The Fossil That Refuses to Die

The biggest problem with the Jews is that their very existence in 2025 validates the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As the late British historian, Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975), often declared, “Jews are the fossils of history.” Jews actually vanished eons ago just like the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Hittites, he’d explain. The people we see today building skyscrapers in Tel Aviv, running financial empires in the City of London, and studying the Torah in Jerusalem’s academies are merely fossils of the long extinct people of Israel. Toynbee understood so very well that if you acknowledge that Jews actually do exist let alone thrive, you undermine western civilization’s secular view of reality. Since the venerable Toynbee was a fully paid-up member of the secular academic establishment, he had to get rid of the Jews. He didn’t have to join those physically committed to eliminating Jews, he just had to prove that they no longer actually exist.

For those less susceptible to academic and intellectual flim-flam, the Jews must be physically eliminated or else the absolute unthinkable–God is real! This is why the locus of Jew hatred in the west is the university campus committed, as it is, to a Godless worldview. The Islamic Jew hatred derives from Judaism and contemporary Islam being mutually incompatible. The Bible and the Koran fundamentally contradict one another.

It is in the Bible that God says:

And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you. (Genesis 12:3)

History will determine the wisdom of France and the United Kingdom exchanging their Jewish populations for Moslems. Meanwhile, the few Jews remaining in France and the U.K. continue to live with peaceful and profitable relationships among themselves and with respect to those among whom they live. A Moslem living among Jews is seldom, if ever, interfered with. Not the same can be said for a Jew living in Bradford or one of the banlieues of Lyon.

Although it makes them dangerously vulnerable to murderous hooligans, Torah observant Jews in hundreds of towns and cities around the world, have just ended a week spending parts of their days and nights out-of-doors in a fragile, temporary hut with branches for a roof that is called a sukkah. (Plural–sukkot)

For a seven-day period you shall live in sukkot…in order that your generations should know that I had the children of Israel live in sukkot when I took them out of the land of Egypt…(Leviticus 23:42–43)

The problem with this reasonably accurate translation is that there is no evidence in the Torah, that during their forty years in the desert they lived in anything other than tents.

For instance:

Balaam raised his eyes and saw Israel dwelling according to its tribes, and the spirit of God rested upon him (Numbers 24:2) ‘…. How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!’ (Numbers 24:5)

Here again we see living in tents:

Go say to them, ‘Return to your tents.’ (Deuteronomy 5:27)

Nowhere does the Torah relate the Children of Israel living in Sukkot during their journey from Egypt to Israel. But wait! Ancient Jewish wisdom establishes a really useful principle. The first time in Scripture that a Hebrew word appears is where you will find the paramount purpose of that word. Take the word, Sukkot for example. We assumed that it meant only the fragile huts of the festival known as Sukkot. However, here is the first time that word shows up–as a place name:

And Jacob traveled to Sukkot and built himself a house, and for his cattle he made booths; therefore he named the place Sukkot. (Genesis 33:17)

And that is not all. Here is another reference to a place named Sukkot:

The children of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Sukkot, about six hundred thousand on foot, the men, besides the young children. (Exodus 12:37)

With the help of ancient Jewish wisdom, we now have a clearer way of understanding these verses:

For a seven-day period you shall live in sukkot [fragile booths] …in order that your generations should know that I had the children of Israel live in Sukkot [Place name in Exodus 12:37] when I took them out of the land of Egypt… (Leviticus 23:42–43)

The word Sukkah or Sukkot (plural) has an auxiliary spiritual meaning–a place that launches people on their new beginnings. Naturally, having left Egypt after centuries of slavery, the Children of Israel need a launching pad to their new future. That was provided by their brief stay in the place, Sukkot.

Having survived the meeting with his estranged brother, Esau, Jacob is ready to launch his new life in the Promised Land so naturally he needs a brief sojourn in–Sukkot of course, as we see in Genesis 33:17.

And we, well we too must have our launching pad to a new year of new beginnings and thus we are told to spend seven days in a sukkah (Leviticus 23:42). This ability to make each year a new year of new beginnings is a colossal aid in our perpetual struggle for self-improvement. Spending a week in a sukkah, relishing the refreshment of a new beginning unencumbered by any possible tarnish from the past, launches us on our new year in the healthiest of ways. Can anything be a better fuel for a people’s endurance through the millennia than the vitality granted by new beginnings?

Enjoyed this article? Feel free to share it using this link: https://rabbidaniellapin.com/the-fossil-that-refuses-to-die/

---

---