just 2 years over 30,000 families of Jews from all around the world from 41 different countries choose to make Israel their home literally the Fulfillment of the prophecies that will be scattered around the world but a time will come when God will bring us home a lot of times Christians they see prophetic events unfolding in the land of Israel and they ask me do the Israelis see it you certainly see it I would say Rabbi you are at the Forefront of it with Aliah with the in gathering of the Exiles it's biblical it's prophetic tell
us what you and your organization you're doing I'm blessed to run an organization called yadim yadim means a hand Yad is hand lolim people who move to Israel it's called Aliah they're moving up spiritually so we're a hand to those who are making alah we have helped in just two years over 30,000 families of Jews from all around the world from 41 different countries to to make Israel their home literally the Fulfillment of the prophecies that will be scattered around the world but a time will come when God will bring us home tell us more
Rabbi why this is so significant some people may may be saying okay wow that's a lot of people that's exciting but what is the deeper spiritual prophetic meaning of that I know you've quoted from Isaiah uh other verses in the Bible that talk about this exactly that the Jewish people will come back to their ancestral Homeland by the way I was blessed to be part of that I was in 2004 before uh my wife and I decided to pick up and move to Israel we were on a flight where the pilot was flying 300 people
from North America to settle in Israel and he said in his words to us before the flight sit back relax enjoy the flight I'm here to take you home and that's an amazing moment after 2,000 years we're the links in the chain to bring our family back home that's so significant because we live in a world of revisionist history and falsehood of people who are not people of Faith who have this narrative that somehow Jews in Israel are occupiers somehow Jews in Israel are aggressors and I can tell you as a member of parliament traveling
around the world and hearing that anti-israel sentiment and you say to yourself but I have a Bible I have the word of God which says this is our homeland so the more Jews come back and live in the land of Israel the more we cement that reality that this is not some we woke up one morning and said this might be a nice place to live in the world but rather we're cementing the fact that is our homeland and even more than that and you know this from traveling around Israel you can see with your
own eyes that we were here for thousands of years so the Jews coming back and those flights that come into the airport and the people as we talked about before kissing the ground and thanking God for letting them come back home that is perhaps the greatest key to Israel's strength and survival in the years to come tell us some more of the exciting stories that you've experienced I mean you've personally been a part of them over the past 2 years over 30,000 families you said at one point you were getting 700 calls and text per
day from people who are just so eager to come to Israel and this was during co corre uh give us some more of those I would say miraculous stories there are people from countries you can't even imagine that are waking up and saying I'm Jewish I want to live in Israel I need help getting there from countries such as brace yourself Iran Iran asking for help documentation and getting them through in a safe way through the various channels to get to Israel people from Kenya people from the former Soviet Union certainly South American countries and
for me I'm going to give the two bookends so to speak it's young people who say I want to go to Israel make that my home serve in the IDF you don't have to go Ser in the IDF you could be sitting in University somewhere having the time of your life but they have a spiritual awakening which says I want to be part of that I want to defend the land of Israel I want to defend the Jewish people and all people of Faith who want to live in the land of Israel that's one side
that I get daily inspiration from but then it's the other grp Group which is retirees who are saying it's I'm not going to go to bokeh you know I'm not going to go to wherever it is you know to some uh Haven of of an island resort I want to be in the biblical Heartland because I want to live out my last days of my life in a spiritual existence I'm so inspired when I see somebody who's 92 years old and says it's time to fulfill my dream and make Israel my home you live in
bet sheemish now you've got two personal stories I'd like you to unpack real quick for us uh bet sheemish and what you told your children about living there number one and number two uh your grandmother a holocaust Survivor unpack those two stories for us because they are powerful Absolutely I'll start with my grandmother because it'll lead into the second story when we decided to move to Israel as you can imagine I was afraid to call my grandmother and tell her this she was living in New York we were in Maryland we saw her all the
time she's a holocaust Survivor she was in the golden years of her life enjoying her grandchildren great grandchildren by the way she lived to see great great grandchildren and now I'm telling her we're picking up and going to Israel I was so afraid to make this phone call but I finally said Bubby which is Grandma in Yiddish uh God willing the summer we're making alar moving to Israel and I braced myself for what I somewhat jokingly call the wrath of Bubby you know she didn't have political correctness she would say whatever was on her mind
and my grandmother responds by saying in Hebrew blessed art thou Lord God of our fathers who has kept me alive and brought me to this great day and she said I took my breath away and she said when she was on the boat Le displaced persons camp in Germany after the Holocaust after pretty much her entire family was murdered in the gas Chambers she said the whole time something was gnawing at her why am I not going to Israel and she lived to see a great grandson who was a commander in the an elite combat
unit in the IDF and even more than that get ready for this one she found the strength to come to Israel and she visited me in my knesset office 70 years after her Liberation from asz and she's sitting in my only God Only God that's exactly what she said she sitting in my office and she said Dove this doesn't make any sense Jewish State Israel Jewish Capital Jerusalem Jewish Parliament conet my grandson is a member who else can make that happen but God s up in silverburg Maryland uh Redskins capitals bullets than Wizards and Orioles
and a regular American kid I couldn't do there what I did with my children the first week we moved to Israel to be chamish and that was opening up the Bible open putting up the Bible and reading a story about the Ark of the Covenant being captured by the Philistines and then God tormented them and they sent it back and the Bible says and it arrived in the field of a man in bit shemes our city I could point to the fields around my house say to my kids maybe it was right there and then
I could take them on a 10-minute drive to the battlefield of David and Goliath and a 5-minute drive to the north to where Samson used to ro and it's just we live in the place where the Bible took place and we can see it and touch it and feel it talk about the importance of that relationship between Christians and Jews at this critical point in history and why it's so important people of Faith have to come together and stand for something together and I know so deeply how we stand for Israel as the holy land
for all the face of the world and Israel as the Homeland for the Jewish people and that support that we can give to one another in that faith-based uh approach to life is critical for one another and I actually believe it's what God is waiting to see that God is saying I have all these people my children people of Faith uh there is a history of conflict and difficulty but we're past that we're in a different stage in the world now and we can work together to enable Israel and Empower Israel to fulfill its Destiny
as a light unto the Nations right 75 years ago it was a very secular country and Israel is also shifting and becoming much more religiously it much more faithful to the word of God and to the Torah so we have this perfect opportunity this great moment for real reconciliation between Christians and Jews and it is prophetic it really is prophetic you see Israel stepping into its prophetic Destiny as a light to the Nations uh through you blessing Gentiles blessing Christians God said to Abraham through you all nations on Earth will be blessed do you see
that coming to fruition now if you look at the Bible so there's three sections of the Bible there's the history you know the Patriarchs and the Kings all the history sections there's the section about the laws and as faithful and observant Jews we take the law very seriously we keep Shabbat on Saturday we eat kosher food the laws are very important to the Jewish Community the Jewish people but then there's many passages about the prophecy yeah right and the prophetic sections are a little harder to navigate sometimes they're written out of order sometimes we don't
understand the context of the conversation right we don't really understand Isaiah's time period and the Kings he's referring to but there are certain milestones in the prophetic sections of the Hebrew Bible that are loud and clear right that are are crystal clear the first Milestone is the ingathering of the Jewish people back to Israel Aliah that's really the first step and the Jews are to be exiled it says that in the Bible but then they're going to come back and if that doesn't happen we can't even move on but that has happened and is happening
right now you it used to be when Israel started 75 years ago something like 1% of the Jews were living in Israel now it's 50% of the Jews are living in Israel in only 75 years yeah it's we're moving rapidly on this prophetic timeline yeah and so the first step is the in gathering the Second Step the second step is that the land has to support that yes cuz before Israel it was a Barren Wasteland couldn't live there you literally could there was no food to eat there was swamps everywhere read Mark Twain the American
author who visited and wrote about this in the 19th century that Israel was essentially at that time A Wasteland exactly before the Zionist movement exactly exactly so the second prophetic Milestone is that the land will come back alive the jewi je people the relationship between the people of Israel and the land of Israel is like a marriage right and when they're together and reunited so both sides are going to start to thrive again and the land is thriving so now with prophecy it's easier to look back at prophecy than to look forward but those are
the two Milestones so what's the next stage of Prophecy according to the Jewish interpretation so following the physical restoration of Israel and the Jewish people is the spiritual restoration of Israel the Jewish people and the whole world and there's a lot of passages that you could look to to me Isaiah 2 is really kind of my favorite it says that in the end of days all nations will stream towards Jerusalem for from Zion shall come forth the Torah and the word of God from Jerusalem yes so describing in the end of days Jews non Jews
All Nations coming to a rebuilt Jerusalem and studying God's word together and that I believe is what we need to focus our energies on with the same determination the same resources that we built up Israel over the last 75 years with God's help we need to dedicate those same resources and dedication to this spiritual partnership between Christians and Jews yes and the groundwork is being laid it's already it's already flourishing as you said Rabbi I think of Isaiah which you mentioned Zechariah Ezekiel they all talk about these days that we're living in that we're rapidly
approaching right now we're talking before the interview and by the way folks if you hear some background noise we are at a convention a Convention Center in Orlando for the nrb National Religious broadcasters convention but Rabbi we were talking before the interview and I said wow a lot of Christians say we see the prophetic significance of what's unfolding in Israel right now but do Israelis see it clearly you do you're an Israeli from the US originally of course but do you see a growing number you mentioned earlier that more Israelis are becoming religious do you
see a growing number of Israelis who say you know God's hand is in this something special is happening and we truly are living in prophetic times yeah the Jewish people thanks to our marriage with the land our reunion with the land are starting to shed some of our Exile mentalities we were living in exile for 2,000 years and we developed a lot of um like a thick coat of armor around us to protect us from really the external forces the anti-Semitism and we developed certain practices and as a result we're now back in the land
and are like a fish back in water yeah
