SCROLLS
PRESERVED
Early the
Morning of June 21, a
Fire
In a nearby dumpster started outside
One for Israel’s
Building In Netanya, and the
Fire
Soon Spread up The South Side
of the Building
Thankfully,
No one was in the building at the Time,
and by a
Miracle of God,
our campus
Library was unharmed
including our
Collection of Irreplaceable
Hebrew Old Testament
Scrolls!
The building itself, however,
sustained significant damage, including a
number of concrete floor slabs that will have
to be replaced to ensure the
structural integrity of the building
Thousands of dollars worth of video equipment was also
destroyed
Insurance is only covering a portion of the repair costs —
so we’re asking friends like you to help
Fully Restore
One For Israel’s building
and equipment
through a generous donation today.
Please give as God leads below — and
Pray with us
for
Full Restoration
of our building in the
coming days Thank you!
Where Do We Find Ourselves at
The End of 69 Weeks?
“And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one
shall be cut off and shall have nothing.
And the people of the prince who is to come
shall destroy the city and the sanctuary.
Its end
Shall come with a flood,
and
To the End... There shall be War...
Desolations are decreed”
(Daniel 9:26)
By the Time you get to The end
of the 69 weeks,
Sin has been atoned for because
of the
Sacrifice of Jesus, which is also a
reference to him
Being cutoff, mentioned in
Daniel
What we also see in verse 26 is the
Rejection of the Messiah by Israel and a
mention of the
Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem,
which happened in
70 A.D.
With these things
Complete, it opens that Span of Time
before we get to the
70th and Final Week
On the ninth and 10th of the month of Av in
The year 70,
The Roman legions in Jerusalem
smashed through
the fortress tower of Antonia
into the
Holy Temple
and
set it afire
In the blackened remains of the sanctuary
lay more than
the ruins of the great Jewish revolt
for political independence.
To many Jews, it appeared that
Judaism itself was
shattered beyond repair
Out of approximately four to five million Jews in the world,
over a million died in that abortive war for independence.
Many died of starvation,
others by
fire and crucifixion
So many Jews were
sold into slavery and given over to the
gladiatorial arenas and circuses that
the price of slaves dropped precipitously,
fulfilling the ancient curse:
"There you will be offered for sale as slaves, and there
will be no one willing to buy”
(Deuteronomy 28:68).
The destruction
was preceded by events so devastating
that they read
like scenes out of the Holocaust.
Famine: “Famine overcomes all other passions and is destructive of modesty… Wives pulled the morsels that their husbands were eating out of their very mouths and children did the same to their fathers and so did mothers to their infants, and when those that were most dear to them
were perishing in their hands,
they were not ashamed to take from them the
very last drops of food that might have preserved their lives…”
Carnage: On the ninth day of Av: “One would have thought that the hill itself, on which the Temple stood, was seething hot from its base, it was so full of fire on every side; and yet the blood was larger in quantity than the fire, and those that were slain were more in number than those that slew them.
For the ground was nowhere visible for
the dead bodies that lay on it.”
Civil war between Jews: “The shouts of those [Jews] who were fighting [one another] were incessant both by day and night, but the continual lamentations of those who mourned were even more dreadful.
Nor was any regard paid by relatives for those who were still alive.
Nor was any care taken for the burial of those who were dead.
The reason was that everyone despaired about himself.”
The exhaustion from all-out sacrifice of lives and
fighting in vain was in itself debilitating,
but the religious crisis was even worse.
God’s own sanctuary,
restored after the return to
Zion
in the sixth century B.C.E., the symbol of the
unbroken covenant of
Israel and God, was destroyed.
This cast doubt on the very relationship of the people
and their Lord.
Had God rejected the covenant with Israel?
The Focal Point of Jewish Worship
The Temple was central
to Jewish religious life
in a way
that is hard to recapture today.
Many Jews believed that
sin itself could be overcome
only by bringing
a sin
offering in the Temple.
Without such forgiveness,
the sinner
was condemned to alienation
from
God, which is equivalent to
estrangement from valid existence.
But the channel of sacrifice was
now cut off
For many Jews, the whole
experience of Judaism was
sacramental.
The Priests served; the ignorant masses watched;
their religious lives were illuminated only by those
extraordinary moments when multitudes
gathered in Jerusalem.
There, in the awe of a Paschal sacrifice
or at the
Yom Kippur atonement ritual,
they felt an
emanation of divine force
that
showered grace and blessing
on the people and made the
Lord’s power a stunning presence.
For these people,
after the
destruction there was only emptiness.
Responses to the Destruction
The majority of the Jews
refused to quit
One element in this community
reacted with overwhelming despair
The Talmud speaks of
“mourners of Zion”
who would
neither eat meat nor drink wine
They rejected any possibility of
normal life and
chose not to marry or have children.
Simple human activities–
having a child, getting married, doing
ACTS of kindness in a community–
are sustained only by enormous
levels of faith and life affirmation,
and
trust in ultimate meaning.
Considering the tragedy and the threat that still hung over the Jewish community, these people felt they simply could not go on with life as usual. Yet by refusing to live normally, they harnessed despair into a force for action: to make an all-out effort to restore the Temple. Only rebuilding the sanctuary could reduce the terrible angst and restore life to normal.
The two major remaining sects, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, shared a common conviction that the Temple must be rebuilt, although the Sadducees, who included the court nobility and priests, were particularly unable to envision Judaism without a Temple. This consensus drove people to drastic action. In the years 115 to 117 C.E., there were widespread rebellions by Diaspora Jewry, which were bloodily suppressed.
In 132 C.E., the remaining population of Judea revolted, led by Simon Bar Kochba. But again, the overwhelming might of Rome was brought to bear. Bar Kochba and his troops were destroyed, and the remaining population of Judea was deported. With this defeat, hopes for an immediate restoration of the Temple were set back indefinitely.
11 Tisha B’Av Calamities
The culmination of the Three Weeks, an annual time of mourning the destruction of The Beis HaMikdash (Holy Temple) is Tisha b’Av. It is the saddest day of the Jewish year and the most calamitous in our history. So great was our pain on this day as a nation, that each year we commemorate it with significant lament. It is also the day that we mourn other tragedies that have befallen us before and since. What happened on this day in Jewish History that was so bad that we have to remember it forever? Here are 11 awful things that happened to the Jewish People on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av – Tisha b’Av.
1. THE SLANDER OF THE SPIES
While Moshe was leading the Jews to Israel from Egpyt, the Jews sent spies into Israel to report back on what they saw, causing most of the Jews to doubt Hashem. This caused a decree to be issued that an entire generation could not enter the Land of Israel.
2. DESTRUCTION OF THE FIRST TEMPLE
Bayis Rishon (Solomon’s First Temple) was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians on Tisha b’Av. 100,000 Jews were murdered and millions were exiled from Jerusalem. This happened in approximately 586 BCE.
3. DESTRUCTION OF THE SECOND TEMPLE
Over 500 years later, Bayis Sheini Herod’s Second Temple) was razed by Romans, who were led by Titus. This time two million Jews were killed and a million were put into exile. This occurred in the year 70 CE.
4. BAR KOCHBA MASSACRE
Soon after the destruction of Bayis Sheini,
a group of Jews thought they had found
Moshiach
in a warrior named Bar Kochba,
who led them
in a revolt against the Roman Empire.
Emperor Hadrian quashed the BarKochba revolt.
The place of the Jews last stand, Beitar, was
completely destroyed on
Tisha b’Av,
as over 100,000 Jews were murdered.
5. PLOWING OF THE TEMPLE GROUNDS
One year after Beitar on
Tisha b’Av, General Turnus Rufus razed and
plowed the Temple site and turned Jerusalem
into a Pagan city,
forbidding all Jews to enter it.
6. CRUSADES
The First Crusade was declared by Pope Urban II on
Tisha B’Av. 10,000 Jews were killed in
first month.
The Crusades brought death and destruction to
thousands of Jews and totally wiped out many
communities in Rhineland and France.
7. SPANISH EXPULSION
The Jews were expelled from Spain at the climax of the
Inquisition in 1492 on Tisha b’Av.
8. ENGLISH EXPULSION
In the year 1290,
Tisha b’Av was the day the Jews were
kicked out of England.
9. WORLD WAR I BROKE OUT
On the night of Tisha b’Av
in 1914, Germany declared war on Russia.
Historians agree that this act directly influenced the Holocaust’s occurrence.
10. WARSAW GHETTO SENT TO TREBLINKA
On Tisha b’Av 1942,
Jews were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto
en masse to Treblinka Concentration Camp.
11. THE FINAL SOLUTION
In 1941
on Tisha b’Av, Himmler yemach”shemo
got formal approval from
The Nazis to proceed with “The Final Solution” in
which
A -Third- of all living Jews were killed
The Sixth Trumpet
…A -Third- of mankind was killed
by the
Three plagues
of
fire, smoke, and sulfur
that
proceeded from their mouths
For the power of the horses was in
their mouths
and in
their tails; indeed, their tails were
like snakes, having heads
with
which to inflict harm.
Now the rest of mankind who were
not killed by
these plagues still did not repent
of the
works of their hands.
They did not stop worshiping demons
and idols of gold,
silver, bronze, stone, and wood,
which
cannot see or hear or walk.…