Mighty Greece, indomitable Rome, the fearless Mongols, and more recently, the iron-fisted U.S.S.R., all played their roles upon the stage of history.  Sooner or later, however, each one stepped down and faded into the past.  It is an axiom of history: Just as men inevitably pass away, so do nations fade and die out, making room for the next generation.

Only one nation has not surrendered its place in the theater of history: the People of Israel.  The Jews have not been replaced, removed, or reduced to nothingness.  Even more remarkable, no other nation has accumulated such a roster of enemies who attempted to destroy it. 

Amazingly, the Jewish nation has not disappeared under the heels of those who tried again and again to trample it to dust.  It is still proudly at its post, boldly engraving its name on every stage of the history of mankind.  Unlike ancient nations, the Jewish People refuses to die. 

What is more, it cannot die; by its very nature, it is immortal.

A historical enigma, the People of Israel have defied the rules of history for nearly two thousand years.  They continue to do so even today, in the 21st century.  Hundreds of philosophers, historians, and researchers have investigated the mystery of Jewish survival, but not one of them has come up with a rational explanation of this enigma. 

Review the pages of history, scan the records of time.  Is there another people, so few in number, so cruelly persecuted, yet so vibrantly alive long after its enemies have faded into the past?  History has known a myriad of nations, states, and ethnic groups that achieved distinction; but which of them endured over a span of four thousand years?    

Native tribes in distant corners of the earth survived, but only so long as civilization left them untouched.  When history brought them into contact with more highly developed civilizations, they crumpled and disappeared.  What remains of the Incas and the Aztecs today? 

In the days of the Persian Empire, Xerxes’ prime minister, Haman, attempted to exterminate the Jewish nation, but failed.  Who remembers his name today?  But who has not heard of the Jews? 

The mighty empires of Persia, Greece and Rome have moldered into extinction, but the Jewish nation, tormented in its exile, with no land of its own, no political body to represent it, and no sovereignty of its own, survived. Even today it defies the axioms of history by the very fact of its existence.

Despite dispersion, despite exposure to the myriad cultures of its hosts, despite repeated attempts to annihilate it, despite even the Holocaust, the Jewish People continues to live, breathe, flourish and grow.