Q:
Don’t we see the desert is blooming in Eretz Yisroel despite the impiety of the inhabitants? Doesn’t that show something?
A:
And the answer is the desert bloomed under the Canaanim also.
And that’s what they’re doing now. They’re preparing for someone else.
So if they’re going to build a Chassidishe kiryah, a housing project, eventually there, that’s what the desert is blooming for. So these chalutzim who dug in the marshes or who irrigated the desert are making a future site for a place where boys will run around with payos and Jews will come to the beis hamedrash on Shabbos in throngs. That’s happened already.
Or it could be that they’re doing something for which someday, chas v’shalom, Arab children will have a place to play. Because this has happened already too. Sometimes the Jews turn into Canaanim and they prepare for the gentiles to take over.
There have been synagogues that turned into churches and our Sages told us that this always happened because something improper was being done there; because people were talking there during the time of prayers and they showed irreverence. Or sometimes there was quarreling inside. Whatever misbehavior took place in the shul lowered its sanctity; and the Jews were the ones who profaned it and thenceforth it was eligible to fall into the hands of the gentiles.
And that’s the explanation why there are synagogues in Brownsville that today are churches, or there are synagogues on Dearborn, on Douglas Boulevard in Chicago that are today churches. Because they brought in chazzanim who came Shabbos morning in a taxi. He came just in time to bang his tuning fork on the table and say, “שוכן עעעעעד.” He took over then; he didn’t say anything before that.
And many other things. Or because dances were held in these holy places; Jews profaned them with many other things.
And therefore, when Jews cause Eretz Yisroel to bloom, who knows for whom they’re doing it? Let’s hope they’re doing it for some future Chassidishe settlements. That’s the best we can hope for.
(October 1975)
