2,000 years old. They go strip the whole Western wall of the old temple. They just discovered a new tunnel underneath Jerusalem. They knew it was there, but they never found before. Just a couple of weeks ago, archaeologists found this tunnel where they believe the Dead Sea scrolls were taken out of Jerusalem to their final resting place in Koran until they were discovered just several decade ago.
So, those are some of the tunnels which are significant in history. You can see that there are tunnels that bring water, there are tunnels that bring weapons, there are tunnels that save lives, there are tunnels that carry holy documents.
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