Living Prophecies

"'…and I will bring my people Israel back from exile. They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,' says the LORD your God." — Amos 9:14-15

The Torah portion for this week is a double reading, Acharei Mot-Kedoshim,from Leviticus 16:1–20:27 and the Haftorah from Amos 9:7–15.

In 1867, Mark Twain visited the Holy Land. This is what he saw: “A desolate country … given over wholly to weeds … a silent mournful expanse … a desolation … we never saw a human being on the whole route … hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.” The land that Mark Twain saw was the way that the land looked for more than two thousand years. As foretold in the Bible, once the children of Israel were exiled, the land ceased to blossom.