A major earthquake hit the Turkey-Syria border region on Monday and was felt also in Israel. A phenomenon occurring in the region for millennia, earthquakes are widely discussed in the Bible and other Jewish sources. Jewish tradition has much to say about earthquakes as a sign of God’s interaction with the earth. Earthquakes are prophesied to accompany the end-of-days. Earthquakes and volcanoes are explicitly mentioned by the prophets as playing a role in the end of days, preparing the world by burning away impurities as a crucible is used in metallurgy to purify metal. As terrifying as earthquakes can be, there may be a silver lining to an increase in regional seismic activity. In a 2007 article in the J-Post, Dr. Shmuel Marco, Head of the School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Tel Aviv University, noted that prophets became active a certain number of years after major earthquakes. Major earthquakes were recorded in the Jordan Valley in the years 31 BCE, 363 CE, 749 CE, and 1033 CE… (READ MORE)

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