ABSTRACT
During his retirement speech in Haarlem in 1940, Rabbi De Vries said:
From where does the strength, the inner salvation, come now? Brothers and sisters, it can only come from Judaism […] From our Jewish self-consciousness […] Jacob made a promise: “When God will be with me.” That when was not conditional but of time. It means that when the time will have come – and that time will come – that the Divine promises have been fulfilled, this stone (that Jacob used as a pillow) will be a house of God. That time has come indeed for Jacob, that is: for Israel […] This way that stone can be: the cornerstone of your inner strength, the basis of your balance, the bulwark of your resistance. 1
