What's going on with Greece?

Today 20,000 protested in Greek's second-largest city, Thessaloniki, in anticipating of the government's announcement of additional austerity measures to avoid a default on the country's debt. Markets plunged on Friday at the prospect of a Greek default, a move that would deal a sharp blow to the European banking sector as a whole.

On a positive note, last week Greece's foreign minister Panos Beglitis was in Jerusalem to sign a security cooperation agreement with Israel, on the background of deteriorating relations between Israel and Greece's neighbor, Turkey. Greece also voiced its support of Cyprus' freedom to conduct business with Israel in the Mediterranean last week, in response to Turkish threats on the island country.

Perhaps also related to strengthening ties between Athens and Jerusalem, a new law passed in Greece last week grants citizenship to Greek Jewish refugees from World War II.

Flotilla activists take over Spanish embassy in Athens

The Acropolis of Athens. Beis HaMikdash, anyone?

In keeping with international law, Greece has banned all ships from the Gaza-bound flotilla from leaving its ports. In response, twenty-one Spanish activists from the Gernica ship took over the Spanish embassy in Athens on Tuesday.

An article covering the incident mentions that the Spanish embassy is located across from the Acropolis, an archeological site holding ancient temples built for the various Greek gods. Greece may be warming up to Israel (who knows why), but there's a long cheshbon between the Jewish people and Greek civilization, most of which takes place in the realm of ideas. Whereas Jewish thinkers such as the Rambam elevated many elements of Greek philosophy, the effect of the clash between philosophy and the true, simple faith of a Jew is a force with which our people have wrestled for centuries, and which lasts until today.

With the help of Gimmel Tammuz, the Jewish people will be freed from all foreign influences, and will elevate the philosophies of all peoples to their true source - Hashem, the One, all-powerful God who is One with His creation. The fact that the Rebbe instituted the daily study of the Rambam demonstrates Chabad's unique ability to unite mind and heart in the service of Hashem.

Beis HaMikdash, in contrast with the Acropolis of Athens (lehavdil elef havdalot), will be a House for all People and a dwelling-place for the One true God of Israel on earth, from which blessing will flow to the Jewish people and through them to the entire world. May it be built speedily in our days.

A freilichen Gimmel Tammuz to all!

The onset of the Birthpangs of Mashiach, circa 1495

A key milestone in our people's reflection on the relationship between the reality at hand and the redemption described and promised by the Prophets was a comment made by Rabbi Yosef Shaltiel the end of the kabbalistic text Sefer HaPliah ('The Book of Wonder'), a book he wrote in double exile from the Island of Rhodes. In the year 1495, equivalent to 5255, or resh nun heh on the Jewish calendar, the penultimate year he ascribes to the great tragedy of the Spanish Inquisition to European Jewry, he writes the following:

I think that the tragedy faced by the Jews in all kingdoms of Edom from the year resh nun of the sixth millennium through the year resh nun heh are a time of trouble for Jacob, out of which he will be saved, these are the birthpangs of Mashiach.

According to the modern scholar of Judaism Gershom Scholem, Shaltiel's and others' reflection on the catastrophe of the Spanish Inquisition marked the beginning of interpreting reality as a prism for chevlei mashiach - the catastrophe out of which a new era will be born. Which can only mean one thing...there is one very large baby on the other end of this 516-year-long labor.

Check this out: Ditch your calculator and try adding 516 to 1495 on paper. Could there be any more 1's? Maybe that's why Hashem loves the number [20]11.

Also, the number of years between when Rabbi Shaltiel announced the beginning of chevlei mashiach in Sefer HaPliah and today is the numerical equivalent of the Hebrew word תיקו, which means [it's a] 'tie' in Talmudic discourse. According to prophecy Mashiach is destined to resolve all of the instances of a Talmudic tie and ascertain truth where it has been split in two.

The God-given destiny of the Jewish people is to turn darkness into light by revealing the unity behind creation. What is the meaning of the verse a time of trouble for Jacob, out of which he will be saved? From the trouble itself the salvation is churned and born. Enduring narrow straits produces a light so bright that it eclipses the darkness, stage after stage, until all darkness has been revealed --through what may be felt as great duress -- as condensed light.

For what better time for the light of moon to shine as bright as the sun than on the background of the darkest night of the year?

All that remains is to say 

ad masai 

until - when

as if your these were the lyrics with which your heart beats

kind of like 

when you call a travel agent in Eretz Yisrael, 

and after you tell them when you want to depart, they respond,

ad matai?