Slideshow image

January 27th is the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp known as Auschwitz-Birkenau. As such, the United Nations has designated this day every year as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Six million Jewish men, women and children were murdered in cold blood and for one reason...they were born Jewish. This period in human history was only the most recent nearly successful attempt, inspired by the Adversary himself, of mass genocide of the children of Israel. Although it was the worst, millions more had already fallen over the millenia at the hands of evil leaders and empires: the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greek-Syrians, Romans, and over the last 1700 years, by many who identified themselves as Christians.

In our generation, history is repeating itself not only through world-wide anti-Semitism, but since the miraculous rebirth of the nation-state of Israel in 1948, through the disguised form of rabid anti-Israelism. The bible clearly describes a time in the very near future when it will not be a crazed despot or a single empire that will attempt to annihilate the Jewish nation, but the entire world will poise itself to come against Israel...a time known as Jacob's trouble. The anti-Jewish marriage of convenience between the worlds' "progressives" on the one hand and radical Islam on the other, provides a substrate for this future attempt at another holocaust.

As many of you know, both my parents were survivors of the Nazi regime's attempt to eradicate the world of its "Jewish Problem."  My mother witnessed her father's arrest by the German SS, never to see him again. My father was the only survivor of his nuclear family of over 30: his mother, father, sisters, nieces, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and the entirety of four generations of the Robitshek clan, murdered in the Nazi gas chambers. It was a horror that can never be reversed...as the Talmudic saying goes: "To lose even one life, is to lose a world entire." To add to the horror, how many stood by silently, doing nothing, as six million Jews were led like lambs to the slaughter?

We understand that evil exists...and that evil is perpetrated by men and women who have rejected the One True God, the Creator of all. They have rejected His laws, His ways, His truth...His life. They have rejected the only means by which any and all of us can be delivered from our own sin - the sacrificial death and resurrection of the ultimate Passover lamb - our Messiah, Yeshua.

I emplore you, on this day, as a first generation offspring of holocaust survivors, as rabbi, and, mostly, as your brother in Messiah...to understand the meaning of Genesis 12:3 - "I will bless those who bless you, but I will curse anyone who curses you; and by you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” The first portion of this often quoted scripture is the key to our blessing, to align with the children of Abraham no matter what the cost...especially as we approach the greatest time of persecution the world has ever seen. The second portion of this scripture is just as vital: we as believers in Messiah are the ones who have been blessed by Abraham and his seeds' enduring history of preserving the scriptures, the promise, and the legacy of the Abrahamic covenant, at the cost of millions of lives.

But, the greatest opportunity is to be part of God's plan to fulfill this promise: to indeed be the source of blessing to the families of the earth through the sharing of the Besorah (the Good News) of redemption through the Jewish Messiah. Isaiah prophetically announces in the 60th chapter: "For although darkness covers the earth and thick darkness the peoples; on you Adonai will rise; over you will be seen his glory."

Let us pray for the shalom of Jerusalem...and for the boldness to stand firm, arm in arm, with the apple of God's eye.