This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.
—Cairo’s radio station “Voice of Thunder” in the tense weeks preceding the Six Day War.
Jewish history does not exist in the past. It is in the here and now. When yeshiva students study Torah—Written and Oral—the present tense is always used. Abraham leaves his father’s home. Moses receives the Torah on Sinai. Rabbi Akiba says. Thus, Jewish festivals are not celebrated just to remember, but to experience Judaism’s eternal covenant with HaShem.
And so it is with the wars that Jews have fought from time immemorial. Whether the enemy is Amalek, Philistine, Babylonian, Seleucid, Roman, Nazi, or today’s IslamoNazis, Judaism/Israel is locked in an eternal existential battle with genocidal enemies.
[Read more…] about The Lion’s Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War