Yosef, who is at the center of this week's Torah portion, merited to be buried in Eretz Yisrael even though he spent most of his life in Egypt. Our Talmudic Sages attribute this to the fact that he never denied his origins while in a foreign land. The repeated reference of Potiphar's wife to him as "the Hebrew" indicated that he had made no effort to hide his Hebrew identify.

We unfortunately live in an age in which so many of our people wish to forget they are Jews in order to assimilate into gentile society. This tragedy is compounded when Jews who have the privilege of living in Eretz Yisrael cast aside the traditional values of Torah Judaism under the banner of "democracy" and pursue a post-Zionistic course of seeking to assimilate as a nation into the "family of nations".

Only by Jews proudly declaring and expressing their Jewish identity through Torah can we hope to secure Israel forever.

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