Sometimes events occur in Israel and my opinion forms immediately, while other times I have to gather the reality of the event a bit; the facts, background, etc..., before I can come to a conclusion.
Thus is the situation with Lebanon, and I think that it has snapped into place and that I've come to a conclusion of what must be done. While I do absolutely believe that the life of every single person possesses the value of the whole world, per the Talmud's statement, "every person is a world," I had to think critically of Olmert's decision to reach into Lebanon in the name of retracting and rescuing them. It has become an Israeli national maxim that no Jew will be left to the whims of kidnappers, a noble tenet. The Talmud also considers the scenario when someone kidnaps Jews, which used to be a frequent set of events throughout the last two millennia in Europe. I remember studying this with a rabbi. This section of the Talmud said that one must do anything in their capability get a kidnapped Jew back, but referred to paying any ransom that the kidnapper demanded. This would translate into today's modern situation as giving Hezba-llah any amount of terrorist prisoners back that they would like. In that we see the difference between the European "kidnappers of old," whom would demand a demoralizing sum of money for the return of kidnapped Jews, but that's it. Today's Arab/Muslim variation is not satisified with money; they want a return of prisoners.
Nevertheless, if it was just a ransom of money, it would be doable. But since the demand is for terrorists, people whom will be used to continue the attacks on Israel, the exchange of three Jewish kidnapees for 1,000 terrorists (I previously said 9,000, which was an error) is not doable since it will put the entire state in further jeopardy.
Perhaps it is not this goal which Israeli Prime Minster Olmert has in mind with the entry into Lebanon, perhaps it is a show of renewed unacceptance with Arab/Muslim terrorism towards the state, that Israel has sat back idly for too long a period in the name of deterrence. It is an attempted return to Israel's formerly solid position on dealing with terrorists, which is defined by some as, "Israel has been hugely successful in defending its borders and then some." Perhaps it is an attempted return to that successful defense. But before we can have that defense, we need some "and then some."
Daniel Pipes says it best in this article, which my friend Ben, my eyes and ears, sent to me.
Enjoy, Yaniv...
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Can You Guess Who said Each Quote?
The late Rabbi Meir Kahane (zl) is known by many as a politically extremist Orthodox Jew. Rabbi Kahane, born in New York on August 1st, 1932 and was assassinated by Egyptian-American El-Sayyid Nosair on November 5th, 1990 in New York City. Rabbi Kahane was an avid writer of articles and books, was a lawyer, lectured in universities and institutions, and favored the creation of a political system making Jewish Law the core of Israeli legal law, or a theocracy. He founded the “ultra-radical Kach Party” in 1974, to which membership was eventually outlawed by Israeli law. He proclaimed that the removal of Israeli Arabs into the surrounding Arab states as the only way to end the conflict. His premise was that population exchanges often end hostile national, social, ethnic, and political conflicts, and have been completed numerous times in human political history in order to resolve conflicts. Further, he stated that a population exchange indeed began with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 when the Arab states expelled almost the entirety of their Jewish populations, whom had lived there for generations and had become thoroughly culturally assimilated as Arabs. From approximately 930,000 Jews living in the Arab countries before 1948, some 850,000 to 900,000 were forced to flee, leaving the population at around 30,000 to 35,000 Jews. In other words, 91%-97% of the Jewish population left those countries and around 550,000-600,000 of them, or 61%-66%, fled to Israel. It would have been a population exchange, but that there was no exchange made it a population transfer. According to the International Journal of Refugee Law website, “The compatibility of population transfers with humanitarian and human rights law in a given situation is thus relevant in determining whether a consolidation of the demographic fait accompli could serve as a basis for a lasting solution to conflict.”
The late Edward Wadie Said (pronounced “Sayyid”) was born on November 1st, 1935 in Jerusalem, Palestine (by international politics it became recognized as Israel on May 14th, 1948) and died on September 25th, 2003 in New York City from Leukemia. He was a Protestant Arab intellectual and his life career was education, having written many books and lecturing on what he believed was the colonialism and racism of the country of Israel and the errors in American and Israeli politics regarding the Arab world in many colleges and other institutions. He was outspokenly and ardently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and according to many opinions, anti-Semitic. He proclaimed the illegality of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and condemned its wars as being “expansionist” and “colonialist,” especially the war of 1967 (Six Day War) with the Jordanians, Egyptians, and Syrians, which caused for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as we know it today.
Here is a series of quotes from both Rabbi Meir Kahane and Edward Said. However, I left no indication of which person said which quote and the point of this is to see if you can successfully identify which person is responsible for which. The answers are at the end of the post.
Quote #1
“Both the organizer of the seminar and myself tried to push past the storm of insults and slurs, asking that people dispute with me on the basis of contested facts or figures. None was forthcoming. My crime seemed to be that I opposed the peace process, even though it was also the case that what I said about it in fact was true. My opponents were in every case people who described themselves as supporters of Peace Now (i.e., liberal Jews) and hence of peace with Palestinians.”
Quote #2
“There is an ultimately immutable clash between that part of Israel’s Declaration of Independence that created the Jewish state and the part that promised ‘complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens,’ even though they be Arabs and not Jews. There is – let it be said once and for all – a potential confrontation between the Jewish-Zionist state that was the millennial dream of the Jewish people and the modern concepts of democracy and citizenship.”
Quote #3
“We are now supposed to feel that peace is moving forward and to question anything about the ‘peace process’ is tantamount to being an ungrateful, treasonous, wretch. I spoke in terms of facts and figures, and I was unsparing in my criticism of all the parties to the peace process.”
Quote #4
“Oslo gave Israelis and supporters of Israel a sense that the Palestinian problem had been solved, once and for all; it also gave liberals a sense of achievement, particularly as the 'peace' under attack by Likud and settler movement.”
Who said it?
Quote one
Quote two
Quote three
Quote four
If the quotes sounded similar to you, think about the implications of this. Rabbi Kahane and Edward Said were definitely on opposite ends of the spectrum on many things, yet, strangely, they seem to be saying something similar, nay, essentially equal, that the process by which peace is being pursued is flawed and impossible to attain. How can it be that an Israel-loving Orthodox Rabbi and an Israel-hating Palestinian intellectual are saying the same things, albeit with different conclusions in mind, about the same peace process? Both blame liberal Jews for being overly optimistic and naive. Both say that the status quo between Israelis and Palestinians is impossible. Both believe that the other should leave because the Arabs cannot accept a Jewish presence in the land. In other words, Rabbi Kahane believes that the Arabs should leave because the Arabs cannot accept the presence of Jews. Said believes that the Jews should leave because the Arabs cannot accept the presence of Jews. What this means is that both agree that the Arabs cannot tolerate Jews. Which argument is more critical of itself? Which argument is willing to compromise more? Remember, Rabbi Kahane is an extremist and Edward Said is an intellectual.
Said’s quotes were taken from his 2000 book, The End of the Peace Process
Rabbi Meir’s quote was taken from his 1981 book, They Must Go!
This is all I have for now but in the future sometime I will extend this little “test” and add more quotes. Hope you enjoyed it and that it was thought-provoking.
The late Rabbi Meir Kahane (zl) is known by many as a politically extremist Orthodox Jew. Rabbi Kahane, born in New York on August 1st, 1932 and was assassinated by Egyptian-American El-Sayyid Nosair on November 5th, 1990 in New York City. Rabbi Kahane was an avid writer of articles and books, was a lawyer, lectured in universities and institutions, and favored the creation of a political system making Jewish Law the core of Israeli legal law, or a theocracy. He founded the “ultra-radical Kach Party” in 1974, to which membership was eventually outlawed by Israeli law. He proclaimed that the removal of Israeli Arabs into the surrounding Arab states as the only way to end the conflict. His premise was that population exchanges often end hostile national, social, ethnic, and political conflicts, and have been completed numerous times in human political history in order to resolve conflicts. Further, he stated that a population exchange indeed began with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 when the Arab states expelled almost the entirety of their Jewish populations, whom had lived there for generations and had become thoroughly culturally assimilated as Arabs. From approximately 930,000 Jews living in the Arab countries before 1948, some 850,000 to 900,000 were forced to flee, leaving the population at around 30,000 to 35,000 Jews. In other words, 91%-97% of the Jewish population left those countries and around 550,000-600,000 of them, or 61%-66%, fled to Israel. It would have been a population exchange, but that there was no exchange made it a population transfer. According to the International Journal of Refugee Law website, “The compatibility of population transfers with humanitarian and human rights law in a given situation is thus relevant in determining whether a consolidation of the demographic fait accompli could serve as a basis for a lasting solution to conflict.”
The late Edward Wadie Said (pronounced “Sayyid”) was born on November 1st, 1935 in Jerusalem, Palestine (by international politics it became recognized as Israel on May 14th, 1948) and died on September 25th, 2003 in New York City from Leukemia. He was a Protestant Arab intellectual and his life career was education, having written many books and lecturing on what he believed was the colonialism and racism of the country of Israel and the errors in American and Israeli politics regarding the Arab world in many colleges and other institutions. He was outspokenly and ardently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and according to many opinions, anti-Semitic. He proclaimed the illegality of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and condemned its wars as being “expansionist” and “colonialist,” especially the war of 1967 (Six Day War) with the Jordanians, Egyptians, and Syrians, which caused for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as we know it today.
Here is a series of quotes from both Rabbi Meir Kahane and Edward Said. However, I left no indication of which person said which quote and the point of this is to see if you can successfully identify which person is responsible for which. The answers are at the end of the post.
Quote #1
“Both the organizer of the seminar and myself tried to push past the storm of insults and slurs, asking that people dispute with me on the basis of contested facts or figures. None was forthcoming. My crime seemed to be that I opposed the peace process, even though it was also the case that what I said about it in fact was true. My opponents were in every case people who described themselves as supporters of Peace Now (i.e., liberal Jews) and hence of peace with Palestinians.”
Quote #2
“There is an ultimately immutable clash between that part of Israel’s Declaration of Independence that created the Jewish state and the part that promised ‘complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens,’ even though they be Arabs and not Jews. There is – let it be said once and for all – a potential confrontation between the Jewish-Zionist state that was the millennial dream of the Jewish people and the modern concepts of democracy and citizenship.”
Quote #3
“We are now supposed to feel that peace is moving forward and to question anything about the ‘peace process’ is tantamount to being an ungrateful, treasonous, wretch. I spoke in terms of facts and figures, and I was unsparing in my criticism of all the parties to the peace process.”
Quote #4
“Oslo gave Israelis and supporters of Israel a sense that the Palestinian problem had been solved, once and for all; it also gave liberals a sense of achievement, particularly as the 'peace' under attack by Likud and settler movement.”
Who said it?
Quote one
Quote two
Quote three
Quote four
If the quotes sounded similar to you, think about the implications of this. Rabbi Kahane and Edward Said were definitely on opposite ends of the spectrum on many things, yet, strangely, they seem to be saying something similar, nay, essentially equal, that the process by which peace is being pursued is flawed and impossible to attain. How can it be that an Israel-loving Orthodox Rabbi and an Israel-hating Palestinian intellectual are saying the same things, albeit with different conclusions in mind, about the same peace process? Both blame liberal Jews for being overly optimistic and naive. Both say that the status quo between Israelis and Palestinians is impossible. Both believe that the other should leave because the Arabs cannot accept a Jewish presence in the land. In other words, Rabbi Kahane believes that the Arabs should leave because the Arabs cannot accept the presence of Jews. Said believes that the Jews should leave because the Arabs cannot accept the presence of Jews. What this means is that both agree that the Arabs cannot tolerate Jews. Which argument is more critical of itself? Which argument is willing to compromise more? Remember, Rabbi Kahane is an extremist and Edward Said is an intellectual.
Said’s quotes were taken from his 2000 book, The End of the Peace Process
Rabbi Meir’s quote was taken from his 1981 book, They Must Go!
This is all I have for now but in the future sometime I will extend this little “test” and add more quotes. Hope you enjoyed it and that it was thought-provoking.
Friday, July 14, 2006
As many of you might be aware, Lebanon's Hezballah (meaning Party of G-d) terrorist group kidnapped three Israeli soldiers: Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser, and Eldad Regev two weeks ago. Supposedly they are still alive and being held somewhere by the Palestinians that kidnapped them, which means that they are either dead or suffering unamable torture. Shalit is 19 years old. One more Jew, Eliyahu Asheri, not a soldier but an 18-year old living in the settlment of Itamar was executed by being shot in the head.
Anyway, Hezballah made Israel a "generous" offer; in exchange for 9,000 prisoners in Israel (terrorists), they will give Israel information on where to find Shalit. It's not even 9,000 to 3, it's 9,000 to some information on the three. Unless a miracle occurs, Hezballah has no intent on returning Shalit back to Israel because he is a such a valuable playing card. Their hope is that Israel give in to their demands, either wholly or partially, so that Hezballah can continue to make demands from them. Not once, I believe, have terrorist groups returned a kidnappee to Israel alive and there is not much chance that they will return Shalit alive either. They'll keep demanding from Israel, and in the case that Israel begins to take military action against them, they will most likely just kill Shalit.
Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel, has begun bombing Hezballah and Hamas infrastructures in Lebanon, the country north of Israel and which has not had a technical war with Israel since 1982, which by some definitions might not have been a real war. Lebanon is the country in which Shalit is being held and in act of foolishness, Hezballah is taking Shalit further and further north into Lebanon, which means that Israel is faced with the reality of entering areas further and further north into that country, which no Lebanese or Israeli wants. As a "response," Hezballah has begun firing Iran-provided missiles into northern Israel, which reach as far as the city of Haifa. Haifa, by the way, is a city with a population of both Arabs and Jews, just a sign of the indiscriminate tactics of Hezballah strategies in which Arab casualties are labeled "martyrs."
A personal aside -- I once visited Haifa where I have friends, and I and my friend Gali went bike-riding up farther north, a 20 or so minute drive from the Lebanese border. Some amount of years before that Israel had to shut down the higher portion of the hill (on the Israeli side) because Hezballah operatives would stand on the Lebanese side of the border and fire into Israel and succeeded in killing some Israeli's. Haifa is even farther away from the border than that hill, about a two hour drive.
You can see a map of the Middle East here and a picture of Haifa here
Iran provides Hezballah and Hamas with the finances they need.
Anyway, in addition to that bit of news, here and here are two interesting accounts of things that occurred in the pages of the Torah that fit in quite strangely with the contemporary politics in the Middle East.
Enjoy, have a good weekend and a good Shabbos. Yaniv...
Anyway, Hezballah made Israel a "generous" offer; in exchange for 9,000 prisoners in Israel (terrorists), they will give Israel information on where to find Shalit. It's not even 9,000 to 3, it's 9,000 to some information on the three. Unless a miracle occurs, Hezballah has no intent on returning Shalit back to Israel because he is a such a valuable playing card. Their hope is that Israel give in to their demands, either wholly or partially, so that Hezballah can continue to make demands from them. Not once, I believe, have terrorist groups returned a kidnappee to Israel alive and there is not much chance that they will return Shalit alive either. They'll keep demanding from Israel, and in the case that Israel begins to take military action against them, they will most likely just kill Shalit.
Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of Israel, has begun bombing Hezballah and Hamas infrastructures in Lebanon, the country north of Israel and which has not had a technical war with Israel since 1982, which by some definitions might not have been a real war. Lebanon is the country in which Shalit is being held and in act of foolishness, Hezballah is taking Shalit further and further north into Lebanon, which means that Israel is faced with the reality of entering areas further and further north into that country, which no Lebanese or Israeli wants. As a "response," Hezballah has begun firing Iran-provided missiles into northern Israel, which reach as far as the city of Haifa. Haifa, by the way, is a city with a population of both Arabs and Jews, just a sign of the indiscriminate tactics of Hezballah strategies in which Arab casualties are labeled "martyrs."
A personal aside -- I once visited Haifa where I have friends, and I and my friend Gali went bike-riding up farther north, a 20 or so minute drive from the Lebanese border. Some amount of years before that Israel had to shut down the higher portion of the hill (on the Israeli side) because Hezballah operatives would stand on the Lebanese side of the border and fire into Israel and succeeded in killing some Israeli's. Haifa is even farther away from the border than that hill, about a two hour drive.
You can see a map of the Middle East here and a picture of Haifa here
Iran provides Hezballah and Hamas with the finances they need.
Anyway, in addition to that bit of news, here and here are two interesting accounts of things that occurred in the pages of the Torah that fit in quite strangely with the contemporary politics in the Middle East.
Enjoy, have a good weekend and a good Shabbos. Yaniv...
Another Torah Israeli-Arab Conflict Analogy..............
You'll need a little background information on this one, so if you have a Tanakh, it's in II Samuel, 11:6-27. Here's a quick summary though. King David, the second king of Israel, developed an interest in a woman named "Bathsheva," who was married to a man named "Uriah," a Hittite. He sent for Uriah to fight in the front lines of a battle so that he would die and then he could take his wife for himself. I won't go through the details of the account, but the last line 27 reads, "The deed that David had done was deemed evil in the eyes of Hashem."
Now, every king had a prophet and King David's was Nathan. Verse 12:1-14 reads, "Hashem sent Nathan to David. He came to him and told him: 'There were two men in one city; one rich and one poor. The rich man had very many sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one small ewe that he had acquired. He raised it and it grew up together with him and his children. It ate from his bread and drank from his cup and lay in his bosom; it became like a daughter to him. A wayfarer came to the rich man. He was reluctant to take from his own sheep or cattle to prepare for the visitor who had come to him, so he took the poor man's ewe and prepared it for the man who had come to him.
David was very indignant about this man, and he said to Nathan, 'As Hashem lives, any man who does this deserves to die! And he must pay fourfold for the ewe, because he did this deed and because he had no pity!
Nathan then said to David, 'You are that man!' Thus said Hashem, G-d of Israel: 'I anointed you the house of your lord, and the women of your lord into your bosom, and I gave over to you the house of Israel and Judah; and if this were not enough I would have increased for you this much and this much again. Why have you scorned the word of Hashem, doing that which is evil in My eyes? You have struck Uriah the Hittite with the sword; and his wife you have taken to yourself for a wife, while him you have killed by the sword of the Children of Ammon! And now, the sword shall not cease from your house forever, because you have scorned Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be a wife unto you.'
So says Hashem: 'Behold! - I shall raise evil againt you from your own household, I shall take your wives away in front of your eyes and give them to your fellowman, who will lie with them in the sight of this sun. Though you have acted in secrecy, I shall perform this deed in the presence of all Israel and before the sun!'
David said to Nathan, 'I have sinned against Hashem!'
Nathan responded to David, 'So, too, Hashem has commuted your sin; you will not die. However, because you have thorougly blasphemed the enemies of Hashem in this matter, the son that has been born to you shall surely die.'"
The very general theme of this story is replicated in today's politics between the Israeli's and the Arabs. The man with the plentitude of sheep are the Arab countries, the Israeli's are the man with the one ewe, and Israel is that ewe. The rich man didn't want to make a feast for his guest from his own ewe, so he stole the ewe of the poor man. The guest in this analogy are the Palestinians, and rather than making a home for them in one of thier multiplitous countries, the Arabs demand making a home for them in Israel, or in other words, by taking Israel from the Israeli's.
The only thing that the Israeli's have, nay, want, is the Land of Israel, while the Arab states have, well, 99.9% of the land in the region and the only thing that they want too is Israel. Now, verse 14 says, "However, because you have blasphemed the enemies of Hashem in this matter, the son that has been born to you shall surely die." The commentary says that this is a euphemism for having blasphemed Hashem himself. Perhaps it is the false wishes of Palestinian nationalism, the rich man's son, that will die in the manner that King David's son dies in the following verses.
Who is the "Nathan" of the Arab world and will the rich man repent for the sin he is attempting to commit?
You'll need a little background information on this one, so if you have a Tanakh, it's in II Samuel, 11:6-27. Here's a quick summary though. King David, the second king of Israel, developed an interest in a woman named "Bathsheva," who was married to a man named "Uriah," a Hittite. He sent for Uriah to fight in the front lines of a battle so that he would die and then he could take his wife for himself. I won't go through the details of the account, but the last line 27 reads, "The deed that David had done was deemed evil in the eyes of Hashem."
Now, every king had a prophet and King David's was Nathan. Verse 12:1-14 reads, "Hashem sent Nathan to David. He came to him and told him: 'There were two men in one city; one rich and one poor. The rich man had very many sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one small ewe that he had acquired. He raised it and it grew up together with him and his children. It ate from his bread and drank from his cup and lay in his bosom; it became like a daughter to him. A wayfarer came to the rich man. He was reluctant to take from his own sheep or cattle to prepare for the visitor who had come to him, so he took the poor man's ewe and prepared it for the man who had come to him.
David was very indignant about this man, and he said to Nathan, 'As Hashem lives, any man who does this deserves to die! And he must pay fourfold for the ewe, because he did this deed and because he had no pity!
Nathan then said to David, 'You are that man!' Thus said Hashem, G-d of Israel: 'I anointed you the house of your lord, and the women of your lord into your bosom, and I gave over to you the house of Israel and Judah; and if this were not enough I would have increased for you this much and this much again. Why have you scorned the word of Hashem, doing that which is evil in My eyes? You have struck Uriah the Hittite with the sword; and his wife you have taken to yourself for a wife, while him you have killed by the sword of the Children of Ammon! And now, the sword shall not cease from your house forever, because you have scorned Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be a wife unto you.'
So says Hashem: 'Behold! - I shall raise evil againt you from your own household, I shall take your wives away in front of your eyes and give them to your fellowman, who will lie with them in the sight of this sun. Though you have acted in secrecy, I shall perform this deed in the presence of all Israel and before the sun!'
David said to Nathan, 'I have sinned against Hashem!'
Nathan responded to David, 'So, too, Hashem has commuted your sin; you will not die. However, because you have thorougly blasphemed the enemies of Hashem in this matter, the son that has been born to you shall surely die.'"
The very general theme of this story is replicated in today's politics between the Israeli's and the Arabs. The man with the plentitude of sheep are the Arab countries, the Israeli's are the man with the one ewe, and Israel is that ewe. The rich man didn't want to make a feast for his guest from his own ewe, so he stole the ewe of the poor man. The guest in this analogy are the Palestinians, and rather than making a home for them in one of thier multiplitous countries, the Arabs demand making a home for them in Israel, or in other words, by taking Israel from the Israeli's.
The only thing that the Israeli's have, nay, want, is the Land of Israel, while the Arab states have, well, 99.9% of the land in the region and the only thing that they want too is Israel. Now, verse 14 says, "However, because you have blasphemed the enemies of Hashem in this matter, the son that has been born to you shall surely die." The commentary says that this is a euphemism for having blasphemed Hashem himself. Perhaps it is the false wishes of Palestinian nationalism, the rich man's son, that will die in the manner that King David's son dies in the following verses.
Who is the "Nathan" of the Arab world and will the rich man repent for the sin he is attempting to commit?
Thursday, July 13, 2006
I'm sitting here pouring the water of life into my blog with the TV on in the background and "Band of Horses," a band of which I've never heard started playing on the David Letterman Show.
Their sound was good, not to mention the lead singer's high pitched voice, so I stopped and watched for a while.
Anyway, I got to thinking something about bands and the messages that they bring forth into the public sphere. For example, I read something the other day about some criticisms that Jewish folks like us were making of Matishyahu. Apparently, some people are getting the feeling that he's selling out, going big time, something that I think is OK. And then I realized something, that given his nature as a Jewish musician (the terms 'Lubavitcher Chassid' or 'Orthodox Jew' don't mean much to the young and general music-listening population) people have a certain expectation of him and of the message that he brings forth. The same cannot be entirely said of bands that, while sound good to the ear and have a humble feel to them, like Band of Horses, people do not have ideological expectations of them. The truth is that I could barely understand what the lead singer was saying, but the sound of the music, his high voice, what seemed like a British accent, and the faces he was making while anunciating, kept me positively entertained. Perhaps it's because we are Jews that we have higher expectations of our fellow Jew, a sentiment that the general populace does not necessarily share. We want him to remain true to the message.
Matisyahu, were he to appear on live TV again like he did on the Jimmy Kimmel show back in the day, the first time that I heard of him, it could be seen by young Yids as a sellout scheme, a further appeal to the masses. This is amazing and phenomenal, we all (or many of us) act like crazed and long-time fans when Matisyahu makes a move in public. No particular expectation of ideological messages is applied to "Gentile musicians," and while they can still sell out, there is no way that their going on tour would be considered selling out.
May this be a picture of what is to be in the future, when the Meshiach comes and Jews and Torah hit the "main stage" and the knowledge of G-d flourishes with the masses.
Peace, Yaniv...
Their sound was good, not to mention the lead singer's high pitched voice, so I stopped and watched for a while.
Anyway, I got to thinking something about bands and the messages that they bring forth into the public sphere. For example, I read something the other day about some criticisms that Jewish folks like us were making of Matishyahu. Apparently, some people are getting the feeling that he's selling out, going big time, something that I think is OK. And then I realized something, that given his nature as a Jewish musician (the terms 'Lubavitcher Chassid' or 'Orthodox Jew' don't mean much to the young and general music-listening population) people have a certain expectation of him and of the message that he brings forth. The same cannot be entirely said of bands that, while sound good to the ear and have a humble feel to them, like Band of Horses, people do not have ideological expectations of them. The truth is that I could barely understand what the lead singer was saying, but the sound of the music, his high voice, what seemed like a British accent, and the faces he was making while anunciating, kept me positively entertained. Perhaps it's because we are Jews that we have higher expectations of our fellow Jew, a sentiment that the general populace does not necessarily share. We want him to remain true to the message.
Matisyahu, were he to appear on live TV again like he did on the Jimmy Kimmel show back in the day, the first time that I heard of him, it could be seen by young Yids as a sellout scheme, a further appeal to the masses. This is amazing and phenomenal, we all (or many of us) act like crazed and long-time fans when Matisyahu makes a move in public. No particular expectation of ideological messages is applied to "Gentile musicians," and while they can still sell out, there is no way that their going on tour would be considered selling out.
May this be a picture of what is to be in the future, when the Meshiach comes and Jews and Torah hit the "main stage" and the knowledge of G-d flourishes with the masses.
Peace, Yaniv...
In my closet is a glass-framed poster with a drawing of Jerusalem on it. Beneath the drawing is a sentence that reads "Peace of Jerusalem." I think of the irony of the sentence since it can be read both "peace of Jerusalem" and "piece of Jerusalem." It is so interesting how Israeli culture usually produces notions related to "peace" and Palestinian culture usually produces notions related to "piece." Truth be told, you never see cultural items coming from Palestinian spheres speaking about "peace of Jerusalem.
Anyway, this got me to thinking. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the account of King Solomon and the two women. Both of them went up to him holding a baby with the claim that the baby was theres. Considering that they could each have been lying, King Solomon simply suggested that the baby be cut in half and that each woman get half of him. At that moment, one of the women cried out that the baby should be given to the other, and at that point King Solomon gave the baby to her. Since she screamed for the life of the baby, King Solomon reasoned that the baby was hers, and she received her child.
Now, if we make an analogy, King Solomon can be seen as a metaphor for G-d, the two women can be seen as metaphors for Israeli's (Jews) and Palestinians (Muslims) and the baby can be seen as Jerusalem. Both of the nations come up to G-d claiming that Jerusalem belongs to them, so G-d suggests that Jerusalem be split in half and each half be given to the respective peoples. Upon this suggestion, the majority of the Israeli people suggest that land be given to the Palestinians in the name of peace, and for this reason G-d gives them Jerusalem. It is because Jews create posters saying "Peace of Jerusalem" that we will get Jerusalem in one piece.
Anyway, this got me to thinking. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the account of King Solomon and the two women. Both of them went up to him holding a baby with the claim that the baby was theres. Considering that they could each have been lying, King Solomon simply suggested that the baby be cut in half and that each woman get half of him. At that moment, one of the women cried out that the baby should be given to the other, and at that point King Solomon gave the baby to her. Since she screamed for the life of the baby, King Solomon reasoned that the baby was hers, and she received her child.
Now, if we make an analogy, King Solomon can be seen as a metaphor for G-d, the two women can be seen as metaphors for Israeli's (Jews) and Palestinians (Muslims) and the baby can be seen as Jerusalem. Both of the nations come up to G-d claiming that Jerusalem belongs to them, so G-d suggests that Jerusalem be split in half and each half be given to the respective peoples. Upon this suggestion, the majority of the Israeli people suggest that land be given to the Palestinians in the name of peace, and for this reason G-d gives them Jerusalem. It is because Jews create posters saying "Peace of Jerusalem" that we will get Jerusalem in one piece.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
I am a conservative Jew, politically, not religiously, and I see that as being perfectly in-line with justice-pursuing, peace-wanting, humanity-loving values, which I hold.
With me at least, but it seems with many Jews in the past couple of years that political conservativism has become more and more of a sensible political ideology, at least with regards to particular arenas. For me, it could have been the maturity that (supposedly) comes with age, but it could also have been the only proper response to a growingly Israel-hostile university climate, which I saw falling all around me like stink bombs. Yes, that was it, the hypocrisy I saw gleaming like bad rays from the intellegentsia liberalidad universitad which, once I Sherlocked my way into what was going on and had given them ample benefit of the doubt, the nonsense sent me flying from them with tracks of fire. It was unfortunate really, I used to be tight with the views of liberalism and to a large degree I think that I still am, it’s just that I saw that field of people begin to take up arms for causes that were associated with hate. In short, the way I saw it, hate was a dragon that the knights of the liberal round table and its disciples vowed to sleigh, but the more I saw them carrying anti-Israel signs, chanting venom, and planting seeds of hate, I realized that they had efficiently set the borders of that room in a way that just left me out of it. There was no more room for me to be a liberal and to join in that scheme as a Jew; my love for and alliance with Israel was an unacceptable firearm in the military of the liberal, and so I switched units.
Of course, just because the liberals whom I saw on campus, a territory like the West Bank where extremists make the most noise, were fools, it doesn’t mean that liberalism as an holistic ideology is wrong or even inherently flawed, it’s just that those people decided to stash Israel away in the “evil” file. This was liberal dogma, a mirage in the dunes where American was an evil empire and Israel was the bloody jewel in the crown. My views were my views and I would not shift them because some fools had mental issues. If I had liberal views they would remain, but if Israel could be filed and categorized away as an evil entity in the way that it was, knowing what I do about Israel, I cognized that there must be a problem with the functioning method of liberal thought. This caused in me a significant right shift and eventually lead me to rethinking the entire structure of the political spectrum.
One commandment is to "love your neighbor as yourself." If we try to understand the significance of this commandment, we get an instruction that tells us to include others in our purview of ourselves. Since we have the tendency to go out of our way (or is it in our way?) to make our lives easier and to care for ourselves, at least theoretically, the Torah is telling us, not asking us, to put others in the same place as we put ourselves. We are not to put ourselves in someone else's shoes, we are to put others in OUR shoes. Contemporary liberal politics has adopted this value as their own.
Another commandment is not to have sex before marriage. Nowadays, this life value is taken to be a more conservative value, indicative of traditional and puritanical views. However, it is from the same set of commandments and the same G-d Whom gives both commandments; it is out of the same Mouth from which we hear both. How do we reconcile the two? Apparently G-d wants us to do both of them, that's how we reconcile them. G-d has created a system in which both social and sexual values are primary, unlike the world view most people have today where either social justice or sexual morality are key, but not both simultaneously. Social justice is about fixing the world around you, sexual morality is about fixing your personal world. The two bleed into each other because how can you begin to nurture the world around you without nurturing your personal world? When you are able to do both you can begin to see how your personal world and the world around are one world, and this explains the unity that is expressed throughout the entire Torah, not to mention the very nature of G-d's existence, which is characterized by complete unity.
Life is too complex to isolate yourself into any one man-made ideological category such as taking a solely liberal or conservative stance on issues. The heart of any matter has to be understood and cognized and only then can a person try to reason how he/she should respond to the issue. If we do this, the result is that we usually get some amalgamation ideology that contains parts of each line of thought. If we take this further, it seems that each line of thought is actually part of a larger "ideology," a comprehensive stance of life, which tends to bend and finally transcend existing political lines of thought. But the key is not to destroy existing political ideologies, it is to understand how the values contained within each camp are actually part of a more coherent world view than each holds on its own. If we try to reach it from a human perspective it begins to look like a fanciful and idealistic illusion of an idea. But if we look at it from the perspective that there is a Being, G-d, Whom has a better understanding of things than we do and rationalize that He is the Source of these commandments, then our limited human understanding becomes less and less of an obstacle because we understand that His wisdom calls for this unity. It then becomes something that we can grasp and understand, not at all far-fetched or enigmatic.
Let us imagine a person who is as devoted to sexual morality as he is to bringing down oppressive regimes, or let us imagine a person who is as devoted to loving his neighbor as himself as he is to running a corporation; neither of these are inherent opposites. Often times people tie a set of values together just because they occur in the same person, but this is a fallacy. Each value has to be understood as an item on its own, for what it is, and then that value can be understood as one value in a larger set. Once this is done, values complement each other and then begin to form a bigger picture. For a Jew, that picture is the Torah and the 613 commandments in it. This is the "ideology of G-d," and can probably only be struck in a theocracy, which is a loaded word for a spiritual, legal, and institutionalized return to that holistic understanding of reality. i.e., Messianic Redemption.
The value of the human is compromised until it has a soul or until one believes that it has a soul – whichever comes first.
It is the soul that allows for the fusion of “liberal” and “conservative” politics, for if the human has a soul, then all human beings are equal; a liberal maxim, but if the human has a soul, then it has to adhere to a number of behaviors that indicate and maintain its endless value, of which sexual morality is just one. If souls exist as the core of the being called the “human being,” then indeed a set of both “liberal” and “conservative” values exist as part of a seamless expression of truth.
But if souls exist then G-d exists, because a soul cannot be the function of anything else other than G-d. It makes sense that G-d created all of this in a chronological manner, perhaps human souls, earth, human body, and then joined the soul with the body, but that Abraham discovered the existence of all this in the opposite order; that he was both soul and body, had a body that was separate from the soul, that the body was part of the earth, and since the soul is self that it had to be made first with the intent of putting it in a vessel. Since the soul exists, it must be that G-d exists.
With me at least, but it seems with many Jews in the past couple of years that political conservativism has become more and more of a sensible political ideology, at least with regards to particular arenas. For me, it could have been the maturity that (supposedly) comes with age, but it could also have been the only proper response to a growingly Israel-hostile university climate, which I saw falling all around me like stink bombs. Yes, that was it, the hypocrisy I saw gleaming like bad rays from the intellegentsia liberalidad universitad which, once I Sherlocked my way into what was going on and had given them ample benefit of the doubt, the nonsense sent me flying from them with tracks of fire. It was unfortunate really, I used to be tight with the views of liberalism and to a large degree I think that I still am, it’s just that I saw that field of people begin to take up arms for causes that were associated with hate. In short, the way I saw it, hate was a dragon that the knights of the liberal round table and its disciples vowed to sleigh, but the more I saw them carrying anti-Israel signs, chanting venom, and planting seeds of hate, I realized that they had efficiently set the borders of that room in a way that just left me out of it. There was no more room for me to be a liberal and to join in that scheme as a Jew; my love for and alliance with Israel was an unacceptable firearm in the military of the liberal, and so I switched units.
Of course, just because the liberals whom I saw on campus, a territory like the West Bank where extremists make the most noise, were fools, it doesn’t mean that liberalism as an holistic ideology is wrong or even inherently flawed, it’s just that those people decided to stash Israel away in the “evil” file. This was liberal dogma, a mirage in the dunes where American was an evil empire and Israel was the bloody jewel in the crown. My views were my views and I would not shift them because some fools had mental issues. If I had liberal views they would remain, but if Israel could be filed and categorized away as an evil entity in the way that it was, knowing what I do about Israel, I cognized that there must be a problem with the functioning method of liberal thought. This caused in me a significant right shift and eventually lead me to rethinking the entire structure of the political spectrum.
One commandment is to "love your neighbor as yourself." If we try to understand the significance of this commandment, we get an instruction that tells us to include others in our purview of ourselves. Since we have the tendency to go out of our way (or is it in our way?) to make our lives easier and to care for ourselves, at least theoretically, the Torah is telling us, not asking us, to put others in the same place as we put ourselves. We are not to put ourselves in someone else's shoes, we are to put others in OUR shoes. Contemporary liberal politics has adopted this value as their own.
Another commandment is not to have sex before marriage. Nowadays, this life value is taken to be a more conservative value, indicative of traditional and puritanical views. However, it is from the same set of commandments and the same G-d Whom gives both commandments; it is out of the same Mouth from which we hear both. How do we reconcile the two? Apparently G-d wants us to do both of them, that's how we reconcile them. G-d has created a system in which both social and sexual values are primary, unlike the world view most people have today where either social justice or sexual morality are key, but not both simultaneously. Social justice is about fixing the world around you, sexual morality is about fixing your personal world. The two bleed into each other because how can you begin to nurture the world around you without nurturing your personal world? When you are able to do both you can begin to see how your personal world and the world around are one world, and this explains the unity that is expressed throughout the entire Torah, not to mention the very nature of G-d's existence, which is characterized by complete unity.
Life is too complex to isolate yourself into any one man-made ideological category such as taking a solely liberal or conservative stance on issues. The heart of any matter has to be understood and cognized and only then can a person try to reason how he/she should respond to the issue. If we do this, the result is that we usually get some amalgamation ideology that contains parts of each line of thought. If we take this further, it seems that each line of thought is actually part of a larger "ideology," a comprehensive stance of life, which tends to bend and finally transcend existing political lines of thought. But the key is not to destroy existing political ideologies, it is to understand how the values contained within each camp are actually part of a more coherent world view than each holds on its own. If we try to reach it from a human perspective it begins to look like a fanciful and idealistic illusion of an idea. But if we look at it from the perspective that there is a Being, G-d, Whom has a better understanding of things than we do and rationalize that He is the Source of these commandments, then our limited human understanding becomes less and less of an obstacle because we understand that His wisdom calls for this unity. It then becomes something that we can grasp and understand, not at all far-fetched or enigmatic.
Let us imagine a person who is as devoted to sexual morality as he is to bringing down oppressive regimes, or let us imagine a person who is as devoted to loving his neighbor as himself as he is to running a corporation; neither of these are inherent opposites. Often times people tie a set of values together just because they occur in the same person, but this is a fallacy. Each value has to be understood as an item on its own, for what it is, and then that value can be understood as one value in a larger set. Once this is done, values complement each other and then begin to form a bigger picture. For a Jew, that picture is the Torah and the 613 commandments in it. This is the "ideology of G-d," and can probably only be struck in a theocracy, which is a loaded word for a spiritual, legal, and institutionalized return to that holistic understanding of reality. i.e., Messianic Redemption.
The value of the human is compromised until it has a soul or until one believes that it has a soul – whichever comes first.
It is the soul that allows for the fusion of “liberal” and “conservative” politics, for if the human has a soul, then all human beings are equal; a liberal maxim, but if the human has a soul, then it has to adhere to a number of behaviors that indicate and maintain its endless value, of which sexual morality is just one. If souls exist as the core of the being called the “human being,” then indeed a set of both “liberal” and “conservative” values exist as part of a seamless expression of truth.
But if souls exist then G-d exists, because a soul cannot be the function of anything else other than G-d. It makes sense that G-d created all of this in a chronological manner, perhaps human souls, earth, human body, and then joined the soul with the body, but that Abraham discovered the existence of all this in the opposite order; that he was both soul and body, had a body that was separate from the soul, that the body was part of the earth, and since the soul is self that it had to be made first with the intent of putting it in a vessel. Since the soul exists, it must be that G-d exists.
Slice of Redemption ---------------------------------------------
I consider myself fortunate and blessed to be alive; this is an on-going blessing from G-d. However, every once in a while I catch a glimpse of something truly amazing, genuinely G-dly, (as if being alive isn’t), something that sets things into perspective.
We all know that the Torah is full of laws and commandments, telling us how to live and so forth. We sometimes want to be free from those laws, but occasionally something happens when we see their usefulness. Let us take simple traffic lights for example, which basically provide drivers and pedestrians with safe passage through otherwise dangerous intersections. It is a simple red light, an arbitrary law, that when observed creates a stronger force than can a tangible wall. The proof is that most people would feel horribly ashamed if they ran a red light; they would feel bad for endangering themselves and others, and further, they would receive the ostracizement of the driving community, a powerful force unto itself. This enough is to make the majority of people willfully stop driving when approaching a red light. It’s a law that we want to keep, it’s a line that we don’t want to cross over, and when we overshoot it we usually find ourselves backing up.
But this isn’t a story about shame, it’s a story about redemption.
One hot day I was driving home from a class at the University when I noticed that none the traffic lights of the entire intersection ahead of me were functioning. I inched my way up to the white lines and when I was a few cars back, I realized that there were no police officers there to regulate the flow of the traffic. It was as if neither the traffic lights nor the guidance-police existed, and we were left alone to get through the random forces on our own. The drivers had taken it into their own hands to get through the intersection, and I realized just how insanely dangerous this was; my turn was coming up and I became attentive.
However, as I approached the white line an amazing spectacle unfolded before my eyes; the drivers were getting through the intersection in peace and safety. For some odd reason, without the regulation of any police, the drivers had resorted to alternating between east-west and north-south traffic. About twenty or so cars heading north and south would drive through, and a few moments later the flow of traffic slowed to a halt and then the east-west flow would pick up, live for a few moments, then stop, and then alternate again. The catalyst in the process was usually one or two sole drivers whom would stop at the intersection’s line rather than drive through it. This would cause a chain reaction leading drivers on either side to stop, which would then lead drivers coming the opposite direction to stop, and open up the opportunity for the perpendicular flow of traffic. This was all carried out in a rather intuitive manner.
That day I caught a short and intense glimpse of the best in human behavior; I saw the G-dly side of humanity triumph over the hurriedness and ego that accompanies a large section of the human being; the Image of G-d shone through. The streets are usually breeding grounds for some of the worst in human behavior; greed, impatience, and ignorance of the rules. But this was almost surreal; human beings were functioning in harmony with each other as they needed without the aid of any regulative system – they had understood the rules and taken to applying them on their own, and succeeding – a wonderful display of the internalization of the rules. The most amazing thing about it was that I was not reading about or imagining it; it was happening in real time in the most mundane of settings; an intersection. This marvel led directly to harmony, to peace; the Shechina, G-d’s Presence, rested there potently, if only for a few slow moments. Occasionally a car would careen through the intersection, the one person that tried to make it, but most cars had already begun stopping by then, creating a few second lapse from the time that the next stream began and allowing him/her safe passage. This is precisely why both lights remain red simultaneously for a few moments, in case a rebel careens through the intersection. Somehow “we” had achieved this on our own.
I had felt, for a moment, that this was a tear in the normal “space-time continuum” of galut, exile, and that the time of the Meshiach would surely be like this, except always. For those that who don’t believe that the time of the Meshiach can happen or find the redemptive promises in the Torah hard to fathom and imagine, you are not alone, I too find myself trying to find new and creative ways to grasp it. However, that day, for a few extended moments, I and everybody who passed through that intersection, some hundreds of cars or more, all simultaneously experienced the same thing, something that I can only explain as a slice of ge’ulah, Redemption. It was nothing short of a pure miracle, and it happened in front of everybody’s eyes. Considering the drawn out nature of the occurrence, I am quite sure that there is nobody who drove through that intersection in those moments without being shocked into a state of curiosity.
When my turn came to go through the intersection, I didn’t want to; I wanted to stay back and to experience the wonder of that spectacle for a while longer, this “natural” phenomenon, but I could not fathom putting a break into the flow of events that was occurring. Once through, I considered turning around and going back, like a gleeful child to a water slide, but time constraints pushed me onward to my destination. When the time of the Meshiach comes, and may Hashem will it to be soon, I won’t have to make a U-turn to experience those few moments again; they won’t end.
I consider myself fortunate and blessed to be alive; this is an on-going blessing from G-d. However, every once in a while I catch a glimpse of something truly amazing, genuinely G-dly, (as if being alive isn’t), something that sets things into perspective.
We all know that the Torah is full of laws and commandments, telling us how to live and so forth. We sometimes want to be free from those laws, but occasionally something happens when we see their usefulness. Let us take simple traffic lights for example, which basically provide drivers and pedestrians with safe passage through otherwise dangerous intersections. It is a simple red light, an arbitrary law, that when observed creates a stronger force than can a tangible wall. The proof is that most people would feel horribly ashamed if they ran a red light; they would feel bad for endangering themselves and others, and further, they would receive the ostracizement of the driving community, a powerful force unto itself. This enough is to make the majority of people willfully stop driving when approaching a red light. It’s a law that we want to keep, it’s a line that we don’t want to cross over, and when we overshoot it we usually find ourselves backing up.
But this isn’t a story about shame, it’s a story about redemption.
One hot day I was driving home from a class at the University when I noticed that none the traffic lights of the entire intersection ahead of me were functioning. I inched my way up to the white lines and when I was a few cars back, I realized that there were no police officers there to regulate the flow of the traffic. It was as if neither the traffic lights nor the guidance-police existed, and we were left alone to get through the random forces on our own. The drivers had taken it into their own hands to get through the intersection, and I realized just how insanely dangerous this was; my turn was coming up and I became attentive.
However, as I approached the white line an amazing spectacle unfolded before my eyes; the drivers were getting through the intersection in peace and safety. For some odd reason, without the regulation of any police, the drivers had resorted to alternating between east-west and north-south traffic. About twenty or so cars heading north and south would drive through, and a few moments later the flow of traffic slowed to a halt and then the east-west flow would pick up, live for a few moments, then stop, and then alternate again. The catalyst in the process was usually one or two sole drivers whom would stop at the intersection’s line rather than drive through it. This would cause a chain reaction leading drivers on either side to stop, which would then lead drivers coming the opposite direction to stop, and open up the opportunity for the perpendicular flow of traffic. This was all carried out in a rather intuitive manner.
That day I caught a short and intense glimpse of the best in human behavior; I saw the G-dly side of humanity triumph over the hurriedness and ego that accompanies a large section of the human being; the Image of G-d shone through. The streets are usually breeding grounds for some of the worst in human behavior; greed, impatience, and ignorance of the rules. But this was almost surreal; human beings were functioning in harmony with each other as they needed without the aid of any regulative system – they had understood the rules and taken to applying them on their own, and succeeding – a wonderful display of the internalization of the rules. The most amazing thing about it was that I was not reading about or imagining it; it was happening in real time in the most mundane of settings; an intersection. This marvel led directly to harmony, to peace; the Shechina, G-d’s Presence, rested there potently, if only for a few slow moments. Occasionally a car would careen through the intersection, the one person that tried to make it, but most cars had already begun stopping by then, creating a few second lapse from the time that the next stream began and allowing him/her safe passage. This is precisely why both lights remain red simultaneously for a few moments, in case a rebel careens through the intersection. Somehow “we” had achieved this on our own.
I had felt, for a moment, that this was a tear in the normal “space-time continuum” of galut, exile, and that the time of the Meshiach would surely be like this, except always. For those that who don’t believe that the time of the Meshiach can happen or find the redemptive promises in the Torah hard to fathom and imagine, you are not alone, I too find myself trying to find new and creative ways to grasp it. However, that day, for a few extended moments, I and everybody who passed through that intersection, some hundreds of cars or more, all simultaneously experienced the same thing, something that I can only explain as a slice of ge’ulah, Redemption. It was nothing short of a pure miracle, and it happened in front of everybody’s eyes. Considering the drawn out nature of the occurrence, I am quite sure that there is nobody who drove through that intersection in those moments without being shocked into a state of curiosity.
When my turn came to go through the intersection, I didn’t want to; I wanted to stay back and to experience the wonder of that spectacle for a while longer, this “natural” phenomenon, but I could not fathom putting a break into the flow of events that was occurring. Once through, I considered turning around and going back, like a gleeful child to a water slide, but time constraints pushed me onward to my destination. When the time of the Meshiach comes, and may Hashem will it to be soon, I won’t have to make a U-turn to experience those few moments again; they won’t end.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Monday, July 10, 2006
An article from the Jerusalem Post; absolutely amazing and well said.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885956191&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Here is the article in text.
---------------------------------------------
Jul. 9, 2006 23:26 | Updated Jul. 10, 2006 4:44
The Region: Palestinian suicide strategy
By BARRY RUBIN
Understandably, most people in the world fail to understand Palestinian ideology and strategy today largely because it is so bizarre compared to politics as usual.
Before examining the basic principles of the Palestinian approach it is useful to consider how things usually work, and thus what people who don't know much about Palestinian politics think they are like.
Normal politics features realizable goals, paying keen attention to the balance of forces, avoiding losing conflicts, and seeking a stable state.
They also include such things as putting a high priority on raising living standards and building effective institutions to serve the people.
Every day Western governments, media and academics try to impose this model on Palestinian behavior, politics and ideology. Yet it just doesn't work. The things many in the West think motivates Palestinians - getting a state, ending the occupation - are of no interest in their own right. Indeed, the only way to maintain the pretense is a combination of amnesia and abandoning of the kind of rational analysis used to view any other political situation in the world.
I must add that in private (though virtually never in public) Palestinian intellectuals sound a lot like me. Over and over again, one hears disgust, despair and profound cynicism along the lines described below.
Given the current Palestinian ideology and strategy the conflict is unsolvable, and there is no way to stop the violence. On the other hand, as a result, Palestinian tactics are unworkable, politics are disorganized, and military strategy is self-defeating. The Palestinians can harass Israel, but not much more.
HERE ARE the basic points for understanding Palestinian politics:
There are hardly any moderate Palestinians in public life and even those few generally keep their mouths shut, or echo the militant majority. With few exceptions - countable on your fingers - a Palestinian moderate in practice can usually be defined as someone who apologizes for terrorism in good English. The mantra of "helping the moderates" cannot work under these conditions.
Fatah and PLO strategy rests on the belief that defeat is staved off as long as you keep fighting. Their only true victory is to continue the struggle. Of course, the cost of this is not only violence, suffering and disruption, but also a failure to achieve anything material. This is why the "cycle of violence" concept is useless. Palestinians don't attack Israel because Israel attacks them, but because that is their sole program.
Whatever the common people think privately, the vast majority of activists believe everything must be subsumed to the struggle. Democracy, living standards, women's rights and so on have no value outside contributing to the battle against Israel. This is why the idea of appealing to Palestinian material interests or finding some leader who puts the priority on achieving peace and plenty fails.
The interim goal is to be able to claim phony victories, which are actually costly defeats. If after 40 years of armed struggle the movement's great triumphs are destroying one Israeli outpost a year or kidnapping a single soldier, this shows its remarkable weakness on the battlefield. Inflicting damage on Israel via rocket attacks serves no Palestinian strategic objective except to make people feel good about damaging Israel (even while they suffer far more damage themselves). Celebrating martyrs simply means bragging about your own casualties.
The movement's social policy is remarkably reactionary. Despite its leftist veneer it does not activate the masses except as an audience to cheer on the heroes. Fatah has no economic or social policy; Hamas seeks to turn Palestine into Iran or Afghanistan.
They have more in common with the world view of the Middle Ages than with Chinese or Cuban visions of guerrilla war. Palestinian groups use only a tiny proportion of the potential for large-scale social mobilization, a feature far more characteristic of the supposedly soft Israeli society.
Not only is infrastructure unimportant, it interferes with waging all-out struggle. If Palestinians become obsessed with job creation, educational or health systems or a successful economy this makes them satisfied with their lot and less willing to fight and die for the cause.
This concept, jarring for Western observers, is common in the Middle East. Consider Saddam Hussein's irresponsible aggressions and the Syrian rulers' preference for stagnation over reform.
Use your people's suffering to win international support. No fear of destruction or popular suffering deters Palestinian leaders. After it was charged that Hamas laid mines on a Gaza beach killing civilians last month, an American newspaper opined that Hamas would never do this to its own people. On the contrary: There is a long pattern of sacrificing Palestinian lives and welfare for propaganda gains. Children are encouraged by the official Palestinian media to become terrorists and hence martyrs.
Lie endlessly, not only to everyone else but to yourself, portraying Israel as always wrong and America as always hostile. Their inability to transcend propaganda and the incessant demonization has ensured - except for rare times during the Oslo process - that the Palestinians cannot maneuver successfully in dealing with these countries.
THIS IS A losing strategy: Destroy your infrastructure, subvert international and even Arab support through extremism - no one is now even surprised that Arab states do nothing to help the Palestinians out of their mess - throw away chances for interim gains (like getting a state) to avoid compromising the chance for total victory, repeat old mistakes, rejoice over defeats as producing martyrs, taunt the world's sole superpower, exalt anarchy, and forfeit any chance of winning sympathy on the other side.
Such a suicide strategy, like suicide bombing, can inflict losses on the enemy but cannot defeat it. Indeed, by sacrificing so many possible benefits it ensures that the gap steadily widens in favor of the other side.
Far from any sign of resistance to this disastrous approach it seems capable of providing decades more of glorious defeat and martyrdom. Maybe it will even go on long enough for those in the West who keep expecting something different to understand what's going on.
---------------------------------------------
The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885956191&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Here is the article in text.
---------------------------------------------
Jul. 9, 2006 23:26 | Updated Jul. 10, 2006 4:44
The Region: Palestinian suicide strategy
By BARRY RUBIN
Understandably, most people in the world fail to understand Palestinian ideology and strategy today largely because it is so bizarre compared to politics as usual.
Before examining the basic principles of the Palestinian approach it is useful to consider how things usually work, and thus what people who don't know much about Palestinian politics think they are like.
Normal politics features realizable goals, paying keen attention to the balance of forces, avoiding losing conflicts, and seeking a stable state.
They also include such things as putting a high priority on raising living standards and building effective institutions to serve the people.
Every day Western governments, media and academics try to impose this model on Palestinian behavior, politics and ideology. Yet it just doesn't work. The things many in the West think motivates Palestinians - getting a state, ending the occupation - are of no interest in their own right. Indeed, the only way to maintain the pretense is a combination of amnesia and abandoning of the kind of rational analysis used to view any other political situation in the world.
I must add that in private (though virtually never in public) Palestinian intellectuals sound a lot like me. Over and over again, one hears disgust, despair and profound cynicism along the lines described below.
Given the current Palestinian ideology and strategy the conflict is unsolvable, and there is no way to stop the violence. On the other hand, as a result, Palestinian tactics are unworkable, politics are disorganized, and military strategy is self-defeating. The Palestinians can harass Israel, but not much more.
HERE ARE the basic points for understanding Palestinian politics:
There are hardly any moderate Palestinians in public life and even those few generally keep their mouths shut, or echo the militant majority. With few exceptions - countable on your fingers - a Palestinian moderate in practice can usually be defined as someone who apologizes for terrorism in good English. The mantra of "helping the moderates" cannot work under these conditions.
Fatah and PLO strategy rests on the belief that defeat is staved off as long as you keep fighting. Their only true victory is to continue the struggle. Of course, the cost of this is not only violence, suffering and disruption, but also a failure to achieve anything material. This is why the "cycle of violence" concept is useless. Palestinians don't attack Israel because Israel attacks them, but because that is their sole program.
Whatever the common people think privately, the vast majority of activists believe everything must be subsumed to the struggle. Democracy, living standards, women's rights and so on have no value outside contributing to the battle against Israel. This is why the idea of appealing to Palestinian material interests or finding some leader who puts the priority on achieving peace and plenty fails.
The interim goal is to be able to claim phony victories, which are actually costly defeats. If after 40 years of armed struggle the movement's great triumphs are destroying one Israeli outpost a year or kidnapping a single soldier, this shows its remarkable weakness on the battlefield. Inflicting damage on Israel via rocket attacks serves no Palestinian strategic objective except to make people feel good about damaging Israel (even while they suffer far more damage themselves). Celebrating martyrs simply means bragging about your own casualties.
The movement's social policy is remarkably reactionary. Despite its leftist veneer it does not activate the masses except as an audience to cheer on the heroes. Fatah has no economic or social policy; Hamas seeks to turn Palestine into Iran or Afghanistan.
They have more in common with the world view of the Middle Ages than with Chinese or Cuban visions of guerrilla war. Palestinian groups use only a tiny proportion of the potential for large-scale social mobilization, a feature far more characteristic of the supposedly soft Israeli society.
Not only is infrastructure unimportant, it interferes with waging all-out struggle. If Palestinians become obsessed with job creation, educational or health systems or a successful economy this makes them satisfied with their lot and less willing to fight and die for the cause.
This concept, jarring for Western observers, is common in the Middle East. Consider Saddam Hussein's irresponsible aggressions and the Syrian rulers' preference for stagnation over reform.
Use your people's suffering to win international support. No fear of destruction or popular suffering deters Palestinian leaders. After it was charged that Hamas laid mines on a Gaza beach killing civilians last month, an American newspaper opined that Hamas would never do this to its own people. On the contrary: There is a long pattern of sacrificing Palestinian lives and welfare for propaganda gains. Children are encouraged by the official Palestinian media to become terrorists and hence martyrs.
Lie endlessly, not only to everyone else but to yourself, portraying Israel as always wrong and America as always hostile. Their inability to transcend propaganda and the incessant demonization has ensured - except for rare times during the Oslo process - that the Palestinians cannot maneuver successfully in dealing with these countries.
THIS IS A losing strategy: Destroy your infrastructure, subvert international and even Arab support through extremism - no one is now even surprised that Arab states do nothing to help the Palestinians out of their mess - throw away chances for interim gains (like getting a state) to avoid compromising the chance for total victory, repeat old mistakes, rejoice over defeats as producing martyrs, taunt the world's sole superpower, exalt anarchy, and forfeit any chance of winning sympathy on the other side.
Such a suicide strategy, like suicide bombing, can inflict losses on the enemy but cannot defeat it. Indeed, by sacrificing so many possible benefits it ensures that the gap steadily widens in favor of the other side.
Far from any sign of resistance to this disastrous approach it seems capable of providing decades more of glorious defeat and martyrdom. Maybe it will even go on long enough for those in the West who keep expecting something different to understand what's going on.
---------------------------------------------
The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Did I break my life or was my life already broken?
Did I speak all words possible or were those words already spoken?
It cracked like an egg and I, hate-filled me, spilled out the contents
It was a shell of a life and I was living on the surface
And when I dipped in the liquid yoke, all that meant lifted to the surface
Did I speak all words possible or were those words already spoken?
It cracked like an egg and I, hate-filled me, spilled out the contents
It was a shell of a life and I was living on the surface
And when I dipped in the liquid yoke, all that meant lifted to the surface
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
In a world and time where we have to argue endlessly just to show that what is ours is ours, how long will I have to share with my theives?
I have adopted them, they are mine, those checkered caped crusaders
My sons with knives to my throat
The nation still raises it sword and sinks it into its plowshare, into my throat
My soul and blood pour all over the canvas which is the Land
Are we painting a good picture?
To see their eyes is enough, they are still learning war
Gilad ben Aviva, Gilad Shalit
The windows to the soul, and their soul and their blood poured all over the Land
The windows to the shul, and their soul and their blood all over them
Free Israel from its Land
How can the believers not be sad?
How can the believers not be mad?
The unbelievers revel in liberation as we are all liberated from our Land
In the world where I will lift every city and town in my Land above my greatest desires
I will not forget Jerusalem, nor Tel-Aviv, nor Ashkelon
Nor the buses that drive down the holy streets
Nor the holy people whom sell food in shops
Nor the smell of the exhaust of the buses, the sounds of the salesmen, the green uniforms, the shining black metal of the guns in which I used to see myself
Now I have a black kippah on my head, though it not shines, with it I try to reflect Heaven
The bricks of Israel, the stones of Jerusalem
They belong in walls and not in the hands of youngsters
They belong in the Wall, not in my head
I belong alive, not dead
I need to go there before I die
G-d send me there!
The sounds of shouts in Hebrew
I will forget none of the cities for they are all holy lands
For how is it that they are not worthy?
We beg for every small town when we realize their value
We want Akko and Haifa and Eilat before Jerusalem
I need to leave here before I die
The body is below the head
How can I throw trash on those streets?
How can I say dirty words in their vicinities?
How can I give them to Arabs?
Arabs who spit on me in my Land
Arabs who respect nothing and want everything, though nothing is theirs
How long can I be choked away from my land like a fish out of water?
How long can I simmer in their hot spit?
How long can I take this s**t?
I need to leave here before I die
G-d send me there!
Why, why, this painful exile?
I cannot endure this mile!
I cannot hold this smile!
My power amounts to nothing; send me Home!
Yours is the dome
I am becoming like a dry bone
Send me to my room, I don't want to leave it; what a beatiful prison
Where Your light shatters through the Prism
I do not know if it is in my power to retrieve it but I know that
I don't have it in my heart to leave it
I fear the future, I know not my sustenance
But I trust in You for it is Yours
Please, just a share
Mistakes I have made, but how can they be paid?
I am a dry bone here, a dry bone I am becoming
I fear the future, I know not my sustenance
But I know that here I cannot be sustained
Send me on that flying train, my L-rd!
Free me from this pain
You've done it once, now do it again
I beg
I have emptiness here, I need a touch of fulness
I realize my weakness, I realize my love for Your Land
I realize the richness of Your Hand
Blame me for I love what I see and what I touch
I fail from iconoclasm with Your Land
There there are spiritual spasms I have
Even in lowliness let me sit on Your Couch
Live to see not die to be free
It's soft pillows enveloping me
I here can barely stand reality
That boost, I need it, four years too long!
I long
I want genuine joy in my songs, from where will it come?
Please, please Hashem, please and give me some
To please I want and now I want
The melancholy of this longing
I see pictures of Your Land and have fits
I have to put them away
I have to deny joy, for all joy opens up to the joy of your Land
But I am far away
All joy opens up to the joy of your land
Like every river ends up in the ocean
What a predicament, what a Land!
For this land I am in is NOTHING!
Even molecules of memory I cannot withstand
I cannot function with images of that Place in my head
I have to imagine all day of its intense beauty
For one sweet drop of its honey
I have to feel nothing just to get by
I don't want to die
I want to live and there
I shake violently to go there
I grab air in front of me, I try to pull myself up
"Please, please," is all I can say
"Please, please, please, please, please"
I am an empty vessel of cracking clay
What is there to be inside?
I have adopted them, they are mine, those checkered caped crusaders
My sons with knives to my throat
The nation still raises it sword and sinks it into its plowshare, into my throat
My soul and blood pour all over the canvas which is the Land
Are we painting a good picture?
To see their eyes is enough, they are still learning war
Gilad ben Aviva, Gilad Shalit
The windows to the soul, and their soul and their blood poured all over the Land
The windows to the shul, and their soul and their blood all over them
Free Israel from its Land
How can the believers not be sad?
How can the believers not be mad?
The unbelievers revel in liberation as we are all liberated from our Land
In the world where I will lift every city and town in my Land above my greatest desires
I will not forget Jerusalem, nor Tel-Aviv, nor Ashkelon
Nor the buses that drive down the holy streets
Nor the holy people whom sell food in shops
Nor the smell of the exhaust of the buses, the sounds of the salesmen, the green uniforms, the shining black metal of the guns in which I used to see myself
Now I have a black kippah on my head, though it not shines, with it I try to reflect Heaven
The bricks of Israel, the stones of Jerusalem
They belong in walls and not in the hands of youngsters
They belong in the Wall, not in my head
I belong alive, not dead
I need to go there before I die
G-d send me there!
The sounds of shouts in Hebrew
I will forget none of the cities for they are all holy lands
For how is it that they are not worthy?
We beg for every small town when we realize their value
We want Akko and Haifa and Eilat before Jerusalem
I need to leave here before I die
The body is below the head
How can I throw trash on those streets?
How can I say dirty words in their vicinities?
How can I give them to Arabs?
Arabs who spit on me in my Land
Arabs who respect nothing and want everything, though nothing is theirs
How long can I be choked away from my land like a fish out of water?
How long can I simmer in their hot spit?
How long can I take this s**t?
I need to leave here before I die
G-d send me there!
Why, why, this painful exile?
I cannot endure this mile!
I cannot hold this smile!
My power amounts to nothing; send me Home!
Yours is the dome
I am becoming like a dry bone
Send me to my room, I don't want to leave it; what a beatiful prison
Where Your light shatters through the Prism
I do not know if it is in my power to retrieve it but I know that
I don't have it in my heart to leave it
I fear the future, I know not my sustenance
But I trust in You for it is Yours
Please, just a share
Mistakes I have made, but how can they be paid?
I am a dry bone here, a dry bone I am becoming
I fear the future, I know not my sustenance
But I know that here I cannot be sustained
Send me on that flying train, my L-rd!
Free me from this pain
You've done it once, now do it again
I beg
I have emptiness here, I need a touch of fulness
I realize my weakness, I realize my love for Your Land
I realize the richness of Your Hand
Blame me for I love what I see and what I touch
I fail from iconoclasm with Your Land
There there are spiritual spasms I have
Even in lowliness let me sit on Your Couch
Live to see not die to be free
It's soft pillows enveloping me
I here can barely stand reality
That boost, I need it, four years too long!
I long
I want genuine joy in my songs, from where will it come?
Please, please Hashem, please and give me some
To please I want and now I want
The melancholy of this longing
I see pictures of Your Land and have fits
I have to put them away
I have to deny joy, for all joy opens up to the joy of your Land
But I am far away
All joy opens up to the joy of your land
Like every river ends up in the ocean
What a predicament, what a Land!
For this land I am in is NOTHING!
Even molecules of memory I cannot withstand
I cannot function with images of that Place in my head
I have to imagine all day of its intense beauty
For one sweet drop of its honey
I have to feel nothing just to get by
I don't want to die
I want to live and there
I shake violently to go there
I grab air in front of me, I try to pull myself up
"Please, please," is all I can say
"Please, please, please, please, please"
I am an empty vessel of cracking clay
What is there to be inside?
I was cleaning up popcorn today in the darkness of a movie theatre, one of my summer jobs, when I had the opportunity to meditate and get lost in thought, or should I say "found?" I realized something interesting; Christianity and Islam are "messianic" religions in that they both were founded as religions by individuals whom deemed themselves the harbingers of Messianic redemption. Both religions were simultaneously founded on the belief that the End Times were right around the corner, if not already in process, and both stand on the notion that they somehow are the literal fulfillments of all previous prophecies and expectations. That they are "messianic" religions in this sense explains the certain kind of "extroverted" energy that both contain, the felt need to evangelize their points of view to help bring about the redemption that (they believe) began with the life of their respective figure. That after 2,006 and 1,284 years respectively that Messianic redemption has not reached full circle yet has necessitated theological explanations as to why it has not occured yet, or that it had already begun and will be completed at a later date, or that the Messiah figure (Jesus in Christianity and the Hidden Imam in Shi'a Islam) is scheduled to return or already has.
Judaism is also a "messianic religion," but it did not spring up as a religion based on a Messianic figure whom announced that the arrival of the Messiah was imminent or had been fulfilled with him. This figure was Abraham, the starter of the Jewish religion (to whom Christians and Muslims also attribute spiritual and literal fatherhood). Perhaps that Judaism was not born out of Messianic fervor unlike Christianity and Islam does alot to explain the different attitude inherent to Judaism regarding prosletyzing. The only prosletyzing in Judaism to convince people of the existence of the One G-d, but not to have them convert to Judaism. Judaism does not believe in the imminent presence of the Messiah, but believes him to be scheduled to arrive any day. Indeed, it would be a lie to say that Messianic fervor does not exist in Judaism, for it surely does and can be felt with many people, but the widely-held belief in Judaism is that the arrival of the Messiah is not open to opinion or interpretation, meaning that when he arrives it will be as clear as day and not a belief held by a group of people. Islam and Christianity are in a state of constant Messianic fervor; Judaism is in a state of constant Messianic longing, which Jews believe will be broken at a certain point in history at which point the truths of G-d, life, and reality are revealed to humanity.
Most importantly is the Jewish view that Messianic redemption is a continuously occuring process, perhaps even after the arrival of the Messiah, which moderates some of the "absolutism" that are part and parcel of Christianity and Islam, the absolute conviction that the Messianic age is here (and has been here). The belief that he is already here makes the "nothing to lose, everything to gain" mentality quite fitting, and imagine being locked into that mentality for 2,000 and 1,284 years respectively. The reality is that there is always much to gain and much to lose; one cannot give away his estates as long as the Messiah has not arrived, and who is to say that one should give away his estates once the Messiah HAS arrived? If Messianic redemption is based on humanity's conviction that G-d is One and rules all, then that revelation is a steadily-occuring and continuous revelation, like an envelope being opened inch-by-inch, not being torn open in one violent act, in which humanity harnesses its best potentialities and learns to moderate its worst, and understands the ever-deep significance that G-d is the King of everything.
Judaism is also a "messianic religion," but it did not spring up as a religion based on a Messianic figure whom announced that the arrival of the Messiah was imminent or had been fulfilled with him. This figure was Abraham, the starter of the Jewish religion (to whom Christians and Muslims also attribute spiritual and literal fatherhood). Perhaps that Judaism was not born out of Messianic fervor unlike Christianity and Islam does alot to explain the different attitude inherent to Judaism regarding prosletyzing. The only prosletyzing in Judaism to convince people of the existence of the One G-d, but not to have them convert to Judaism. Judaism does not believe in the imminent presence of the Messiah, but believes him to be scheduled to arrive any day. Indeed, it would be a lie to say that Messianic fervor does not exist in Judaism, for it surely does and can be felt with many people, but the widely-held belief in Judaism is that the arrival of the Messiah is not open to opinion or interpretation, meaning that when he arrives it will be as clear as day and not a belief held by a group of people. Islam and Christianity are in a state of constant Messianic fervor; Judaism is in a state of constant Messianic longing, which Jews believe will be broken at a certain point in history at which point the truths of G-d, life, and reality are revealed to humanity.
Most importantly is the Jewish view that Messianic redemption is a continuously occuring process, perhaps even after the arrival of the Messiah, which moderates some of the "absolutism" that are part and parcel of Christianity and Islam, the absolute conviction that the Messianic age is here (and has been here). The belief that he is already here makes the "nothing to lose, everything to gain" mentality quite fitting, and imagine being locked into that mentality for 2,000 and 1,284 years respectively. The reality is that there is always much to gain and much to lose; one cannot give away his estates as long as the Messiah has not arrived, and who is to say that one should give away his estates once the Messiah HAS arrived? If Messianic redemption is based on humanity's conviction that G-d is One and rules all, then that revelation is a steadily-occuring and continuous revelation, like an envelope being opened inch-by-inch, not being torn open in one violent act, in which humanity harnesses its best potentialities and learns to moderate its worst, and understands the ever-deep significance that G-d is the King of everything.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
On the Nature of Atonement
This post is basically about human nature and whether it is good or evil, according to Judaism and Christianity. It started off as a writing on Christianity's view of human nature ("Notzriut" means "Christianity" in Hebrew), but eventually meshed into something else. Anyway, hope you enjoy, and please leave a comment.
Thoughts on Notzriut:
If G-d can forgive Christians without their having to do anything to receive that forgiveness, then G-d can surely forgive Jews as they do something to receive that forgiveness, even if it is not up to par with the way they originally atoned. The basis of G-d’s forgiveness of Jews is their recognition of G-d’s Law and at least a show of effort to improve, and if not, then at least a recognition that they need to improve. The basis of G-d’s forgiveness of Christians is that they cannot improve. The atonement that Christians believe G-d provided for them calls into question the way in which G-d made the entire universe and the nature of man, with free will to either sin or be obedient. The atonement of Christianity believes itself to have triumphed over that innate human tendency to sin, but not by steering the free will in the proper direction to avoid sin, but to provide a perpetual sin offering. To use an analogy, human nature is like water and sin is a contaminant in that water. The atonement of sin is the drain in the tub down which all of the contaminant goes. The concept of a perpetual sin offering is like expressing no concern over how much contaminant actually goes into the water because it is constantly going down the drain. The Jewish concept of sin is that the drain does not exist, but that each individual (and group) must reach into the water and remove the contents on their own. Therefore, they share in the process of atonement with G-d, for even though they have removed the transgression on their own, it is G-d Who has forgiven them for committing it. Every once in a while, as we see in the Torah, G-d forgives the Jews “randomly,” He is moved to mercy, for whatever reason, to forgive the Jews, and those instances can be likened do the drain down which G-d sends all the contamination. Sometimes it is their worthiness that motivates Him and sometimes it is their inability to be worthy, but in Christianity, it is always their inability to be worthy that has caused G-d to create that perpetual drain for their sin. In this view, the attempt to improve is futile because the human nature is a nature of sin, even though that is not the view expressed in Genesis and other parts of the Torah and Jewish thought. How can the nature of the human be a nature of sin when Adam was made in the image of G-d? It does not say that Adam was made in the image of Satan, but only that Satan tempts him. Therefore, ideally and theoretically, Man’s being made in the image of G-d triumphs over his being tempted by Satan; if Man meditates and concentrates on in Whose image he was created, he can at least move in the direction of avoiding sin. So often do Christians act as if humanity has been made in the image of Satan. If it is really no question of who is stronger, G-d or Satan, then being made in the image of the stronger should triumph over the temptations of the weaker. If G-d is stronger than Satan, then G-d’s urgings should be more influential and persuasive over the human being than Satan’s. Satan is powerful, there is no question there, but the relationship between Man and G-d is infinitely more intimate than the relationship between Man and Satan, ideally and theoretically, but essentially and literally. It is Christianity’s view which makes it a fatalistic religion, fearing human nature and accordingly shunning the most human of behaviors, associating them with the essence of evil (and therefore death, for evil brings death, if not physical then spiritual). Sex is the most potent example of this. If not sex itself, then it is the powerful drive for sex which a human possesses which is said to be evil, or to cause evil. It is for that reason that we see repeated associations between sex, sin, and Satan, and why in Christian thought, if culturally and not directly religious, sex is usually a vessel for evil, a tool of Satan. Mind you, Judaism too recognizes the powerful potential for sex to bring evil, but takes the stance that it is not sex that is inherently evil, but the desire for sex, which is designed to ideally lead one to union with one’s mate, which causes a human being to yearn for sex and to lose control. It is this yearning when acted upon out of control and without boundary and guidance which causes evil to occur, but is not sex itself that is evil. Remember, it was G-d that created sex, not Satan, and it was G-d that told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, not Satan. Therefore, it is not Satan whom gives one the desire to have sex, it is G-d. However, it is Satan that leads us to misuse sex, and misusing sex is evil. It was G-d that gave humanity the ability to procreate, not Satan, for if it was Satan, then humankind is the progeny of Satan, not G-d, for it is to Satan that we can attribute prolonged existence, not G-d. This is not true. We see in Christianity that the figure associated with the highest good is not just G-d but Jesus, and Jesus, in accordance with the theology of the evil nature of sex, is a virgin figure without children. The idea here is that sex corrupts, and since Jesus never had sex (which is evidenced by his not having children), he is purely good. In Catholicism his mother is considered to be a virgin, and in the Christian tradition the only one partaking in the act of “be fruitful and multiply” is G-d Himself, the giver of the commandment! At once this makes absolute sense and absolutely no sense. It makes sense because we should expect that G-d follows His own commandments, but it makes no sense because He holds the virgins higher than those who know and therefore, Himself knowing, debases Himself. Perhaps sex has such an evil effect on the mind of Man that only G-d can partake in it without becoming damaged. In other words, sex is for G-d and not for humanity. Every act in the Torah attributed to G-d, “He heard, He saw, He took the Jews out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” is an example of anthropomorphism. The only corporeal act attributed to G-d is found in the New Testament, and it is that He quite literally impregnated a human being.
This post is basically about human nature and whether it is good or evil, according to Judaism and Christianity. It started off as a writing on Christianity's view of human nature ("Notzriut" means "Christianity" in Hebrew), but eventually meshed into something else. Anyway, hope you enjoy, and please leave a comment.
Thoughts on Notzriut:
If G-d can forgive Christians without their having to do anything to receive that forgiveness, then G-d can surely forgive Jews as they do something to receive that forgiveness, even if it is not up to par with the way they originally atoned. The basis of G-d’s forgiveness of Jews is their recognition of G-d’s Law and at least a show of effort to improve, and if not, then at least a recognition that they need to improve. The basis of G-d’s forgiveness of Christians is that they cannot improve. The atonement that Christians believe G-d provided for them calls into question the way in which G-d made the entire universe and the nature of man, with free will to either sin or be obedient. The atonement of Christianity believes itself to have triumphed over that innate human tendency to sin, but not by steering the free will in the proper direction to avoid sin, but to provide a perpetual sin offering. To use an analogy, human nature is like water and sin is a contaminant in that water. The atonement of sin is the drain in the tub down which all of the contaminant goes. The concept of a perpetual sin offering is like expressing no concern over how much contaminant actually goes into the water because it is constantly going down the drain. The Jewish concept of sin is that the drain does not exist, but that each individual (and group) must reach into the water and remove the contents on their own. Therefore, they share in the process of atonement with G-d, for even though they have removed the transgression on their own, it is G-d Who has forgiven them for committing it. Every once in a while, as we see in the Torah, G-d forgives the Jews “randomly,” He is moved to mercy, for whatever reason, to forgive the Jews, and those instances can be likened do the drain down which G-d sends all the contamination. Sometimes it is their worthiness that motivates Him and sometimes it is their inability to be worthy, but in Christianity, it is always their inability to be worthy that has caused G-d to create that perpetual drain for their sin. In this view, the attempt to improve is futile because the human nature is a nature of sin, even though that is not the view expressed in Genesis and other parts of the Torah and Jewish thought. How can the nature of the human be a nature of sin when Adam was made in the image of G-d? It does not say that Adam was made in the image of Satan, but only that Satan tempts him. Therefore, ideally and theoretically, Man’s being made in the image of G-d triumphs over his being tempted by Satan; if Man meditates and concentrates on in Whose image he was created, he can at least move in the direction of avoiding sin. So often do Christians act as if humanity has been made in the image of Satan. If it is really no question of who is stronger, G-d or Satan, then being made in the image of the stronger should triumph over the temptations of the weaker. If G-d is stronger than Satan, then G-d’s urgings should be more influential and persuasive over the human being than Satan’s. Satan is powerful, there is no question there, but the relationship between Man and G-d is infinitely more intimate than the relationship between Man and Satan, ideally and theoretically, but essentially and literally. It is Christianity’s view which makes it a fatalistic religion, fearing human nature and accordingly shunning the most human of behaviors, associating them with the essence of evil (and therefore death, for evil brings death, if not physical then spiritual). Sex is the most potent example of this. If not sex itself, then it is the powerful drive for sex which a human possesses which is said to be evil, or to cause evil. It is for that reason that we see repeated associations between sex, sin, and Satan, and why in Christian thought, if culturally and not directly religious, sex is usually a vessel for evil, a tool of Satan. Mind you, Judaism too recognizes the powerful potential for sex to bring evil, but takes the stance that it is not sex that is inherently evil, but the desire for sex, which is designed to ideally lead one to union with one’s mate, which causes a human being to yearn for sex and to lose control. It is this yearning when acted upon out of control and without boundary and guidance which causes evil to occur, but is not sex itself that is evil. Remember, it was G-d that created sex, not Satan, and it was G-d that told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, not Satan. Therefore, it is not Satan whom gives one the desire to have sex, it is G-d. However, it is Satan that leads us to misuse sex, and misusing sex is evil. It was G-d that gave humanity the ability to procreate, not Satan, for if it was Satan, then humankind is the progeny of Satan, not G-d, for it is to Satan that we can attribute prolonged existence, not G-d. This is not true. We see in Christianity that the figure associated with the highest good is not just G-d but Jesus, and Jesus, in accordance with the theology of the evil nature of sex, is a virgin figure without children. The idea here is that sex corrupts, and since Jesus never had sex (which is evidenced by his not having children), he is purely good. In Catholicism his mother is considered to be a virgin, and in the Christian tradition the only one partaking in the act of “be fruitful and multiply” is G-d Himself, the giver of the commandment! At once this makes absolute sense and absolutely no sense. It makes sense because we should expect that G-d follows His own commandments, but it makes no sense because He holds the virgins higher than those who know and therefore, Himself knowing, debases Himself. Perhaps sex has such an evil effect on the mind of Man that only G-d can partake in it without becoming damaged. In other words, sex is for G-d and not for humanity. Every act in the Torah attributed to G-d, “He heard, He saw, He took the Jews out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” is an example of anthropomorphism. The only corporeal act attributed to G-d is found in the New Testament, and it is that He quite literally impregnated a human being.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
In the times after my finding I have experienced times when I was searching
I soared to heights after I found and became found
Being found is the foundation of humanity
To be found is to be grounded
The maximum is our minimum
G-d's expectations are our standards
His standards are our requisites
Our requisites should be our expectations - and no other
And only the grounded can fly
They begin to occupy a space not in place or time
And they ask, and it rains dimes
That land on their plates and in their minds
From the Most High
Times when I've been searching since then
Even then the valleys were higher than the peaks
Which I reached before I saw and understood
My lowest day in the past four years
Has been higher than my highest day beforehand
When life was crisis
Those days are shattered to me, I can't even fathom them
They have sunk to uncountable fathoms
Who dare say that G-d doesn't exist?!
A man cannot rise out of despair by his own volition
G-d is a Savior and He lives forever
And it is the Gentle Hand of our L-rd, Hashem ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu
Who flings a soul up with the bend of His Finger
Don't you know that men cannot fly?
I could not touch joy; I thought there was something wrong with me
The deep sadness that pervaded my vision, fading everything to gray
My heart imploded inside me, my sensation drained like blood from a vein
Joy was vain
Now I know what it was
I hated the drugs and sexual recreation of those my age
Once I knew of the latter, I let it go for Jacob's ladder
Only to know it later when the time has arrived to know
For those who don't know don't glow
It was not joy that I could not touch
It was falsehood, and our generation's folly is
The mixing of joy with falsehood
The idols with the healthy breasts -- see Isis
The idols with the clean-shaven chests and faces -- see Greek row
See 21st Century paganism there
In our institutions of higher learning
Who there has a higher yearning, a higher burning?
They are paving the paths of the future
We have been shown the pure way and more
We have been commanded it
G-d is our Light and Savior
He is our Lightsaver, our Lifesaver
The Floaty in the torrential ocean
And the evil past has been bound, choked, and drowned, murdered mercilessly
Beneath the waves of that ocean
Like a Titanic that won't ever be resurrected
Killed and broken in the depths of the ocean
Where there is no light
I soared to heights after I found and became found
Being found is the foundation of humanity
To be found is to be grounded
The maximum is our minimum
G-d's expectations are our standards
His standards are our requisites
Our requisites should be our expectations - and no other
And only the grounded can fly
They begin to occupy a space not in place or time
And they ask, and it rains dimes
That land on their plates and in their minds
From the Most High
Times when I've been searching since then
Even then the valleys were higher than the peaks
Which I reached before I saw and understood
My lowest day in the past four years
Has been higher than my highest day beforehand
When life was crisis
Those days are shattered to me, I can't even fathom them
They have sunk to uncountable fathoms
Who dare say that G-d doesn't exist?!
A man cannot rise out of despair by his own volition
G-d is a Savior and He lives forever
And it is the Gentle Hand of our L-rd, Hashem ha-Kadosh Baruch Hu
Who flings a soul up with the bend of His Finger
Don't you know that men cannot fly?
I could not touch joy; I thought there was something wrong with me
The deep sadness that pervaded my vision, fading everything to gray
My heart imploded inside me, my sensation drained like blood from a vein
Joy was vain
Now I know what it was
I hated the drugs and sexual recreation of those my age
Once I knew of the latter, I let it go for Jacob's ladder
Only to know it later when the time has arrived to know
For those who don't know don't glow
It was not joy that I could not touch
It was falsehood, and our generation's folly is
The mixing of joy with falsehood
The idols with the healthy breasts -- see Isis
The idols with the clean-shaven chests and faces -- see Greek row
See 21st Century paganism there
In our institutions of higher learning
Who there has a higher yearning, a higher burning?
They are paving the paths of the future
We have been shown the pure way and more
We have been commanded it
G-d is our Light and Savior
He is our Lightsaver, our Lifesaver
The Floaty in the torrential ocean
And the evil past has been bound, choked, and drowned, murdered mercilessly
Beneath the waves of that ocean
Like a Titanic that won't ever be resurrected
Killed and broken in the depths of the ocean
Where there is no light
One day I can't write anything
All I absorb or that I exude has to stay fresh in my mind
This is the most real state in which one can live
And that day is a sign of the future days
When all the world is the World to Come
Only now can I jot them down
This is the way one should live, not resorting to paper for his memory's sake
But life should be written in the world
When this world has become the World to Come
The sun was dropping below the horizon to the west/northwest
Making a mockery of the luminescence of everything
A degree of brilliance not attainable
It shot me back to my childhood
When things were felt with such naturally-occuring charisma
To a place far away in space, to the holiest of lands
It reminded me of something that I saw there
And I can't quite place my finger on it, all I know is that it reminded me
Inside every adult is the version of the person whom they were
The child who saw things unhindered, unobstructed by... what is the word?
Life? No, for they saw life
Practicality? No, for only ideals are practical
Reality? No, their version is reality
Perhaps a word for which there is none
Maybe falsehood
They are proof that the truth of G-d is euphoric
But only because it is G-d and truth is it euphoric
Those who know this are with G-d and they stay children forever
And then, how can the world grow old or anything in it?
Our King Solomon said, "Nothing is new under the sun."
All I absorb or that I exude has to stay fresh in my mind
This is the most real state in which one can live
And that day is a sign of the future days
When all the world is the World to Come
Only now can I jot them down
This is the way one should live, not resorting to paper for his memory's sake
But life should be written in the world
When this world has become the World to Come
The sun was dropping below the horizon to the west/northwest
Making a mockery of the luminescence of everything
A degree of brilliance not attainable
It shot me back to my childhood
When things were felt with such naturally-occuring charisma
To a place far away in space, to the holiest of lands
It reminded me of something that I saw there
And I can't quite place my finger on it, all I know is that it reminded me
Inside every adult is the version of the person whom they were
The child who saw things unhindered, unobstructed by... what is the word?
Life? No, for they saw life
Practicality? No, for only ideals are practical
Reality? No, their version is reality
Perhaps a word for which there is none
Maybe falsehood
They are proof that the truth of G-d is euphoric
But only because it is G-d and truth is it euphoric
Those who know this are with G-d and they stay children forever
And then, how can the world grow old or anything in it?
Our King Solomon said, "Nothing is new under the sun."
Friday, June 30, 2006
Good point. An article from Ha'aretz. Just to give a bit of background on this for those who don't know. In 1967 there was a war between Israel and three Arab countries, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. It's also known as the Six Day War. Israel ended up winning that war, taking the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and part of Jordan, which is now known as the West Bank. Israel's border with Jordan before that war (the pre-1967 war border) made Israel a disrespectfully small country with an area of land nine miles wide. Israel has since pulled out of the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, and Hamas wants Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders. The Gaza Strip and West Bank are labeled "the territories," referring not to Israel's sovereingty but to Palestinian. Who should rationally care what Hamas wants? But this is Israel 2006 and the world 21st Century, so go figure. So much for progress; it's the progressives that support the pullout for the most part. The Palestinian leadership, now replaced with Hamas, patterned its policies on threatening Israel to withdraw from "territories" or for more attacks to come. However, after Israel's withdrawal and the continuance of attacks, we understand that withdrawals do not stop the attacks. In other words, the Palestinian leadership said, "Leave the areas and we'll stop because we want those areas in which to build a Palestinian state." Israel leaves the areas and the attacks dont' stop, they only get moved into the areas in which Jews still live. What will happen next? "Leave the areas in which you live now (they'll have to fabricate some false reason) and we'll stop the attacks." Will Israel do it? G-d forbid no, but the Palestinians will want them to, at which point Israel can either attack them or actually leave. That' what it comes down to; those two options. Anyway, that's my explanation, enjoy the article.
Tie a blue ribbon for Gilad and Eliyahu (By Bradley Burston) from Haaretz.com
There's an inexplicable calm regarding Gilad Shalit.
Must be the way the world works.
When the missile hit his tank, Gilad Shalit was guarding our pre-1967 war border.
The border that Hamas has been talking about for months. The one to which, should we withdraw, they would make peace with us for generations.
Or until Sunday morning, whichever came first.
When the missile hit his tank, two of his crewmates, Hanan Barak and Pavel Slutzker, were killed in the blast. A third was seriously injured.
And there was Gilad, this kid, bleeding, alone, dragged off into the Gaza Strip by men who would probably rather kill him than look at him.
There's this heartbreaking photograph of a kid not 20 years old. The wide, unspoiled smile, doubtless unchanged from when he was small.
There is this lovely family, their guard let down because they believed him to be serving in the north, far from danger. A father who, in the depth of his dread, can say to the kidnappers, "We believe that those who are holding him also have families and children, and that they know what we are feeling."
The world can't give a fallen fig.
When the missile hit, there was this kid, stationed at a quiet IDF position, not in the territories, nowhere near Palestinians.
And here is this kidnapping of a soldier in an army which has withdrawn from the internationally recognized whole of the once-occupied Gaza Strip.
The world cares not at all.
Perhaps we should care more. Perhaps it's time people made a small statement in as many places as possible.
Now there is another kid being held, by the celebrants of horrible death, under threat of horrible death: Eliyahu Asheri, even younger than Gilad.
Tie a blue ribbon on a tree for Gilad, and for Eliyahu. So that people will ask what it's for, and you can tell them.
So that they won't be left alone, nor their family.
Ignore the voices - you can hear them already - saying that Gilad had it coming, as a member of a military that attacks Palestinians - the Palestinians that fire Qassams into homes, schools and medical clinics, the Palestinians that fire Qassams every single day, sometimes as many as seven times a day.
Ignore the voices - you know what they're going to spit at you, saying that Eliyahu had it coming, just because his parents decided to raise him on the wrong side of the Green Line.
The world doesn't give a fallen fig.
The world has washed its hands of the Palestinians. The world has washed its hands of Hamas. The world is tired of our troubles as well.
There's a sense that this is a kidnapping that even Hamas would rather not think about.
The answer may well lie somewhere between the Twin Towers and Faluja. Mass murder in the name of God, beheadings in the name of God, bombing after bombing after bombing after bombing in the name of God, gets to us after a while. Our ability to care, our very ability to notice, has been compromised by a reign of terror of such enormity, of such horror, of such duration, that the threshold of our emotional attention has become all but unreachable.
But just this once ...
We should tie a blue ribbon for Gilad, and for Eliyahu. For the sake of their families. For our own sake. For the sake of the world.
So that people will ask what it's for. And so they'll find out.
Tie a blue ribbon for Gilad and Eliyahu (By Bradley Burston) from Haaretz.com
There's an inexplicable calm regarding Gilad Shalit.
Must be the way the world works.
When the missile hit his tank, Gilad Shalit was guarding our pre-1967 war border.
The border that Hamas has been talking about for months. The one to which, should we withdraw, they would make peace with us for generations.
Or until Sunday morning, whichever came first.
When the missile hit his tank, two of his crewmates, Hanan Barak and Pavel Slutzker, were killed in the blast. A third was seriously injured.
And there was Gilad, this kid, bleeding, alone, dragged off into the Gaza Strip by men who would probably rather kill him than look at him.
There's this heartbreaking photograph of a kid not 20 years old. The wide, unspoiled smile, doubtless unchanged from when he was small.
There is this lovely family, their guard let down because they believed him to be serving in the north, far from danger. A father who, in the depth of his dread, can say to the kidnappers, "We believe that those who are holding him also have families and children, and that they know what we are feeling."
The world can't give a fallen fig.
When the missile hit, there was this kid, stationed at a quiet IDF position, not in the territories, nowhere near Palestinians.
And here is this kidnapping of a soldier in an army which has withdrawn from the internationally recognized whole of the once-occupied Gaza Strip.
The world cares not at all.
Perhaps we should care more. Perhaps it's time people made a small statement in as many places as possible.
Now there is another kid being held, by the celebrants of horrible death, under threat of horrible death: Eliyahu Asheri, even younger than Gilad.
Tie a blue ribbon on a tree for Gilad, and for Eliyahu. So that people will ask what it's for, and you can tell them.
So that they won't be left alone, nor their family.
Ignore the voices - you can hear them already - saying that Gilad had it coming, as a member of a military that attacks Palestinians - the Palestinians that fire Qassams into homes, schools and medical clinics, the Palestinians that fire Qassams every single day, sometimes as many as seven times a day.
Ignore the voices - you know what they're going to spit at you, saying that Eliyahu had it coming, just because his parents decided to raise him on the wrong side of the Green Line.
The world doesn't give a fallen fig.
The world has washed its hands of the Palestinians. The world has washed its hands of Hamas. The world is tired of our troubles as well.
There's a sense that this is a kidnapping that even Hamas would rather not think about.
The answer may well lie somewhere between the Twin Towers and Faluja. Mass murder in the name of God, beheadings in the name of God, bombing after bombing after bombing after bombing in the name of God, gets to us after a while. Our ability to care, our very ability to notice, has been compromised by a reign of terror of such enormity, of such horror, of such duration, that the threshold of our emotional attention has become all but unreachable.
But just this once ...
We should tie a blue ribbon for Gilad, and for Eliyahu. For the sake of their families. For our own sake. For the sake of the world.
So that people will ask what it's for. And so they'll find out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
