The sedra opens with HaShem telling Avraham (then ‘Avram’) to Eretz C’naan and blessing him that ‘I will make you into a great nation…those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you, I shall curse’ (12;2-3).
In fact, this latter blessing of ‘those who bless you I shall bless and those who curse you I shall curse’ is quite evident and openly manifest over the course of history. The following is something I saw quoted from Professor Huston Smith’s ’The Religions of Man:’
“…Western civilization was born in the Middle East, and the Jews were at its crossroads. In the heyday of Rome, the Jews were close to the Empire’s centre. When power shifted eastward, the Jewish centre was in Babylon; when it skipped to Spain, there again were the Jews. When in the Middle Ages the centre of civilization moved into Central Europe, the Jews were waiting for it in Germany and Poland. The rise of the United States to the leading world power found Judaism focused there. And now, today, when the pendulum seems to be swinging back towards the Old Worldand the East rises to renewed importance, there again are the Jews in Israel…” And the converse is true also; when Jewish persecution under the Roman Empire rose, Rome began its permanent demise from centre stage. When, in 1000ce, Jewish life in Babylonia became unbearable and previous tolerance was ignored, Babylonia’s fall began. Spain too, initially welcomed the Jews, rose to a world power, and less than a century after the Jews’ 9th Av 1492 expulsion from Spain (the same day Columbus set sail to eventually discover America) Spain too had fallen into decay. Europe then became the power focus, and many Jews were scattered there, and after the holocaust – which was preceded by mass Jewish immigration predominantly to America, the USA is currently the world superpower.
“Those who bless you I will bless and those who curse you I will curse.”
