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How can we
beat Antisemitism
It was never
supposed to happen again! But here it is – happening everywhere! For
years the festering cancer of Jew-hatred has been growing and spreading,
but most were too politically correct even to pay attention, let alone
discuss it, until the shots rang out in Pittsburg, then again in Poway
and then in Jersey City, and then the Hanukkah stabbings in Monsey, not
to speak of the now daily and mostly unreported assaults on Jews in
Brooklyn, New York and other Jewish centers. And not to speak about the hatred,
attacks and literal pogroms against Jews and Israelis – one and the same
tribe – now being witnessed across the whole of Europe, the Moslem world
as well and elsewhere.
If Jews in
America have been profoundly shaken by the latest outrages in the land
that was to be the bastion of freedom from religious persecution, this
testifies to a massive failure on the part of the established Jewish
community institutions – the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and many others
– whose very mission was to guard against any resurgence of the ancient
evil cancer that attacked satanically in the Holocaust. All the Holocaust
education, speeches, conferences, memorials, museums and all the rest
have done nothing to diminish Jew-hatred or instill even the least
contrition in today’s propagators and perpetrators of this scourge,
whether among the “white supremacists”, the “Nation of Islam”, the
“Moslem Brotherhood”, Iran’s “Revolutionary Guards”, etc. etc.
Living in the
Past
The
self-appointed guardians of America’s Jewish communities were asleep to
what has been developing. This is because they were living in the past
and searched only for signs of some resurgence of Nazism as was, while
ignoring and papering over contemporary Jew-hatred in all kinds of other
guises – in major Christian denominations, among sectors of the black and
other ethnic groups, and particularly among the swelling numbers of
Moslems who have moved to most parts of the U.S. in recent times. Those
“guardians” were not paying attention to the rhetoric of radical Moslem
infiltrators into campuses across the country or to that of the left-wing
academics who now dominate most colleges and even schools.
Those
“guardians” preferred to see the unceasing terror attacks and Jew hatred
in the “Middle East” as Israel’s regional problem. Major American Jewish
organizations implicitly blamed Israel for Arab aggression and terror,
consistently supporting their stance that Israel must trade “land for
peace”. This was in spite of the obvious fact that the “Peace Process”
which began in Oslo in 1993 has led to nothing but a nightmare of terror
and barrages of missiles from Lebanon and Gaza aimed against Tel Aviv,
Haifa and other Israeli targets with the ever-present threat of
simultaneous Arab uprisings across Israel and in what Jewish “liberals”
continue to call “the occupied territories”, i.e. the ancestral heartland
of the Land of Israel. The liberal assimilated Jewish conscience could
never grasp that the 1993 Clinton-Arafat-Rabin handshakes in Washington
merely sealed the end-times pact of the Ox and the Donkey, Edom and
Ishmael, against little Jacob.
Likewise, the
American Jewish “liberals” have felt unable to raise all the obvious
concerns about the massive influx of Moslems into Europe and America etc.
because they think to themselves: “Were not our parents and grand-parents
immigrants to this land? How can we as successful, assimilated Americans
do anything but welcome more immigrants (particularly if they provide
cheap labor)?” These “liberals” forget, of course, that their immigrant
forebears had fled their countries of origin on account of unremitting
and unending Jew-persecution, and when they arrived in America, they
received absolutely no welfare or other assistance. They sought refuge in
a country whose proud boast was to guarantee religious freedom, while
many of the present-day immigrants have no intention of accepting the
norms and ideals of Big Satan America but rather seek to impose their own
constricting religious law on all America, under which the Jewish
liberals are to convert or be wiped out as heretics.
The root of
the contemporary Jewish “liberal conscience” lies in its being a
modern-dress incarnation of the mind-set of the classic Golus-Jew of the
exile, who in a vain quest for security in face of the volatile Goyim all
around, felt compelled (except for Mordechai) to bow down and fawn to
them. Humiliated by generations of crushing degradation, the wavering Jew
questioned his own antiquated, seemingly decrepit tradition while
embracing every fad of the nations. In contemporary terms this translates
into the Jewish liberal championship of every “humanitarian” cause
(except for the endemic Jew- and Israel-hatred across the world). Jews
are conspicuous supporters of gays, gender fluidity, sex change,
alternative life-style, freely available legal abortion, confiscation of
citizens’ arms, abolition of the Second Amendment, Black Lives Matter,
BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel’s purported
oppression of the “Palestinians”, etc. etc.
The liberal
solution to the Jewish conscience
Deep down in
the heart and soul of the “liberal” Jew is an unacknowledged, guilty
awareness of the heavy obligations of the Torah of his ancestors. But he
seeks to cast them from himself forever because they are inconvenient and
contradict his secular life-style choices, his appetites and pleasures.
In order to justify his freedom to do as he pleases, his conscience
compels him to stand up for everyone else’s freedom and license to do
what they please. He soothes any residual pangs of conscience by casting
himself as the champion of all just causes (except that of his own
people) and tolerance for all – even for the grossly intolerant.
Similarly, in
Israel, the secular elite, who love nothing more than to jet all over the
world, desperately feel the need to be accepted by the nations through
showing we are no different. This is particularly damaging in the case of
the country’s Supreme Court judges, Attorney General and legal mafia, who
go out of their way to contrive favorable rulings for terrorists and
other enemies of Jews and Israel, while consistently ruling against
heroic Israeli soldiers, Jewish settlers and the Torah observant sectors
of society. The simple reason is that the Israeli legal establishment
crave to be accepted as “woke” by the post-modern, fantasy-ridden jurists
of the international courts of “Justice” and “Human Rights” in
Strasbourg, the Hague, etc.
While Tel Aviv
boasts itself to be the gay capital of the Middle East and the rainbow
parade is now an annual curse on the streets of the Holy City of
Jerusalem, the Israeli army prides itself on being the most ethical army
in the world. Indeed, it is! But in this case, the army elite do not come
near to other “civilized” nations, who kill, wound and destroy their
enemies without conscience (as in the bombings of Dresden and Vietnam and
countless other atrocities until today). Israeli army “rules of
engagement” are so ethical that officers frequently endanger the lives of
their own soldiers in action in order to protect Arab civilians harboring
ruthless terrorists in their midst. They thus follow in the tracks of
King Saul, who was so over-righteous that contrary to G-d’s explicit
command, he took pity on the captured king of the Amalekite nation who
sought to annihilate Israel. Did the Amalekites thank him? Not only did
Saul lose the kingship; he let the Jew-hatred cancer fester forever.
Decades of
failure by successive Israeli governments to give adequate protection to
its citizens from terror and to destroy the cancer at its roots have led
to a situation where today the southern half of the country live in daily
fear of rockets, missiles, balloon and tunnel attacks from Gaza while
Hezbollah in the north acquire ever more heavy weaponry and the
generously-financed leaders of the “Palestinian Authority” tirelessly
travel the world fanning the flames of Israel (=Jew) hatred at
international conferences, on campuses, in mosques and every other
possible venue. And I have not even mentioned the threats uttered daily
by the Iranian leadership.
The present
shock of the Jews of America (many of whom remained apathetic through
years of Arab hatred, wars and terror attacks against Israel) is because
the blight of Jew-hatred and violence seen already for decades across
“enlightened” Europe suddenly burst out in the “Land of the Free” with
the mass shootings in Pittsburg and San Diego and the Monsey stabbings.
“If someone
comes to kill you, kill him first!”
That we Jews
need to defend ourselves proactively is obvious. This is one of the great
pillars of Torah law, which detests murder: If someone is coming to kill
you, get in there first and make sure you kill him – if that is the only
way you can stop him. Long before today’s “Neighborhood Watch” patrols
and Brooklyn’s “Guardian Angels,” over fifty years ago, Rabbi Meir Kahane
(may HaShem avenge his blood) understood perfectly the vital urgency of
serious Jewish self-defense both in America and elsewhere in the Diaspora
and in Israel. But just as in the case of earlier prophets of Israel,
like Zechariah son of Yehoiyadah the High Priest, who was murdered in the
Temple on Yom Kippur, Isaiah, who was killed by King Menasheh, and Jeremiah,
who was persecuted all his life, Rabbi Kahane was marginalized,
ostracized and demonized as if he was a fomenter of racism and hatred
rather than the fountain of love, human kindness and compassion that he
truly was. Until today we see in Israel in the shameless political
machinations against the “Otzma Yehudit” party the same determination by
the Israeli mafia elite to marginalize any group who dissent from the
suicidal policies of Israel’s “enlightened” “democratically elected”
despots.
It would be a
typical Golus-Jew approach to try to hush the public outcry against the
current spike of attacks on Jews, as if too much noise might further
antagonize the Goyim. But do marches and protests against hatred do
anything to quell that hatred? We most certainly need the support of the
surrounding population and the presence of people like the “Guardian
Angels” in some areas is truly heart-warming. Jewish neighborhoods need
adequate policing. All Jewish institutions, synagogues, schools,
community centers etc. need proper security. Yet our apparent need for
such “protection” is on a deep level humiliating because it involves a
painful Chillul HaShem (desecration of the glory of the Lord) in the fact
that His chosen people, who should enjoy protection from Above under an
unseen Cloud of Glory, His Presence, are in fact sitting-duck targets
wide open to the blows, knives, bullets and missiles of our enemies. (Yet
it is an attested fact that many times, intended attacks on Israelis and
Jews have been miraculously frustrated in amazing ways.)
I cast no
blame whatever on the victims of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel attacks, so
many of whom have been left with the most horrific, permanent,
life-changing injuries, scars and disabilities, not to speak of those who
have lost their lives. G-d alone is the Judge and He alone knows the
secrets of why bad things happen to good people.
What Jews of
all colors, complexions or creeds, Ten Tribers, Noahides and all lovers
of Israel need to examine is the root spiritual causes of this menacing
current wave of Jew- and Israel-hatred, and what is the message that G-d
is sending us. For we believe and know that He alone governs the entire
universe in every single detail, and nothing whatever occurs unless He so
decrees.
Halachah: Esau
hates Jacob
We are taught
that it is a halachah, a basic law of existence, that
“Esau hates Jacob”, Esau being the personification of the Evil
Inclination, the Angel of Death and the Accuser on High, as embodied in
all those in all the generations who hate and fight spiritually and
physically against Jacob’s descendants, the Nation of Israel.
When Esau wept
because Jacob had received the blessings, Isaac “compensated” him with
the blessing in Genesis 27:40: “By your sword shall you live, and you
shall serve your brother, but when you grow restive, you shall break
his yoke from your neck”. Rashi in his commentary on this verse explains
that Esau’s “restive” sense of hurt would be aroused when Israel
transgress the Torah, thus justifying Esau’s rage over Jacob’s having
taken the blessings, and Esau would then break Jacob’s yoke from his
neck.
This is the
psychological mechanism deep within certain kinds of Goy that is set in
motion when Jews stray in some degree or other from true Torah observance,
namely unconditional service of G-d on every level of thought, speech and
action. This is how G-d’s rod of chastisement “works” through the various
different kinds of Jew- and Israel-haters, who are usually consumed with
extreme anger and unacknowledged jealousy.
There is often
no visible connection between some “antisemitic” outburst and a
particular deviation, small or large, from the Torah on the part of one
or more Jews. This is because G-d is “patient and slow to anger” and does
not punish the sinner immediately but waits, in order to give him a
chance to repent by himself as long as his “measure” is not complete. Yet
even a seemingly minor deviation can have serious indirect consequences,
as exemplified in a famous Hassidic story about a follower of Rabbi Dov
Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch, leader of the Hassidic movement after Rabbi
Israel Baal Shem Tov. The hassid came to the Maggid and told him the
shocking news of the murder of a Jew in a far-off town. The Maggid said
this occurred because of an explosive outburst of anger by that very
hassid some days earlier, despite the fact that this took place a long
way away and there was no visible connection between the two events in
the physical world.
Father’s Rod
Whenever
Israel strays from the Torah, the loving Father longs for His children to
return and as a prompt and a wake-up call, He menacingly wields the rod
of chastisement, whether in the guise of white supremacists, black
supremacists, Islamic terrorists or any other of our many enemies,
visible or invisible: “My children! You must repent!”
If any
“observant” Jews were previously inclined to blame the surge of
“Antisemitism” on the less-observant, the non-observant, the assimilated,
the “Mixed Multitude” or any other sector, they have been decisively
repudiated by the attacks on orthodox synagogues and the Monsey
stabbings. It is just that synagogues and long-bearded, non-violent Jews
dressed in long black coats and black hats are the easiest targets and conspicuous
representatives of the Jewish people. In the hate-intoxicated mind of the
resentful, angry, uncouth Goy they are from one and the same tribe as all
the other notorious Jewish crooks, criminals, perverts and other deviants
– Bernie Madoff, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, twisted clowns like
Jerry Nadler, Chuck Schumer and Adam Schiff, a sinister ogre like George
Soros, the “Jewish bankers, Freemasons, Sabbatians, Satanists, Elders of
Zion etc. etc. With so much media attention focused on high profile
scandals involving Jews, not to speak of the endless, insidious
anti-Israel “fake news” spewed forth day after day by news media across
the world, is it any wonder that discontented goyim all over find no
better scapegoat for all their woes than the Jews and Israel?
Could it be
that deep in the collective unconscious of the nations – who themselves
have oppressed Israel for thousands of years – is an incessant, gnawing
pain that this very oppression has caused Israel to fall from their level
as G-d’s chosen nation of priests? Could it be that like a raging child
who furiously rains blows on the very one that seeks to benefit him, the
angry goy attacks whoever he associates with his demonized image of the
Jew or Israeli because they fall short of the true level of the priests
that he and all the world desperately need to lead the way to knowledge
and service of the One God and to draw salvation and blessing to all?
Torah for the
Nations
In earlier
periods there were very sound reasons why the Jews in exile were unable
to proselytize and convert non-Jews to Judaism or even preach to the
world about the Torah Noahide code for the nations. In both Christian and
Moslem countries any hint of a Jew trying to influence a non-Jew could
cost that Jew his life, often together with the lives and property of his
family, fellow Jews and even of the non-Jews involved. It was impossible
for the Jews to express publicly the true Torah stance on the surrounding
expressions of paganism dressed in pious Catholic, Moslem or other guises
in the countries where they lived in constant peril of their lives. Thus
Judaism turned into a matter of private individual conscience that had to
be secretively hidden away from the wider population. (Contrast this with
the many cases in the Talmud and Midrash where we find the leading sages
in Roman times in active dialogue with gentiles, some sincere, others
merely provocative, on a multitude of Torah matters.)
Today we are
at the end of the exile, and although quite obviously thick darkness
still holds sway all over, there are also amazing manifestations of the
dawning light of Redemption in the form of the unprecedented arousal to
Torah among individuals, groups and whole tribes of many different
complexions and backgrounds in literally all parts of the world.
Moreover,
today we have Israel, where although there is still a long way to go for
the light of Torah to shine to all the population and where there are
still many de facto constraints on the Torah-observant community, including
virtual censorship in large areas of the public arena, it is nevertheless
possible to observe and teach Torah with relative freedom. And through
the alternative media of our day – through Internet websites and social
media – it is possible to reach souls in almost any part of the world in
ways that were simply unavailable in any previous generation.
What does the
Torah-observant community have to offer the surrounding peoples? Among
the ultra-orthodox the same secretive Golus approach to Torah knowledge
and practice persists to the extent that even Jews who are considered not
quite frum enough, are excluded from their circles either literally or
through invisible but palpable walls of coldness and rejection. The news
media of the Torah community are full of disputes, feuds and arguments
between different groups and viewpoints, religious or political. If we
stand for the ending of discrimination on grounds of race, what do we
have to say about the discrimination in “observant” Jewish communities
between Ashkenazi and Sefardi or Ethiopian Jews?
If Torah is
all about peace and Israel seeks only peace, why is it that her own
would-be political leaders are unable to make peace among themselves and
to cooperate for the welfare of the nation instead of squabbling
incessantly and entirely paralyzing the country’s government? As for
talking to the Goyim, in the last few years some forward-thinking rabbis
began encouraging lovers of Torah and Israel among the nations to stop
being shy and to know that they too may voluntarily observe many of the
commandments. These rabbis brought decisive proofs from the classical
rabbinical authorities. And what happened? Their fellow rabbis publicly
shot them down and threatened them with excommunication.
Why is it that
young people from the post-Christian, post-modern, decadent, pagan
cultures of the west – many of whom like, Greta Thunberg, are in deepest
despair about the state of the world – have been streaming to Islam in
search of meaning, while Torah faith and wisdom, which are the only truth
that will endure at the end of days, are ignored, marginalized, demonized
and considered totally irrelevant?
What about the
spiritual holocaust?
If we fear a
new holocaust and wonder if the ancient Islamic dream of Jews helplessly
seeking refuge behind trees from their Jihadi murderers might be a
plausible scenario, why is their hardly any outcry or even awareness of
the spiritual holocaust that has caused the loss of over
seventy percent of born-Jews in America to intermarriage with non-Jews,
resulting in a whole new generation of countless “captive children” whose
Jewish heritage and identity has been almost totally erased?
I was present
in a very prestigious, wealthy, nominally orthodox synagogue in Britain
when the then Chief Rabbi, the late Rabbi Lord Immanuel Jacobovitz,
publicly stated in a sermon that someone entering an average British
synagogue during a prayer service might have difficulty discerning if
today was the festival of Purim or the Tisha B’Av fast commemorating the
destruction of the Temple. Most if not all of the time in such places of
“worship,” minimal attention is given to the chore of the actual
high-speed davening, while all the emphasis is on who received the
honors, what are the prospects for today’s match and what are the best
investment and property options.
A glance at
the weekly magazines and supplements that circulate among the
“ultra-orthodox” communities both in Israel and outside indicates that at
the very least the advertisers certainly believe their target audiences
are mainly interested in extravagant fashions for men, women and children
of all ages, attractive wigs, cosmetics and beauty treatments for women,
flashy cars, glamorous properties and furnishings, lavish catering for
celebrations and luxury vacations and getaways. What are the luckless
goyim at the bottom of the ladder expected to make of that?
The authentic
Torah way is one of modesty in all aspects of lifestyle, clothing and
material consumption. The true Jew and Jewess are “worker-priests and
priestesses”, out there in the thick of the material world, serving G-d
Almighty through the practice of Torah in the home, on the road, at work,
in business and everything else from birth to death, bending the physical
to serve the spiritual, servants of the All High.
Search within
and reach out
The only way
for us to “reach out” to the Nations of the World is first to reach deep
down into our hearts, to confront our own barriers and resistances to the
embrace of our exalted role as ambassadors of the G-d of Israel with all
our hearts, our souls and all our might. It is impossible for us to call
for greater spiritual awareness among the Goyim if we ourselves rush
through our devotions in flight from naked, honest, face-to-face
connection with our Maker, if we have no time for praise and song to the
One who sustains us every day, every hour and every second of our
existence in such beautiful and gracious ways.
Throughout the
sad history of Israel’s fall from the Torah as documented stage by stage
in TaNaKh, particularly in the book of Kings, we find that even in
periods when there was a revival of Torah faith and observance, the
people never felt able to pull down their “High Places”, the Bamot,
private altars where they persisted in offering their own sacrifices even
though sacrifices anywhere other than the Temple in Jerusalem was
strictly forbidden. At root the flaw of one who wants to sacrifice to the
All High on his own private altar rather than in His Temple is that the
person puts his own prestige and honor before G-d’s explicit commandment
in the Torah (Leviticus 17:3-9) and before the honor of His Holy Temple.
The Bamah is an expression of the person’s haughtiness, as if
he himself is worthy to be the priest when the true purpose of the
sacrifice is to teach him to humble himself and efface his ego before
G-d. There is great merit in building a synagogue or study hall or
establishing some other Torah organization or movement for the benefit of
the immediate or wider community, but when the motives of those involved
are mixed with a thirst for recognition and prestige, the “sacrifice”
involved borders on sacrifice at a “high place”, the person’s pride.
All who mourn
for Zion and the Holy Temple and long for the restoration of Israel and
the Redemption need now to pull together and set aside our squabbles and
jockeying for prominence. The war against Jew hatred is our war against
those who hate HaShem – and we fight it by joining together in harmony
and reaching out to all those who love Him. But if we seek to draw the
world to G-d, we ourselves need first and foremost to turn to Him
directly in prayer, repentance and acts of charity and kindness. Only
when we make the effort to discover for ourselves something of G-d’s ways
can we hope to help teach others about Him.
This is
something each one of us can do, and in the merit of our each and every
gesture of Teshuvah, love of G-d and love of our fellows, He will surely
turn to us in love and quickly bring about our Redemption. Amen.
ABY
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