A good week, Rabbi.
There are also prophecies that were not fulfilled—what is the relation between them and those that were fulfilled? Does that make them irrelevant, or weaken them?
And another slightly embarrassing question, just to remove any doubt—does the Rabbi know that the desolation of the Land of Israel is a phenomenon with no parallel, with not even a historical precedent that is even somewhat similar?

Clearly, prophecies that were not fulfilled weaken the claim. I already wrote here in the past that I haven’t conducted a survey of the Hebrew Bible to see what was fulfilled and what wasn’t (it’s also hard to do, because the language of prophecy is vague and interpretive flexibility makes it possible to fit them to many cases).
I haven’t checked.

1. So what force do the prophecies that are concrete have—Return to Zion and a desolate land—about which the Rabbi wrote (in the link above) that they do indeed strengthen these unique phenomena—and yet they are weakened?

2. And why did the Rabbi write (in the first response) that the desolation of the Land of Israel is a unique phenomenon? Because if it isn’t unique, then the prophecy (already weakened) is fairly predictable too.

May I ask for help from M regarding the matter of the desolation?
Thank you very much.

Itai, I already explained this.
1. Prophecies that were fulfilled are a confirmation of the Torah’s reliability. It’s hard to examine this systematically, so it isn’t decisive. Still, it has significance.
2. This is a unique phenomenon, but I didn’t do comprehensive research to see to what extent. It joins the other considerations, as I explained in the fifth notebook.

Regarding research on the desolation, can the Rabbi refer the question to M?

I forwarded it.

Thank you very much.

I don’t know how to tell the story in comparison to the rest of the world. I can, however, talk about the condition of the Land of Israel, which truthfully is a bit more complex.

Basically, it is not correct to say that the land was desolate for 2,000 years since the destruction of the Temple. In fact, during the Byzantine period the land was flourishing. What is true, though—and this is an interesting phenomenon—is that the Land of Israel retained a Jewish majority until almost the 8th century CE (that is, the end of the Byzantine period). At the end of this period the Jews suddenly disappear (for various reasons, and this is not the place), and the Land of Israel does indeed become the wasteland we all know from the legends.
Indeed, that does not mean that nothing at all was built and there were no people, but in general the condition of the land, despite attempts to settle it, was extremely poor (apart from a few singular points).

Indeed, I don’t have data on other lands, but it’s not clear that we need such data. The discussion is not about Israel’s condition versus Egypt, but about the condition of the land compared to other desirable places (say, compared to Europe). That is, probably the Sahara Desert was also miserable, but Israel, unlike it, the moment the Jewish majority disappeared, became desolate, despite the fact that everyone and his wife wanted it to prosper. And as far as I know, that is indeed an interesting phenomenon.

Therefore, the urban legend about the land’s desolation since the destruction of the Temple is mistaken, but indeed from the disappearance of its masses of Jews onward there is a phenomenon there that matches the prophecy.

Thank you very much for the response.
If I understood correctly, this phenomenon is interesting because it has no logical explanation, regardless of whether it is a special phenomenon that happened nowhere else?
But from what I understood from Rabbi Michael’s article, the Rabbi brings strange phenomena and also emphasizes how unique they are.

With God’s help, 12 Av 5778

To M — greetings,

It seems that two main reasons led to the thinning of the Jewish settlement in the land at the end of the Byzantine period and the beginning of the Muslim conquest:

(a) The Jews’ revolt against Byzantine rule and their attempt to help the Persians conquer the land, an attempt that was crushed cruelly by Emperor Heraclius (612).

(b) The heavy land taxes imposed by the Muslim regime on non-Muslims. Most of the Jews of the Land of Israel were farmers who could not bear the tax burden, and therefore many abandoned their land and emigrated to other countries where one could make a living from trade and crafts.

A similar process happened to the Jews of Babylonia, until in a responsum from 785 the Gaon explains the enactment to collect the ketubah from movable property by saying that most Jews have no landholdings (unlike the Talmudic era, when most Jews were farmers). On the detachment of the Jewish people from working the land as a characteristic of the Middle Ages, see the beginning of Professor Avraham Grossman’s book, Piety and Rebellion.

Regards,
S.Z. Levinger

Itai —

As I explained, the phenomenon probably is rare.

As for an explanation—in my opinion one can always raise hypotheses, but the existence of an explanation does not negate the argument of uniqueness and prophecy.

Hello M. I also wanted to ask about the very unique survival of our holy Torah—are there not other peoples who claim to preserve ancient traditions? Thank you, and sorry for the trouble.

I don’t know what is meant by ancient traditions.
There are other ancient religions, and some of them are probably older than us (such as Hinduism). In any case, it is indeed a rare phenomenon for a religion to survive, especially after persecutions.

Do you mean that there are no other religions that survived persecutions besides the Jewish people?

Dear M, I’m asking because you wrote that it is rare for a religion to survive, but you also wrote that there are other ancient religions that survived—so it isn’t rare…
If this isn’t a special phenomenon (historically unique), then this claim isn’t significant.

With God’s help, 15 Av 5778

To Itai — greetings,

Ancient peoples or religions can survive by inertia, when the members of the people or religion live in their land in relative peace. But for the phenomenon of a people that was exiled and scattered to the ends of the earth, and in every place persecuted and humiliated so that it would abandon its religion, yet in all the exiles and persecutions stubbornly preserved its national and religious identity—there is no equal in history. The only people that preserved its identity despite exile, dispersion, persecutions, and humiliations is “Israel, the boldest of the nations”!

Regards,
S.Z. Levinger

Thank you. Just to remove any doubt—do you know this from historical research?

Itai —

What?? An event that happens 3 times in 1000 attempts is not rare because there is more than one case??

In addition, see also what I wrote above about the persecutions, etc., which make this comparison problematic in the opposite direction (and those are also S.Z.L.’s words).

Hinduism also survived Muslim attacks. And yet it is clear that Hinduism had a strong backing that made things very difficult for the Muslims in India. They never ruled the entire subcontinent. Most of the population supported Hinduism, and there were always Indian rulers who supported Hinduism. Nor did the Muslim sultans always suppress Hinduism. The Mughals, for example, were quite tolerant and tried to combine Hinduism and Islam.

By the way, for the Talmud, the very survival of the Jews is a revelation of God’s awe. This is not something new, but something Jews have felt for 2,500 years already.

With God’s help, 15 Av 5778

To Y.D. — greetings,

You nicely distinguished between the existence of the Hindus, a people of hundreds of millions living in their land and forming an overwhelming majority there, and the Jewish people, surviving despite being a persecuted minority everywhere, who not only preserved its identity in relation to the ruling majority, but also influenced the spirit of the surrounding peoples and transmitted some of its values to them—though precisely its spiritual influence intensified the surrounding hatred toward it, in refusing to give the Jews “credit” for what they had received from them.

However, regarding your statement that for about 2,500 years the Jews have marveled at the miracle of their survival, it should be noted that people have been trying unsuccessfully to destroy the Jewish people from the very beginning of its formation over 3,000 years ago. Merneptah the Egyptian proudly proclaims: “Israel is laid waste, his seed is no more”; Mesha king of Moab boasts: “And Israel has utterly perished forever.” Where are they, and where are we?

The wonder of our existence obviously comes also from divine providence intervening to save us even when the situation seems lost and hopeless, but no less than that, from the vision and consciousness of mission that thousands of years of Torah have implanted in our souls. We live and act not only from the inertia of the past, but from the hope that we will bring humanity a better moral future, as Dr. Yaakov Herzog expressed in his debate with the historian Toynbee, and in his book A People That Dwells Alone.

Regards,
S.Z. Levinger

And see the work of Yitzhak Lior Vazana, “The Faith Foundations in the Statesmanship of Dr. Yaakov Herzog,” on the Da’at website.

To M. But when Rabbi Michael wrote in the article that this is a “very unique phenomenon,” from my perspective it is no less unique than the other claims mentioned in the article (the demographic weight, antisemitism, etc.), if I understood the Rabbi correctly (correct me if I’m wrong). Regarding what S.Z.L. wrote, that only the Jewish people, who experienced many persecutions, managed to survive—is that certain?

With God’s help, 15 Av 5778

To Itai — greetings,

You are invited to take an atlas and check country by country whether there is another people that scattered to the ends of the earth and was persecuted everywhere, yet not only preserved its identity despite all the persecutions, but also stirred things up culturally and influenced the entire world morally—and, for a finale, returned to its land and renewed its independence after years of exile and a terrible Holocaust.

When you find another such wondrous people, please share your discovery with the readers of the site; perhaps we will go there to learn from them the secret of their miraculous existence!

Regards,
S.Z. Levinger

I was referring to my own words about the factual claim that this is rare, and not to the Rabbi’s analytical remarks.

In any case, given the persecutions, etc., I am not familiar with a similar phenomenon, and it seems to me that this is what the Rabbi meant by unique survival (one should add that we are talking about persecution and prominence in many areas at once).

I once saw a comparative analysis of other peoples in some book and came away with the impression that this is indeed the case, but I don’t have it in front of me. Still, one or two cases do not, in my opinion, undermine the point.

Understood, thank you so much, M, and also to S.Z.L.—bless you!

With God’s help, 15 Av 5778

To M — greetings,

There is one exception that comes somewhat close to the resilience of the Jewish people, and that is the Roma, who have endured in Europe despite dispersion and persecution since the 14th–15th centuries. I praised their attachment to their culture and heritage in my response “The Roma and Their Virtues,” on column 61 on this very site, “On Roma and Thieves.”

Still, one cannot compare 700 years of existence to 3,500 years of existence, nor can one compare a miserable, declining existence on the margins of society to the existence of a people that is “the leaven in the dough” of the world in cultural and moral terms.

And as I explained above (in my response to Y.D.), the strength of the Jewish people lies in the fact that the existence of the Jewish people is not only by inertia from the past, but through the vision and sense of mission that our Torah and prophets have implanted in us, demanding from us constant moral ascent so that we fulfill our destiny to be the moral “vanguard force” of humanity!

Regards,
S.Z. Levinger

The Roma preserved music and dress, but they converted to Christianity and adopted quite a bit from the surrounding culture, and religion itself was the main basis of the persecution against Jews for most of those 700 years, except for nearly the Nazi period (unlike Judaism, which preserved precisely that on whose basis it was persecuted, and not just folklore).

In addition, unlike the Jews, they unfortunately remained in the gutter and were not, on the one hand, persecuted and, on the other hand, flourishing; and there is still much more to elaborate on here.

Hello M. Regarding the book that compares the survival of peoples—what is it called, and where can it be obtained?

Hello M. What about the Native Americans who were persecuted—are there ancient traditions that they preserve today?

To Itai,
They preserve no ancient traditions at all.

What about the Yazidis, who preserve unique customs despite having been persecuted?

The Yazidis have lived for centuries as an independent, fighting tribe in their land in Kurdistan. Like all the Kurdish tribes, they take part in wars against one another, whereas the Jews survived for thousands of years even after all military power had been taken from them. You can try comparing the Yazidis to the Jews only in another 2,000 years!

Regards,
S.Z. Levinger

Didn’t the Ottoman Empire persecute them for a significant period? And what good would the Yazidis’ small military power do for them?

Ottoman rule was loose everywhere. Beyond demanding tax payment, the governors were not especially interested in the internal affairs of the tribes, certainly not in a remote mountainous region like Kurdistan. Those who were especially persecuted there by the Kurdish tribes were the Jews and the Nestorians; see the article by Dr. Shimon Marcus, “The Jews of Kurdistan,” on the Da’at website.

Regards,
S.Z. Levinger

From what I understood from the article on the Da’at website, the condition of the Jews was easier under Ottoman rule than under Persian rule, so apparently that indicates that conditions in the rest of Kurdistan were probably better.
But regarding the Yazidis—they are different from the Jews in that they are a separate religion with a different and somewhat idolatrous belief system, so could it be that the Ottoman rule alienated them more because of their difference?

I understood from a Wikipedia entry that there is a book called Through Wild Kurdistan that presents, among other things, a fairly accurate picture of the great suffering of the Yazidis under Ottoman rule; that they were persecuted as devil-worshipers—that’s what it says there.
Do you know what this refers to?