One of the most amazing prophecies in the Torah, which is one of the greatest proofs for the Torah's truth, actually. In my opinion, probably the greatest, which is in next week's Parsha, where we're going to read in Vayikra, where God says there's a list of various sins, and then after that, after the list of sins, the Torah says, don't make yourself impure with all these sins, because through such actions, the nations that lived, in Israel before you were made impure, and I am sending them out. I am removing all those Canaanites and all those people because they sinned with these immoral behaviors.
And the land becomes impure because of the people. The land cannot tolerate, Israel is a holy land, and it cannot tolerate unholiness and impurity. and immorality. So the land will literally vomit out. That's what the Torah says.
The land, the land will literally vomit out, it's inhabitants, if they engage in such behaviors. And the Torah continues and says, You shall fulfill my laws and my judgments and my ordinances, and do not commit these abominations. Both the citizen of Israel, the Jewish citizen, and the stranger that lives among you.
Both the Jew and the Gentile who lives among you. If you're in the Holy Land, the land cannot tolerate such behavior. Because the people that lived here before you did these things.
And they made the land impure. If you don't want the land to vomit you out, then don't engage in such. behaviors. And I say that this is an amazing prophecy and probably the greatest truth that you can, the greatest proof for the Torah, because if you look at history in the last 3,000 plus years, you will find that no people has ever been able to flourish in the land of Israel. No people has ever been able to make any kind of successful kingdom in the land of Israel except the Jewish people.
If going back even to the first temple, the first temple was destroyed, the Babylonians were only able to hold on for maybe 70 years, and then they were replaced by the Persians. And the Persians didn't have it too much longer either. And then the Greeks came, and the Greeks couldn't do much with it either. And then, you know, Antiochus tried and was destroyed by the Maccabees, and then the whole Seleucid kingdom fell apart. And the Romans came, and then they didn't really make anything out of it.
They flattened it, and they wanted to at one point to rebuild it. Hadrian wanted to rebuild it as this new capital of the East, Aelia Capitolina, didn't go anywhere. And even that didn't go. And then the Byzantines, when the Muslims took over in the 600s, the Temple Mount was literally a garbage dump.
The whole place was falling apart. And then in the last 1300 years, various Muslim dynasties and the Turks and whatever, the Ottomans and the original Arab Caliphate, and they all held it, the Muslims held it for 1300 years. They never were able to make anything out of it.
There was never a great city built. They weren't able to make a Baghdad or a Cordoba or a Bukhara or an Istanbul in Israel, and Jerusalem was always basically depleted of people. Yeah, the whole land was barren. And if you read travelers throughout history that came there, whether it was Benjamin of Tadela or even Mark Twain in the 1800s, right?
They described the land as desolate, empty. So Mark Twain, who was there in 1869, he wrote about his trips, the innocents abroad. He wrote that Israel is basically...
The whole Holy Land is a desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given over wholly to weeds. I'm quoting directly his words. A silent mournful expanse. He said a desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action.
He says, by the way, we never saw a human being on the whole route. Mark Twain says this, and he's not Jewish or anything, right? He's not. In fact, some would say he had some anti-Semitic things to say in other places.
So he says in his whole trip through the Holy Land, we never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil had almost deserted the country. Nothing, not even cactuses and olive trees. Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince.
And he said, can the curse of the deity beautify a land? Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and feathered its energies. So this is just in 1869. So when we talk about that prophecy at the very beginning of this passage, when Israel flourishes again and has trees and branches and fruits, right?
Mark Twain in 1869 is saying there's hardly even an olive tree. or a cactus, you know, nothing's going on. And think of what Israel is today. So it's amazing that nobody has ever, no other people has ever been able to make anything prosperous in the Holy Land, except the Jews, whether it was during the first temple era, during the second temple era, the Maccabean kingdom, the Herodian kingdom, whatever, and even now. This is an amazing prophecy.
By the way, why did the Muslims have control of Israel for 1,300 years? Why Dafka 1,300 years? Because you know, the Muslims took over in 638, in the year 638, and Israel was re-established in 1948. You have 1,300 years, almost exactly, 1,310 years.
Why 1,300? So look what the czar says. The czar...
In the Zohar on the Shemot, page 32a, it says something amazing. It says, remember God told Abraham to expel Ishmael. He said, you know, Itzhak is the one that's going to inherit you.
Don't worry, I'll take care of Ishmael. I'll give him other lands. There will be 12 princes that will come out of him.
But the Holy Land is for Yitzhak and the progeny through Yitzhak. But Abraham came to him and said, He came before God and he told him, He said to him, that he said, Ishmael also circumcised himself. So shouldn't he also have a portion within you? And he told him, and not only that, Not only that, but he circumcised himself as a 13-year-old.
That's very hard. Imagine being a 13-year-old kid, because if you count, God came to Abraham, thank you, when he was 99. And Ishmael was born when Abraham was 86, and God came to Abraham when he was 99. and said, gave him the mitzvah of circumcision. And so...
Abraham was 99 when he circumcised himself, okay, but Ishmael was only a 13-year-old kid. That's hard. And then Yitzhak was born the following year and was circumcised on the eighth day. So Abraham said, listen, Ishmael also did the circumcision. He also has a portion of the covenant here in some way, and he did it when he was 13. So he should also have chulka bach k'mo Yitzhak.
He should also have a portion within you and within your land, like Yitzhak does. Amar leh. He said, yes, however, these, the progeny of Yitzhak, they circumcise the way it's supposed to be done properly. These ones don't circumcise properly according to all the halachot. They don't do the procedure exactly right, and so on.
And then it continues and says, nonetheless, Abraham had a good point. And the Muslims also circumcised themselves. So they also have...
It's not the Shemans'fault. Right, exactly, exactly. So, what did God do? He says, God said, okay, I'll give you a portion of the Holy Land for a certain amount of time.
And then people, the Zohar doesn't say this explicitly, but the implication is, and as other commentaries later say, because he was 13, God said, I'll give it to you for 1300 years. However, and remember, the Zohar... says this a long time ago, right?
The Rashbist lived almost 2,000 years ago, and the Zohar was published over 700 years ago. So this is not like they knew that this is, they didn't know that Ishmael would control the land, obviously, for 1,300 years. It was an amazing prophecy in the Zohar. But the Zohar promises, So a time will come when the Ishmaelites will rule over the land of Israel.
And however, when they rule over it, it will be Reikana, Mikola. It'll be empty. It'll be rik. They won't be able to make anything out of it. Okay?
So they will have control over it for 1300 years, but they won't be able to make a prosperous state out of it. 638 CE is when the original Arabic Islamic Caliphate conquered the land from the Byzantines. 638. So until 1948, that's 1310 years.
So that's why the 1300 years for the Maghreb. Okay. But again, it was empty for that whole time.
Mostly empty. Of course, there was the period of the Crusades. There were moments where they had little short-lived kingdoms there, yes.
But nothing that lasted, nothing that flourished until Israel returned.