In 1947, thirty-three nations voted at the United Nations to create the State of Israel. Today, that same institution votes to condemn Israel more than every other country on earth combined.
In 2024 alone, the UN General Assembly passed seventeen resolutions against Israel — and only seven against the entire rest of the world. Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy, stands perpetually in the dock, isolated, cast out from the family of nations, forced to justify its existence before a body that helped bring it into being.
It raises an obvious question — and a less obvious one. The obvious question is why. The less obvious question is this: what does it look like when a person chooses to do the opposite? When a country, or a person, turns toward Israel instead of away from it?
The reading from the Prophets that accompanies the Torah portion of Tazria tells the story of a gentile who began as an enemy of Israel and ended declaring its God as the only God in all the earth.
Naaman was the commanding general of the Aramean army. By every worldly measure, he was at the top of his world — powerful, celebrated, trusted by his king, victorious in battle. Aram was Israel’s enemy, and Naaman was Aram’s finest soldier. He had no obvious reason to think about Israel at all.
Except that Naaman had tzaraat.
The skin condition described throughout the Torah portions of Tazria and Metzora was not merely a medical problem. The rabbis understood it as a spiritual affliction, a signal that something needed to change. For Naaman, the most powerful man in the room, something very much needed to change.
Among the servants in Naaman’s household was a young Jewish girl — taken captive in an Aramean raid against Israel. She told her mistress that there was a prophet in Samaria who could heal Naaman.
Naaman arrived in Israel with a retinue worthy of his status — silver, gold, ten changes of clothing, a letter from the king of Aram to the king of Israel. He was accustomed to being received. What he got instead was a message delivered through a servant: go dip in the Jordan River seven times.
That was it. No ceremony. The prophet Elisha did not even come to the door.
Naaman was furious.
He had traveled all this way, and this was the reception? This was the advice? He turned to leave.
What saved him was the quiet voice of his own servants. They reasoned with him simply: if the prophet had asked something difficult of you, would you not have done it? Why not try something easy? Naaman listened. He went down to the Jordan and dipped seven times. When he came up the seventh time, his skin was restored like the skin of a young child.
Standing on the banks of the river, his pride finally behind him, Naaman said words that ring across three thousand years:
An enemy general, a man who had spent his career fighting against Israel, spoke those words standing before the Jewish prophet who had not even come to the door to greet him when he arrived. It was precisely his willingness to set aside his assumptions, cross the border, and humble himself that transformed him — not just physically but spiritually. The Sages were so moved by this moment that they ranked Naaman’s declaration of faith above even that of Jethro, Moshe’s own father-in-law. He came to Israel sick, swallowed his pride, and went home transformed — carrying two mule-loads of Israelite soil so he could worship the God of Israel on Israelite earth even in his own country.
The Torah portions of Tazria and Metzora describe the process by which a person moves from impurity to purity, from isolation to restoration, from being cut off to being brought back in. Naaman’s journey follows exactly that arc — from affliction, through humility, to wholeness. And the road ran straight through Israel.
In his book Universal Zionism, Rabbi Tuly Weisz describes how this pattern — the individual from the nations who recognizes God’s hand in Israel and draws near — appears throughout the entire Bible. Jethro heard about the Exodus and came to Moses. Rahab sheltered Joshua’s spies. Ruth clung to Naomi and walked into history. King Hiram supplied cedar for Solomon’s Temple. Cyrus the Great freed the Jewish exiles from Babylon and sent them home. Each of them made the same essential choice that Naaman made on the banks of the Jordan.
For most of history, these figures were the exception. The nations, as a whole, remained hostile or indifferent. But something has shifted dramatically in our generation. Millions of Christians worldwide now stand openly with Israel and the Jewish people — not despite their faith but because of it. They read the same Bible. They recognize the same God. And they are choosing, as Naaman chose, to move toward Israel rather than away from it.
The prophet Zechariah saw this moment coming. He described a future in which “ten men from every language of the nations shall take hold of the cloak of a Jew, saying: ‘We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you'” (Zechariah 8:23). What once described a distant messianic dream is becoming, in our time, a description of reality.
Those who stand with Israel are writing themselves into God’s story — the same story Naaman stepped into when he finally walked down to the river.
