On this date (November 9) in 1938, Nazi rioters launched a campaign of terror against Jewish people and their homes and businesses in Germany and Austria. The violence continued through the following day and was later known historically as “Kristallnacht,” or “Night of Broken Glass,” so named for the countless smashed windows of Jewish-owned establishments. The rampage left approximately 100 dead, 7,500 Jewish businesses damaged and hundreds of synagogues, homes, schools and graveyards vandalized. An estimated 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many of whom were the first of millions to be sent to concentration camps. Kristallnacht represented a dramatic escalation of the genocide initiated by Adolf Hitler in 1933 when he became chancellor to purge Germany of its Jewish population. Ultimately, that goal, referred to by Nazi propagandists euphemistically as “The Final Solution,” resulted in the horrors of the Holocaust.

The Jewish people are no strangers to ethnic antagonism, either in subtle forms of politically incorrect or downright off-color social contempt or in its most vile and cruel expressions of murderous hatred. Despite the world-wide pledge of “Never Again,” it is obvious that the fuse has been lit for a renewed expression of anti-Semitism triggered by the attack from Gaza by Hammas into Israel on October 7. As of this writing, the fuse is still a long one and has not yet reached an actual weapon of mass destruction, the explosive extent of which could be catastrophic beyond imagination.

Nightly news analysts and pundits all have a comment or interpretation either left or right of these disturbing sometimes even frightful current events escalating in the Middle East and the widespread protests on the streets of America and abroad. The evidence favoring the extermination of Jews in Israel and anywhere for that matter cannot be ignored. The signage, banners, graffiti and chants of “Hitler was right” and “Gas the Jews” says it all.

But let’s put the TV volume on mute for a bit and look at this unfolding drama through the only lens that really matters – the Bible.

Long before Israel the nation legally became in 1948 the body politic it is now, the people Israel were, are and always will be the Chosen People of God. The Torah states “For you [Israel] are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.” (Deuteronomy 7:6) There is so much to say about that relationship, on both sides of the Covenant, but let’s just observe that there is more happening today than just a war for the preservation of Zionism or its complete destruction.

How far will the war go? In its extreme, maybe nuclear. In the streets of America, maybe our own ugly version of Kristallnacht.

Abraham and Ishmael could never have imagined how far their generations would become divided, culturally and spiritually. HaShem, the Lord God, knew. For us in this present day of uncertainty, we cannot see tomorrow. We can, however, sharpen our spiritual vision, again through the lens of scripture, trusting that “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.” (Eccl. 3:1)