Did This Ancient Prophecy Come True in Israel? - Rabbi Uri Pilichowski

I live in a desert town called Mitzpe Ramon. There there's endless mountains of sand, desert like you've seen in movies. Any movie could be shot in our town. And it's been around for about 48 years. People live there. It's hot. It gets really, really hot. We've had days where it's been 120° for a couple days straight in Fahrenheit, 50° C. It gets really, really hot. Swimming pools are very popular. Air conditioning, complete necessity. We have Bedouins that live around our town and I've no idea how they live without air conditioning and how they've survived for thousands of years in desert-like conditions like this. I don't get it. But that's the way life is. When our town was started some 50 years ago, the agriculturists of our town wanted plants to be put into our into our town. And they went to the government to the Israeli government to the Department of Agriculture and asked them for plants. We wanted to have fruit trees. And they looked at us as if we were crazy. And again, obviously [clears throat] I wasn't there at the time. I wasn't born. But they asked for fruit trees. They wanted citrus trees. And the man behind the counter looked at them as if they were crazy and said, "You live in the desert. We will give you cacti and you will be happy with the cacti, especially if they grow cuz nothing else is going to grow in your town." And they looked at him and said, "You don't understand. God told us that when the Jewish people come back to the land of Israel, everything will grow. The land will produce. And it's true that for the last 150 years, nothing has grown inside this desert area. But that's just because the Jews haven't been there." God's promise is plant, fruit will grow [clears throat] as long as my people come back to the land. I will bless the land when you return to it. So, the government wouldn't give the people the plants that they needed. So, what they did was they went on and invested on their own. And they put together fruit plants. Now, if you fruit trees, excuse me. Now, if you come back to our town today, you drive through Mitzpe Yericho, some of the people who have been to Israel have driven past our town. It's right on the way from Jerusalem towards the Dead Sea, towards Masada. You pass it, it's right there on the left side as you come out of Jerusalem. You will drive into our town and the first thing you'll encounter is a big a mural that that says Mitzpe Yericho, the town's name. Welcome to Mitzpe Yericho, it says in Hebrew. Welcome to Mitzpe Yericho. And right behind that mural are 10 pomegranate trees. Why 10 pomegranate trees? Because in the desert, it's almost impossible to grow pomegranate trees. But if you walk around our town, you will see pomegranates growing. You will see citrus fruit growing. My my front yard has lemons and something called clementina, which are sort of like oranges. And they grow um every single year. We have a full full stock of a fruit that grows. How do you explain it? How do you explain that the mountains around us produce absolutely nothing? It's just our mountain in the desert. And really, there's only one explanation. And we love telling it to everybody. And I hope that you'll come to our town and get to tell you this exact story again in person. Because God promised us that when the Jewish people come back to the land, the fruit will grow. How difficult is it for us that we always say, "How come we don't get to see the miracles? Where's our splitting of the sea? How come we don't have the Hanukkah victory against the Greeks?" And yet, we do have it every [clears throat] single day. Unfortunately, sometimes we don't open up our eyes enough to see the miracles of the state of Israel and the day and the land of Israel that we get to experience every [clears throat] single day of our lives today. We live in a time that our ancestors could not even dream of. Their dreams didn't equal the average day. I'm sitting in a studio here. The air conditioning's off for the betterment of the of the sound. Just the fact that we get to live in Israel with air conditioning is something that I consider miraculous because our ancestors didn't have it. But it goes so much further than that. The military victories that we've experienced in this land, whether it's in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2014, 2021, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026. We live [snorts] in miraculous times. I'm not a guy that walks around talking about miracles. I'm not a person that sits there and tells people you got to see the miracles. But when there's so blatantly obvious in front of you, how do you explain the Beamer operation in Lebanon? How do you explain an October 7th failure that turns around so much that every single person that planned that attack is gone from the earth, eliminated by our armed forces. This doesn't happen naturally. Whether it's the pomegranate tree growing in my in my town or whether it's the military victories that we see over and over, there is no other explanation other than to know that God's hand is divinely providentially changing things on a daily basis in our land. There's simply no other way of looking at the times that we're in. My grandfather slept cold nights in Auschwitz. And I picture how often I would love to have visited him and whispered in his ear, "I know this is hard. I know we're never going to forget this and it's difficult. But your great-grandchildren are going to grow up seeing fruit trees growing in the outskirts of Jerusalem and they're going to study God's Torah. They're going to walk the streets of Jerusalem. They're going to get married and dance to the huppah in Jerusalem as the prophets told us. That's the turnaround that we will see. How do we explain such things? How can we go on and not see lives as completely miraculous? Now, how does that change our daily life? How do we look at things differently? How do we How do we act in a miraculous times? It's so difficult, especially when we're in the midst of it. It's so hard to recognize it. It's so hard for us to be able to lead our lives. Well, first is joy. Just be happy. Be happy of the times that we're living in. So often we get caught up in the minutia of the things that bother us. But if we take a step back and look at the big picture of what we're involved in, the times of Jewish history that we get to see, of world history that we get to experience, that joy is enough to change us. Second is gratitude. >> [snorts] >> Sitting and thanking God for the times that he has blessed us, our generation to live in. What did I do to deserve life so great, so much better than my ancestors had it? For 2,000 years our people suffered. They could only imagine the little daily pleasures that we have today. And I get to experience it. I know I didn't do anything to deserve it. So, that comes the gratitude of I know God I didn't deserve this, but I'm so grateful that I get to have it. And lastly is spreading this message. Showing other people, telling other people, revealing to them what they might not be able to see because their eyes aren't open enough. It doesn't mean you become a preacher or a missionary or a fanatic that goes around talking about it. But, when sharing a meal with people, whether it's in your house or in other houses, just bringing up an amazing thing that occurred to you or to our people that week and being able to share that message with other people, of spreading that joy, of showing how grateful you are for it, helps other people understand exactly what is happening around them. It's those steps that really change our lives for the better. That's my advice. That's That's how I would say look around life as it is now. And come visit us in Bnei Brak and see the pomegranate trees. But, it's not just my town that has them. They're all over Israel. All of these sights, all of these things are everywhere for you to see. Thanks so much for joining me. Shalom.