Of Past and Future

13 Nisan 5776

When I saw the date on the calendar today - April 21st - I immediately flashed back to my childhood. It's San Jacinto Day, I thought. When I was young, this day was a state holiday. Schools and banks were closed. Even as late as high school, I marched with the drill team in a parade marking the occasion, sidestepping the horse droppings like eveyone else on foot. 

San Jacinto Day is Texas Independence Day - the day the despicable Mexican General Santa Anna surrendered to General Sam Houston at the site of what today is still known as the San Jacinto Battlegrounds and is marked by the 567 ft tall San Jacinto Monument.

I remember when I was six and my daddy first asked me if I wanted to go to the monument. I didn't understand the word. The closest thing I could think of was peppermint and there was an amusement park we used to go to called Peppermint Park, so I thought it must be something good and I agreed. Boy, was I surprised when we went into this strange looking building and took an elevator all the way to the top. It was like being a bird gazing down from so high and I remember being impressed most by how everything looked so small when seen from above - you could really understand how everything fit together.

Those were the days before the complete take-over by the globalists who have since erased the differences between the states the same way they erased the differences between the European countries. Or at least they've tried by eliminating all outward signs of separateness. When I was growing up, loyalty to my state was held above loyalty to the country. And I was the fifth generation of people who had immigrated not to the United States, but to the Republic of Texas - before it became the 28th state in the union from which it seceded only sixteen years later. I renounced my US citizenship seventeen years ago, but once a Texan, always a Texan.

My mama was born in Houston. I was born in Houston. And all my children were born in Houston. But, the last time I saw it, it was unrecognizable from the city I grew up in. I'm not sure there is anyone left there who doesn't speak Spanish. There was this movement called Azatlan that advocated "Reconquista" - the reconquering of the American southwest, including Texas, for Mexico. Maybe they won, but now Mexico is part of the North American Union, so....

Speaking of Houston, Texas. We had rain floods when I was a  kid, but nothing on the scale that has been seen in this century. Apparently there was a really bad flood in 2001 that they called a 1,000 year flood at the time. Then, they had another historic flood last May that really adversely affected the growing Jewish community there and then another one this week.

Houston Jewish Community Is Flooded Again

JNS.org – Just 11 months after a massive Memorial Day flood damaged about 500 Jewish homes (among more than 2,500 homes overall) and three synagogues in my current home city of Houston, what seems to me to be a flood of equal or greater magnitude on Monday wreaked renewed havoc on the Houston Jewish neighborhoods of Meyerland and Willow Meadows.

For scores of Jewish and other families in America’s fourth-largest city who are still rebuilding their homes after last year’s flood, today’s deluge likely means the devastating scenario of restarting that process from square one. The Jewish Federation of Greater Houston had already projected an 18-month recovery timetable, with a price tag of $3.5 million, for the local Jewish community’s individual flood victims and institutions following the May 2015 flood. Initial indications are that the congregation I belong to, United Orthodox Synagogues of Houston, was hit even harder than it was last year — when damages to the synagogue facility exceeded $1 million. While I won’t often make opinionated statements in my writing, I can say with confidence that Houston’s Jewish community and all of Houston’s flooded neighborhoods are worthy of your thoughts and prayers.

Take it from someone who knows, there is no future for Jews in Houston. They can keep rebuilding, but Hashem will continue to wash it away. The exile is ending and those who resist will in the end be worn out from their efforts to remain. Be smart and read the handwriting on the wall. Israel - and only Israel - is both our past and our future.