                       A Prophet in Our Time
                       by Gershon Ben Shabtai
                         September 12, 1991
                                  
       There are many who are upset to hear the ranting of an anti-semitic black professor, and
still others who gasp at the outrageous use of a traffic accident as a justification to launch pogroms in
Crown Heights.  In his book, "The Story of the Jewish Defense League", Rabbi Kahane warned about
such events, and more:
       "I realize that the thought is a staggering one. There are those who will simply reject it out
of hand as too fantastic to even consider happening in the democratic United States.  There are others
who will look upon it as the product of paranoia and irrational fear. . .  But, despite all this, I repeat
again: We are beholding the beginnings of an era that can culminate in the kind of holocaust that we
witnessed barely over a quarter-
century ago. . . 
       We do not wish to believe that a terrible Jew-hatred is growing in the United States to an
alarming degree and that the possibility of another holocaust exists. . .
       The United States is no longer the golden land that it has been for many decades, and
tomorrow looms as even less golden than today. . .
       America is today a troubled land, torn by racial passions and hatreds.  We find white pitted
against black. . . and tension and fighting between races in the schools and the armed forces. .   And who will be blamed for all this if not the Jew, whose presence in the civil rights
movement was so prominent?
       . . .Demagogues haters, and fascists are to be found in the United States in abundance. . . 
They speak openly of gas chambers and of eliminating Jews.  They mean it and no one knows if they
can really be stopped if the conditions for them are ripe. . .
       Why should we gamble once again?  Why should we chance our lives in Galut?  Is America
so different? . . . What happened before can happen again and, indeed, is beginning to happen already. 
The answer, the urgent answer, is to evacuate the American Jew and bring him home. . . 
       Is there a Zionist who does not recognize that the United States with all its past goodness
to us is also Galut-Exile and that there were other "golden exiles" in the past that turned into horrors
for Jews?  What are we doing sitting in the fleshpot of America?  What are you as Zionists doing
about immediate plans for permanent aliyah? . .
       It is not a peculiarly American problem.  It is indigenous to affluent and 'healthy' Jews in
every 'New Paradise' on earth.  I once met a Jew from Montreal.  He was a survivor of Auschwitz
who had gone through seven circles of hell.  In Montreal he had become very wealthy.  Suddenly the
French separatist movement threatened his economic future if not his physical safety.  He told me he
was thinking of moving.  I looked at this survivor of the gentile hell in Europe and the budding victim
of its fury in Montreal and asked him where he contemplated going.
       'Toronto,' was the answer.  And after that Vancouver, no doubt, and after that Australia. 
Any place but not the one logical sane place.  Home.  Eretz Yisrael.  Israel. . .
       A final word on the Exile, for those who have little or no knowledge of Judaism and for
those who think they have a great deal.  The Exile is more than a curse; it is a desecration of G-d's
Name. . .chilul HaShem. . .
       This is what the L-rd meant when he told the prophet Ezekiel (36:20): 'And when they
(Israel) entered into the nations, whither they went, they profaned my holy name. . .'
       The very presence of the Jew in exile. . . is desecration.  . . .  This is why the creation of the
State of Israel is . .  . sanctification.
       And this the Jew cannot understand, not the assimilator and not the vast majority of the so-called religious.  Both remain side by side, desecrating G-d's Name in the American fleshpot, waiting--
not even knowing that they are waiting-- but waiting, nevertheless.
Waiting for the holocaust. . .                                                                