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Holding on to Your Name
 
The whole story of our exile in Exodus is called Shemos, 'Names'. In order to go into exile and come out alive, you've got to hold on to your name. The name is something so deep; very, very deep...
What keeps us going in exile? What's the whole thing about exile? The whole world wants to tear us away from the Land God gave to us. How come Israel is called Eretz Yisrael? (The Land of Israel) Because  this is mamesh our name. The connection between me and Israel is not like the connection between me and even Shabbos. Shabbos is only once a week. My connection to Eretz Yisrael is even deeper than Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur. You know something even stronger? It's even deeper than the Torah because the Torah - sometimes I'm learning, sometimes I'm not learning. The holiness of Israel is it's so much connected to my name. It's on that level of Divrei Torah. 
 
And what happens to us in exile? The whole world wants to tear us away from that holy name. You know friends, there is tremendous evil going on in the world. Tremendous evil. 
 
Right now evil is concentrating more than ever before Mashiach is coming. The Baal Shem Tov says, that by the last battle, evil wants mamesh really to tear us out once and for all. So first physically they want to tear us out. And now the new thing is that the world doesn't talk against Jews, they talk against Zionists. They cover it up. Or they come to you and say listen, you can go to here, you can be this, you can do that, you can belong to all other religions and you're still a Jew. They're covering up everything. You know what they mean? They want to tear out your name. 
 Tearing out our names. Tearing out that Divrei Torah. And then they say to us Jews, 'Listen, we have nothing against your religion, you just shouldn't live in Israel because Israel belongs to the Arabs.' Things like that.
 
Everything has to do with the name. At this moment the concentration is on the name, on the name, gevalt. And they say Israel's name is not Israel, it's Palestine. That's the whole thing. They want to tear out the name from the Holy Land. Everything is against the name. So right now how do you get over this? Everyone has to get for himself - my weapon is Divrei Torah ( Words of Torah) on the level of a name. You have to mamesh dig so deep and find holy words which are mamesh on the level of your name.
 
Maybe that's the profound meaning of Anti-Semitism. Anti shem... Against the name.

Good Shabbos!
Am Yisrael Chai