Devarim 18: 15 "A prophet from your midst from your brothers, like me shall Hashem your G-d Establish for you to him you shall listen to."

This weeks Parsha is Parshat Shoftim speaks about prophets

"A prophet from your midst from your brothers, like me..." Moses told the people that Hashem would choose prophets from amongst them and not anywhere else. Furthermore according to Rashi this means that prophecy would be limited to Eretz Israel.

The parsha continues with a warning no to follow after falls prophets. When the people of Israel stop listening to real prophets and started listening to false once the gates of prophecy closed since became exiled.

Every single has the potential to reach the level of prophecy, but this is a level that is impossible in galut (exile) as we learned from the above verse. Even though this is true Hashem has left other way that he speaks to us, on of the mayor ones is Torah learning.

Any form of divine communication to know what God wants us to do next as partners in creation is very desirable.

There is another method to find out weather we are living our lives according to Torah. The mouth of our enemies, the nations will let us know i.e. Anti-Semitism. According to our Rabbi's anti-Semitism is a way for Hashem to speak to us and let us know we are in wrong path; A great Rabbi once said, "Anti-Semitism is the world’s way of telling the Jews we need more Torah.

Many people are sore to some of the topics discussing the suffering of so many Jews in the Holocaust.

However, many times its just to the ramifications of trying to understand the message, and what changes that would imply to our daily lives. When Anti-Semitism rises we need to pay attention to what the nations are saying about us, since they will tell us what is wrong with our actions.

One example is the Holocaust, after visiting different Holocaust museums including the famous Yad Vashem; and hearing the testimony of several Holocaust survivors.

There is one thing that strikes me as shocking; they all said the same thing

"No one believed that such a Highly Educated society could be possible of doing such a thing." Or "Everything was perfect we where at the top economic classes, many of even held office, nothing can explain the irrational amount of hate that was generated; it was all very quick."

The scary part of statements as those is that that we are in the same position today.

The Jewish people in America today are in a some what good economic situation, many hold office.

And even though that is the case instead of holding on to Torah we are assimilating at alarming rates; almost as if we learned nothing from the Holocaust. We dream and think that a Holocaust is impossible in America, but that is exactly what German Jews thought in Germany before the greatest massacre of Jews in the history took place.

Some will answer we can not know the why of the Holocaust now. However, we know that we have a righteous king, Hashem that Judges measure for measure so that we can learn from it. For a Jew to analyze why he is undergoing suffering or why he underwent suffering is part of being Jewish. Just like we can learn what the curse was from the blessing of bilam, so to can we learn from the curse that came instead.

The Answer is Obvious and found in our Torah, Hashem tells us that if we don’t hold on to his law and observe his commandments we will be exiled and forced to worship other idols of the nations, but even in exile we are given a commandment, "even there you shall seek me."

By Yosef Juarez