Drumbeats and Smoke Signals for Jews (Part II)

By Jason Gold

Next stop, the US.

It has already begun. Flash mobs/rioting in Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, Wisconsin(??!!). It is amazing the US showed such enlightenment electing a black man as President and yet he and his administration including the Justice department have polarized the US along racial lines like never before. Throw in the fact that Obama learned anarchy/socialism/communism/anti-Semitism at the feet of Ayers, Alinsky, Dorn, Kalidi, Farrakhan, Wright, and the fact that despite what he polls say now he has an excellent chance of getting re-elected, and this is definitely not good for the Jews. And yet 78% of the Jews voted for this man despite his inimical hostility towards them and Israel. It is equally amazing how time and again we sow the seeds of our own destruction. And if he should be elected again with the help of our assimilated liberal brethren and the Pravda-like mainstream media, things are going to get much worse than they are now.

To be sure, what is happening in Europe will spread to the US. It will just take longer because unlike the Europeans, Americans are basically decent people. But give them enough financial hardship, fiscal uncertainty, demonization of a certain country that has its supporters in the US, and the discomfort level for Jews in this US will be ratcheted up considerably.

If there is one discussion that Jews (even observant ones) are uncomfortable with, it is about the end times or "keitz hayamim" leading to the Messianic age. The Talmud speaks about the end days leading up to the Messianic age as being the “Dor HaHachafa” or the generation of reversal, when things go backwards, when truth are lies and lies are truth, etc. among other things. And before you accuse me of being a messianist, let’s be clear about something; ALL observant Jews are messianists or are supposed to be. Many Jews feel uncomfortable acknowledging this and how it pertains to what is playing out on the world stage all around them, and how their time in the Diaspora is rapidly approaching its end, whether they choose to accept it or not.

It is also clear from Talmudic sources that as we approach our final destiny, before the new order with Israel leading the way can begin, the old order must decay and rot away. The previous post looked at Europe so now let us look at the moral decay happening in the US. Let us look at the proliferation of sexual licentiousness, pornography, corruption, and the decay of the moral values and with them the family unit, all of this once again true to Pat Moynihan's prediction of defining deviancy down. Let us look at the lack of real leadership or for those who truly have the gift of leadership, the way they are demonized by the mainstream media. Want more evidence of the generation of reversal, how lies are truth and how truth is treated as lies? If your stomach will tolerate it, tune in to MSNBC and watch the liar, racist, tax cheat, race baiter, and corporate blackmailer, aka the new “host” of his own cable show, the “Reverend” Al Sharpton. Sharpton, who perpetrated one of the greatest frauds in New York State history in the Tawana Brawley affair and whose murderous incitement helped flare the Crown Heights riots and the burning down of the Jewish-owned “Freddies” in Harlem. Who has been given a free pass by the mainstream press all these years and who counts himself as one of President Obama’s good friends. I think Tuvia Brodie put it best in his blog post of the other day; “When the political culture of the West joins the religion-based culture of Middle East Islam to attack Israel, the resulting condemnations signal how complete is the West’s moral collapse. It is not a coincidence that the West’s refusal to stand up for a Westernized but Jewish sovereign state’s right to exist appears simultaneously with the rising influence of the International political Left. This modern Left, with deep roots in Marxism, Humanism and Hellenism is perfectly comfortable with a global demonization of Israel and all matters Jewish. The Left’s Humanist-Hellenist ideology seeks to replace G-d with man, the minority with majority, and ‘justice’ with a man-made morality. The Humanist Left feeds itself on a globalist world-uniting vision that is based in part on a Hellenist faith that it is man (and only man) who can best shape the universe”.

Gd has been sending us numerous messages of late (how’s that comfort level doing?) about looking to the East and the impending demise of the West both economically and by the hand of Islam; i.e. 9/11, the recurrent economic collapse of the West, Israel’s technological and economic ascendancy. How many of us are getting that message? If you’ll allow me some dime-store prophecy (oh, let's just shred that remaining comfort level), perhaps the final or near-final message will be when a faith-based leader takes the reins of Prime Minister in Israel with a clear mandate from the people of Israel. When that happens, several things will become manifest. First, that leader will place faith in Gd and Israel’s interests above all else; no more kowtowing to world opinion. That in turn will trigger rage in the Islamic world, and when they see that they are utterly impotent against Israel, they will turn their savage rage at what remains of the West. Hopefully, we'll hear the drumbeats and see the smoke signals way before that because at that point, the discomfort levels of the Jews in the Diaspora will rise exponentially. And then, the universal question that will ring from shore to shore will be, “Where are the passports and are they up to date?”

Feiglin Objects to Beck Jerusalem Event

August 25, 2011 Thursday 25 Av 5771 14:20 IST

Jerusalem Post
22 Av, 5771 (August 22, '11)

Feiglin Objects to Beck Jerusalem Event
By Gil Hoffman

http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=234853

American broadcaster Glenn Beck has faced criticism from left-wingers and Reform rabbis in the US and warnings from Arab MKs and Peace Now in Israel ahead of his Jerusalem mega event set for Wednesday night at Jerusalem’s Southern Wall site.

But Beck has been welcomed warmly by the Israeli Right until Sunday, when hawkish Likud activist Moshe Feiglin denounced him in an interview with The Jerusalem Post. Feiglin objected to the Christian broadcaster holding his Restoring Courage rally so close to Judaism’s holy site.

“Glenn Beck should do such an event in his court, not mine,” Feiglin said. “Besides territorial sovereignty, there is also a concept of spiritual sovereignty. When he holds his event so close to the Temple Mount, he is supporting us physically but undermining us spiritually.”

Feiglin noted that Beck was purposely holding his event close to the site where, according to the New Testament, Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers where Jews on pilgrimage to Jerusalem redeemed funds for sacrifices that would be made in the Temple. He said this was problematic, because the incident has been a source for anti-Semitism for centuries.

“This created the image of Jews as pursuers of money and Christian anti-Semitism that led to rivers of Jewish blood,” Feiglin said.

“Glenn Beck doesn’t back the Jewish mission. What drives him is the Christian mission. I have no problem doing business with him, but he has to respect me when he comes here just like I don’t try to force my identity on him when I come to him.”

Feiglin mocked right-wing figures such as MK Danny Danon (Likud) and Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip chairman Danny Dayan who have facilitated Beck’s visit.

“Jews like it when goyim finally smile at them, but sometimes a smile is more dangerous than a scowl, and this is one of those occasions,” Feiglin said.

Feiglin also said he had a “deep problem” with Efrat Chief Rabbi Shlomo Riskin participating as a featured speaker at a Christian prayer rally Beck organized at the Caesarea Amphitheater Sunday night.

HaRav Nachman Kahana on Parashat Re'eh 5771: Two Views from beyond the Horizon

BS"D Parashat Re’eh 5771

TWO VIEWS FROM BEYOND THE HORIZON

A:

In this week’s parasha, the age old ethical-philosophic problem of defining right and wrong and what is good and what is bad, is unequivocally and unambiguously resolved:

ראה אנכי נתן לפניכם היום ברכה וקללה: את הברכה אשר תשמעו אל מצות ה' א-להיכם אשר אנכי מצוה אתכם היום: והקללה אם לא תשמעו אל מצות ה' א-להיכם וסרתם מן הדרך אשר אנכי מצוה אתכם היום ללכת אחרי אלהים אחרים אשר לא ידעתם

See (acknowledge), I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse; The blessing if you obey the commands of the LORD your God that I am giving you today; and the curse if you disobey the commands of the LORD your God and turn from the way that I command you today to follow false deities which you have not known

"Good" is defined as "the commands of the Lord your God," and "bad" is the negation of those commands.

I suggest a corollary to the above definition of good vs. bad. Any act that benefits the Jewish people is "good"; an anti-Semitic one is "bad". Any act that supports what the Torah (Bible) says is good, an anti-Bible one is bad. An activity or resolution intended to foster the Jewish people’s return to all the Biblical lands as promised in the Torah is "good"; an act intended to distance the Jewish people from re-establishing our sovereignty over the Holy land is, by definition, "bad". Any person or nation that supports "bad" acts or policies is by definition "bad".

During the last six months, we have been witnessing the unexpected, sudden downfall of many evil leaders by the hand of their equally evil subjects.

It makes for fascinating news, but the real story is what is happening "beyond the horizon", which is the subject of this d’var Torah.

The Torah states (Beraisheet 25:16)

אלה הם בני ישמעאל ואלה שמתם בחצריהם ובטירתם שנים עשר נשיאם לאמתם

These were the sons of Ishmael, and these are the names of the twelve tribal rulers according to their settlements and camps

Yishmael’s rise to power was through his 12 children, each of who ascended the throne of some country in the area of Eretz Yisrael.

We are witnessing today the dramatic, and in historical terms "sudden" downfall, and imminent downfall of 12 malevolent leaders of 12 evil Yishmaelic Arab states: Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudia, Lebanon, Jordan, Algeria and Morocco.

It has all the trappings of a Godly production, where HaShem as the ultimate playwright draws the audience of the world to the edge of their seats, not knowing what the next scene might bring.

But as moving as these events appear to be on the front pages of newspapers and on TV screens, they are only the shadow of what is actually transpiring. The real story is as follows.

The prophet Yeshayahu says (24-21,22)

והיה ביום ההוא יפקד ה' על צבא המרום במרום ועל מלכי האדמה על האדמה; ואספו אספה אסיר על בור וסגרו על מסגר ומרב ימים יפקדו

In that day the LORD will punish the powers in the heavens and the kings on the earth below. They will be herded together like prisoners bound in a dungeon; they will be shut up in prison and be punished after many days.

The 12th century renowned Bible commentator, RaDaK (Rabbi David Kimchi, Narvona France) echoes earlier sources, including the Zohar, Midrashim and many more; that prior to HaShem’s destruction of evil leaders and evil nations, He destroys the heavenly spiritual forces that empower those entities (guardian angels, if you wish).

In chapter 7 of the Book of Daniel, it is recorded (in Aramaic):

In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream, and visions passed through his mind as he was lying in bed. He wrote down the substance of his dream.

Daniel said: "In my vision at night I looked, and there before me were the four winds of heaven churning up the great sea. Four great beasts, each different from the others, came up out of the sea. "The first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground so that it stood on two feet like a human being, and the mind of a human was given to it.

And there before me was a second beast, which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. It was told, ‘Get up and eat your fill of flesh!’

After that, I looked, and there before me was another beast, one that looked like a leopard. And on its back it had four wings like those of a bird. This beast had four heads, and it was given authority to rule.

After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns...

As I looked, thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days (HaShem) took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze. A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before him. Thousands upon thousands attended him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court was seated, and the books were opened...

Then I continued to watch because of the boastful words the horn was speaking. I kept looking until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire.

Avraham Ibn Ezra, in his commentary to the Book of Daniel, explains the meaning behind the dream.

The fearful strange animals refer to the descendants of Yishmael. And Ibn Ezra writes:

אגלה קצת סוד המלאכים הקדושים לאשר יבינו: והנה ראה כי השם יעשה משפט וישפוט כל הארץ והספרים יהיו פתוחים לפניו כדרך מספרך אשר כתבת ויכתב בספר זכרון לפניו ועם דבר המלאכים אדבר על זה והנה פירש שראה די קטלת חיותא שתאבד כל מלכות ישמעאל רגע אחד בימים מועטים

I will reveal a little of the secrets surrounding the heavenly angels. HaShem will make judgment on the the world. The great books that recall all human actions will be open before Him. And an angel revealed to me that Daniel was shown how in future times HaShem will destroy Yismael in a very short period of time.

The Islamic cry of praise for their fictitious god "AlaHu Akbar" when beheading someone unfortunate enough to fall into their hands, is the absolute negation of what a human being was created for. The leaders of Islam, beginning with the illiterate Mechamad, use what they call "ala" to further their political-military interests as a soldier uses a weapon. So the time will eventually come when the descendants of Yishmael, who have sown and reaped so much evil over these many centuries, will pass from the world.

May we merit to see it speedily in our time.

B:

With authority comes responsibility. A parent must show an example to his children; a rabbi to his community; a mayor towards his city and a president to his nation. And a nation that deems itself to be the world’s leader must certainly maintain high ethical principles.

So lets go "beyond the horizon" to discover why the United States is in the situation it finds itself.

Like everything else in this material world, earthquakes have a superficial scientific explanation, while the real reasons are to be found in the spiritual world.

This week the East Coast of the US experienced an earthquake of 5.9 magnitude, felt from Virginia to Canada.

The Talmud Yerushalmi (end of chapter 1 of Berachot) states that one of the causes of earthquakes is homosexuality. That as a reaction to human being’s unnatural patterns of behavior, the earth reacts in an extremely unnatural way.

There are an increasing number of states which have, or are in the process of, approving same sex marriages, the latest one being New York.

A seismograph or Richter Scale can tell us the magnitude of an earthquake, but only the Torah traditions are able to inform us of the human misbehavior that incurs the wrath of HaShem which causes them.

The other misfortune to have fallen on the United States, as the leader of the western world, is the economic downturn. The economic indicators can measure the severity of the catastrophe, and can even explain what brought it about in economic terms, such as housing mortgages etc., but that again is the superficial appearance of what is really causing the misery.

As I have previously written, it is happening because the US is the world’s leader in pressuring the Jewish people to refrain from building and developing the lands promised to us by the Creator.

The misery will continue and even worsen in the US if they do not reverse their anti-Bible policy of tying our hands in Eretz Yisrael.

It is vital for the US and the western world that this message be brought to the attention of their political movers and shakers.

It is even more vital for them than for the people of Israel, because as in the words of Mordechai to Esther when she hesitated to do what was necessary for the survival of the Jewish nation (chapter 4,14):

כי אם החרש תחרישי בעת הזאת רוח והצלה יעמוד ליהודים ממקום אחר ואת ובית אביך תאבדו ומי יודע אם לעת כזאת הגעת למלכות:

For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for just such a time as this?"

HaShem has brought the United States to the position of a world leader, but if it turn its back on the people of the Bible, we the Jews in Eretz Yisrael shall find "relief and deliverance" from wherever HaShem will choose, but the western world will decline and fall.

Shabbat Shalom

Nachman Kahana

Copyright © 5771-2011 Nachman Kahana

On the Threshold of Greatness (VI): when the Jewish Nation becomes Dirty and Repulsive (Part II)

By Tuvia Brodie

Where Illegitimacy began, and where it ends

When the political culture of the West joins the religion-based culture of Middle East Islam to attack Israel, the resulting condemnations signal how complete is the West’s moral collapse. It is not a coincidence that the West’s refusal to stand up for a Westernized but Jewish sovereign state’s right to exist appears simultaneously with the rising influence of the International political Left. This modern Left, with deep roots in Marxism, Humanism and Hellenism is perfectly comfortable with a global demonization of Israel and all matters Jewish. The Left’s Humanist-Hellenist ideology seeks to replace G-d with man, the minority with majority, and ‘justice’ with a man-made morality. The Humanist Left feeds itself on a globalist world-uniting vision that is based in part on a Hellenist faith that it is man (and only man) who can best shape the universe.

From our point of view, the Hellenist influence on the West’s moral collapse begins with arrogance and ends with denigrating the Jew: Hellenists considered themselves more intellectually sophisticated than others and, by comparison, aristocratic, while the rest of the world was barbaric (ibid, p. 205); only they were civilized and only they had the answers. They were—as today’s Left—intolerant, cruel and full of contempt for those who were ‘other’. In addition, their attitudes toward Jews was to remove the Jew from the ‘nations’ of the world, by isolating the Jew as unsocial, impious and hostile (Hecataeus, 300 BCE, in Judeophobia: attitudes toward the Jews in the ancient world, Peter Schafer, Harvard University Press paperback, pp. 15-16, and 23); indeed, the Jews’ insularity and supposed hostility to ‘foreigners’ was explicitly associated with their strange and perhaps ‘improper’ belief in a non- human god who had no physical form (ibid, 17 and 22-23). Less politely (Manetheo, app 250 BCE, ibid, p. 18), Jews were portrayed as cruel. Worse, Jews were said to create laws to assure that the world’s ‘normal’ gods were not worshipped. Jewish law, in this view, was exclusionary to the point that Jews required their women to have intercourse only with those within their own confederacy (ibid, p.18)—something which, apparently, bothered non-Jewish observers. By first century BCE Hellenists, Jews are portrayed as having adopted a hatred of humankind as their permanent tradition (Diodorus, ibid, p. 23). Later (Tacitus, early second century CE), Jews become ‘hateful to the gods’, practicing customs (the Sabbath, fasts, abstinence from pork) that were abominable ( ibid 31-2); some at that time spoke of Judaism with disgust (32). Curiously, Jews again seem particularly offensive because they abstain from intercourse with foreign women while among themselves, it is suggested, nothing lustful is unlawful (p. 33), a criticism that surely says more about the accuser than the accusee. Ultimately, the fact that Jews did not make images of their god meant that they were in fact godless (ibid, 36). You can see where this is going: the creation of anti-Semitism, a focused, unified attitude where the Jew becomes both hostile and repulsive, blasphemous, godless and hypocritical—foreign, untrustworthy, suspicious. The Jew, in other words, becomes the one who obstructs amity and trust.

In the modern world, Nazi Germany refined this anti-Semitism; they built upon ancient and accepted attitudes to create a uniquely horrific Jewish ‘solution’—the complete removal of Jews from the world’s population map. Today, as the Arab seeks to remove Israel from the Middle East map, the politically Left Humanist speaks of the power of human capability above all else, and is disdainful of G-d. To the Humanist, compassion and sympathy towards others is not paramount, the minority must yield to the majority, and peace in the Middle East comes only when the Jew yields to the Muslim.

The Left (the Humanist’s natural home) along with Arab media and Mosque, seem now to have inherited the Nazi and Hellenist views of the Jewish people. Anti-Semitism fits their world-view. One can see this in the Arab use of Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda, and in the Left’s support for the modern version of the big lie (the Arab claim of a Palestinian people forcibly ejected from their ancestral homes by murdering Jews in 1948, who now cry for the justice they deserve), in order to demonize an Israel they identify as a cruel, repulsive and arrogantly abusive minority. British Leftist Jenny Tonge sums it up well when she suggests (Jerusalem Post, November 14, 2010) that the very existence of Israel creates terrorism-- the inference being that the political pursuit of a Humanistic world peace would be much enhanced with the terror-creating, obstructionist Israel removed from the world map. The Arab and the Hellenist Left appear to have formed a symbiotic partnership, where, working together for peace, the one would disdain and demonize as the other would destroy and/or kill. These haters of the Jewish people have a long and sneering (and by now) blood-stained legacy.

In their own way, some Christians back away from this hatred. It is too extreme. Christians may have their own ideas about Jews, but this unholy alliance goes too far: the Left and the Arab pursue their modern anti-Israel, anti-G-d agenda with a fervor that seems too intense—indeed, altogether too, well, religious. For some Christians, this hatred suggests a religion of Evil; suddenly, perhaps surprisingly, the Jew must be defended because once the Jew is destroyed, they will be next; and if they wait until the Jew is destroyed, it will be too late; the enemy, this Evil, will have become too powerful.

We must not be distracted by events or individuals. The G-d of Israel remains the Living G-d of the Jewish nation, who has promised both punishment and Redemption for his Chosen. We might wish to note this Christian battle against Evil, but we should read our own Tanach and remember what our G-d has said to us. In comments on the poetic lines that follow the words, “They called me dirty and repulsive, worse than all my peers,” Rabbi Soloveitchik tells us, “In effect, G-d says to the Jewish people, ‘I will bring you back to the land of Israel…and restore you to your former glory, for one reason—not because you are deserving, but because My name has been desecrated”(ibid, 200).

The Jewish people may not be deserving—there is, unfortunately, some evidence of this; but there is also evidence that Left-leaning politicians of the world actively desecrate both the name of Israel and the name of G-d in order to promote a Humanist, majority-focused and man-made ‘justice’ that has nothing to do with G-dliness or Holiness. Right now, the nations of the world (and the political Left) seem to work too fervently and too diligently to isolate us as a repulsive, cruel and vile nation. But the Jewish tradition is clear: more than a 1,000 years ago, we were reminded that the enemies of Israel are the enemies of G-d. You may have to re-read parts of this essay (or do some additional reading) in order to think it through, but this association holds true. To hate Israel is to hate G-d. The Christians may see something else in today’s events—deeds and words that strike at the heart of their own religion-- but our truth is found and then repeated throughout history: G-d and Israel are as one; to hate the one is, in fact and deed, to hate the other. To desecrate the one is to desecrate the other. Remember that as you watch September 2011 at the UN and note how eagerly do the nations work against Israel, how gladly do they support wrong over right and desecration over Deity.

Do not tremble if you see sneering hate. Do not worry if the media shows us nations seeking to foist a Humanist ‘justice’ upon us. Do not fear if the Jewish nation becomes dirty and repulsive, worse than all her peers at the United Nations, for the G-d of Israel watches. As September unfolds, we would be wise to read our Tanach and remember what our G-d has told us.

Drumbeats and Smoke Signals for Jews (Part I)

By Jason Gold

1. Defining Deviancy Down

Some years ago I was dragged to a political function in New York, which, unfortunately in New York City invariably meant and still means a Democratic Party dinner/fund raiser/sycophantic glad-handing soiree. However, the lone bright spot was the presence of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Pat, as he was fondly known, was a brilliant man, an eloquent speaker and perhaps the last remnant of what the Democratic Party used to be. The fact that as a Senator, professor and UN Ambassador, he was also a fierce supporter of Israel was just the cherry on the cake.

One of his most famous essays was on “Defining Deviancy Down”. Triple D, as I called it (he was somewhat amused) states that as a society begins to implode, it will gradually tolerate more deviant behavior than was previously thought possible and redefine its normal standards lower and lower. We discussed that seminal essay of his and also discussed how the decay in the US began during the sixties and how Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” spending binge just made things worse. Peering at me over the top of his reading glasses, Pat told me that no matter how much money was thrown at poverty and inner city youth, unless education and programs to strengthen the traditional family unit accompanied it, it was doomed to failure and things would just get worse and worse. Not exactly PC and he was called all sorts of names for this but he was right on the money. I have to wonder how horrified Pat would be if he were alive today and saw just how accurate his predictions about Triple D have become starting with Europe and now the US.

2. Attention Jews! Kiss England/Europe Goodbye

Watching the riots in England, I really wanted to feel sorry for the country. But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t. Forget the fact that England was the incubator to the Crusades and had the honor of being the first European country to throw out the Jews, or how it specializes in that nuanced, gentlemanly anti-Semitism (nee Jew-hatred) that is so chic to speak about at British functions, on the BBC, and at tea time. But here in the European heartland of political correctness, we got to see in living color the absolute and complete failure of the Left liberal welfare state brought to an explosive end of thirteen years of binge spending on failed social programs by Tony Blair and the Labour Party hoards. Abortions for unwed mothers, cradle to grave entitlements, no encouragement of work, complete disintegration of the family unit with alcohol and drugs; yes the nanny state in all its glory. Triple D, indeed. Nine and eleven year olds who have never seen their parents (or parent) work a day in their lives rampaging for the fun of it because the British government in an all-too-brief moment of fiscal urgency realized it had to cut the financial handout cancer that Blair et al let grow. And so the hooded masses rioted, stole, and pillaged, despite having food, clothing shelter, health-care and of course, flat-screen TV’s. The defining moment of this came when Labour party hack Harriet Harman faced off against Conservative Secretary of Health Michael Gove and tried to score political points by blaming the riots on the current government’s cost-cutting. Mr. Gove handed Ms. Harman her head in a way that would have made Pat smile.

What’s the point of all this? Is this good for the Jews or bad for the Jews of England (and, not just England; riots in Greece, Spain, Italy although a bit more subdued). I fear the latter as into the breach of this social chaos usually steps the opportunistic Islamists. Couple this social disaster with the massive immigration explosion of Muslims over the last decades, the exponential expansion of Sharia law in Europe with its associated "no go" zones (see "European 'No-Go' Zones for Non-Muslims Proliferating"), the unemployment of both youths and adults, and it is time to bid the old mother country good night. As the financial crisis intensifies, as the Islamists take over more and more of the continent, the Jews will start bearing the blame for everything both from the Islamists and the Europeans who will find themselves powerless against the Islamist tide and only able to fight against....the Jew. It has happened before in Europe. It will happen again.

I daresay if Pat were here, he would have tried to make the hyper PC correct, left wing British pansies (as a British friend calls them) read Melanie Phillips’ “Londonistan” and Bat Yeor’s “Eurabia” which were prescient roadmaps of the end of Europe as we know it and the establishment of the future Islamic Euro-Caliphate. The drumbeats and smoke signals were there but there are none so blind as those who will not see and none so deaf as those who will not hear. Not good for the Jew and not a place you want to be in the coming years. Unfortunately I see no people of courage in England ready to stand up to this like Geert Wilders in Holland. I see no hope for England and the continent. England and Europe will indeed become Eurabia. Time for the Jew to say to Europe farewell, adieu, arrivederci, buona note, etc. What was that song by The Clash? “Safe European Home”? Not for the Jews anymore.

(Tomorrow; Part II, Next stop, the US)

On the Threshold of Greatness (VI): when the Jewish Nation becomes Dirty and Repulsive (Part I)

By Tuvia Brodie

Upon Becoming Illegitimate

In the Tisha B’av poetry called Kinot, there appears a line that translates as, “They called me dirty and repulsive, worse than all my peers.” The dating of this line is uncertain, but all seem to agree that it would have been written no later than the eleventh century, some 1,000 years ago, or as early as the second century, perhaps some 1,750 years ago. It draws our attention not to the physical destruction of the Holy Temple (the subject of the poetry), but to hostility of the nations towards Israel (see discussion by Rav Joseph Soloveitchik, The Koren Mesorat Harav Kinot, the Lookstein edition, ed Simon Posner, OU press, Koren publishers, 2010, p. 200). This reference to the disdain and contempt of the nations is meant here to refer to the political and social aftermath of the destruction of both the First Temple (586 BCE) and the Second Temple (70 CE); but it is also relevant today, as Israel is demeaned and demonized by both Western and Muslim countries.

At the United Nations, for example, where we should expect to see respect for a sovereign nation’s rights, Israel is condemned even as some of the world’s most brutal national killers (think of Communist North Korea) are essentially ignored. Too often, when Arab dictators kill thousands of their own people in brutal internal repressions aimed solely at maintaining a brutal regime, they receive—at best-- only formal verbal objection from the nations of the world. But when Israel seeks to defend itself from 8,000 rockets fired into her sovereign territory from an avowed enemy, Gaza (2009), the UN rises up almost in unison—against Israel. The UN not only fails to protect a sovereign member (see the very beginning of the UN Charter), it attacks, condemns and investigates Israel (recall the Goldstone Report), seeming always to conclude that Israel is surely to be considered an international rogue. This disdain for both Israel’s safety and its sovereign rights is a clear expression of contempt for the right of the Jewish nation to exist. Israel has no right to defend herself against attack? The UN’s contempt towards Israel desecrates the rights of a sovereign nation. It falsely calls Israel worse than her peers, dirty and repulsive, when North Korea, Syria and events in Somalia and Darfur demonstrate that such a label is blatantly and obviously untrue. In addition, when a Synod of the Catholic Church publishes a document(accepted by the Vatican without comment) that states unequivocally that the Jews are no longer the Chosen, singular People of G-d, the desecration of G-d’s name gets added to the contempt heaped upon Israel. Particularly since the 2009 Gaza incursion, the nations of the world have made a clear statement: they not only reject Israel’s right to defend herself, but they reject as well the word and the Promise of the G-d of Israel. Rabbi J. Soloveitchik anticipated this reality—perhaps understanding it better than we—when he wrote, “the enemies of Israel want not only to kill the Jews, but also to deny the…chosenness that G-d imparted to the Jewish people (ibid, 201).

In an extraordinary article (International Analysts Network, August 6, 2011) Mark Silberberg writes that

“The lies perpetrated by otherwise respectable international religious, educational, humanitarian and political bodies against the only democracy in the Middle East are most notable in the double standards that are applied to Israel as opposed to states that have slaughtered their own peoples for decades with absolute immunity from international censure. In an excellent article published in the Jewish World Review, Jonathan Rosenblum notes that the UN General Assembly passes more resolutions against Israel annually than against all of the rest of the nations of the world combined" [my emphasis].

Israel is repulsive, worse than all other nations, even as million are slaughtered, raped and starved in aggressive Muslim-African and Muslim-Muslim conflict. Only Israel is condemned—for defending herself. Indeed, as all of this unfolds at the UN, Arab Mosques of the Middle East call for death to the Jews, and the Waqf of Jerusalem supervises the illegal removal of more than 15,000 tons of debris from the Temple Mount before announcing that there is no evidence of Jewish life on the Temple Mount. As this goes on, the nations of the world remain cynically and sneeringly silent. If they do speak, it is to claim, as Caroline Glick shows (Our world: Norway’s Jewish problem, Jerusalem Post, August 8, 2011), that Israel somehow deserves to be denigrated and attacked because it is a vile ‘occupier’; and they then define ‘occupation’ as, “Since 1948 the state of Israel has occupied Palestinian land.”

Israel’s very existence, in other words, is illegitimate.

(Tomorrow: Part II: where illegitimacy began, and where it ends)

Success is a Gift of G-d

By Moshe Feiglin

"Because G-d, your G-d is bringing you to a good Land. And you shall eat and you shall be satiated and you shall bless G-d, your G-d for the good Land that He has given you." (From this week's Torah portion, Eikev, Deuteronomy 8:7, 10)

Sometimes we are so involved in man-made troubles that we forget to give thanks for all the wondrous good that G-d gives us. Just 70 years ago, we were at the receiving end of the prophecy that opens this week's Prophets reading: "And Zion said G-d has abandoned me and my Master has forgotten me," and now we have merited "And He will love you and He will bless you and He will make you many and bless the fruits of your womb and the fruits of your earth, your grain and the juice of your grapes and your oil." (Deuteronomy 7: 13).

Gratefulness does not come naturally; we must work on acquiring it. On the contrary, when all is going well, one often forgets the feelings of lack and dependence that he feels in times of trouble. In truth though, all is a gift from G-d, and we must thank Him for every detail throughout the day.

The good that we have been promised is not a given. The feeling that we are on a direct route to the Final Redemption often dangerously combines with the plague of "My strength and the power of my hand brought me this success," causing us to forget our responsibility to nurture the process in which we are living. G-d directs us to build a kingdom of priests and a holy nation that calls out in the Name of G-d and is a moral beacon for the world. Nowhere in the Torah does He call upon us to establish a normal state that will find its place among the nations. The reason that Israel - strong and prosperous - is losing the legitimacy for its existence hinges on this understanding.

It is up to us: "And if you will listen to My voice - "No man will stand in your path, G-d, your G-d will put fear and trepidation of you on the entire Land upon which you will step."

Slavery or Freedom?

By Michael Fuah

The tent city protests have now gone in the direction of solutions. In a certain way, we are facing an Oslo-like social danger. False messiahs are talking about "justice" and lofty goals, as if the State can cure all the ills of the human race. Affordable housing, mandatory education from birth (in other words, government funding of pre-school care from birth and up) free medical care and more are the slogans just barely concealing Socialist - and in some cases, Communist - policies.

History has proven that a welfare state is a state of servitude and tyranny. Just a small reminder of the socialist worldview that we have not yet managed to uproot from our country is the battle being waged by families right now over their right to bring their children home from kindergarten for lunch and not to leave them there against their will until 2 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

Capitalism, though, is not a cure-all. Individual liberty and the freedom to do just about anything easily descend into anarchy, in which the individual is concerned only with his own success while social responsibility crumbles away. In a socialist regime, the people are slaves to the government and the system; in a capitalist regime, they are slaves to work and the eternal drive for more and more material goods on the mistaken assumption that they will provide true happiness.

We would like to propose a social justice system based on Jewish heritage and culture: Let’s call it "a Jewish society". The Jewish Society's economic method would be based on the Jubilee. In the Jewish Society, the citizens enjoy true liberty. They are free to do what they want, but shoulder personal responsibility for their livelihood, the education of their children, their family’s health and for helping others who truly need help. As opposed to the "welfare state" in which the citizen is trained to expect the state to provide for everything with no responsibility on his part, the Jewish Society teaches its citizens to take responsibility for all that they can. No more focus solely on personal gain, trampling anyone and anything in the path to material success.

As a first step, and on the backdrop of the genuine housing shortage in Israel, we propose to give each citizen an initial economic base that really should be his, but was stolen from him. 93% of the land in the State of Israel is owned by the State. This phenomenon is unique to Israel, a remnant of the days when the socialist Mapai party ruled. Land is a resource that belongs to all the citizens of a state. The State of Israel must return it to its rightful owners. We propose to give - that's right, to give - every household in Israel half a dunam of land.

Another issue that we need to strengthen is the family structure. Both the capitalist and socialist approaches have wreaked terrible damage on the proper development of parental responsibility.

The prominent British Jewish journalist Melanie Phillips recently addressed this topic:
http://melaniephillips.com/goodbye-to-the-enlightenment

As I have been writing for more than twenty years, a society that embraces mass fatherlessness is a society that is going off the edge of a cliff. There are whole areas of Britain (white as well as black) where committed fathers are a wholly unknown phenomenon; where serial generations are being brought up only by mothers, through whose houses pass transitory males by whom these girls and women have yet more children, and whose own daughters inevitably repeat the pattern of lone and utterly dysfunctional parenting.

The result is fatherless boys who are suffused by an existential rage and desperate psychic need, who take out the damage done to them by lashing out from infancy at the world around them. And all this is effectively condoned, rewarded and encouraged by the welfare state which conceives of need solely in terms of absence of money, and which accordingly subsidises lone parenthood and the destructive behaviour that welfare fatherlessness brings in its train.

And the unutterably wicked thing is that this catastrophe has been deliberately willed upon Britain by left-wing politicians, well-heeled media feminists and other middle-class ideologues who wrap their utter contempt for the poor in the mantle of ‘progressive’ non-judgmentalism, witlessly prattling about poverty and social justice and hurling execrations at anyone who suggests that lone parenthood is in general a catastrophe for children (and a disaster for women) and that the state should stop subsidising family and social breakdown and start encouraging married parenthood instead.

It is urgent to regain our handle on societal norms, to strengthen the family unit instead of fostering its disintegration. It is time to free ourselves of foreign influences and return to our Jewish culture and heritage, developing and applying them to all facets of our lives.

Woodstock on Rothschild Boulevard

(Ed. note: While we are all in favor of dealing with the core issues of the housing affordability protests in Israel; i.e., release of state-owned lands, unfreezing of construction in Yesha and Jerusalem to let the capital markets work and lower prices; the attempted hijacking of the movement by the Left and its freeloading "social justice" brigade does not bode well. Below, Professor Plaut tells it like it is.)

By Steven Plaut

Would it not be nice if people simply said what they mean? All those tent protesters whining about “piggish capitalism” and yearning for “Scandinavian socialism” when what they really want is free handouts, rent controls with the housing in consequential shortage being granted to them, and a comfortable standard of living without having to work too hard. And then, when Israeli leftists denounce the “occupation,” insist that the “occupation” is the root of all evil, demand an end to the “occupation,” what do they REALLY mean? What they all really mean when they demand an end to the “occupation” is the duplication of Gaza to the West Bank. Once they end the “occupation,” events like those near Eilat last week will be daily events in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Remember when the slogan that summed up the American elections and the collapse of the Republican Party at the end of the Bush administration was, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Well, I wish I could take credit for this quip, but I think the best comment so far on the Woodstock on the Yarkon tent protests in Tel Aviv is in the column by Uri Elitzur in Makor Rishon this weekend. He describes how he would sum up the tentster protests if he were writing a memo to Manuel Trachtenberg, the head of the committee on “social change” appointed by Netanyahu to try to buy off the tentsters. Trachtenberg is a professor of economics, with specialization in the economics of technology. Elitzur sums up the tent protests with the quip, “It’s the stupid people, economist!”

There is one other item in this weekend’s Makor Rishon which I wish I had written. Actually it is written by Rabbi Haim Navon. He is mocking the tentster protesters and their demands. He suggests that in the next round of protests they issue a series of demands related to the hot summers in Israel. According to Navon, these should include:

1. A law that limits how hot it can get in Israel in August.

2. In order to make productive use of solar energy Israel needs to destroy all settlements in the West Bank at once and replace them with large solar panels.

3. Israel will officially cut July and August down to 15 days each and insert a new month in between them – the month of chill and solidarity.

4. All factories in the Israeli periphery that emit pollution will be converted into igloo manufacturers.

5. Tens of thousands of igloos will be distributed for free to Israelis living in hardship, especially to Negev Bedouin squatters living illegally on lands that do not belong to them.

6. Since greenhouse gases are causing global warming, all Israeli power plants will be shut down in August, making it a cooler month.

7. Being realists, the protesters understand that Israel would still need a source of power and so they are proposing that it be generated by conscripting tens of thousands of unemployed Israelis and assigning them to peddling stationary bike exercise machines attached to a generator to generate electricity, while earning high wages.

8. Every Israeli citizen will receive an organic air conditioner unit that generates its own energy with compost and love.

9. The government will be asked to provide subsidized air tickets for young Israelis wishing to go to cooler countries in August.

10. And the most important way to make August cooler is to get rid of Bibi and his government.

An Open Letter to Glenn Beck

By Tuvia Brodie

Sir,

You have come to Israel to hold a rally, “Restoring Courage”, on Wednesday, August 24, 2011. I believe you plan to hold this rally at the Southern Wall excavations, the Davidson Center, Jerusalem, though of course I understand that the final venue could be different. You have invited, among many, the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel, several prominent Jewish and Christian clergy, and both politicians and diplomats from around the world. You have asked Americans to join you, to show the world that, despite the cost of travel and lodging, they are willing to stand with Israel.

Mr. Beck, you have revealed on your now-cancelled American TV program that you must spend more than a million dollars a year on personal security. Clearly, you understand the cost to defend Israel. Your willingness to pay such a price to be steadfast is stunning. Considering the hatred that we (and now you) face, your continued defense of our beleaguered country represents for many Jews an act of courage that few are willing to take. Indeed, many here believe that your TV program was cancelled precisely because you chose not only to stand up for Israel, but also because you counter-attacked those whom you believe support the demonization of Israel and/or the destruction of the Jewish people. For many Jews, you appear to be a true Gentile hero. I believe it is proper to say, ‘thank you’, for the courage you have shown.

But now, Mr. Beck, you face a challenge. As you await your moment to stand—perhaps before thousands-- in Israel’s lime-light, you have already asked American Jews to join with their Christian friends to talk about Israel and to stand together for Israel; you have asked that synagogues and churches should interface, to solidify behind Israel; you have spoken as a Christian to your Israeli friends, recalling the words of the Biblical Ruth, ‘Your G-d is my G-d’; you have declared your commitment to your deity on American TV; and, after all of this, you have identified this rally as ‘non-denominational’. Your challenge, Mr. Beck, is to confront the contradictions of Christian-Jewish relations.

You see, Mr. Beck, many believe that some Christians see friendship with Jews as a means to missionize Jews. Even today, as you prepare to stand up for Courage, some Jews in Israel are talking about a certain Jewish citizen of Hebron who had recently spoken in support of a ‘Christian friend’, who had come to Israel to work side-by-side with Jewish families. But it turns out that the ‘Christian friend’ might see his friendship with Jews as a way to missionize them-- something, apparently, he may have discussed on his website but not revealed to his friend in Hebron.

For us, Mr. Beck, it does not matter if this current Hebron story is true or not, because history teaches us that the Christian hand of friendship too often means something other than pure friendship. So as you prepare to speak in Israel, please note that we do appreciate the hand that you hold out to us. Today, before you have spoken publicly, we accept your hand. We accept your love and we celebrate your courage on our behalf. But do not become a pseudo- ‘Christian friend’. Do not disappoint us. Instead, respect our religion. Be mindful of the history of those Christians who have held out their hand—with less than honest intent. Be sensitive. Do not invoke your deity’s name before our public. Ask other Christian speakers to share your sensitivity. By all means, call for Christians to support Israel. But do not ask Jews to hold hands with their Christians friends, for the history of such hand-holding has proven painful to the Jewish people. By all means, tell Christians they must fight evil and stand up for good—but do not ask Jews to join their Christian neighbors to pray together. Such prayer has led to unhappy outcomes for a Jewish community.

Christian-Jewish history has brought pain to us, Mr. Beck. As our friend, do not bring more pain.

Some Christians demonize Israel. Some believe that Israel is not simply an ‘occupier’ of Palestinian land, but that we have been occupiers since our modern State’s creation—1948-- which means that our very existence is vile and repulsive to them. Mr. Beck, you have stood against these Christians. Your courage and your words have inspired both Christian and Jew. Now, on August 24, you are scheduled to ascend a unique bully-pulpit. How will you use that platform? You have the opportunity to speak to all, including Christians, about Israel, G-d, courage—and the survival of Western ideals. You will be challenged not only to find the proper words, but also to speak with proper respect—because from this unique place the world will see if you are one who understands the lessons of Christian-Jewish history.

Mr. Beck, use your moment in this spotlight wisely. Be careful, Be sensitive. Honor the soil upon which you stand. Honor your friends. Do not disappoint us.

Rav Nachman Kahana on Parashat Aikev 5771

BS"D Parashat Aikev 5771

Devarim 8:7-10

כי ה' א-להיך מביאך אל ארץ טובה ארץ נחלי מים עינת ותהמת יצאים בבקעה ובהר:

ארץ חטה ושערה וגפן ותאנה ורמון ארץ זית שמן ודבש:

ארץ אשר לא במסכנת תאכל בה לחם לא תחסר כל בה ארץ אשר אבניה ברזל ומהרריה תחצב נחשת:

ואכלת ושבעת וברכת את ה' א-להיך על הארץ הטבה אשר נתן לך:

For the LORD your God brings you to a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths, springing forth in valleys and hills;

A land of wheat and barley, and vines and fig-trees and pomegranates; a land of olive-trees and honey;

A land where you will eat bread without scarceness, you will not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you may dig brass.

And you will eat and be satisfied, and bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you.

The blessed land of Eretz Yisrael - God’s eternal gift to the Jewish nation.

Do you remember Tish’a Be’Av?

Last Tuesday, the 9th of Av seems so far away, but not as far away as the memory of what that day represents - the destruction of our two holy Temples in Yerushalayim. Tuesday come every week, whereas we have an entire year to keep our minds concentrated on "real life" before we have to think again about the Bet Ha’Mikdash.

I mention the 9th of Av because our parasha has much to do with how we conduct ourselves on that day.

Tish’a Be’Av is identified with fasting. Indeed, what is Tish’a Be’Av without fasting, isn’t it the very essence of the day!

But that is problematic. Tish’a Be’Av is a day of mourning. But mourning does not engender fasting. The most halachically severe laws of mourning are in effect for a parent who passed away. The mourning period for a parent is 12 months, for other relatives it is 30 days (in all cases kaddish is recited for 11 months). The renting of a mourner’s garment is on the left side near the heart for a parent, for all other deceased relatives it is on the right side.

But, however severe the mourning over a parent, there is no halacha that requires the mourner to fast. True, that from the time of death until the burial, the soon to be mourner may not eat meat or drink wine, but he may eat and drink all else.

So why did the rabbis institute the refraining from food on the national mourning day of Tish’a Be’Av?

I suggest:

Open a siddur (prayerbook) to Birkat Hamazon (grace after meals) and slowly study the text.

In the first chapter we acknowledge that it is HaShem who provides sustenance for all things He created, and concludes with the blessing:

ברוך אתה ה' הזן את הכל

Blessed are You HaShem who sustains all

In chapter two we offer praise to HaShem for the basic foundations of our Jewish lives: The gift of Eretz Yisrael, the exodus from Egypt, Brit Mila (the sacred, eternal covenant between HaShem and the Jewish people), the gift of life and for the food that sustains us.

This chapter includes the verse in this week’s parasha:

And you will eat and be satisfied, and bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you.

The concluding blessing is:

ברוך אתה ה' על הארץ ועל המזון

Blessed are You HaShem for the land and for our sustanance.

Chapter three is our prayer to HaShem that He deal compassionately with His people Yisrael and His city Yerushalayim and Zion, and restore the Davidic Monarchy and Bet Hamikdash.

It concludes with the blessing:

ברוך את ה' בונה ברחמיו ירושלים אמן

Blessed are You HaShem who in His compassion rebuilds Yerushalayim. Amen

The above three chapters have the halachic status of a Torah based mitzva. The fourth chapter is a later rabbinic addition to commemorate the burial of the defenders of the great city of Betar, following the destruction of Yerushalayim.

It too deals with the appearance of the Mashiach and ultimate redemption of the Jewish people in Eretz Yisrael.

Birkat Hamazon is so thoroughly Eretz Yisrael, that I often wonder why it is not deemed to be a part of the land (agricultural) mitzvot which are observed only here.

Our holy rabbis, in their wisdom, declared that Tish’a Be’Av and its "satellite" days of mourning over Yerushalayim (17th of Tamuz, 3rd of Tishrei, 10th of Tevet) should be days when we refrain from eating. Because eating would require us to recite Birkat Hamazon that permits us in some small way to identify with the Bet Hamikdash and Eretz Yisrael.

It was the rabbis’ intention to heighten the feeling of total devastation at the loss of our Bet Hamikdash, the abolition of our national independence and our forced exile from Eretz Yisrael, to the extent that we may not even mention these holy matters even in Birkat Hamazon, because by refraining from eating we will not be obligated to recite Birkat Hamazon.

This was perhaps the original intent of our rabbis, and I am quite certain that the desired effect of feeling our total devastation was accomplished. But, unfortunately, as we became more accustomed to life in the galut, especially in the "golden" ones, our sharp religious-national reactions became dulled. The music in the word YERUSHALAYIM became common place, even wearisome, and Birkat Hamazon became a tedious duty.

I am acquainted with holy people in Eretz Yisrael who wash for bread even when they are not hungry, just to become obliged to recite Birkat Hamazon and identify with the Holy Land, Yerushalayim and the Bet Hamikdash. (The same can be achieved when eating one of the "seven agricultural products of Eretz Yisrael" which requires one to recite "mai’ain shalosh", although it is not universally agreed upon that this blessing has a Torah status).

How strange it seems to me, that a Jew living in Chicago and eating bread made from wheat grown in Kansas, declares the sanctity of Eretz Yisrael, Yerushalayim and the Bet Hamikdash. The kindest word I can find for this conduct is "ludicrous," when in reality it is much more serious than just ludicrous.

I thank Hashem every moment of my life for freeing me from that state of self denial, when He permitted my wife and me to descend from the silver wings of an El Al eagle, to take our 4 steps on the holy soil of this land and stoop to kiss the ground sanctified by our Father in Heaven.

Shabbat Shalom

Nachman Kahana

Copyright © 5771-2011 Nachman Kahana

The Devil's Dance

By Moshe Feiglin

Editor's Note: As this update is being prepared, news of the terror attack near Eilat is beginning to come in. With sorrow, we bring you excerpts from a still-pertinent article by Moshe Feiglin written in 2003 and published in his book, "The War of Dreams".

I have an ultra-Orthodox sister. She lives in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem, and she and her husband often travel to the Western Wall with their children. They take the Number 2 bus.

After the Number 2 bus was blown up, I waited an hour and a half and, with shaking hands, dialed my sister's number.

Thank G-d, they are fine. They were always afraid of that bus and only travel with it after 1 a.m.

"You know," she said to me. "I really don't understand. Every time that we have just about finished them off, we perform a 'resurrection of the dead.'"

My sister doesn't understand why we resurrected Arafat when he was sitting in Tunis. And now she doesn't understand why Sharon insisted on resurrecting the Arab angel of death.

She doesn't understand. But I understand. I just didn't want to tell her.

They resurrect them because they want them to live so as to help the Jews finish themselves off - or at least to finish off their Jewishness.

The Nation of Israel wants to be a normal nation. In other words, it wants to be everything but Jewish. But after all, who should be erased from the face of the earth if not Arafat, Dahlan and the other serpents? If we eliminate them, however, then we will remain alone. Alone against the world. Jewish, once again. Not enlightened Israeli rabble, but the Jewish Nation - with identity and values and a history of four thousand years, with a mission and a destiny.

If we eliminate them, we will be left with ourselves. We will be ourselves. And that frightens the Israelis much more than exploding buses.

So they continue to dance with the devil.

Right now, the bus that exploded has made us think - for the moment.

Tomorrow, everyone will calm down and just like lowly dogs, once again we will lick the hand that holds the whip. And then we will get another lash.

It's the devil's dance, greased with the blood and flesh of small children riding the bus to the Western Wall.

There is a solution, Manhigut Yehudit's solution. The solution is to completely change direction. Instead of eliminating our identity and our bodies in the process - we must cling to our identity and to our lives.

Tachat Kanfei Ha'Shechina--Under the Wings of Heaven

By Michael Hirsch

I have hesitated to begin writing this, as I get extremely emotional just thinking about it. But it’s important enough, I believe, to steel my backbone & try.

On the Fast of Tisha B’Av during the Second Lebanon War, Jane & I delivered a carful of food packages to Israeli soldiers with a tank corps, parked on the side of the road north of Metullah (minutes from the Lebanese border). To this day, the images are burnt into my memory—the look of astonishment on their faces as they saw us approach, the broad smiles on their faces as we opened the cargo area of our van & they saw what we had brought them, the most sincere handshakes & hugs I had ever received in my life.

Over breakfast at home the next morning, I read in the newspaper that one-half hour after we left the soldiers, that section of road was the recipient of a fusillade of Katyusha rockets launched by Hezbollah in Lebanon (none of the soldiers were injured or killed, Thank G-D).

Earlier today, at 11:30 AM Israel Time, Jane & I headed home from Mitzpe Ramon, where we spent a lovely overnight in a new hotel—Beresheet. Approximately one-half hour later, some miles away, terrorists, who had crossed the Egyptian border, strafed a bus carrying soldiers + a private car. Many, many injured (none dead, as I write).

I am welling up, but will try to finish.

I look at these two events & wonder how anybody with any degree of intelligence can imagine that G-D Almighty is not involved with each and every one of us on a second-by-second basis?!?!

In the morning & evening prayers (& at bedtime), we recite the Shema (“Hear O Israel”), which includes the phrase: “And you shall love the Lord, your G-d, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.”

After these two incidents of hashgacha pra’tit (individual attention from G-D), may Jane & I only be worthy to truly love G-D with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our might!!!

I have to stop now,

Michael

How Much Do They Cost Us?

By Moshe Feiglin

18 Av, 5771
August 18, '11

Translated from an article for Ma'ariv's NRG website

When the spokespersons for the social protests engulfing Israel revive the clichés about the money that could have gone to housing wasted on the settlements, they evoke the poltergeist of classic anti-Semitism. The Jew is always to blame, and so is the settler.

Unfortunately, for over a decade the State hasn't invested a shekel in the settlements. Not roads, not infrastructure and not development plans. Not only is there no state investment in the parts of the Land of Israel invaded by King Abdullah in 1948 (with the generous help of Britain) and liberated by the Israel Defense Forces 19 years later, but the State of Israel also absolutely blocks private investment and does not authorize any new construction there. In my community, three young families now share a divided house that used to house one family. Each family pays rent for its third equal to the rents paid in Israel's center. The high rents are not the result of an authentic shortage similar to what people are complaining about in Tel Aviv: it is the result of deliberate policy. The only funds allocated to the municipalities over the Green Line are those earmarked for basic municipal functions such as upkeep of roads and sidewalks, transportation for students and the like. This is the same funding that all municipalities in Israel receive.

The building freeze in Judea and Samaria is one of the main causes (according to a study by Globes) of the housing shortage in Tel Aviv. Ending the building freeze is the only practical solution for quick and affordable housing near the business hubs in Israel's center. It is the cheapest, quickest and most convenient solution for most Israelis. It is also the most just and moral thing to do. But radical leftist singer Aviv Gefen thinks that it is Abdullah who liberated and the IDF that occupied Judea and Samaria, concluding that the most logical and inexpensive solution is a waste of billions of shekels that if they were invested elsewhere, would drastically lower the price of housing in the entire country.

Last week, I was interviewed with MK Yitzchak Herzog on the Channel 2 morning show. We discussed the housing protests in a very amiable atmosphere. But near the end of our slot, Herzog couldn't control himself and pulled the old genie out of the bottle: the "billions" going to the settlements at the expense of the development towns. I didn't ask him about the missiles flying into the development towns in his merit and the merit of his cohorts who rammed Oslo down our collective throats. I didn't want to raise the hate level.

"Do you have statistics?" I asked him in an attempt to keep the conversation businesslike. He didn't, of course. But it wouldn't have mattered even if he did. Because it is not the results of the investigation, but rather, who is investigating and who is being investigated that matters.

A person who talks about the billions going to the settlements is working on the assumption that the settlements are not legitimate and so, every shekel spent there is an exploitation of the tax payer. Likewise, a person who claims that all the State's money is channeled into the yeshivas (schools of higher Torah learning) is working on the assumption that Torah study is an insignificant waste of time.

To me, the Oslo Accords were not legitimate. Besides the death, misery and existential danger that they have brought upon us, we are also paying for them to the tune of 10% of our nation budget; approximately 15 billion dollars a year.

In other words, it is easy to claim - and to back up with numbers - that Aviv Gefen and Yitzchak Herzog and every other leftist who supported and dragged us into Oslo cost us infinitely more than a settler or yeshiva student ever could. And by the way, the IDF Home Front is quietly drilling emergency evacuation of the public from Israel's center to the only logical place that can safely accommodate them - Judea and Samaria. With G-d's help, we will not have to implement those plans. But we must remember that due to "Palestinian" (in quotation marks because there is no such nation) intransigence, the Oslo Accords have not been fully implemented, the settlements still exist and in the eventuality of a chemical attack (G-d forbid) Aviv Gefen and MK Herzog and their families will have a place to which they can run.

I heard a leftist professor explain that all the State's money goes to the religious and ultra-Orthodox. The professor, a senior liberal arts lecturer in one of Israel's major universities, earns at least 30,000 NIS per month. As far as I am concerned, let him earn twice that. The problem is that he and his students cost the State at least five times the amount that their yeshiva counterparts cost.

With this fact in mind, how do they dare to criticize the yeshiva students? It's simple: For the learned professor, liberal arts are a legitimate recipient of State investment (and I agree with him on that point) but Jewish studies are not. Despite the fact that the State invests miniscule sums on yeshiva students in proportion to what the professor and his students receive, they see those sums as nothing more than exploitation and waste.

I am not sure, by the way, that the State has to fund any of the students. But that is a different topic. Due to the fact that we still live under a centralized state, it would be best for us all to stop blaming each other. Who costs who how much and who is carrying the burden of whom is a matter of perspective that is decided in elections.

The social protests embody some very important authentic elements. It will all be lost if they become a platform for baseless hatred and reciprocal finger-pointing.