Jews Awaiting the Redemption davka in JERUSALEM
Via Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:
Soon after Napoleon’s campaign, the French historian Chateaubriand visited Jerusalem. There he found a tiny Jewish community whose persistence filled him with awe. Speaking of the Jewish settlement, he wrote:
It has seen Jerusalem destroyed seventeen times, yet there exists nothing in the world which can discourage it or prevent it from raising its eyes to Zion. He who beholds the Jews dispersed over the face of the earth, in keeping with the Word of God, lingers and marvels. But he will be struck with amazement, as at a miracle, who finds them still in Jerusalem and perceives even, who in law and justice are the masters of Judea, to exist as slaves and strangers in their own land; how despite all abuses they await the king who is to deliver them . . . If there is anything among the nations of the world marked with the stamp of the miraculous, this, in our opinion, is that miracle.
R. Mahler, A History of Modern Jewry 1780-1815, 621.