A RABBI'S MESSAGE TO MY YOUNG ISRAEL SHUL AND AN OPEN LETTER TO MY PEOPLE

A RABBI'S MESSAGE TO MY YOUNG ISRAEL SHUL 

AND AN OPEN LETTER TO MY PEOPLE

By Rav Dov Fischer

For Zion's sake I cannot hold my peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I cannot rest silently.  And so I write our shul.

It is the fifth day of Chanukah.  This week of Chanukah, our people find ourselves under attack.  It is not “unprecedented” attack.  We have faced worse — much, much worse. Yet, once again, we are under attack by the usual outright haters (the Arab world, the tyrannies like Venezuela and Cuba in South and Central America and in Africa, the communists like China), by the “friends” we don’t need like France, Spain, Italy, and New Zealand, and by our “true friends who do us a favor by telling us what is best for us” like the Obama-Kerry Administration.  Today John Kerry gave us advice for 70 minutes.  I just had the opportunity, through the miracle of the internet, to hear his advice. His tone was condescending and arrogant.  It would have been nice if he had spoken to Iran, China, or Castro that way.  However, Schoolyard Bullies are afraid of getting hit; they are tough specifically with people whom they expect will not hit them back — and they usually wait to attack only when they are pretty certain that they have a quick get-away route planned before their targets can rebound and can hit back.

It is no secret that this Rav of this Shul supports Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. I have been supporting them for nearly fifty years. Moreover, that support for Judea and Samaria is a core foundational hallmark of the nearly 150 congregations of the National Council of Young Israel comprising nearly 25,000 families.  Nor is it for me only a matter of talking the talk, offering a nice sermon.  Rather, I have walked the walk.  In 1985, my family were among the first 35 families to create a new Jewish community in Samaria — the Ginot Shomron community of Karnei Shomron.  There are now approximately 7,000 Jews living in Karnei Shomron, which now is a small city.  If Wikipedia is correct, our initial 35 families now comprise approximately 4-5,000 of those “settlers.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnei_Shomron       http://www.karneishomron.co.il/    Barack Obama and John Kerry, along with their UN cohort, call people like my family "settlers in Occupied Palestine."  In truth, they are Jewish residents of beautiful communities in Samaria (Shomron) and Judea (Yehudah).

I remember the struggle in that first year.  We had arrived from all parts of the United States.  We from New Jersey.  Benny and Marge from Cleveland.  Dan and Judy from Chicago.  The Harrows from Beverly Hills -- we all were so excited to have a Beverly Hills family in town because they were going to build a swimming pool in their backyard, so they had no trouble making friends.  Nat and Fran from Long Beach.  Sammy and Sue from Far Rockaway.  Sharon and Jerry from Cleveland.  Two or three of us were rabbinic families.  A few accountants, lawyers, doctors.  There was this couple from England; she trained horses.  This new family who kept borrowing our outdoor broom without permission.  Harry, a semi-retired guy, who helped persuade me to start a weekly Talmud Class in my home, in our finished basement. 

The sewage in our neighborhood that first year of construction was terrible, and there was an outbreak of Hepatitis A.  The electric company had not yet hooked up all the homes to the main grid, so some of us had to run cables to our neighbors’ homes to have electricity.  It was a 20-minute walk to the bus stop, and the bus came once “every so often.”  One evening, one of my daughters cut her chin badly in a freak accident, and I had to carry her somehow for half an hour (because a 20-minute walk takes 30 minutes when you are carrying a three-year-old) to the bus stop while compressing a handkerchief against her chin to staunch her bleeding.  By miracle, the bus came "sooner than later," and we got her to the hospital in Kfar Saba, where they had just innovated a new way to deal with severe lacerations that effectively promoted healing without stitches and thus without scarring. Meanwhile, the phone lines in the neighborhood regularly disconnected.  (It was before cell phones; indeed, maybe we were the reason that cell phones were invented.)  But we lived there because we were reclaiming Jewish land that G-d promised to us.

Were we "settlers" in "Occupied Palestine"?  What "Palestine"?  When Jordan occupied that land from 1948-1967, there were no "Palestinians" complaining that Jordan was "occupying" any "Palestine."  The very word "Palestine" was always a synonym for "Israel."  In the 1960 movie "Exodus," Paul Newman's Ari ben Canaan is trying to help the people aboard the ship reach Palestine.  The original name of the Jerusalem Post was the Palestine Post.  The original name of the United Jewish Appeal was the "United Palestine Appeal."  The American agency that raised funds for the Irgun was called the "American League for a Free Palestine."  The very term was assigned to Israel by the Romans after they expelled us from Israel when they destroyed the Second Holy Temple; they drove us into a two-thousand-year Exile and sought to distance the land from us by naming it for the Philistines of the Bible.  This was six centuries before Mohammed.  The Romans drove us from Jerusalem and re-named the city for one of their gods.  For the next two thousand years, we prayed three times daily for a return to Jerusalem, and we even have included that prayer in the grace after every meal we have eaten these past two millennia.  We fasted in sackloth with bitter tears, with lights dimmed and candles flickering, reading Lamentations, as we remembered Zion and Jerusalem these two thousand years of Exile, never waiving our claim.  During all that time, no Arab country ever yearned for or made Jerusalem a capital.  Muslims face Mecca and Medina in prayer; we Jews always have faced Jerusalem.  When Jordan illegally occupied East Jerusalem for nineteen years from 1948-1967, driving out its Jewish inhabitants who had been living there for centuries, the King never once visited Jerusalem in the two decades he occupied it.  So again the question:  What "Palestine"?

We Jews once lived in France, but they threw us out in the early 1300s and told us effectively to “go back to Israel.”  England threw us out in 1290 and told us effectively to “go back to Israel.”  Italy put us in ghettoes in 1555.  Spain threw us out in 1492 and told us effectively to “go back to Israel.”  Portugal the same in 1497.  By the early 1900s, we were being driven out of North Africa, out of Eastern Europe.  Those Jews who remained ultimately were murdered.  Germany — well, let’s just be polite and say they told us to “go back to Israel.” 

So over the centuries we were driven out and murdered during Crusades, Blood Libels, Inquisitions, Pogroms, and Holocausts with the understanding that no one had a place for us, and we should just go back to Israel.  Some who got out of Germany alive, on ships like the “S.S. St. Louis,” were barred from America’s waters.  They, too, found that they had nowhere to go.  Other ships had similar journeys: The “Struma” (all Jewish passengers drowned at sea while no country would admit them), the “Patria” (barred at Haifa port from debarking), the “Exodus” (not as sanguine a result in real life as in the movie).

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/stlouis.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struma_disaster

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patria_disaster

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Exodus

We live today in magical times.  Our grandparents barely could have dreamed of a day when Jews would have a land of our own in the land of our ancestors.  And yet today Israel is real and is a normal part of our lives.  It no longer is a dream.  For that dream to have become real, it cost 6,373 Jewish lives in 1948 — included among those dead were nearly 2,000 Holocaust survivors — who withstood the onslaught of seven Arab armies determined to destroy the country before it even breathed life.  For those of us who remember 1967, we recall how uncertain we were then whether Israel would survive the attacks from Egypt, Syria, and Jordan all at once — and that precarious fate is why Nasser closed the Straits of Hormuz, legally an act of war, and then gained UN Secretary-General U Thant’s instant agreement to withdraw the UN “peacekeeping force” from the Sinai.  They were going to “drive the Jews into the sea.”  I was thirteen-years-old then, and I remember.  I remember reciting the Tehillim in eighth grade.  I remember watching the news, as early news reports and claims from Egypt and Syria described having destroyed the Israeli air force and spoke of Jews being slaughtered and fleeing towards the Mediterranean with nowhere left to flee for their lives.  I remember.  Do you?

Israel never would have been in the “West Bank” if Egypt and Jordan and Syria had not started that war.  Israel never would have reunited Jerusalem if King Hussein had acquiesced to Israel's pleas that he not open a third front on the east.  But he and they made war — and they lost.

These past few weeks in shul we have been reading about the “West Bank” every week.  Only it is not called that in the Torah portions. Avraham and Sarah lived in Hebron.  Yitzchak accompanied his father to Mount Moriah at the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem, and he went to Beer Sheva.  Yaakov and the boys lived in Shechem; Yosef later was buried there.  Rachel died and was buried on the road to Bet Lechem.  These are the very center of the Jewish homeland.  (Spoiler Alert:  Nowhere in the Torah will we ever read in any forthcoming parsha about Tel Aviv, Haifa, Raanana, or Kfar Saba. But we read of Eilon Moreh and Bet El. The very heartland of Israel is in Judea and Samaria.) 

For those pundits and politicos who would assign this week’s nastiness to Bibi Netanyahu, I think of what I have learned in two decades as a litigation attorney.  It is true:  When you let the other side order you what to do, and you back down and concede most everything they demand of you, and you do not stand up for your very survival — it really is true: people like you better!  Just give them everything they are suing you for.  Just agree to all of their terms and conditions without standing for your rights. Back down on everything. Suddenly, they no longer are calling you "stubborn" and no longer are scowling.  Rather, as you sign everything away to them at the mediation, they smile at you, toast to your health, invite you to their country club. They love you!  Sure, your business will go bankrupt, and you will disappear from the face of the earth, but people will say: “Geez, what a nice guy!” They will send you a Christmas card and a Kwanzaa card and will wish you a very happy Hhhanukkah. Indeed, were Jews ever more popular on film and screen, on stage and in literature, than after the Holocaust?  The Ivy League schools started diluting their anti-Jewish quotas and started allowing us to attend.  Major law firms began allowing Jews to practice among their associates.  Banks suddenly allowed Jews to apply for executive positions. A new Chancellor of West Germany arose and warmly placed a wreath at Yad Vashem and shed a tear.  It was lovely.

The reality is that America became strong by seizing land all over this continent — just plain taking it.  Since there was no Torah or Holy Biblical Testament to justify the original Thirteen Colonies expanding to grab all the land on the continent and “occupying the territories” and “settling them,” we Americans just proclaimed that we had a “Manifest Destiny” to take all of it.  The term was coined by John L. O'Sullivan, a journalist, in 1845 in an atmosphere and time when President Polk was moving to annex Texas.  Yes, we paid Napoleon cash, fair and square, for Louisiana and the land comprising much of fifteen of our states. (And Abraham bought the Cave of Machpela.) But we outrightly annexed Texas.  And we forced England to give us Oregon on fear of annexation.  And President Polk further forced Mexico to concede to us all or part of what would become the states of California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado,  and Wyoming as parts of the "Mexican Cession."  Remember the Alamo?  It is an interesting story:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Texas

We drove the Indians out of their homes and ancestral lands all over this continent, from the Cherokee in North Carolina to the Seminole in Florida, all the way up through the Great Plains. We force-marched tens of thousands into Oklahoma.  Thousands of Native Americans died amid the “Trail of Tears.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears   Eventually we contained them in concentration cam. . . — er, in "reservations." We signed agreements with them, and then we breached our signed pledges.  We did it because, as Custer’s men experienced, the country could not abide a Two-State Solution.  The America that we know today was fighting for its identity and its very life.  The country, for its survival and success, needed one direction.  And a century later, as we understandably were frightened after Japan sucker-bombed Pearl Harbor, hitting us blindly without warning that we were at war, we frantically and frenziedly rounded up more than 100,000 loyal American citizens of Japanese heritage, and we forcibly interned them in California concentration camps.  The man who would be known as the most liberal of U.S. Supreme Court justices, then Gov. Earl Warren of California, authorized the round-ups, and the United States Supreme Court, voting 6-3, upheld the constitutionality of rounding up more than 100,000 Japanese Americans and depriving them of their equal rights as American citizens and their basic human rights. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944).  That is what America did only a few decades ago.

We who deeply and intensely love America, who are firecely loyal and boldly patriotic to America, who seethe with fury as we see American flags burned by ignoramus college students who know nothing whatsoever of what America is and the greatness and goodness and kindness into which America has evolved, nevertheless understand that the road to getting America established was challenging.  And this is the Government now pontificating to Israel as she tries to survive amid a sea of enmity and medieval barbarismn that is even more difficult than being bordered by Mexico in the South and by Japan across an ocean.

No people ever have been as kind and forthcoming, as the Jews of Israel have been, to a second demographic in their country, who aim to destroy them. In Israel, the Israelis have been far more forthcoming than many of us among American Jews ever wanted them to be.  But it was for them to decide, not for us in America.  So they gave up so much at Camp David and so much at Oslo.  They gave Arafat a quasi-country — the "Palestine Authority" — and all Arafat had to do was teach a new generation to stop hating us so much.  He even promised in writing that he would do just that: stop the incitement to hate.  The Japanese and Germans did that after World War II, teaching people to stop hating, and now America acknowledges the pain and suffering caused by the destruction of Hiroshima, grateful for Japan’s friendship today, even as Japan acknowledges the pain and suffering caused by the destruction at Pearl Harbor, grateful for America’s friendship.  History is not erased, as it cannot be, but we now are friends and allies.

Arafat chose to proceed along a different course. After promising a new tone and direction, and getting his polity and his money, Arafat chose to use the new mass-media at his control to teach a new generation of Arabs to hate Israel and Jews even more.  So his schools use textbooks that teach children to hate Israel and all Jews.  His TV and radio teach that.  The summer camps for children teach that.  Their children’s TV shows teach the hate.  They name streets for terriorist murderers.  They pay monthly stipends — for life — to families of people who have murdered Israelis. 

These are Israel’s neighbors. It is not Canada, and it is not Mexico.  America speaks of building a wall to keep out undocumented aliens who come here for jobs.  Israel has had to build a wall to keep out suicide bombers and radical Islamist terrorists who come solely to maim and murder.

When Israel offered Arafat 97% of Judea and Samaria, under the ill-fated governance of Ehud Barak during the Clinton years, Arafat responded by rejecting the offer and igniting the first Intifada.  And so it always has been.  They will not make peace with Israel and will not compromise.  They will not accept a Jewish country in the Middle East. They just won’t.

Meanwhile, Amricans should consider: Even if Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah got Israel out of the way, what country would “they” be?  Their claimed polity is divided into two completely separate geographic polities.  The Gaza and the “West Bank” have nothing in common.  They are geographically apart. Their economies are completely different.  Gaza is ruled by Hamas — an Al Qaeda/ISIS South.  In Gaza, they build underground tunnels with cement they are given to build homes, and they shoot rockets at Jews from schoolyards, hospitals, and rooftops of apartment buildings. Indeed, every few years Hamas kills leaders of Fatah.  Meanwhile, Abbas now is in the eleventh year of the four-year term to which he was elected in 2005.  He won’t hold new elections because he is a dictator.  "Palestine?" This is no country.  The two segments have less in common than do India and Pakistan — and how long did that jigsaw puzzle of a singular polity last?

Abbas walked away from talks with Israel nearly eight years ago, as soon as Barack Obama, who began his Presidency with a trip to Cairo bypassing Israel, made clear that he was inserting himself into the region with an agenda.  Abbas saw that the new American President would be doing the heavy lifting for him.  Obama demanded an Israeli “settlement freeze” so that an environment “conducive to peace talks” could resume.  Prime Minister Netanyahu infuriated his own base at that time by agreeing to the freeze.  No one remembers today that Netanyahu wanted so much to have good relations with Obama that he agreed to freeze construction in East Jerusalem and elsewhere in Judea and Samaria. All Bibi demanded was that Abbas recognize the right of Israel to be a homeland for Jews.  Abbas thereupon walked and never talked.  He got a freeze without engaging in talks. Ultimately, the freeze continued for nearly a year, but there never were talks.  It was a one-sided Israeli concession that achieved nothing. Abbas has not talked with Israel for years.  Finally, after seeing that the construction freeze was binding Israel unilaterally with no purpose, Israel resumed building.

Jews have been living in Judea and Samaria for thousands of years.  The Jewish presence in Jerusalem, even during the worst of the Middle Ages, was so manifest that the main area of Jewish life there was known as the “Jewish Quarter” of Jerusalem.  We all know the Jewish Quarter.  Many of us have been there.  Many of us have visited several times. We have been to the Kotel.  Christians likewise know that Jews always have lived in Jerusalem.  Christians know about the Beit HaMikdash and the Temple Mount.  It is all recorded throughout their Bible, too.  Those who deny or even question the Jewish connection with East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount inexorably deny the authenticity and veracity of the central theological document of the Christian faith.

Yesterday John Kerry reiterated Barack Obama’s position, refusing to veto a Security Council resolution that said explicitly that Jews are barred from living even in East Jerusalem, even in the Jewish Quarter, even worshipping at the Kotel.  The only other period in modern times that Jews were barred from the Kotel was the 19 years from 1948-1967 when Jordan occupied East Jerusalem.  In those days, Jordanian snipers had guns pointed, and Jews could not dare go to the Kotel.  Now, if the United Nations could have its way, they would return us to such a world, and yesterday John Kerry spoke for 70 minutes justifying his and Barack Obama’s support of that position.  It was a nasty and mean-spirited 70-minute lecture, a parting shot from a Schoolyard Bully before turning away to run for safety before the target's big brother arrives in three weeks to offer some added protection. 

As for the Obamas and the Kerrys, once they pass from posing danger we turn a page.  We leave them to their destinies, and we focus on ours. They are soon — in 22 days — to be part of our past.  As I recite Al Hanisim and as I light menorah candles this week, I am reminded by the recitals about the Chashmonaim and the Syrian-Greeks of yore, of how we Jews never forget our past.  We remember the heroes of our past.  We remember everyone in our past.  And we learn from them all as we chart our futures.  They become names we never forget as we teach our future generations:  comparatively good names like Darius and Cyrus, other names like Haman and Nebuchadnezzar, more contemporary names like Adolf Hitler and Joszef Stalin, other names like Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg.  We remember all of them, and they became part of an eternal heritage and lesson.

East Jerusalem is our future.  Karnei Shomron is our future.  The 800,000 Jews living in East Jerusalem and throughout  Judea and Samaria are our future. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_statistics_for_Israeli_settlements_in_the_West_Bank

Those Jews are not moving anywhere.  Not the 20,000 Jews in Ariel nor the 50,000 Jews in Betar Illit, nor the 64,000 in Modi’in Illit nor the 37,000 in Maaleh Adumim, the 16,000 in Givat Ze’ev, the 8,000 in Efrat, the 7,000 in Kiryat Arba. No one is going to move 800,000 Jews out of their homes. Not the foreign minister of New Zealand and not the governments of Senegal and Venezuela and not Barack Obama and John Kerry. 

Rather, our future is to watch the Jews of Jerusalem and all the rest of Judea and Samaria soon grown to a million.  They will soon.

Many of you do not know this — I am surprised that none of the pundits on TV or in the newspapers comment on this, so maybe our shul will be the only ones who now know it — but the fact is that the United Nations Security Council actually voted once before to ban Israel from settling another area, declaring the Jewish presence there to be permanently illegal.  On December 17, 1981, in Security Council Resolution 497, they voted to declare as illegal the act by Menachem Begin’s Government extending Israeli law into the Golan Heights, by which Israel effectively had annexed the Golan into Israel.  That was 35 years ago — two years before Starbucks ever sold a cup of coffee outside Seattle and four years before Blockbuster opened its first store with the novel idea of renting out VHS tapes.  It now is 35 years later.  By 1989, eight years after that UN Security Council vote, the forbidden Jewish population of the Golan Heights had grown to number 10,000.  By 2010, the population there had grown to 20,000.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golan_Heights#Israeli_settlements   The plan is to expand to 30,000 by 2020.   The local Druze, who had thought they would get the land from the Jews after the Security Council vote, now have come to terms with a permanent Jewish sovereignty. And as they look across the border into Syria, the Druze know they could do worse. http://nyti.ms/1j5Bqfo  (Too,

despite the BDS noise, many of us here get our Yarden Wines from the Golan Heights.  Don’t you, too? http://www.kosherwine.com/products.html#filter:main_region:Israel/filter:additional_region:Golan$2520Heights

We now are planning for Year 50, the fiftieth anniversary of Israel’s June 1967 reunification of Jerusalem and liberation of Judea and Samaria.  It will be a great 50^th year.  There will be fresh new faces — new Jewish babies born up and down the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria, new faces of new residents continuing to move into and expand those communities and fortify the Jewish presence in East Jerusalem, and — who knows? — perhaps even a new American embassy and an American ambassador to Israel based, for the first time in American and Jewish history, in Jerusalem the Eternal Capital City of the Jewish People.

As Jewish destiny unfolds in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, where will Barack Obama be? Maybe on a golf course in Martha's Vineyard.  Maybe on a salsa dance floor in Havana. Maybe co-authoring a New York Times op-ed with Jimmy Carter.  And what of John Kerry?  Maybe he will be on a bicycle ride somewhere in Paris.  Maybe at a James Taylor concert, singing  "You've Got a Friend." And maybe teaching a college course on "Middle East Peacemaking and Negotiating Peace with Iran" at some liberal arts college in the northeast where students receive trigger warnings from microaggressions and enjoy safe spaces with coloring books where they can explore mindfulness amid cups of hot cocoa and gobs of Play-Doh.  http://nyti.ms/1OjaovV

Their retirement awaits them in three weeks. A worn page closes.  Jewish destiny awaits the Jewish people.  A new book opens.

Happy Chanukah.  Chag Chanukah Same’ach.  I attach Psalm 122 and Chapter 62 of the Book of Isaiah.

Rabbi Dov Fischer

Rav, Young Israel of Orange County

Irvine, CA

www.yioc.org 

Psalms Chapter 122 תְּהִלִּים

א  שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת, לְדָוִד: שָׂמַחְתִּי, בְּאֹמְרִים לִי:        בֵּית יְ-וָה נֵלֵךְ.	1 A Song of Pilgrims, of David. I rejoiced when they said unto me: 'Let us go unto the house of the L-RD.'
ב  עֹמְדוֹת, הָיוּ רַגְלֵינוּ בִּשְׁעָרַיִךְ, יְרוּשָׁלִָם.	2 Our feet are standing within thy gates, O Jerusalem;
ג  יְרוּשָׁלִַם הַבְּנוּיָה כְּעִיר שֶׁחֻבְּרָה-לָּהּ יַחְדָּו.	3 Jerusalem, that art built as a city that is unified as one;
ד  שֶׁשָּׁם עָלוּ שְׁבָטִים, שִׁבְטֵי  קָהּ--עֵדוּת לְיִשְׂרָאֵל:       לְהֹדוֹת לְשֵׁם יְ-וָה.	4 To there the tribes went up, the tribes of the L-RD, as a witness unto Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the L-RD.
ה  כִּי שָׁמָּה, יָשְׁבוּ כִסְאוֹת לְמִשְׁפָּט: כִּסְאוֹת, לְבֵית דָּוִד.	5 For there were set thrones for judgment, the thrones of the house of David.
ו  שַׁאֲלוּ, שְׁלוֹם יְרוּשָׁלִָם;    יִשְׁלָיוּ אֹהֲבָיִךְ.	6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; may they who love thee prosper.
ז  יְהִי-שָׁלוֹם בְּחֵילֵךְ;         שַׁלְוָה בְּאַרְמְנוֹתָיִךְ.	7 Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.
ח  לְמַעַן, אַחַי וְרֵעָי אֲדַבְּרָה-נָּא שָׁלוֹם בָּךְ.	8 For the sakes of my brethren and companions, I will now say: 'Peace be within thee.'
ט  לְמַעַן, בֵּית-יְ-וָה אֱלֹ-ינוּ    אֲבַקְשָׁה טוֹב לָךְ.	9 For the sake of the house of the L-RD our G-d I will seek thy good.

Isaiah Chapter 62 יְשַׁעְיָהוּ

א  לְמַעַן צִיּוֹן לֹא אֶחֱשֶׁה, וּלְמַעַן יְרוּשָׁלִַם לֹא אֶשְׁקוֹט, עַד-יֵצֵא כַנֹּגַהּ צִדְקָהּ, וִישׁוּעָתָהּ כְּלַפִּיד יִבְעָר.	1 For Zion's sake will I not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, until her triumph goes forth as brightness and her salvation as a torch that burneth.
ב  וְרָאוּ גוֹיִם צִדְקֵךְ, וְכָל-מְלָכִים כְּבוֹדֵךְ; וְקֹרָא לָךְ שֵׁם חָדָשׁ, אֲשֶׁר פִּי יְ-וָה יִקֳּבֶנּוּ.	2 And the nations shall see thy triumph, and all kings thy glory; and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the L-RD shall mark out.
ג  וְהָיִית עֲטֶרֶת תִּפְאֶרֶת, בְּיַד-יְ-וָה; וצנוף (וּצְנִיף) מְלוּכָה, בְּכַף-אֱלֹ-ָיִךְ.	3 Thou shalt also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the L-RD and a royal diadem in the open hand of thy G-d.
ד  לֹא-יֵאָמֵר לָךְ עוֹד עֲזוּבָה, וּלְאַרְצֵךְ לֹא-יֵאָמֵר עוֹד שְׁמָמָה--כִּי לָךְ יִקָּרֵא חֶפְצִי-בָהּ, וּלְאַרְצֵךְ בְּעוּלָה:  כִּי-חָפֵץ יְ-וָה בָּךְ, וְאַרְצֵךְ תִּבָּעֵל.	4 Thou shalt no more be termed “Forsaken,” neither shall thy land any more be termed “Desolate”; but thou shalt be called, “My delight is in her,” and thy land, “Espoused”; for the L-RD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be espoused.
ה  כִּי-יִבְעַל בָּחוּר בְּתוּלָה, יִבְעָלוּךְ בָּנָיִךְ; וּמְשׂוֹשׂ חָתָן עַל-כַּלָּה, יָשִׂישׂ עָלַיִךְ אֱלֹ-יִךְ.	5 For as a young man espouseth a virgin, so shall thy sons espouse thee; and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy G-d rejoice over thee.
ו  עַל-חוֹמֹתַיִךְ יְרוּשָׁלִַם, הִפְקַדְתִּי שֹׁמְרִים--כָּל-הַיּוֹם וְכָל-הַלַּיְלָה תָּמִיד, לֹא יֶחֱשׁוּ; הַמַּזְכִּרִים, אֶת-יְ-וָה--אַל-דֳּמִי, לָכֶם.	6 I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, they shall never hold their peace day nor night: 'Ye that are the L-RD'S remembrancers, take ye no rest,
ז  וְאַל-תִּתְּנוּ דֳמִי, לוֹ:  עַד-יְכוֹנֵן וְעַד-יָשִׂים אֶת-יְרוּשָׁלִַם, תְּהִלָּה--בָּאָרֶץ.	7 And give Him no rest, till He establish, and till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.'
ח  נִשְׁבַּע יְ-וָה בִּימִינוֹ, וּבִזְרוֹעַ עֻזּוֹ:  אִם-אֶתֵּן אֶת-דְּגָנֵךְ עוֹד מַאֲכָל, לְאֹיְבַיִךְ, וְאִם-יִשְׁתּוּ בְנֵי-נֵכָר תִּירוֹשֵׁךְ, אֲשֶׁר יָגַעַתְּ בּוֹ.	8 The L-RD hath sworn by His right hand, and by the arm of His strength: “Surely I will no more give thy corn to be food for thine enemies; and strangers shall not drink thy wine, for which thou hast laboured;
ט  כִּי מְאַסְפָיו יֹאכְלֻהוּ, וְהִלְלוּ אֶת-יְ-וָה; וּמְקַבְּצָיו יִשְׁתֻּהוּ, בְּחַצְרוֹת קָדְשִׁי.	9 “But they that have garnered it shall eat it, and praise the L-RD, and they that have gathered it shall drink it in the courts of My sanctuary.”
י  עִבְרוּ עִבְרוּ בַּשְּׁעָרִים, פַּנּוּ דֶּרֶךְ הָעָם; סֹלּוּ סֹלּוּ הַמְסִלָּה סַקְּלוּ מֵאֶבֶן, הָרִימוּ נֵס עַל-הָעַמִּים.	10 Go through, go through the gates, clear ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway, gather out the stones; lift up an ensign over the peoples.
יא  הִנֵּה יְ-וָה, הִשְׁמִיעַ אֶל-קְצֵה הָאָרֶץ, אִמְרוּ לְבַת-צִיּוֹן, הִנֵּה יִשְׁעֵךְ בָּא; הִנֵּה שְׂכָרוֹ אִתּוֹ, וּפְעֻלָּתוֹ לְפָנָיו.	11 Behold, the L-RD hath proclaimed unto the end of the earth: say ye to the daughter of Zion: “Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, His reward is with Him, and His recompense before Him.”
יב  וְקָרְאוּ לָהֶם עַם-הַקֹּדֶשׁ, גְּאוּלֵי יְ-וָה; וְלָךְ יִקָּרֵא דְרוּשָׁה, עִיר לֹא נֶעֱזָבָה.	12 And they shall call them “the holy people, the redeemed of the L-RD”; and thou shalt be called “Sought out, a city not forsaken.”