Abda-llah's Havdala
The Muslims (at least the Arab Muslims) have a political and social culture that is deeply religious, which is the way we used to be and the way that we'll be again. When the Arabs get rowdy and pissed off about our returning to our Holy Land, we should take it as a serious sign that we're doing something right because they foresee the re-establishment of the Jewish sovereign state, which would undermine claims to Islam's universality and utter dominance. Through all their bluffs of military strength this is one thing that they demonstrate honestly through their hostility. To the degree of their fear of the implications of Israel we should be that much happier and willing. It's strange, but they are serving as a reminder for us in a way. Hehe, if we get confused about what we have to do we should take a look at what the Arab Muslims are saying Israel is and take a cue from them. R' Chaim of Volozhin said, "If a Jew doesn't say Kiddush, the non-Jew will say Havdalah for him*." In Arabic, the word "junud" means soldiers and "Yahud" means Jews. I once heard an Hamas song where the singer rhymed those two words. The song was expressively negative but the jist of the lines was, "My son, Qassam, have no mercy on all of the Jews. They are all soldiers." He's right, but not the kind of soldiers he says we are, the soldiers that we say we are, soldiers of Torah. We should put our lives in the hands of Hashem, not of some bloody murderer terrorist. Let's make some Kiddush and avoid that type of Havdalah; Abda-llah's Havdalah.
May the anthems of our enemies be like sweet words to our ears.
*"Kiddush" literally means "sanctification," i.e., separating the holy from the mundane. "Havdalah" literally means "separation" and it's a blessing that Jews say right after Shabbat ends to separate the holy day from the mundane. R' Chaim was using the words metaphorically; if a Jew doesn't sanctify his/her life, he will be shown just how different he is. I also read it, if a Jew doesn't take on a life of holiness, the Gentiles will take it upon themselves to take on that life of holiness in our stead. The two ways it can be read can come together, because once they believe they have replaced us, they will try to remove us.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Will the Real Akeidah Please Stand Up?
So I just came back from praying Mincha and Ma’ariv (the evening and night prayers) at the synagogue, where our Rabbi taught us some of the halakhot (laws) of building the mizbe’ach, or altar where the sacrifices were brought. It resides in Jerusalem on the site of the Temple, built on the land of Moriah, a hill to be exact, where Abraham brought Isaac to be sacrificed – the Akeidah. It was the same spot where Noah offered a sacrifice to G-d after the Flood. It was also the same spot where Adam brought an offering to G-d and from the same mound of dirt from which he was created. The point is that he was forgiven in the same place from which he was made, and it is where we will be forgiven.
So here comes the point where I glean and focus the information into something relevant for a different purpose, other than rebuilding the Temple.
As the Torah says, Abraham was to sacrifice his (second born) son Isaac on that site on Mt. Moriah. Muslim tradition has it that Abraham was to sacrifice Ishmael, not Isaac, and it also says that the Akeidah took place in Mecca, on the future site of the Qaba, not Jerusalem. Take a look at a map of where Mecca is located. In Genesis 12:5 we read, "Abram took his wife Sarai and Lot, his brother's son, and all their wealth that they had amassed, and the souls they made in Haran; and they left to go to the land of Canaan, and they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed into the land as far as the site of Shechem, until the Plain of Moreh." The walk from Jerusalem to Mecca is about twice as long as the walk from Haran to Jerusalem. Haran is located in modern-day southeast Turkey, the northernmost black dot. Jerusalem is in Israel, which is in green, and Mecca is in Saudi Arabia, in yellow. Nevertheless, the walk from Haran to Jerusalem is about 550 miles, or 890 kilometers away from Jerusalem, which is one place Abraham travelled. From Jerusalem to Mecca it's about 931 miles, or about 1,500 kilometers, or in other words, almost twice as long. But Muslim tradition doesn't say that Abraham went to Jerusalem, but rather Mecca, so cutting Jerusalem out of the trip and going straight from Haran to Mecca would be about 1,211 miles, or about 1,950 kilometers. This means that Abraham took a camp of people 1,211 miles on donkey and camelback to a place that was "out of the way," i.e., nothing of import was taking place there until much later. They would have gone all this way to sacrifice Ishmael, which serves the purpose of making Mecca and the Hijaz (Saudi Arabian Peninsula) the inheritance of the legacy of Abraham, but we see that his legacy was born with the Jewish monarchy in around the year 1020 BCE, meaning that there was about a 1,742 year long period where there was no Islam. The Jewish monarchy even lived out its duration long before Islam was born and fell in 722 BCE with the Assyrian invasion; Islam finished spreading in 722 CE. Even today neither Mecca nor Saudi Arabia are the center of Middle Eastern politics, but Jerusalem. Mecca is definitely the center, or the major center, of the Muslim world, but only the Muslim world.
The most unfitting thing here is that G-d told Abraham to go to Canaan (later Israel) to establish his legacy there. Why only during Muhammad's life some 3,000 year later did Arabs suddenly realize that Abraham brought Ishmael to Mecca? If Abraham had really taken Ishmael to Mecca, where was his religious legacy for all that time?
In Genesis 12:5 we read, "Hashem appeared to Abram and said, 'To your offspring I will this land,'" a reference to Isaac then Jacob's offspring. In 13:8-9 we read, "So Abram said to Lot: 'Please let there be no strife between me and you, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are kinsmen. Is not all the land before you? Please, separate from me: If you go left then I will go right, and if you go right then I will go left.'" In verses 14 adn 15 we read, "Hashem said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, 'Raise now your eyes and look out from where you are: northward, southward, eastward, and westward. For all the land that you see, to you will I give it, and to your descendants forever.'"
Now, aside from the questionable line of logic that Muslim tradition has in showing that Abraham brought Ishmael and not Isaac (due to its location) to Mecca, how do we explain that throughout human history it has been Jerusalem, and specifically the site of the Beit Hamikdash, or Temple and not Mecca and the site of the Q'aba that has been wrought with strife? Why is that invading peoples and nations have always wanted to get their hands on Jerusalem, not Mecca? How do we explain that the Crusaders persistently wanted to take over Jerusalem and not Mecca? Why are today’s problems concentrated in Jerusalem, not Mecca? Mecca, in purely relative matters, is marginal to the core of the conflict in the Middle East, it’s a sort of “backwater” and only important to Muslims. Why, why aren’t Jews, Christians, and Muslims fighting over the holiest site of Islam, or even Christianity? Why is that it, to go along with the common maxim, Jerusalem is a holy site to the three major religions and not Bethlehem, Nazareth, Mecca, or Medina? Why is Jerusalem a pillar that the people involved want?
Perhaps it is possible, in alignment with the Torah tradition of Abraham bringing Isaac to Mt. Moriah, that the world’s religious populations have internalized a certain tradition, that Abraham brought his son Isaac to the future site of Jerusalem to be sacrificed. Whether or not peoples have passed on this tradition in the same form, the fact is that Jerusalem has stayed at the center of interest for many world powers over; why is it that Mecca never became the new Jerusalem? This wasn’t achieved even after Muhammad shifted the direction of prayer, or Qibla of Muslims from Jerusalem to Mecca and stated that Abraham went to sacrifice Ishmael there. Even if it was true that Abraham brought Ishmael and not Isaac, it still wouldn’t explain why Muslim tradition doesn’t declare that Ishmael is only concerned with making statements about Ishmael with regards to Mecca but not to Noah, or Adam. The Qur'an doesn't say that Noah made an offering in Mecca or that G-d formed Adam from a mound of dirt in Mecca, in fact, they probably agree that those events took place in Jerusalem. We indeed see that Islam makes many of the same or similar claims that Judaism does, for example, that Abraham came from a family of polytheists in Babylon (modern day Iraq), but it was necessary for them to alter their stance on Ishmael. And of course we can’t ignore that the Jewish religious monarchy was started by King Saul and passed on to many “greats,” such as King David, who moved it to Jerusalem, and his son Solomon. They are all figures which Muslim tradition recognizes as “Muslims,” (submitters to G-d) and that this monarchy, which was in fact an ancient Jewish state, was the center of world politics for some one thousand and seven hundred years before Muhammad was born. If, Kings Saul, David, and Solomon were Muslims and they erected the first ever religious monarchy to G-d, we could even say that Israel was the first Muslim state. Equally, we can say that it should serve as the prototype for all future Muslim states, "Palestine" included.
Perhaps the world tradition, at least for “Western” religionists, that human civilization started with Adam and eventually centered around a location fixed in the heart of a Land called “Israel,” is unshakeable no matter what new religions say. The Jews are much less populous than the Muslims, making up .002% of the world compared to Islam’s 23%, but Islam will always be Judaism’s little sister regardless of her enormity.
Counterpoint
This is one of the major rebuttals coming from the Muslim tradition as to the veracity of the Torah tradition that Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac in Jerusalem and not Ishmael in Mecca. If there are any that you know about that I missed, please leave a comment.
According to Wikipedia, the Muslim traditions states this:
“Traditionally, Muslims believe that it was Ishmael rather than Isaac whom Abraham was told to sacrifice. In support of this, Muslims note that the text of Genesis as it stands, despite specifying Isaac, appears to state that Abraham was told to sacrifice his only son ("Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac," Genesis 22:2) to God. Since Isaac was Abraham's second son, there was no time at which he would have been Abraham's only son, so they take this to imply that the original text must have named Ishmael rather than Isaac as the intended sacrifice. The Qur'an itself does not specify which son he nearly sacrificed (Qur'an 37:99-111).
The entire episode of the sacrifice is regarded as a trial that Abraham had to face from God. It is celebrated by Muslims on the day of Eid ul-Adha.”
I must say that from a logical perspective that is a great point and it is not the first time that I have been pleased (logically) with an argument I’ve heard come from Islam. However, after just a bit of thinking it dawned on me that earlier in 21:9, “Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking. So she said to Abraham, ‘Drive out this slavewoman with her son, for the son of that slavewoman shall not inherit with my son, with Isaac!’” Later in 21:11, G-d says, “Be not distressed over the youth (Ishmael) or your slavewoman (Hagar): Whatever Sarah tells you, heed her voice, since through Isaac will offspring be considered yours.” Perhaps that by the time of the Akeidah, Ishmael was not around, and therefore Isaac was Abraham’s only son. Note, the Hebrew doesn’t say “even Isaac,” which is a product of translation. Further, which can be taken to confirm that Isaac was really the object of the Akeidah, is that, according to the above paragraph from the Wikipedia site, “The Qur'an itself does not specify which son he nearly sacrificed (Qur'an 37:99-111).”
The exact verses in the Qur’an mentioning the Akeidah are as follows,
“Allah the Almighty tells us of Ibrahim's affliction. After his rescue from the fire, Ibrahim (pbuh) says : ‘Verily, I am going to my Lord. He will guide me! My Lord! Grant me (offspring) from the righteous.’ So We gave him the glad tidings of a forbearing boy. And, when he (Isma'il) was old enough to walk with him, he said: ‘0 my son! I have seen in a dream that I am slaughtering you (offer you in sacrifice to Allah), so look what do you think!’ He said: ‘0 my father! Do that which you are commanded, Insha' Allah (if Allah wills), you shall find me of the patient.’ Then, when they had both submitted themselves (to the Will of Allah) and he had laid him prostrate on his forehead (or on the side of his forehead for slaughtering); and We called out to him: ‘0 Abraham! You have fulfilled the dream (vision)!’ Verily! Thus do We reward those who perform good deeds totally for Allah's sake only.’
This test was truly a manifest trial, and Isma'il (pbuh) and his father (pbuh) showed their complete submission to God. Allah granted their progeny with so many prophets.
"And We left for him (a goodly remembrance) among generations (to come) in later times.. Verily, he was one of Our believing slaves. (Qur'an Saffat 37:99-111)”
Interestingly enough, in the same manner, the Qur’an does not mention that Muhammad ascended to Heaven from Jerusalem, but rather from a place which the Qur’an refers to as the “furthest mosque.” Al aqsa means “nearest” in Arabic, the name given to the mosque built on the site of the Temple in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest site in honor of this verse from the Qur’an. However, if the Qur’an says that the place was “the farthest,” why was the mosque in Jerusalem named “the nearest,” the exact opposite? What this could mean is that “the place farther from all other places” was not a reference to Jerusalem, but maybe to Mecca, or maybe even to Heaven, and Jerusalem was “nearer,” or “the nearest.”
According to an article by Daniel Pipes about Al-Aqsa Mosque, of which the full article can be found
“The next Umayyad step was subtle and complex, and requires a pause to note a passage of the Qur'an (17:1) describing the Prophet Muhammad's Night Journey to heaven (isra'):
Glory to He who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the furthest mosque. (Subhana allathina asra bi-‘abdihi laylatan min al-masjidi al-harami ila al-masjidi al-aqsa.)
When this Qur'anic passage was first revealed, in about 621, a place called the Sacred Mosque already existed in Mecca. In contrast, the ‘furthest mosque’ was a turn of phrase, not a place. Some early Muslims understood it as metaphorical or as a place in heaven.14 And if the ‘furthest mosque’ did exist on earth, Palestine would seem an unlikely location, for many reasons. Some of them:
Elsewhere in the Qur'an (30:1), Palestine is called ‘the closest land’ (adna al-ard).
Palestine had not yet been conquered by the Muslims and contained not a single mosque.
The ‘furthest mosque’ was apparently identified with places inside Arabia: either Medina15 or a town called Ji‘rana, about ten miles from Mecca, which the Prophet visited in 630.16
The earliest Muslim accounts of Jerusalem, such as the description of Caliph ‘Umar's reported visit to the city just after the Muslims conquest in 638, nowhere identify the Temple Mount with the ‘furthest mosque’ of the Qur'an.
The Qur'anic inscriptions that make up a 240-meter mosaic frieze inside the Dome of the Rock do not include Qur'an 17:1 and the story of the Night Journey, suggesting that as late as 692 the idea of Jerusalem as the lift-off for the Night Journey had not yet been established. (Indeed, the first extant inscriptions of Qur'an 17:1 in Jerusalem date from the eleventh century.)
Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiya (638-700), a close relative of the Prophet Muhammad, is quoted denigrating the notion that the prophet ever set foot on the Rock in Jerusalem; ‘these damned Syrians,’ by which he means the Umayyads, ‘pretend that God put His foot on the Rock in Jerusalem, though [only] one person ever put his foot on the rock, namely Abraham.’17
--------------------------
Just a thought:
Another argument made by the Muslim tradition is that the Jews maliciously corrupted the text of the “original Torah” (meaning that the Torah that the Jews read today is not the original) to replace Ishmael with Isaac. However, in verse 21:9 of the Torah we read, “Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking. So she said to Abraham, ‘Drive out this slavewoman with her son, for the son of that slavewoman shall not inherit with my son, with Isaac!’” This hardly seems like a corruption of the text; Hagar mocked Sarah because Sarah was barren and Hagar had just given birth. Sarah, who is also seen as a Muslim in Muslim tradition, was deeply offended by Hagar’s subtle patronizing and expelled her slavewoman, or handmaiden, from the home. Further, the Torah says in 22:11, “The matter greatly distressed Abraham regarding his son (Ishmael).”
Wait just a matzah-pickin’ minute here! If the Jews corrupted the text, they are treating “the bad guys” very nicely. Maybe this is how it really happened? There are a series of verses that deal with Hagar and her son Ishmael quite compassionately, hardly indications of malicious corruption. Guess what, there are even Rabbi’s with the name “Ishmael.” 22:14-20 says, “So Abraham awoke early in the morning, took bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar. He placed them on her shoulder along with the boy, and sent her off. She departed, and strayed in the desert of Beer-sheba. G-d heard the cry of the youth, and an angel of G-d called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for G-d has heeded the cry of the youth in his present state. Arise, lift up the youth and grasp your hand upon him, for I will make a great nation of him.’ Then G-d opened her eyes and she perceived a well of water; she went back and filled the skin of water and gave the youth to drink. G-d was with the youth and he grew up; he dwelt in the desert and became an accomplished archer. He lived in the desert of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt.”
Interestingly enough, Genesis 22:4-5 says, “So Abraham woke up early in the morning and he saddled his donkey; he took his two young men with him and Isaac, his son; he split the wood for the offering, and stood up and went to the place of which G-d had spoken to him. On the third day, Abraham raised his eyes and perceived the place from afar. And Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here by yourselves with the donkey, while I and the lad will go yonder; we will worship and we will return to you.” The Talmud commentary says that Abraham told the young men that “they,” he and Isaac, would worship and return because he knew that G-d was going to tell him not to sacrifice Isaac. Genesis 22:14, which starts with the same wording, “So Abraham awoke early in the morning,” has a similar occurrence. Abraham gives Hagar a skin of water, and it is that same skin that she fills up later when the angel of G-d showed her the well of water. It is as if Abraham also knew that she would be saved in the desert in the same way that Isaac was saved from sacrifice. This is just something I am inferring from the text, but nevertheless, it hardly seems to be a malicious corruption.
Oh yes, the Talmud also says that Ishmael and Isaac made amends upon burying their father Abraham and also says that Ishmael made "tshuva", he repented, and was a tzaddik, a righteous person. It seems that the Muslim tradition has had to be a bit hasty in its conclusions about the Torah's treatment of Ishmael in the name of establishing that they are the correct religious heirs to Abraham.
Further, Muslim tradition is bound by certain laws of logic, so it cannot denigrate any of the Prophets and so the Jews serve as that antithesis to Islam, true submission. In reality, and with the utmost respect and love for Abraham who is our father too, Muslim tradition faithfully ignores that he too could have been implicated in acting erroneously, as a Jew. What about Jacob, whom stole Esav's birthright? "Ah," they would say," you see how the Jews even stoop so low as to insult their own Patriarch? This is something that a Muslim never does." Perhaps in the Qur'an Esav, in an act of exhuberant and excited utter submission gives his birthright over to Jacob with joy. That way they can tell the story without "insulting" any of the Prophets the way that those horrible Jews do. On the other hand, they end up with shallow and less believable characters, and what is a worst act of corruption than turning complicated Prophets into mindless zombie drones? We are supposed to simulate our Prophets; most Muslims do a fine job of simulating the Prophets the way the Qur'an describes them. Again, I can't help but to wonder if how the Torah says it went down is how it really all happened; all the evidence points in that direction.
One final thought; why are Muslims so quick to offer high respects to Hagar as a Muslim, a woman who insulted another who was not able to give birth? Some submitter.
Comments, quips, and complaints greatly appreciated.
So I just came back from praying Mincha and Ma’ariv (the evening and night prayers) at the synagogue, where our Rabbi taught us some of the halakhot (laws) of building the mizbe’ach, or altar where the sacrifices were brought. It resides in Jerusalem on the site of the Temple, built on the land of Moriah, a hill to be exact, where Abraham brought Isaac to be sacrificed – the Akeidah. It was the same spot where Noah offered a sacrifice to G-d after the Flood. It was also the same spot where Adam brought an offering to G-d and from the same mound of dirt from which he was created. The point is that he was forgiven in the same place from which he was made, and it is where we will be forgiven.
So here comes the point where I glean and focus the information into something relevant for a different purpose, other than rebuilding the Temple.
As the Torah says, Abraham was to sacrifice his (second born) son Isaac on that site on Mt. Moriah. Muslim tradition has it that Abraham was to sacrifice Ishmael, not Isaac, and it also says that the Akeidah took place in Mecca, on the future site of the Qaba, not Jerusalem. Take a look at a map of where Mecca is located. In Genesis 12:5 we read, "Abram took his wife Sarai and Lot, his brother's son, and all their wealth that they had amassed, and the souls they made in Haran; and they left to go to the land of Canaan, and they came to the land of Canaan. Abram passed into the land as far as the site of Shechem, until the Plain of Moreh." The walk from Jerusalem to Mecca is about twice as long as the walk from Haran to Jerusalem. Haran is located in modern-day southeast Turkey, the northernmost black dot. Jerusalem is in Israel, which is in green, and Mecca is in Saudi Arabia, in yellow. Nevertheless, the walk from Haran to Jerusalem is about 550 miles, or 890 kilometers away from Jerusalem, which is one place Abraham travelled. From Jerusalem to Mecca it's about 931 miles, or about 1,500 kilometers, or in other words, almost twice as long. But Muslim tradition doesn't say that Abraham went to Jerusalem, but rather Mecca, so cutting Jerusalem out of the trip and going straight from Haran to Mecca would be about 1,211 miles, or about 1,950 kilometers. This means that Abraham took a camp of people 1,211 miles on donkey and camelback to a place that was "out of the way," i.e., nothing of import was taking place there until much later. They would have gone all this way to sacrifice Ishmael, which serves the purpose of making Mecca and the Hijaz (Saudi Arabian Peninsula) the inheritance of the legacy of Abraham, but we see that his legacy was born with the Jewish monarchy in around the year 1020 BCE, meaning that there was about a 1,742 year long period where there was no Islam. The Jewish monarchy even lived out its duration long before Islam was born and fell in 722 BCE with the Assyrian invasion; Islam finished spreading in 722 CE. Even today neither Mecca nor Saudi Arabia are the center of Middle Eastern politics, but Jerusalem. Mecca is definitely the center, or the major center, of the Muslim world, but only the Muslim world.
The most unfitting thing here is that G-d told Abraham to go to Canaan (later Israel) to establish his legacy there. Why only during Muhammad's life some 3,000 year later did Arabs suddenly realize that Abraham brought Ishmael to Mecca? If Abraham had really taken Ishmael to Mecca, where was his religious legacy for all that time?
In Genesis 12:5 we read, "Hashem appeared to Abram and said, 'To your offspring I will this land,'" a reference to Isaac then Jacob's offspring. In 13:8-9 we read, "So Abram said to Lot: 'Please let there be no strife between me and you, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen, for we are kinsmen. Is not all the land before you? Please, separate from me: If you go left then I will go right, and if you go right then I will go left.'" In verses 14 adn 15 we read, "Hashem said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, 'Raise now your eyes and look out from where you are: northward, southward, eastward, and westward. For all the land that you see, to you will I give it, and to your descendants forever.'"
Now, aside from the questionable line of logic that Muslim tradition has in showing that Abraham brought Ishmael and not Isaac (due to its location) to Mecca, how do we explain that throughout human history it has been Jerusalem, and specifically the site of the Beit Hamikdash, or Temple and not Mecca and the site of the Q'aba that has been wrought with strife? Why is that invading peoples and nations have always wanted to get their hands on Jerusalem, not Mecca? How do we explain that the Crusaders persistently wanted to take over Jerusalem and not Mecca? Why are today’s problems concentrated in Jerusalem, not Mecca? Mecca, in purely relative matters, is marginal to the core of the conflict in the Middle East, it’s a sort of “backwater” and only important to Muslims. Why, why aren’t Jews, Christians, and Muslims fighting over the holiest site of Islam, or even Christianity? Why is that it, to go along with the common maxim, Jerusalem is a holy site to the three major religions and not Bethlehem, Nazareth, Mecca, or Medina? Why is Jerusalem a pillar that the people involved want?
Perhaps it is possible, in alignment with the Torah tradition of Abraham bringing Isaac to Mt. Moriah, that the world’s religious populations have internalized a certain tradition, that Abraham brought his son Isaac to the future site of Jerusalem to be sacrificed. Whether or not peoples have passed on this tradition in the same form, the fact is that Jerusalem has stayed at the center of interest for many world powers over; why is it that Mecca never became the new Jerusalem? This wasn’t achieved even after Muhammad shifted the direction of prayer, or Qibla of Muslims from Jerusalem to Mecca and stated that Abraham went to sacrifice Ishmael there. Even if it was true that Abraham brought Ishmael and not Isaac, it still wouldn’t explain why Muslim tradition doesn’t declare that Ishmael is only concerned with making statements about Ishmael with regards to Mecca but not to Noah, or Adam. The Qur'an doesn't say that Noah made an offering in Mecca or that G-d formed Adam from a mound of dirt in Mecca, in fact, they probably agree that those events took place in Jerusalem. We indeed see that Islam makes many of the same or similar claims that Judaism does, for example, that Abraham came from a family of polytheists in Babylon (modern day Iraq), but it was necessary for them to alter their stance on Ishmael. And of course we can’t ignore that the Jewish religious monarchy was started by King Saul and passed on to many “greats,” such as King David, who moved it to Jerusalem, and his son Solomon. They are all figures which Muslim tradition recognizes as “Muslims,” (submitters to G-d) and that this monarchy, which was in fact an ancient Jewish state, was the center of world politics for some one thousand and seven hundred years before Muhammad was born. If, Kings Saul, David, and Solomon were Muslims and they erected the first ever religious monarchy to G-d, we could even say that Israel was the first Muslim state. Equally, we can say that it should serve as the prototype for all future Muslim states, "Palestine" included.
Perhaps the world tradition, at least for “Western” religionists, that human civilization started with Adam and eventually centered around a location fixed in the heart of a Land called “Israel,” is unshakeable no matter what new religions say. The Jews are much less populous than the Muslims, making up .002% of the world compared to Islam’s 23%, but Islam will always be Judaism’s little sister regardless of her enormity.
Counterpoint
This is one of the major rebuttals coming from the Muslim tradition as to the veracity of the Torah tradition that Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac in Jerusalem and not Ishmael in Mecca. If there are any that you know about that I missed, please leave a comment.
According to Wikipedia, the Muslim traditions states this:
“Traditionally, Muslims believe that it was Ishmael rather than Isaac whom Abraham was told to sacrifice. In support of this, Muslims note that the text of Genesis as it stands, despite specifying Isaac, appears to state that Abraham was told to sacrifice his only son ("Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac," Genesis 22:2) to God. Since Isaac was Abraham's second son, there was no time at which he would have been Abraham's only son, so they take this to imply that the original text must have named Ishmael rather than Isaac as the intended sacrifice. The Qur'an itself does not specify which son he nearly sacrificed (Qur'an 37:99-111).
The entire episode of the sacrifice is regarded as a trial that Abraham had to face from God. It is celebrated by Muslims on the day of Eid ul-Adha.”
I must say that from a logical perspective that is a great point and it is not the first time that I have been pleased (logically) with an argument I’ve heard come from Islam. However, after just a bit of thinking it dawned on me that earlier in 21:9, “Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking. So she said to Abraham, ‘Drive out this slavewoman with her son, for the son of that slavewoman shall not inherit with my son, with Isaac!’” Later in 21:11, G-d says, “Be not distressed over the youth (Ishmael) or your slavewoman (Hagar): Whatever Sarah tells you, heed her voice, since through Isaac will offspring be considered yours.” Perhaps that by the time of the Akeidah, Ishmael was not around, and therefore Isaac was Abraham’s only son. Note, the Hebrew doesn’t say “even Isaac,” which is a product of translation. Further, which can be taken to confirm that Isaac was really the object of the Akeidah, is that, according to the above paragraph from the Wikipedia site, “The Qur'an itself does not specify which son he nearly sacrificed (Qur'an 37:99-111).”
The exact verses in the Qur’an mentioning the Akeidah are as follows,
“Allah the Almighty tells us of Ibrahim's affliction. After his rescue from the fire, Ibrahim (pbuh) says : ‘Verily, I am going to my Lord. He will guide me! My Lord! Grant me (offspring) from the righteous.’ So We gave him the glad tidings of a forbearing boy. And, when he (Isma'il) was old enough to walk with him, he said: ‘0 my son! I have seen in a dream that I am slaughtering you (offer you in sacrifice to Allah), so look what do you think!’ He said: ‘0 my father! Do that which you are commanded, Insha' Allah (if Allah wills), you shall find me of the patient.’ Then, when they had both submitted themselves (to the Will of Allah) and he had laid him prostrate on his forehead (or on the side of his forehead for slaughtering); and We called out to him: ‘0 Abraham! You have fulfilled the dream (vision)!’ Verily! Thus do We reward those who perform good deeds totally for Allah's sake only.’
This test was truly a manifest trial, and Isma'il (pbuh) and his father (pbuh) showed their complete submission to God. Allah granted their progeny with so many prophets.
"And We left for him (a goodly remembrance) among generations (to come) in later times.. Verily, he was one of Our believing slaves. (Qur'an Saffat 37:99-111)”
Interestingly enough, in the same manner, the Qur’an does not mention that Muhammad ascended to Heaven from Jerusalem, but rather from a place which the Qur’an refers to as the “furthest mosque.” Al aqsa means “nearest” in Arabic, the name given to the mosque built on the site of the Temple in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest site in honor of this verse from the Qur’an. However, if the Qur’an says that the place was “the farthest,” why was the mosque in Jerusalem named “the nearest,” the exact opposite? What this could mean is that “the place farther from all other places” was not a reference to Jerusalem, but maybe to Mecca, or maybe even to Heaven, and Jerusalem was “nearer,” or “the nearest.”
According to an article by Daniel Pipes about Al-Aqsa Mosque, of which the full article can be found
here:“The next Umayyad step was subtle and complex, and requires a pause to note a passage of the Qur'an (17:1) describing the Prophet Muhammad's Night Journey to heaven (isra'):
Glory to He who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the furthest mosque. (Subhana allathina asra bi-‘abdihi laylatan min al-masjidi al-harami ila al-masjidi al-aqsa.)
When this Qur'anic passage was first revealed, in about 621, a place called the Sacred Mosque already existed in Mecca. In contrast, the ‘furthest mosque’ was a turn of phrase, not a place. Some early Muslims understood it as metaphorical or as a place in heaven.14 And if the ‘furthest mosque’ did exist on earth, Palestine would seem an unlikely location, for many reasons. Some of them:
Elsewhere in the Qur'an (30:1), Palestine is called ‘the closest land’ (adna al-ard).
Palestine had not yet been conquered by the Muslims and contained not a single mosque.
The ‘furthest mosque’ was apparently identified with places inside Arabia: either Medina15 or a town called Ji‘rana, about ten miles from Mecca, which the Prophet visited in 630.16
The earliest Muslim accounts of Jerusalem, such as the description of Caliph ‘Umar's reported visit to the city just after the Muslims conquest in 638, nowhere identify the Temple Mount with the ‘furthest mosque’ of the Qur'an.
The Qur'anic inscriptions that make up a 240-meter mosaic frieze inside the Dome of the Rock do not include Qur'an 17:1 and the story of the Night Journey, suggesting that as late as 692 the idea of Jerusalem as the lift-off for the Night Journey had not yet been established. (Indeed, the first extant inscriptions of Qur'an 17:1 in Jerusalem date from the eleventh century.)
Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiya (638-700), a close relative of the Prophet Muhammad, is quoted denigrating the notion that the prophet ever set foot on the Rock in Jerusalem; ‘these damned Syrians,’ by which he means the Umayyads, ‘pretend that God put His foot on the Rock in Jerusalem, though [only] one person ever put his foot on the rock, namely Abraham.’17
--------------------------
Just a thought:
Another argument made by the Muslim tradition is that the Jews maliciously corrupted the text of the “original Torah” (meaning that the Torah that the Jews read today is not the original) to replace Ishmael with Isaac. However, in verse 21:9 of the Torah we read, “Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking. So she said to Abraham, ‘Drive out this slavewoman with her son, for the son of that slavewoman shall not inherit with my son, with Isaac!’” This hardly seems like a corruption of the text; Hagar mocked Sarah because Sarah was barren and Hagar had just given birth. Sarah, who is also seen as a Muslim in Muslim tradition, was deeply offended by Hagar’s subtle patronizing and expelled her slavewoman, or handmaiden, from the home. Further, the Torah says in 22:11, “The matter greatly distressed Abraham regarding his son (Ishmael).”
Wait just a matzah-pickin’ minute here! If the Jews corrupted the text, they are treating “the bad guys” very nicely. Maybe this is how it really happened? There are a series of verses that deal with Hagar and her son Ishmael quite compassionately, hardly indications of malicious corruption. Guess what, there are even Rabbi’s with the name “Ishmael.” 22:14-20 says, “So Abraham awoke early in the morning, took bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar. He placed them on her shoulder along with the boy, and sent her off. She departed, and strayed in the desert of Beer-sheba. G-d heard the cry of the youth, and an angel of G-d called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for G-d has heeded the cry of the youth in his present state. Arise, lift up the youth and grasp your hand upon him, for I will make a great nation of him.’ Then G-d opened her eyes and she perceived a well of water; she went back and filled the skin of water and gave the youth to drink. G-d was with the youth and he grew up; he dwelt in the desert and became an accomplished archer. He lived in the desert of Paran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt.”
Interestingly enough, Genesis 22:4-5 says, “So Abraham woke up early in the morning and he saddled his donkey; he took his two young men with him and Isaac, his son; he split the wood for the offering, and stood up and went to the place of which G-d had spoken to him. On the third day, Abraham raised his eyes and perceived the place from afar. And Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here by yourselves with the donkey, while I and the lad will go yonder; we will worship and we will return to you.” The Talmud commentary says that Abraham told the young men that “they,” he and Isaac, would worship and return because he knew that G-d was going to tell him not to sacrifice Isaac. Genesis 22:14, which starts with the same wording, “So Abraham awoke early in the morning,” has a similar occurrence. Abraham gives Hagar a skin of water, and it is that same skin that she fills up later when the angel of G-d showed her the well of water. It is as if Abraham also knew that she would be saved in the desert in the same way that Isaac was saved from sacrifice. This is just something I am inferring from the text, but nevertheless, it hardly seems to be a malicious corruption.
Oh yes, the Talmud also says that Ishmael and Isaac made amends upon burying their father Abraham and also says that Ishmael made "tshuva", he repented, and was a tzaddik, a righteous person. It seems that the Muslim tradition has had to be a bit hasty in its conclusions about the Torah's treatment of Ishmael in the name of establishing that they are the correct religious heirs to Abraham.
Further, Muslim tradition is bound by certain laws of logic, so it cannot denigrate any of the Prophets and so the Jews serve as that antithesis to Islam, true submission. In reality, and with the utmost respect and love for Abraham who is our father too, Muslim tradition faithfully ignores that he too could have been implicated in acting erroneously, as a Jew. What about Jacob, whom stole Esav's birthright? "Ah," they would say," you see how the Jews even stoop so low as to insult their own Patriarch? This is something that a Muslim never does." Perhaps in the Qur'an Esav, in an act of exhuberant and excited utter submission gives his birthright over to Jacob with joy. That way they can tell the story without "insulting" any of the Prophets the way that those horrible Jews do. On the other hand, they end up with shallow and less believable characters, and what is a worst act of corruption than turning complicated Prophets into mindless zombie drones? We are supposed to simulate our Prophets; most Muslims do a fine job of simulating the Prophets the way the Qur'an describes them. Again, I can't help but to wonder if how the Torah says it went down is how it really all happened; all the evidence points in that direction.
One final thought; why are Muslims so quick to offer high respects to Hagar as a Muslim, a woman who insulted another who was not able to give birth? Some submitter.
Comments, quips, and complaints greatly appreciated.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
All information about the Hamas Charter contained in this post comes from this website:
http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm
Psalm 83:1-19
1
A Song, a Psalm of Asaph.
2
O G-d, keep not Thou silence; hold not Thy peace, and be not still, O G-d.
3
For, lo, Thine enemies are in an uproar;and they that hate Thee have lifted up the head.
4
They hold crafty converse against Thy people, and take counsel against Thy treasured ones.
5
They have said: 'Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.'
6
For they have consulted together with one consent; against Thee do they make a
covenant;
7
The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites; Moab, and the Hagrites;
8
Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;
9
Assyria also is joined with them; they have been an arm to the children of Lot. Selah
10
Do Thou unto them as unto Midian; as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the brook Kishon;
11
Who were destroyed at En-dor; they became as dung for the earth.
12
Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, and like Zebahand Zalmunna all their princes;
13
Who said: 'Let us take to ourselves in possession the habitations of G-d.'
14
O my G-d, make them like the whirling dust; as stubble before the wind.
15
As the fire that burneth the forest, and as the flame that setteth the mountains ablaze;
16
So pursue them with Thy tempest, and affright them with Thy storm.
17
Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek Thy name, O HaShem.
18
Let them be ashamed and affrighted for ever; yea, let them be abashed and perish;
19
That they may know that it is Thou alone whose name is HaShem, the Most High over all the earth.
http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm
Psalm 83:1-19
1
A Song, a Psalm of Asaph.
2
O G-d, keep not Thou silence; hold not Thy peace, and be not still, O G-d.
3
For, lo, Thine enemies are in an uproar;and they that hate Thee have lifted up the head.
4
They hold crafty converse against Thy people, and take counsel against Thy treasured ones.
5
They have said: 'Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.'
6
For they have consulted together with one consent; against Thee do they make a
covenant;
7
The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites; Moab, and the Hagrites;
8
Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre;
9
Assyria also is joined with them; they have been an arm to the children of Lot. Selah
10
Do Thou unto them as unto Midian; as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the brook Kishon;
11
Who were destroyed at En-dor; they became as dung for the earth.
12
Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, and like Zebahand Zalmunna all their princes;
13
Who said: 'Let us take to ourselves in possession the habitations of G-d.'
14
O my G-d, make them like the whirling dust; as stubble before the wind.
15
As the fire that burneth the forest, and as the flame that setteth the mountains ablaze;
16
So pursue them with Thy tempest, and affright them with Thy storm.
17
Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek Thy name, O HaShem.
18
Let them be ashamed and affrighted for ever; yea, let them be abashed and perish;
19
That they may know that it is Thou alone whose name is HaShem, the Most High over all the earth.
A Fire Not Pleasing to A-llah.....................
Iraninans Volunteer to Fight Israel
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Surrounded by yellow Hezbollah flags, more than 60 Iranian volunteers set off Wednesday to join what they called a holy war against Israeli forces in Lebanon.
The group -- ranging from teenagers to grandfathers -- plans to join about 200 other volunteers on the way to the Turkish border, which they hope to cross Thursday. They plan to reach Lebanon via Syria on the weekend.
Organizers said the volunteers are carrying no weapons, and it was not clear whether Turkey would allow them to pass.
A Turkish Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, would not say Wednesday if Turkey would allow them to cross. Iranians, however, can enter Turkey without a visa and stay for three months.
Iran says it will not send regular forces to aid Hezbollah, but apparently it will not attempt to stop volunteer guerrillas. Iran and Syria are Hezbollah's main sponsors.
"We are just the first wave of Islamic warriors from Iran," said Amir Jalilinejad, chairman of the Student Justice Movement, a nongovernment group that helped recruit the fighters. "More will come from here and other Muslim nations around the world. Hezbollah needs our help."
Military service is mandatory in Iran, and nearly every man has at least some basic training. Some hard-liners have more extensive drills as members of the Basiji corps, a paramilitary network linked to the powerful Revolutionary Guard.
Other volunteers, such as 72-year-old Hasan Honavi, have combat experience from the 1980-88 war with Iraq.
"God made this decision for me," said Honavi, a grandfather and one of the oldest volunteers. "I still have fight left in me for a holy war."
The group, chanting and marching in military-style formation, assembled Wednesday in a part of Tehran's main cemetery that is reserved for war dead and other "martyrs."
They prayed on Persian carpets and linked hands, with their shoes and bags piled alongside. Few had any battle-type gear and some arrived in dress shoes or plastic sandals.
Some bowed before a memorial to Hezbollah-linked suicide bombers who carried out the 1983 blast at Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. servicemen. An almost simultaneous bombing killed 56 French peacekeepers.
Speakers praised Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and laid scorn on Muslim leaders -- including their own government -- for not sending battlefield assistance to Hezbollah since the battles erupted two weeks ago.
Even if the volunteers fail to reach Lebanon, their mobilization is an example of how Iranians are rallying to Hezbollah through organizations outside official circles.
Iran insists it is not directly involved in the conflict on the military side, but it remains the group's key pipeline for money. Iran has dismissed Israel's claims that Hezbollah has been supplied with upgraded Iranian missiles that have reached Haifa and other points across northern Israel.
"We cannot stand by and watch out Hezbollah brothers fight alone," said Komeil Baradaran, a 21-year-old Basiji member. "If we are to die in Lebanon, then we will go to heaven. It is our duty as Muslims to fight."
Iraninans Volunteer to Fight Israel
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Surrounded by yellow Hezbollah flags, more than 60 Iranian volunteers set off Wednesday to join what they called a holy war against Israeli forces in Lebanon.
The group -- ranging from teenagers to grandfathers -- plans to join about 200 other volunteers on the way to the Turkish border, which they hope to cross Thursday. They plan to reach Lebanon via Syria on the weekend.
Organizers said the volunteers are carrying no weapons, and it was not clear whether Turkey would allow them to pass.
A Turkish Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, would not say Wednesday if Turkey would allow them to cross. Iranians, however, can enter Turkey without a visa and stay for three months.
Iran says it will not send regular forces to aid Hezbollah, but apparently it will not attempt to stop volunteer guerrillas. Iran and Syria are Hezbollah's main sponsors.
"We are just the first wave of Islamic warriors from Iran," said Amir Jalilinejad, chairman of the Student Justice Movement, a nongovernment group that helped recruit the fighters. "More will come from here and other Muslim nations around the world. Hezbollah needs our help."
Military service is mandatory in Iran, and nearly every man has at least some basic training. Some hard-liners have more extensive drills as members of the Basiji corps, a paramilitary network linked to the powerful Revolutionary Guard.
Other volunteers, such as 72-year-old Hasan Honavi, have combat experience from the 1980-88 war with Iraq.
"God made this decision for me," said Honavi, a grandfather and one of the oldest volunteers. "I still have fight left in me for a holy war."
The group, chanting and marching in military-style formation, assembled Wednesday in a part of Tehran's main cemetery that is reserved for war dead and other "martyrs."
They prayed on Persian carpets and linked hands, with their shoes and bags piled alongside. Few had any battle-type gear and some arrived in dress shoes or plastic sandals.
Some bowed before a memorial to Hezbollah-linked suicide bombers who carried out the 1983 blast at Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. servicemen. An almost simultaneous bombing killed 56 French peacekeepers.
Speakers praised Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah and laid scorn on Muslim leaders -- including their own government -- for not sending battlefield assistance to Hezbollah since the battles erupted two weeks ago.
Even if the volunteers fail to reach Lebanon, their mobilization is an example of how Iranians are rallying to Hezbollah through organizations outside official circles.
Iran insists it is not directly involved in the conflict on the military side, but it remains the group's key pipeline for money. Iran has dismissed Israel's claims that Hezbollah has been supplied with upgraded Iranian missiles that have reached Haifa and other points across northern Israel.
"We cannot stand by and watch out Hezbollah brothers fight alone," said Komeil Baradaran, a 21-year-old Basiji member. "If we are to die in Lebanon, then we will go to heaven. It is our duty as Muslims to fight."
Anybody can convert to Judaism if he/she wants, and if a person wants to do it then he should. The Torah tells us to love the convert and the Talmud, Jewish Law, tells us not to remind a person needlessly of his/her life before the conversion. Questions like, "You mean you used to try to convert Jews to Christianity," or "You once had three girlfriends at one time?!" should be out of the question. This is similar to how ba'alei t'shuva, Jews who've become obserant/religious, should be treated.
Myself personally, I think it's cool when a person becomes a Jew. Given that our religion does not actively seek converts, when a person makes the decision to become a Jew on his/her own, it's quite an amazing thing. When an "unexpected" person, or a person from a group of people that haven't been known to traditionally choose Judaism as their faith, such as black Americans, Mexican Americans, Christians, or Muslims, it is all the more shocking, and to me, a bit of a spiritual buzz.
And I think it's cool for a more important reason; when a person from "a different walk of life," a person relatively removed from Judaism decides to become a Jew it's a statement that Judaism is a religion compatible with universal notions of morality and truth. Usually the person converting chooses Judaism BECAUSE he/she sees Judaism as the source from which these things emanate.
Further, and closely related, converts to Judaism allow the Jewish people contact with the rest of the world in a very intimate way, through the Torah and its values and precepts. Seeing that a convert will not cut out family and friend from his/her life, converts to Judaism allow "the Torah opinion" to be disseminated to the world's nooks and crannies. Judaism is a people, but a people does not mean one "race," although we started out from our Father Avraham, a Hebrew. In the end, Judaism is a people with a religion; any type of person can become a Jew, and converts expand a Jew's horizon of how observance of Torah fits into every nut and bolt of the world.
However, there is also a potential "downside," one that I didn't give much credence to. The same with a ba'al t'shuva, a convert brings something new to the table of Judaism, a set of concepts and sentiments which he/she incorporates into the Jewish world view, while Judaism brings something new to him/her, or answers old questions. A convert is a human being with his/her own set of presuppositions and there is a possibility that he/she tries to steer Jewish values in a direction that will conform to his/her personal set of values, as true to the Torah as those values might be. The Torah contains all that is righteous in the world, but that doesn't mean that a person, a convert or a ba'al t'shuva, in the direction that he/she deems concordant with the values of the Torah. This would be a bit self-absorbed. Yes, it is perfectly valid to bring new insights to people born Jews, and this is incredibly important, but it needs to be done in a give and take manner, it can't be done in the manner likened to walking into a building and claiming a corner as yours, or by pushing people out of your way.
Myself personally, I think it's cool when a person becomes a Jew. Given that our religion does not actively seek converts, when a person makes the decision to become a Jew on his/her own, it's quite an amazing thing. When an "unexpected" person, or a person from a group of people that haven't been known to traditionally choose Judaism as their faith, such as black Americans, Mexican Americans, Christians, or Muslims, it is all the more shocking, and to me, a bit of a spiritual buzz.
And I think it's cool for a more important reason; when a person from "a different walk of life," a person relatively removed from Judaism decides to become a Jew it's a statement that Judaism is a religion compatible with universal notions of morality and truth. Usually the person converting chooses Judaism BECAUSE he/she sees Judaism as the source from which these things emanate.
Further, and closely related, converts to Judaism allow the Jewish people contact with the rest of the world in a very intimate way, through the Torah and its values and precepts. Seeing that a convert will not cut out family and friend from his/her life, converts to Judaism allow "the Torah opinion" to be disseminated to the world's nooks and crannies. Judaism is a people, but a people does not mean one "race," although we started out from our Father Avraham, a Hebrew. In the end, Judaism is a people with a religion; any type of person can become a Jew, and converts expand a Jew's horizon of how observance of Torah fits into every nut and bolt of the world.
However, there is also a potential "downside," one that I didn't give much credence to. The same with a ba'al t'shuva, a convert brings something new to the table of Judaism, a set of concepts and sentiments which he/she incorporates into the Jewish world view, while Judaism brings something new to him/her, or answers old questions. A convert is a human being with his/her own set of presuppositions and there is a possibility that he/she tries to steer Jewish values in a direction that will conform to his/her personal set of values, as true to the Torah as those values might be. The Torah contains all that is righteous in the world, but that doesn't mean that a person, a convert or a ba'al t'shuva, in the direction that he/she deems concordant with the values of the Torah. This would be a bit self-absorbed. Yes, it is perfectly valid to bring new insights to people born Jews, and this is incredibly important, but it needs to be done in a give and take manner, it can't be done in the manner likened to walking into a building and claiming a corner as yours, or by pushing people out of your way.
Arabs Should Take Care of their Own Problems.............................
I was watching the news a few hours ago with my dad when the reporter summarized a statement made by Mahmoud Abbas, or Abu Mazen, the Palestinian Prime Minister. According to her, he said that Hezba-llah should do everything in its power to remove Israeli troops from Lebanon. The Shi'ite Iraqi President, Jawad al-Maliki, expressed the same sentiment on a separated occasion.
Here's my beef, and I hope it's Halal; it seems to me that both the Palestinians and the Iraqi's have a list of problems occuring within their own peoples. Palestinian society is rife with the power struggle between Hamas and Fatach, basically uncontrollable by Abbas. They have severe economic problems, Gaza is said to be one of the poorest regions in the world and have almost no infrastructure, which means no jobs, etc... The education system is almost completely infiltrated with propagandaagainst the State of Israel, which has been the case approximately since the Six Day War in 1967 (38 years), and this is a movement that will only be able to be remedied by another movement moving in the other direction. Israel is always on the defensive and offensive due to the stock of young suicide bombers that Gaza and the West Bank towns produce per capita. Not to forget, the occasional Muslim Palestinian takeover of Christian Palestinian sites. If they had less war, they could have more production.
The Iraqi's have their own set of problems; Sunni-Shi'ite struggles, anti-American troop insurgencies, and the establishment of a constitution, government, and military force that will be able to reign control in on the country. Not to mention, as with the Palestinians, a crossroads of terrorist activity from other Arab countries funding and operating within.
Yet, in spite of all this, Mahmoud Abbas and Maliki have the time and energy, and immaturity, to even have an opinion on what's going on in Lebanon. Excuse me, but Hassan Nasra-llah, the leader of Hezba-llah, is doing a fine enough job without the emotional support of Abbas and Maliki. If Abbas and Maliki truly want to be leaders to their people they should be too busy with the issues of their own people to have an opinion on what's happening in Lebanon. They should say, "Let Lebanon do what it needs to against Israel and America. We have our own problems here and we are trying our best to take care of them. Lebanon is not of our concern, our well-being is." The problem is that many Arab societies and their governments suffer the delusional illusion that their well-being is dependent on the ability and success of Arab states to fight Israel - it is an ideological association that serves only the Pan-nationalist hatred of the Arab states towards Israel but serves no direct tangible purpose for the actual subjects of those Arab countries, the citizens. Not surprisingly, their maintained focus and effort in fighting a perpetual war on the proverbial front with Israel keeps them wallowing in the muck of their problems and never proceeding. The sad truth about Arab leaders is that part of the prerquisites of a good Arab (and Iranian) leader is his hatred for Israel and how much prideful bluffing and propaganda spreading he is able to do. Nasra-llah's poker face was solid but transparent when he said that Israel did not inflict many casualties on Hezba-llah.
I was watching the news a few hours ago with my dad when the reporter summarized a statement made by Mahmoud Abbas, or Abu Mazen, the Palestinian Prime Minister. According to her, he said that Hezba-llah should do everything in its power to remove Israeli troops from Lebanon. The Shi'ite Iraqi President, Jawad al-Maliki, expressed the same sentiment on a separated occasion.
Here's my beef, and I hope it's Halal; it seems to me that both the Palestinians and the Iraqi's have a list of problems occuring within their own peoples. Palestinian society is rife with the power struggle between Hamas and Fatach, basically uncontrollable by Abbas. They have severe economic problems, Gaza is said to be one of the poorest regions in the world and have almost no infrastructure, which means no jobs, etc... The education system is almost completely infiltrated with propagandaagainst the State of Israel, which has been the case approximately since the Six Day War in 1967 (38 years), and this is a movement that will only be able to be remedied by another movement moving in the other direction. Israel is always on the defensive and offensive due to the stock of young suicide bombers that Gaza and the West Bank towns produce per capita. Not to forget, the occasional Muslim Palestinian takeover of Christian Palestinian sites. If they had less war, they could have more production.
The Iraqi's have their own set of problems; Sunni-Shi'ite struggles, anti-American troop insurgencies, and the establishment of a constitution, government, and military force that will be able to reign control in on the country. Not to mention, as with the Palestinians, a crossroads of terrorist activity from other Arab countries funding and operating within.
Yet, in spite of all this, Mahmoud Abbas and Maliki have the time and energy, and immaturity, to even have an opinion on what's going on in Lebanon. Excuse me, but Hassan Nasra-llah, the leader of Hezba-llah, is doing a fine enough job without the emotional support of Abbas and Maliki. If Abbas and Maliki truly want to be leaders to their people they should be too busy with the issues of their own people to have an opinion on what's happening in Lebanon. They should say, "Let Lebanon do what it needs to against Israel and America. We have our own problems here and we are trying our best to take care of them. Lebanon is not of our concern, our well-being is." The problem is that many Arab societies and their governments suffer the delusional illusion that their well-being is dependent on the ability and success of Arab states to fight Israel - it is an ideological association that serves only the Pan-nationalist hatred of the Arab states towards Israel but serves no direct tangible purpose for the actual subjects of those Arab countries, the citizens. Not surprisingly, their maintained focus and effort in fighting a perpetual war on the proverbial front with Israel keeps them wallowing in the muck of their problems and never proceeding. The sad truth about Arab leaders is that part of the prerquisites of a good Arab (and Iranian) leader is his hatred for Israel and how much prideful bluffing and propaganda spreading he is able to do. Nasra-llah's poker face was solid but transparent when he said that Israel did not inflict many casualties on Hezba-llah.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
A dromedary named "Great" sent me this in an e-mail, and I present it to you here today.
This is from a friend who served in the USCG.
A difficult lesson
When I was in the Navy, I once witnessed a bar fight in downtown Olongapo (Philippines) that still haunts my dreams. The fight was between a big oafish Marine and a rather soft-spoken, medium sized Latino sailor from my ship. All evening the Marine had been trying to pick a fight with one of us and had finally set his sights on this diminutive shipmate of mine... figuring him for a safe target.
When my friend refused to be goaded into a fight the Marine sucker punched him from behind on the side of the head so hard that blood instantly started to pour from this poor man's mutilated ear. Everyone present was horrified and was prepared to absolutely murder this Marine, but my shipmate quickly turned on him and began to single-handedly back him towards a corner with a series of stinging jabs and upper cuts that gave more than a hint to a youth spent boxing in a small gym in the Bronx. Each punch opened a cut on the Marine's startled face and by the time he had been backed completely into the corner he was blubbering for someone to stop the fight. He invoked his split lips and chipped teeth as reasons to stop the fight. He begged us to stop the fight because he could barely see through the river of blood that was pouring out of his split and swollen brows.
Nobody moved. Not one person. The only sound in the bar was the sickening staccato sound of this sailor's lightning fast fists making contact with new areas of the Marine's head. The only sound I have heard since that was remotely similar was from the first Rocky film when Sylvester Stallone was punching sides of beef in the meat locker. Finally the Marine's pleading turned to screams.... a high, almost womanly shriek. And still the punches continued relentlessly. Several people in the bar took a few tentative steps as though they wanted to try to break it up at that point, but hands reached out from the crowd and held them tight. I'm not ashamed to say that mine were two of the hands that held someone back. You see, in between each blow the sailor had begun chanting a soft cadence: "Say [punch] you [punch] give [punch] up [punch]... say [punch] you [punch]were [punch] wrong [punch]". He had been repeating it to the Marine almost from the start but we only became aware of it when the typical barroom cheers had died down and we began to be sickened by the sight and sound of the carnage.
This Marine stood there shrieking in the corner of the bar trying futilely to block the carefully timed punches that were cutting his head to tatters... right down to the skull in places. But he refused to say that he gave up... or that he was wrong. Even in the delirium of his beating he believed in his heart that someone would stop the fight before he had to admit defeat. I'm sure this strategy had served him well in the past and had allowed him to continue on his career as a barroom bully. Finally, in a wail of agony the Marine shrieked "I give up", and we gently backed the sailor away from him. I'm sure you can guess why I have shared this story today. I'm not particularly proud to have been witness to such a bloody spectacle, and the sound of that Marine's woman-like shrieks will haunt me to my grave. But I learned something that evening that Israel had better learn for itself if it is to finally be rid of at least one of its tormentors: This is one time an Arab aggressor must be allowed to be beaten so badly that every civilized nation will stand in horror, wanting desperately to step in and stop the carnage... but knowing that the fight will only truly be over when one side gives up and finally admits defeat. Just as every person who had ever rescued that bully from admitting defeat helped create the cowardly brute I saw that evening in the bar, every well-intentioned power that has ever stepped in and negotiated a ceasefire for an Arab aggressor has helped create the monsters we see around us today.
President Emile Lahoud of Lebanon, a big Hezbollah supporter and a close ally of Syria, has been shrieking non-stop to the UN Security Council for the past two days to get them to force Israel into a cease fire. Clearly he has been reading his autographed copy of 'Military Success for Arab Despots' by the late Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Ever since Nasser accidentally discovered the trick in '56, every subsequent Arab leader has stuck to his tried and true formula for military success:
1. Instigate a war.
2. Once the war is well underway and you are in the process of having your ass handed to you... get a few world powers to force your western opponent into a cease fire.
3. Whatever you do, don't surrender or submit to any terms dictated by your enemy. That would ruin everything! All you have to do is wait it out and eventually the world will become sickened at what is being done to your soldiers and civilian population... and will force a truce.
4. Once a truce has been called you can resume your intransigence (which probably caused the conflict in the first place), and even declare victory as your opponent leaves the field of battle.
This tactic has never failed. Not once. In fact it worked so will for the Egyptians in 1973, that to this day they celebrate the Yom Kippur War - a crushing defeat at the hands of Israel - as a military victory! No kidding... it's a national holiday over there! President Lahoud has already begun to shriek like a school girl to the UN Security Council to "Stop the violence and arrange a cease-fire, and then after that we'll be ready to discuss all matters." Uh huh. Forgive me if I find that a tad hard to swallow. He allowed Hezbollah to take over his country. He allowed the regular Lebanese army to provide radar targeting data for the Hezbollah missile that struck the Israeli destroyer. He has turned a blind eye while Iranian and Syrian weapons, advisers and money have poured into his country. And now that his country is in ruins he wants to call it a draw. As much as it may sicken the world to stand by and watch it happen, strong hands need to hold back the weak-hearted and let the fight continue until one side finally admits unambiguous defeat.
--------------------------
My own aside... Lebanon's president is a Maronite Christian, and today on a news interview I heard him mention that Hezba-llah is good for Lebanon. You see, an Arab Christian can play either side of politics; siding with Islamists or taking a stance against them, which usually, but not always, ends up in siding with Israel. Another Arab Christian is Hanan Ashrawi, former legislator and spokewoman for the Palestinians. Betcha didn't know that, did ya?
... and all the libbies say, "Dum, dee dum, dee dum, dee dum dum. Dum, dee dum, dee dum, dee dum dum."
This is from a friend who served in the USCG.
A difficult lesson
When I was in the Navy, I once witnessed a bar fight in downtown Olongapo (Philippines) that still haunts my dreams. The fight was between a big oafish Marine and a rather soft-spoken, medium sized Latino sailor from my ship. All evening the Marine had been trying to pick a fight with one of us and had finally set his sights on this diminutive shipmate of mine... figuring him for a safe target.
When my friend refused to be goaded into a fight the Marine sucker punched him from behind on the side of the head so hard that blood instantly started to pour from this poor man's mutilated ear. Everyone present was horrified and was prepared to absolutely murder this Marine, but my shipmate quickly turned on him and began to single-handedly back him towards a corner with a series of stinging jabs and upper cuts that gave more than a hint to a youth spent boxing in a small gym in the Bronx. Each punch opened a cut on the Marine's startled face and by the time he had been backed completely into the corner he was blubbering for someone to stop the fight. He invoked his split lips and chipped teeth as reasons to stop the fight. He begged us to stop the fight because he could barely see through the river of blood that was pouring out of his split and swollen brows.
Nobody moved. Not one person. The only sound in the bar was the sickening staccato sound of this sailor's lightning fast fists making contact with new areas of the Marine's head. The only sound I have heard since that was remotely similar was from the first Rocky film when Sylvester Stallone was punching sides of beef in the meat locker. Finally the Marine's pleading turned to screams.... a high, almost womanly shriek. And still the punches continued relentlessly. Several people in the bar took a few tentative steps as though they wanted to try to break it up at that point, but hands reached out from the crowd and held them tight. I'm not ashamed to say that mine were two of the hands that held someone back. You see, in between each blow the sailor had begun chanting a soft cadence: "Say [punch] you [punch] give [punch] up [punch]... say [punch] you [punch]were [punch] wrong [punch]". He had been repeating it to the Marine almost from the start but we only became aware of it when the typical barroom cheers had died down and we began to be sickened by the sight and sound of the carnage.
This Marine stood there shrieking in the corner of the bar trying futilely to block the carefully timed punches that were cutting his head to tatters... right down to the skull in places. But he refused to say that he gave up... or that he was wrong. Even in the delirium of his beating he believed in his heart that someone would stop the fight before he had to admit defeat. I'm sure this strategy had served him well in the past and had allowed him to continue on his career as a barroom bully. Finally, in a wail of agony the Marine shrieked "I give up", and we gently backed the sailor away from him. I'm sure you can guess why I have shared this story today. I'm not particularly proud to have been witness to such a bloody spectacle, and the sound of that Marine's woman-like shrieks will haunt me to my grave. But I learned something that evening that Israel had better learn for itself if it is to finally be rid of at least one of its tormentors: This is one time an Arab aggressor must be allowed to be beaten so badly that every civilized nation will stand in horror, wanting desperately to step in and stop the carnage... but knowing that the fight will only truly be over when one side gives up and finally admits defeat. Just as every person who had ever rescued that bully from admitting defeat helped create the cowardly brute I saw that evening in the bar, every well-intentioned power that has ever stepped in and negotiated a ceasefire for an Arab aggressor has helped create the monsters we see around us today.
President Emile Lahoud of Lebanon, a big Hezbollah supporter and a close ally of Syria, has been shrieking non-stop to the UN Security Council for the past two days to get them to force Israel into a cease fire. Clearly he has been reading his autographed copy of 'Military Success for Arab Despots' by the late Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt. Ever since Nasser accidentally discovered the trick in '56, every subsequent Arab leader has stuck to his tried and true formula for military success:
1. Instigate a war.
2. Once the war is well underway and you are in the process of having your ass handed to you... get a few world powers to force your western opponent into a cease fire.
3. Whatever you do, don't surrender or submit to any terms dictated by your enemy. That would ruin everything! All you have to do is wait it out and eventually the world will become sickened at what is being done to your soldiers and civilian population... and will force a truce.
4. Once a truce has been called you can resume your intransigence (which probably caused the conflict in the first place), and even declare victory as your opponent leaves the field of battle.
This tactic has never failed. Not once. In fact it worked so will for the Egyptians in 1973, that to this day they celebrate the Yom Kippur War - a crushing defeat at the hands of Israel - as a military victory! No kidding... it's a national holiday over there! President Lahoud has already begun to shriek like a school girl to the UN Security Council to "Stop the violence and arrange a cease-fire, and then after that we'll be ready to discuss all matters." Uh huh. Forgive me if I find that a tad hard to swallow. He allowed Hezbollah to take over his country. He allowed the regular Lebanese army to provide radar targeting data for the Hezbollah missile that struck the Israeli destroyer. He has turned a blind eye while Iranian and Syrian weapons, advisers and money have poured into his country. And now that his country is in ruins he wants to call it a draw. As much as it may sicken the world to stand by and watch it happen, strong hands need to hold back the weak-hearted and let the fight continue until one side finally admits unambiguous defeat.
--------------------------
My own aside... Lebanon's president is a Maronite Christian, and today on a news interview I heard him mention that Hezba-llah is good for Lebanon. You see, an Arab Christian can play either side of politics; siding with Islamists or taking a stance against them, which usually, but not always, ends up in siding with Israel. Another Arab Christian is Hanan Ashrawi, former legislator and spokewoman for the Palestinians. Betcha didn't know that, did ya?
... and all the libbies say, "Dum, dee dum, dee dum, dee dum dum. Dum, dee dum, dee dum, dee dum dum."
Monday, July 24, 2006
Observation......................................
My becoming an observant Jew was an answer to the question that asked, “What and who are you?” I eventually answered with “I am a Jewish.”
It’s ironic that it took for me to live in America as a relative “outsider” to find out that being Jewish was the foundational basis of my existence and identity. I was born in Israel and moved here at the age of five with my family. My being an outsider was not just from the Gentile community, many of whom were Christian, but from the American Jewish community as well. Subsequently, I found myself in a state of “outsiderness” that lasted my whole life, even into high school and college.
Shakespeare asks the question, “To be or not to be?” The way I see it, and I think this is the way he intends the question, is it better to live life by defining yourself as something and being a part of that thing, or is it better to live your life negating other things and making negation the source of your identity? If you find something good in life, something worth being a part of, then logically you will want to identify yourself by that thing. But if you can’t find anything in life worth being a part of then it is logical to say that it makes more sense to be a part of nothing. If you find something good, the answer to Shakespeare’s question is “to be.” If you can’t find anything good in life worthy of association, then the answer to Shakespeare’s question is “not to be.”
It is like if you ask a dog, assuming that it can speak, “What animal are you?” If the dog says, “Well, I am not a cat, I am not a bird, I am not a giraffe, and I am not a camel,” then we can begin to understand that the dog does not have a real understanding of what it is. But if the dog says, “I am a dog,” then we can understand that the dog understands its identity and existence.
I believe that “to be” is the best answer to the question, no matter what. It is better to be a wrong thing than to be nothing. You can find a plethora of things in the world not worthy of being, but what self-value can you find by negating each and every one of those things? Basically none. The question that I have asked myself is, if I strongly believe that “to be” is the best answer to that question, then why did I have to be Jewish? Why couldn’t I have been a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Buddhist? Why a Jew?
And if we look at the dog analogy again, the dog is already a dog; if that animal is looking for its identity, it would have an easier time being a dog than trying to be a cat, or a bird, or a giraffe, or a camel. In reality, it was raised with dogs, so being a dog would be much easier for it. If the dog feels that it has to go through a change in order to be something, becoming a dog also requires a change. I reasoned, “I am a Jew, and while I am capable of trying to find an identity as something else, maybe the things I am looking for can be found in Judaism.” It turned out being the first and last place I looked. If I was going to be something, why not be the thing that I already was? If I was looking for an identity, and identity is arbitrary, then why not simply choose the thing with which I already identify? I concluded then that Judaism was the first place that I would look for what I needed, but I also had the feeling that Judaism was the place where I would find them, and I was right.
It seems that my search for a fixed identity was based in my feeling of being without a real or fixed identity. This is not something that everybody experiences, and I know that my feeling of having that lack of an identity is a result of coming to America at such a young age and never fully integrating. I later realized that my apprehension in full integration was that I didn’t want to lose what I felt was very close to my heart and my being, which was Israel. Therefore, I resisted almost everything in my life, every kind of group belonging or association, which ironically, also meant resisting my own Judaism, an organized religion and my own people. I got so used to resisting everything in the name of maintaining my identity that my identity eventually became a collection of things that I wasn’t. I knew that I wasn’t a cat, or a bird, or a giraffe, or a camel, but by the time I had it figured to all the things that I was not, my identity had slipped away; what was I? I had eventually identified myself as something so unique and unable to fit anywhere that there was nothing I could say I belonged to.
Further, I had begun to associate Judaism as a non-Israeli thing – it was an American thing because I never saw Judaism in Israel (having left at the age of five). Therefore, to be true to what I believed I was, Israeli, I had to be distanced from Judaism. I had come to believe that to be Israeli, which it was debatable if I was or not, was to be the opposite of what it was to be Jewish. The validity, or lack thereof, of that statement is also debatable and does not fit into the scope of this essay.
The realizations that led me to become an observant Jew had a few layers. First, I realized that I needed an identity. Second, I realized that my identity was largely Jewish already. Three, I felt that my identity had to reflect truth. And four, I already believed in G-d. If I was going to choose an identity I wanted to choose something which with I already identified but also with something that reflected truth, hence, I started to read about Judaism. This would fill in the first three “prerequisites” that I had of Judaism; identity, personal identification, and truth. I had already believed in G-d, and I finally reasoned that if He existed then identifying, recognizing, and living with the truth was of utmost importance – if G-d did not exist then these things didn’t matter. My personal identification with Judaism would then make sense beyond my love for it; my personal love for Judaism would then be attached to truth. This would do the job of giving me a sense of identity. This search, which ended with a successful find, thank G-d, started internally and bumped into an external truth. It was that external truth, which is G-d, which made the continued internal and external search possible.
I would often lie in bed, restless and with my mind full of thoughts, trying to understand the phenomena of existence. It was an esoteric and painful and unhappy thing to do but I wasn’t content without doing it and it troubled me because I was in high school and it put me at odds with much of the people and things happening around me. Eventually I ran into an external Source, a product of my ideas and observations. It was as if I drew a bunch of lines on a piece of paper, one at a time and at different angles, and they eventually each stopped in a place where if I looked at the product at once it was a circle. I had not drawn the circle, the lines that I drew stopped in a place that created a circle, and it was then I realized that there even was a circle. How could my thoughts exist in a vacuum? If thoughts are the products of free will, how it is that my thoughts, when carried to logical conclusions, led to a specific location, and when viewed as a whole in a unified state, created a shape? It is as if the desire to know the truth, if left unhindered and obstructed by what the human assumes he knows, to flow forwards, it will channel in a certain direction. Some say that it’s the subconscious mind at work, but are we really ready to say that the subconscious mind knows things that the conscious does not? If so, and if the subconscious mind is a part of the conscious mind, the human mind, which is finite and has finite knowledge, from where does the subconscious mind receive its knowledge? If we say that the subconscious mind draws and absorbs truth from the world, we are really saying is that there is a real and discernable truth that exists in the world and that the subconscious mind is able to suck it in and digest it. When it becomes digested it seeps into the conscious mind and this results in knowledge. Truth is an object then and not a product of the subjective mind, and to understand the truth is to be objective, i.e., to pursue the truth. There is a set of rules in which the human mind functions and it is the biggest fallacy to believe that the rules freeze the mind; nay, it is the rules which allow the mind to function and then to function strongly and healthily. Have you ever tried to run in water? There is less gravity in water and therefore it is harder to run. It is this very force that pulls one down which allows one to move though space at high speeds. Similarly, an object with mass can be thrown farther than one without much mass. A feather cannot be thrown as can a rock.
But the really important thing to realize is that humans cannot really discern the truth in this way in a lasting manner or in a way perfectly reflective of the truth; the world is too much of a cluttered place for that. The truth is that somebody before us had already discerned the truth in this way, and perfectly, and his name is Abraham. It was through him that the first contact with G-d was established and to his descendants that the Laws expressing that truth were delivered. Those Laws are the (six hundred and thirteen) commandments, or mitzvot, of the Torah.
My becoming an observant Jew was an answer to the question that asked, “What and who are you?” I eventually answered with “I am a Jewish.”
It’s ironic that it took for me to live in America as a relative “outsider” to find out that being Jewish was the foundational basis of my existence and identity. I was born in Israel and moved here at the age of five with my family. My being an outsider was not just from the Gentile community, many of whom were Christian, but from the American Jewish community as well. Subsequently, I found myself in a state of “outsiderness” that lasted my whole life, even into high school and college.
Shakespeare asks the question, “To be or not to be?” The way I see it, and I think this is the way he intends the question, is it better to live life by defining yourself as something and being a part of that thing, or is it better to live your life negating other things and making negation the source of your identity? If you find something good in life, something worth being a part of, then logically you will want to identify yourself by that thing. But if you can’t find anything in life worth being a part of then it is logical to say that it makes more sense to be a part of nothing. If you find something good, the answer to Shakespeare’s question is “to be.” If you can’t find anything good in life worthy of association, then the answer to Shakespeare’s question is “not to be.”
It is like if you ask a dog, assuming that it can speak, “What animal are you?” If the dog says, “Well, I am not a cat, I am not a bird, I am not a giraffe, and I am not a camel,” then we can begin to understand that the dog does not have a real understanding of what it is. But if the dog says, “I am a dog,” then we can understand that the dog understands its identity and existence.
I believe that “to be” is the best answer to the question, no matter what. It is better to be a wrong thing than to be nothing. You can find a plethora of things in the world not worthy of being, but what self-value can you find by negating each and every one of those things? Basically none. The question that I have asked myself is, if I strongly believe that “to be” is the best answer to that question, then why did I have to be Jewish? Why couldn’t I have been a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Buddhist? Why a Jew?
And if we look at the dog analogy again, the dog is already a dog; if that animal is looking for its identity, it would have an easier time being a dog than trying to be a cat, or a bird, or a giraffe, or a camel. In reality, it was raised with dogs, so being a dog would be much easier for it. If the dog feels that it has to go through a change in order to be something, becoming a dog also requires a change. I reasoned, “I am a Jew, and while I am capable of trying to find an identity as something else, maybe the things I am looking for can be found in Judaism.” It turned out being the first and last place I looked. If I was going to be something, why not be the thing that I already was? If I was looking for an identity, and identity is arbitrary, then why not simply choose the thing with which I already identify? I concluded then that Judaism was the first place that I would look for what I needed, but I also had the feeling that Judaism was the place where I would find them, and I was right.
It seems that my search for a fixed identity was based in my feeling of being without a real or fixed identity. This is not something that everybody experiences, and I know that my feeling of having that lack of an identity is a result of coming to America at such a young age and never fully integrating. I later realized that my apprehension in full integration was that I didn’t want to lose what I felt was very close to my heart and my being, which was Israel. Therefore, I resisted almost everything in my life, every kind of group belonging or association, which ironically, also meant resisting my own Judaism, an organized religion and my own people. I got so used to resisting everything in the name of maintaining my identity that my identity eventually became a collection of things that I wasn’t. I knew that I wasn’t a cat, or a bird, or a giraffe, or a camel, but by the time I had it figured to all the things that I was not, my identity had slipped away; what was I? I had eventually identified myself as something so unique and unable to fit anywhere that there was nothing I could say I belonged to.
Further, I had begun to associate Judaism as a non-Israeli thing – it was an American thing because I never saw Judaism in Israel (having left at the age of five). Therefore, to be true to what I believed I was, Israeli, I had to be distanced from Judaism. I had come to believe that to be Israeli, which it was debatable if I was or not, was to be the opposite of what it was to be Jewish. The validity, or lack thereof, of that statement is also debatable and does not fit into the scope of this essay.
The realizations that led me to become an observant Jew had a few layers. First, I realized that I needed an identity. Second, I realized that my identity was largely Jewish already. Three, I felt that my identity had to reflect truth. And four, I already believed in G-d. If I was going to choose an identity I wanted to choose something which with I already identified but also with something that reflected truth, hence, I started to read about Judaism. This would fill in the first three “prerequisites” that I had of Judaism; identity, personal identification, and truth. I had already believed in G-d, and I finally reasoned that if He existed then identifying, recognizing, and living with the truth was of utmost importance – if G-d did not exist then these things didn’t matter. My personal identification with Judaism would then make sense beyond my love for it; my personal love for Judaism would then be attached to truth. This would do the job of giving me a sense of identity. This search, which ended with a successful find, thank G-d, started internally and bumped into an external truth. It was that external truth, which is G-d, which made the continued internal and external search possible.
I would often lie in bed, restless and with my mind full of thoughts, trying to understand the phenomena of existence. It was an esoteric and painful and unhappy thing to do but I wasn’t content without doing it and it troubled me because I was in high school and it put me at odds with much of the people and things happening around me. Eventually I ran into an external Source, a product of my ideas and observations. It was as if I drew a bunch of lines on a piece of paper, one at a time and at different angles, and they eventually each stopped in a place where if I looked at the product at once it was a circle. I had not drawn the circle, the lines that I drew stopped in a place that created a circle, and it was then I realized that there even was a circle. How could my thoughts exist in a vacuum? If thoughts are the products of free will, how it is that my thoughts, when carried to logical conclusions, led to a specific location, and when viewed as a whole in a unified state, created a shape? It is as if the desire to know the truth, if left unhindered and obstructed by what the human assumes he knows, to flow forwards, it will channel in a certain direction. Some say that it’s the subconscious mind at work, but are we really ready to say that the subconscious mind knows things that the conscious does not? If so, and if the subconscious mind is a part of the conscious mind, the human mind, which is finite and has finite knowledge, from where does the subconscious mind receive its knowledge? If we say that the subconscious mind draws and absorbs truth from the world, we are really saying is that there is a real and discernable truth that exists in the world and that the subconscious mind is able to suck it in and digest it. When it becomes digested it seeps into the conscious mind and this results in knowledge. Truth is an object then and not a product of the subjective mind, and to understand the truth is to be objective, i.e., to pursue the truth. There is a set of rules in which the human mind functions and it is the biggest fallacy to believe that the rules freeze the mind; nay, it is the rules which allow the mind to function and then to function strongly and healthily. Have you ever tried to run in water? There is less gravity in water and therefore it is harder to run. It is this very force that pulls one down which allows one to move though space at high speeds. Similarly, an object with mass can be thrown farther than one without much mass. A feather cannot be thrown as can a rock.
But the really important thing to realize is that humans cannot really discern the truth in this way in a lasting manner or in a way perfectly reflective of the truth; the world is too much of a cluttered place for that. The truth is that somebody before us had already discerned the truth in this way, and perfectly, and his name is Abraham. It was through him that the first contact with G-d was established and to his descendants that the Laws expressing that truth were delivered. Those Laws are the (six hundred and thirteen) commandments, or mitzvot, of the Torah.
What is the right way to fight a war?
This short article about Israeli and American war tactics with Hezba-llah and its associates was written by Yehezkel Dror of the Jerusalem Post.
The main jist is, "should the war with Hezba-llah be approached as a strategic game (tit for tat?) or should it be approached as a conflict in which life or death is the matter?" He goes into the respective views of America and Europe in facing conflicts.
Enjoy...
This short article about Israeli and American war tactics with Hezba-llah and its associates was written by Yehezkel Dror of the Jerusalem Post.
The main jist is, "should the war with Hezba-llah be approached as a strategic game (tit for tat?) or should it be approached as a conflict in which life or death is the matter?" He goes into the respective views of America and Europe in facing conflicts.
Enjoy...
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Mental Running............................
I’ve read Constantine’s Sword twice, and I have an interesting time understanding how the author can understand Judaism from the eyes of a Jew. I used to have a lot of pent up anger towards Christianity, and reading that book broke up a lot of that anger because a Christian was understanding that anger from the point of view of a Jew and understanding that that anger was not “anti-Christian.”
In fact, I’ve never heard a Christian refer to Jews as anti-Christian, and I’m not exactly sure why. Indeed, some of the views that Jews have towards Christianity are really anti-Christian. I want to give the benefit of the doubt to Christians, I want to believe that they haven’t used it because they understand that Christianity has done some bad things to Jews and therefore they understand that their resentment towards Christianity is not “anti-Christian” but is based on what was done to them. I think that they don’t use it because they haven’t rationalized it as being anti-Christian. They see the confluence between the Tanakh and the Christian Bible as being so smooth and natural that there is no such thing as being anti-Christian; by rejecting Jesus the Jews are being anti-Jewish. Therefore, the term “anti-Christian” has no meaning in the Christian mind, a Christian has to bend his way of thought to make sense of that word because it explains to him just how separate Jews see the Tanakh and the Christian Bible; to use the word “anti-Christian” to refer to a Jew’s sentiment is to understand Christianity as an entirely separate tradition from Judaism, meaning that it is extraneous to it and has nothing to do with it. Christians do sense that Judaism is anti-Christian, but it seems that they have never used that word. Instead, they conceptualize this tension, which to them is senseless, that Jews have resentment towards Christianity in the form of shock that Jews do not accept Jesus. To a Christian, to love G-d is to love Jesus, so the logical question for a Christian to ask a Jew is “why don’t you accept Jesus?” They can’t understand how Jews say that they love G-d but don’t accept Jesus. There is a confusion in their mind, two existing and opposite concepts at once; they know that the Jews love G-d, and since it is so natural for a Christian to love both G-d and Jesus as an measure of their love for G-d, they simply can’t understand how a person can love G-d without loving Jesus. Unfortunately, they might be tempted to conclude that Jews don’t really love G-d. The fact that the Tanakh and the Christian Bible can be logically seen as two different Bibles would allow for the concept that one can love G-d in His Entirety and not love Jesus, or even know him.
From a perspective of Christianity, it is logical to see Jesus everywhere in the Tanakh, because that religion was made real on the basis of Jesus being foretold everywhere in the Tanakh. It makes sense to believe that the Tanakh talks about Jesus only if your religion was founded on Jesus being the fulfillment of the Tanakh. If you’re a Jew, your religion was founded on something else and therefore there is no place for Jesus within Judaism because it is already complete without him. A Christian simply can’t fathom the notion that anything be complete without Jesus, but this is explicitly because his religion was founded by Jesus. I guess it would be the same to say that Judaism just does not make sense without Abraham. This also means that, in an abstract manner of speaking, that Christianity is a “Judaic religion,” because Jesus was a Jew. To a Christian, Jesus’ being Jewish lends it 100% believability in the eyes of a Jew, meaning that a Christian believes that it should be no problem for a Jew to accept Christianity on the merit that Jesus was a Jew. The answer to that is that there have been many Jews in history who have done wrong and their being Jewish was not a litmus test for their validity.
Jews, but I am really just talking about myself, are not anti-Christian in the sense that they hate G-d, because to Jews, Christianity is not representative of G-d. There are people who are anti-Christian along the lines that they don’t like the concept of G-d; Jews are not anti-Christian for this reason, if they even are anti-Christian, but rather for the reason of what Christianity has done to the Jews, and is doing. I for one think that Christianity should be allowed to flourish but in the Christian social context and in the lives of Christians; it should not reach over into the lives of Jews. Let Christians love Jesus, let them pray to him, let them believe that he fulfilled the Torah; this has nothing to do with me.
In a Boston University interview, James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword, said, "I went to Auschwitz in November 1996 not knowing, or having forgotten, about the cross. When I saw it, I was shocked. I knew that there had been a furious dispute about the presence of a convent, and I went to look at the building that had housed the convent. John Paul II had intervened with Polish Catholics and the order of Carmelite nuns, and helped arrange for the convent's move to a site a bit farther from the camp. The sight of the cross was a jolt for me. I had a reaction that I knew I would have to confront. It was a visceral, negative reaction, and I was confused by my reaction. It was the literal beginning of this book."
This is just an interesting picture, a Catholic Bishop meeting Hitler, an indication of the political alliances forming between Hitler and the Bishops and that they were too close for comfort.
Here's an equally shocking snapshot of Bishops during World War II giving the Nazi salute in the vicinity of Hitler.
This picture, a meeting between Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during World War II, and Hitler shows that he was also meddling in the Middle East. He was engaging the Christians in Europe and the Muslims in the Middle East, can we imagine where this was going?
And for the visual learners, a picture of Nazisand Hezba-llah, the Lebanese terrorist group, respectively heiling Hitler and heiling Hassan (Nasra-llah).
My point with this blog is not to induce an unnecessary guilt trip on the faithful (Christians) or to lead to their questioning or breaking their faith (G-d forbid), even if I don't believe in it, but to get them to understand that they cannot make, or try to make, logical distinctions between "true Christians" and "not real Christians" based on (in)conveniences to their faith. I have had too many Christian friends tell me, when I brought up this topic, that anyone who does something bad in the name of Jesus is not a real Christian - how to explain the large cross hanging from the Bishop's neck as he stood face-to-face with Hitler is a good a guess as anybody's. This is a cognizant dissonance, an inability to grapple with real phenomena and events because they do not conform with currently held notions of something, in this case (an individual's understanding of) Christianity. If those Bishops weren't real Christians, Christianity does not exist. We cannot ignore history to save faith and I definitely am not ready to erase one of the worst moments in Jewish history just so that Christians can go to Church Sunday morning with a clear conscience and a happy heart. What happened to the Jews cannot be erased, not from the fiber of existence nor from the Jewish law-violating tattoos nor from the minds of the survivors.
Two Christians meet: Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian Christian and legislator/spokesperson for the Palestinian people and cause meeting with a Cardinal
Further, what would this do to the integrity of Christianity if these things could be forgotten? In what shallow, false, and two dimensional realm would Christianity exist if it remained in a state forgetful of, and therefore unaware of, atrocities carried out under its auspices, detached from what "true Christianity" is? In what "happy-go-lucky" sugary philosophy of love-state would Christianity exist if it insisted that to be a Christian is to love but was unable to realize that Christians have hated? Christianity did not come into existence on your birthdate; it existed before you for two thousand years, and the Christianity of 13th Century Europe is not the Christianity of 21st Century America. Christianity cannot be just a mental structure in the minds or hearts of Christian believers; if Christianity does not exist in this world, it does not exist. You are not a real Christian if you assume that Christianity only figures into your lifetime and leaves you in a state detached from past events done in the name of your religion. Nor am I a real Jew if I live with the assumption that my existence in the 21st Century in America has nothing to do with every single day that has passed in the history of the world. The survivors of the Holocaust coined the phrase "Never Again." It shouldn't be obsessive fear that motivates one to fight against "again," and therefore to remember, rather, the quality of one's identity is reduced to rubble if memory is erased. Imagine a person with amnesia who tries desperately to remember his past; he is valued by it.
Two interesting videos
In the above video, from 1:15 to about 1:25, it looks like a movement made by Muslims in prayer.
I’ve read Constantine’s Sword twice, and I have an interesting time understanding how the author can understand Judaism from the eyes of a Jew. I used to have a lot of pent up anger towards Christianity, and reading that book broke up a lot of that anger because a Christian was understanding that anger from the point of view of a Jew and understanding that that anger was not “anti-Christian.”
In fact, I’ve never heard a Christian refer to Jews as anti-Christian, and I’m not exactly sure why. Indeed, some of the views that Jews have towards Christianity are really anti-Christian. I want to give the benefit of the doubt to Christians, I want to believe that they haven’t used it because they understand that Christianity has done some bad things to Jews and therefore they understand that their resentment towards Christianity is not “anti-Christian” but is based on what was done to them. I think that they don’t use it because they haven’t rationalized it as being anti-Christian. They see the confluence between the Tanakh and the Christian Bible as being so smooth and natural that there is no such thing as being anti-Christian; by rejecting Jesus the Jews are being anti-Jewish. Therefore, the term “anti-Christian” has no meaning in the Christian mind, a Christian has to bend his way of thought to make sense of that word because it explains to him just how separate Jews see the Tanakh and the Christian Bible; to use the word “anti-Christian” to refer to a Jew’s sentiment is to understand Christianity as an entirely separate tradition from Judaism, meaning that it is extraneous to it and has nothing to do with it. Christians do sense that Judaism is anti-Christian, but it seems that they have never used that word. Instead, they conceptualize this tension, which to them is senseless, that Jews have resentment towards Christianity in the form of shock that Jews do not accept Jesus. To a Christian, to love G-d is to love Jesus, so the logical question for a Christian to ask a Jew is “why don’t you accept Jesus?” They can’t understand how Jews say that they love G-d but don’t accept Jesus. There is a confusion in their mind, two existing and opposite concepts at once; they know that the Jews love G-d, and since it is so natural for a Christian to love both G-d and Jesus as an measure of their love for G-d, they simply can’t understand how a person can love G-d without loving Jesus. Unfortunately, they might be tempted to conclude that Jews don’t really love G-d. The fact that the Tanakh and the Christian Bible can be logically seen as two different Bibles would allow for the concept that one can love G-d in His Entirety and not love Jesus, or even know him.
From a perspective of Christianity, it is logical to see Jesus everywhere in the Tanakh, because that religion was made real on the basis of Jesus being foretold everywhere in the Tanakh. It makes sense to believe that the Tanakh talks about Jesus only if your religion was founded on Jesus being the fulfillment of the Tanakh. If you’re a Jew, your religion was founded on something else and therefore there is no place for Jesus within Judaism because it is already complete without him. A Christian simply can’t fathom the notion that anything be complete without Jesus, but this is explicitly because his religion was founded by Jesus. I guess it would be the same to say that Judaism just does not make sense without Abraham. This also means that, in an abstract manner of speaking, that Christianity is a “Judaic religion,” because Jesus was a Jew. To a Christian, Jesus’ being Jewish lends it 100% believability in the eyes of a Jew, meaning that a Christian believes that it should be no problem for a Jew to accept Christianity on the merit that Jesus was a Jew. The answer to that is that there have been many Jews in history who have done wrong and their being Jewish was not a litmus test for their validity.
Jews, but I am really just talking about myself, are not anti-Christian in the sense that they hate G-d, because to Jews, Christianity is not representative of G-d. There are people who are anti-Christian along the lines that they don’t like the concept of G-d; Jews are not anti-Christian for this reason, if they even are anti-Christian, but rather for the reason of what Christianity has done to the Jews, and is doing. I for one think that Christianity should be allowed to flourish but in the Christian social context and in the lives of Christians; it should not reach over into the lives of Jews. Let Christians love Jesus, let them pray to him, let them believe that he fulfilled the Torah; this has nothing to do with me.
In a Boston University interview, James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword, said, "I went to Auschwitz in November 1996 not knowing, or having forgotten, about the cross. When I saw it, I was shocked. I knew that there had been a furious dispute about the presence of a convent, and I went to look at the building that had housed the convent. John Paul II had intervened with Polish Catholics and the order of Carmelite nuns, and helped arrange for the convent's move to a site a bit farther from the camp. The sight of the cross was a jolt for me. I had a reaction that I knew I would have to confront. It was a visceral, negative reaction, and I was confused by my reaction. It was the literal beginning of this book."
This is just an interesting picture, a Catholic Bishop meeting Hitler, an indication of the political alliances forming between Hitler and the Bishops and that they were too close for comfort.
Here's an equally shocking snapshot of Bishops during World War II giving the Nazi salute in the vicinity of Hitler.
This picture, a meeting between Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during World War II, and Hitler shows that he was also meddling in the Middle East. He was engaging the Christians in Europe and the Muslims in the Middle East, can we imagine where this was going?
And for the visual learners, a picture of Nazisand Hezba-llah, the Lebanese terrorist group, respectively heiling Hitler and heiling Hassan (Nasra-llah).
My point with this blog is not to induce an unnecessary guilt trip on the faithful (Christians) or to lead to their questioning or breaking their faith (G-d forbid), even if I don't believe in it, but to get them to understand that they cannot make, or try to make, logical distinctions between "true Christians" and "not real Christians" based on (in)conveniences to their faith. I have had too many Christian friends tell me, when I brought up this topic, that anyone who does something bad in the name of Jesus is not a real Christian - how to explain the large cross hanging from the Bishop's neck as he stood face-to-face with Hitler is a good a guess as anybody's. This is a cognizant dissonance, an inability to grapple with real phenomena and events because they do not conform with currently held notions of something, in this case (an individual's understanding of) Christianity. If those Bishops weren't real Christians, Christianity does not exist. We cannot ignore history to save faith and I definitely am not ready to erase one of the worst moments in Jewish history just so that Christians can go to Church Sunday morning with a clear conscience and a happy heart. What happened to the Jews cannot be erased, not from the fiber of existence nor from the Jewish law-violating tattoos nor from the minds of the survivors.
Two Christians meet: Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian Christian and legislator/spokesperson for the Palestinian people and cause meeting with a Cardinal
Further, what would this do to the integrity of Christianity if these things could be forgotten? In what shallow, false, and two dimensional realm would Christianity exist if it remained in a state forgetful of, and therefore unaware of, atrocities carried out under its auspices, detached from what "true Christianity" is? In what "happy-go-lucky" sugary philosophy of love-state would Christianity exist if it insisted that to be a Christian is to love but was unable to realize that Christians have hated? Christianity did not come into existence on your birthdate; it existed before you for two thousand years, and the Christianity of 13th Century Europe is not the Christianity of 21st Century America. Christianity cannot be just a mental structure in the minds or hearts of Christian believers; if Christianity does not exist in this world, it does not exist. You are not a real Christian if you assume that Christianity only figures into your lifetime and leaves you in a state detached from past events done in the name of your religion. Nor am I a real Jew if I live with the assumption that my existence in the 21st Century in America has nothing to do with every single day that has passed in the history of the world. The survivors of the Holocaust coined the phrase "Never Again." It shouldn't be obsessive fear that motivates one to fight against "again," and therefore to remember, rather, the quality of one's identity is reduced to rubble if memory is erased. Imagine a person with amnesia who tries desperately to remember his past; he is valued by it.
Two interesting videos
In the above video, from 1:15 to about 1:25, it looks like a movement made by Muslims in prayer.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
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...
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...
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.
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