IS NEW YORK UNDER A CURSE? IF SO, WHY?

There are about 8,000,000 people living in New York City so we would expect there to be many relevant stories encoded about it in the Torah. The city occurs at an ELS 446 time in wrapped Torah (more than one computer pass through the 304,805 letters of Torah), but just 80 times in unwrapped Torah (one pass). Twice a word for CURSE appears in sequence before NEW YORK. Curiously, this word for CURSE (spelled alef lamed hey) is identical in spelling to a spelling of ALLAH. The first ELS of CURSE (or Allah) NEW YORK is shown on the matrix below. At the same skip is ATOMIC. WAR is in the open text. So is ISHMAEL and UTTERLY DESTROY THEM. The words TERROR and FLOOD are also found at an ELS. This article will look at whether New York is under a curse, and if so why. It will also look at New York's ultimate threat. I expect reaction to my views to be about as popular as Jeremiah's prophecy against Jerusalem before the First Temple fell, but (although God does not speak to me as he did with Jeremiah) as an American and as an Orthodox Jew, I feel it's my duty to point out where my country and my fellow Jews have gone astray, and what they should do to avoid the fate encoded.

The Perfect Storm and What It May Portend.  America has the greatest military in the world. But on 9-11-2001 it was defeated by Arabs carrying simple box cutter knives when they high jacked and then slammed the planes they were flying into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. On 9-11-2012 the same Al Qaida terrorist organization raided our consulate in Bengazi, Libya, slaughtering four Americans including our ambassador. Contrary to Obama Administration boasts about Al Qaida being broken and on the run, they are, if anything, growing.

       On 10-29-2012 something very curious occurred. An area of lower Manhattan that included the footprint Memorial of one of the fallen World Trade Center towers was inundated as were the subways and tunnels under and near it by a mere Category 1 hurricane, Sandy. I had already written on 10/28/2012 about the potential for this storm to strike New York like or as Act of God that might help sway the election. But what startled me as I watched the magnitude of destruction again in New York was that it was centered on and under the primary 9-11 site. It wasn’t just a Category 1 storm that had caused the disaster. Key to magnifying the storm’s fury (even as the 9-11 terrorists had magnified their crude knife weaponry into human-piloted bombs laden with jet fuel) were local geography with a double-barreled funneling of waters into lower Manhattan at a full moon (the exact right time to increase tides to the maximum), and arrival of the storm surge at the very instant of high tide, and the merging of the hurricane with a another storm and a jet stream that seemed designed to further amplify all other effects. If ever there was an Act of God, surely this was it. Three immediate questions that followed were: (1) Is this disaster in any way encoded beyond the 10/28/2012 matrix mentioned earlier? (2) Why would God allow this site to be hit twice? Finally, is there any other disaster encoded for New York here? 

(1) Is this disaster in any way encoded beyond the 10/28/2012 matrix mentioned earlier? The answer partially is given on the discussion below about the statistical significance of Figure 1. Figure 1 was highly significant, existing against odds of at least 29,077 to 1. However the word FLOOD was not statistically significant, and thus Figure 1 is of greatest interest in terms of the ongoing threat of Muslim extremism, the nuclear threat, and New York's ultimate fate unless decisive action is taken on a number of fronts.

(2) Why would God allow this site to be hit twice, and threaten it with more? This is a dangerous question to attempt to answer. It's akin to asking why God would allow the Holocaust to happen, and why good people often suffer horrible fates. In all honesty, only a prophet could  provide real insight here into the mind of God. Even prophets have a hard time with this question. Abraham argued repeatedly with God to refrain from destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, reminding him of the possbility that the righteous would be swept away with the wicked (Genesis 18:23-32). Likewise Moses told God to blot him out of His Book (Torah) if God annilihilated the Israelites because of our sin with the golden calf (Exodus 32:9-14 and Exodus 32:32).

       I'm not a prophet, but I will risk the wrath of my readers and speculate. To do so, I'll start with a look at the demographics of New York. In particular, I'll start with looking at the Jewish population, which (surprisingly) is rapidly being transformed from a Democratic bastion to an ultra-Orthodox Republican constituency. See the article about this in HaAretz. A hint of this transformation was seen when former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner's seat went Republican in 2011. 

     Of the eight million New Yorkers, about 1.54 million were Jewish in 2011. That's down from about 2.5 million in the 1950s. Did the missing million move to Israel? For the most part, no. Wikipedia cites low fertility rates and the movement of many Jews to Florida and California. I've always said that God didn't split the sea to lead us Jews to Miami Beach (or New York, but my wife and I live in Florida. Is God angry us for it? If He is, I hope he remembers that we lost about $120,000 in two unsuccessful attempts to move to Israel in 1992 and 2007. Both moves failed (in part) as a result of Israeli builders who failed to finish the homes we put down much money for, and as a result of Israeli bureaucrats who made unfulfilled promises. There were also problems with the education system for our son in 2007. In the U.S. he went on to earn a B.S. in space physics while he was only 18 years old, but in Israel he would have had no such opportunity, and in fact he would have been put back by almost a decade because he didn't speak Hebrew - and he would have faced the draft at the age of 18.

       These above points are, of course, excuses. Israel needs every Jew it can get, and most who move there adjust (and proudly serve in the Israel Defense Force), though it is far easier to do so if coming from a Third World nation than if coming from America. One study showed that two out of every three Jews attempting to move from America in the end return to America. The language barrier is tough, but it would be much easier if there were far more Jews there from America (especially New York) to help each other. However here I must call attention to the issue of how Jews live in America, and especially in New York. Do we fulfill our role of being a Light Unto the Nations or Gentiles (Isaiah 42:6) in the U.S.? I don't think so. We are supposed to preach that for the Gentiles only the 7 Precepts of Noah are required to obtain salvation. I never met a Gentile who had heard of them before from the Jews, though I'm aware (largely due to Vendyl Jones - also see my article about his research) there are about 10,000 of them out there somewhere that have heard it. Such people are not required to be circumcised nor to comply with the whole of the Torah. They are bound only to conform to the seven precepts of Noah, the Noahide Laws: do not worship idols, do not blaspheme God's name, do not murder, do not commit immoral sexual acts, do not steal, do not tear the limb from a living animal, and do not fail to establish courts of justice to be assured of a place in the world to come.

       Before looking at how New York Jews are rapidly becoming Orthodox (and Republican) because of the birth rate, with two out of every three Jewish births there occurring in Orthodox families, I though that perhaps God might be angry with New York because if all the liberal Jews that helped make Obama president in 2008. Obviously, a president that favors homosexual marriage is not a president that wants to see Torah or Noahide (or Christian) morality exercised. But this liberal complexion of the Jewish community there is changing, even if it is not in Florida where I live, or elsewhere in America. The only criticism that I can level at the Orthodox community is that some of it is anti-Zionist. If you can stand it, you can watch a meeting between Orthodox rabbis and Iran's Ahmadinejad here. But why would they do that?

       The answer to the question just asked is that many ultra-Orthodox don't recognize Israel because Jews believe that the Messiah has not yet come, and restoration of Israel (under the Torah as its constitution) is the job of the Messiah. This they argue that any Israel established by secular Zionists is counterfeit. This touches on a larger Jewish problem. Although the word Messiah is derived from the Hebrew word for Anointed (Moshiach), the Jews have done a miserable job of telling the world what the expectations of the Messiah are. First among these demands is the success of the man in question to end war on Earth permanently. In fact, the Reform Jews don't believe in a Messiah at all, Conservatives may mouth the word, but really don't care about him, while the Orthodox pretty much keep their expecations to themselves. If you are wondering about Jews for Jesus, they are not Jews (any more, if they ever were - meaning that they were born to a Jewish mother). Someone who believes in Christ (having come before) is by definition a Christian. Now, among the Jews who were in the past thought of as Orthodox, many of those in Chabad wing of the religion (Chabad) are on their way out of Judaism by insisting that a dead rabbi (Menachem Mendel Schneerson) is the Messiah. Again, their already is a religion that believes a deceased rabbi is the Messiah - Christianity. Chabad seems to be replicating that faith with Schneerson the new Nazarene.

       Most Orthodox Jews and religious Christians can probably see why God might be angry with Chabad's line of thought, but, of course, there is more to New York than the Jews there. It is likely that more than 95% of the black population will vote for Obama without regard to his ideology about gay marriage, seeing no issue more important than common skin color. But beyond issues of who is (and who is not) the Messiah, or what people believe about gay marriage, New York is the seat of the United Nations. It is the annual site of Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitic rants, and the safe gathering place of all Muslim states who want to see the destruction of America and Israel. If God allows Muslims to destroy New York, it will likely be in part because Muslims are allowed to use that city to plot our destruction.  This brings us to the third big question in conjunction with Figure 1:

(3) Is there any other disaster encoded for New York here? Obviously, we see the words ATOMIC and WAR are on the matrix. But this is not the best matrix for the threat (although it is the only one that I've found so far that singles out New York). The three matrices that are most significant are as follows:

(A) ATOMIC IRAN.

(B) ATOMIC HOLOCAUST AND IRAN, and

(C) WORLD WAR

      There's an old cliche'. God helps those who help themselves. President Obama has failed to stop Iran from moving its nuclear weapons program so far underground that even American bombers can't reach it without using nuclear weapons. Whether, in the end, it's an Iran or Pakistani nuclear bomb that may be used against New York, New York City helped to get Obama elected in at least 2008. In that year 63% of New York state voted for Obama, despite his association for 20 years with Reverend Wright who declared, "God damn America." In Manhattan Obama received 85.5% to McCain's 10.9%. The Bronx went for Obama by 88.7%, Kings County (Brooklyn) by 79.4%, Queens 75.1%, and Nassau County by 53.8%. Only Staten Island went for McCain  (by 51.7%).  So, when we look at all the grief that has come so far to Manahattan, and to what might follow, we should ask "Do New Yorkers support a man who seeks to bless it, or damn it as part of America?" 

STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MATRIX. STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MATRICES. As per my standard protocol, no statistical significance is assigned to the axis term, here CURSE (or ALLAH) NEW YORK at its lowest skip (28,577) in (wrapped) Torah.  There were many Hebrew words to choose from for the word CURSE, but this one (by chance?) also is one of two possible Hebrew spellings for ALLAH. It can be certain that when the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in 2001 they used this as part of their chant, "Allahu akbar," meaning "God is Great." Since Westerners and others often find themselves being murdered with during chant, the perceived message to their victims is really that the Muslim god is a curse to everyone else (even members of other Muslim sects). So this is a particularly well suited term to seek before NEW YORK. As is shown by the Muslim propaganda image on Figure 1 with Bin Laden on it, a goal of Al Qaeda is to acquire an atomic bomb for use against New York. As such, the first a-priori word to look for is ATOMIC. The term is on the matrix at the same exact skip as CURSE or ALLAH) NEW YORK. This normally qualifies it as being at a special case skip (+/-1 or the skip of the axis term); however in this case in order to see ATOMIC we must first employ a row skip of 4. When I do this, I do not treat it as a special case skip, but simply as an ELS that must be evaluated in accordance with the Roffman Skip Formula and Tables. As such, I find that ATOMIC had about 1 chance in 33 to be on the matrix. Had I used the special case skip rule and just checked for frequency of the term at skips +/1 and +/-28,557; then it would be argued that the term appeared this way on the matrix against odds of about 243 to 1.

       The next most significant term was ISHMAEL (who is central to the history of Islam) in the open text. He was found against odds of about 15.7 to 1. After ISHMAEL the next most significant term was WAR in the open text. It is there against odds of about 14 to 1. ISHMAEL and WAR were both found a-priori, but the phrase UTTERLY DESTROY THEM was only found after the fact (a-posteriori) and, while certainly describing an atomic attack, it can't be used for a probability calculation by me because I did not think of this specific phrase before the experiment. The two remaining a-priori terms (TERROR and FLOOD) are of low or no real significance. TERROR (here a transliteration of the English word) had about 1 chance in 4 to be on the matrix, while FLOOD was virtually certain to be there. Without treating ATOMIC as a special case skip, the matrix was found against odds of about 29,077 to 1. If I had used the special case frequency of ATOMIC (2 hits vs. 15 hits with the Roffman Skip Formula) then the odds against the matrix would be altered to about 215,193 to 1.