Tuesday, December 29, 2015

In the Spirit of the Season Moslems and Christians with Good Things to Say About Jews

In the Spirit of the Season Moslems and Christians with Good Things to Say About Jews


The ook of Kuzari  by  Rabbi Judah Halevi of Spain recounts  The story of King Bulan of the Khazars who needs to decide whether to become a Christian and therefore an ally of Byzantium  or a Moslem and an ally of the Caliphate in Baghdad.

He calls in a Moslem who makes claims about Islam and when the king asks where here derives these claims from, he points to the Jews and their scriptures. He then has a similar conversation with a Christian, who also  points back to the story of the Jews.


At this point, the King, seeing both sides agrees on only one thing, the Jews, decides to call in a Jew, and, as a result, he and his kingdom become Jewish, and owe allegiance neither to the Christian  Byzantines nor to the Moslem Caliphates.

The moral of the story?
 Maybe we as Jews can get the Christians and Moslems to agree.

This is our traditionally blurred and mixed season; we have Happy Chanukah for ourselves, Merry Christmas for our neighbors.  In order for us to say Eid Mubrak to our Moslem neighbors at this time, we need to wait several decades for the holidays to overlap.

However, just a King Bulan discovered in his day, both sides have something important to say about us Jews, in some ways, very surprisingly.

First, in the spirit of this season, let’s see what Christians are saying about Jews now.

Just in the past weeks, the Vatican came out with a pronouncement that would have been unthinkable in earlier generations:

 “The Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards the Jews,” that is the core of the official statement written by a panel of Catholic theologians specializing in Jewish-Catholic dialogue.

       "Even though Christians believe that salvation comes through Christ alone, “it does not in any way follow that the Jews are excluded from God’s salvation because they don't believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah of Israel and the Son of God,” the document stated.

I am not a Catholic theologian, but for a church whose grounding principal is “There is no salvation outside the church”  this is a huge deal.

Here is a another statement:
   " Judaism is not to be considered simply another religion; the Jews are instead our “elder brothers” (Saint Pope John Paul II), our “fathers in faith” (Benedict XVI). Jesus was a Jew, was at home in the Jewish tradition of his time, and was decisively shaped by this religious milieu. [14]
             Pope Francis in his first Encyclical in November 2013 affirmed God’s everlasting covenant with the Jews: “We hold the Jewish people in special regard because their covenant with God has never been revoked, for ‘the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable’ (Rom 11:29).”

            To some extent, it was coming. 
The great Pope before World War ii, Pope Pius 11th,1938, preached against Nazi policies:”. . . antisemitism is inadmissible. Spiritually, we are Semites.” ( Sadly,  it fell on deaf ears of his coreligionists).

What about the State of Israel?

Pope Francis reappointed Father Raniero Cantalamessa as preacher to the papal household. Who is he?  Fr. Cantalamessa, a renowned bible scholar and teacher, in his book The Mystery of Christmas affirmed the everlasting covenant, writing, “We share with the Jews the biblical certainty that God gave them the country of Canaan forever (Genesis 17:8, Isaiah 43:5, Jeremiah 32:22, Ezekiel 36:24, Amos 9:14). We know that the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”

     So much for the Catholics. How about the Protestants? The liberal ones, that are supposed to like us, have often times been siding with calls for BDS, which is tantamount to a call to dismantle the State of Israel, not just move out of the West bank.
          It is the traditional, what are called Evangelical Protestants, who don’t get along so easily with Catholics or the liberal Protestants, those very same Protestants that we traditionally  worry about, those have turned around to become our supporters.

       Here is one of the leading voices of the Christian right, Pastor John  Hagee.
         One newspaper account puts it this way:
Trying to convert Jews is a “waste of time,” he [Hagee] said. . . .
Everyone else, whether Buddhist or Baha’i, needs to believe in Jesus, he says. But not Jews. Jews already have a covenant with God that has never been replaced with Christianity, he says.
          “The Jewish people have a relationship to God through the law of God as given through Moses,” Hagee said. “I believe that every Gentile person can only come to God through the cross of Christ. I believe that every Jewish person who lives in the light of the Torah, which is the word of God, has a relationship with God and will come to redemption.
“The law of Moses is sufficient enough to bring a person into the knowledge of God until God gives him a greater revelation. And God has not,” said Hagee . . ."
( I think he was channeling the great Jewish philosopher of Jewish renewal in Germany a century ago, Franz Rosenzweig)

Here is the essential Pledge of his organization, Christians United For Israel, CUFI.
    "We believe that the Jewish people have a right to live in their ancient land of Israel, and that the modern State of Israel is the fulfillment of this historic right.
We maintain that there is no excuse for acts of terrorism against Israel and that Israel has the same right as every other nation to defend her citizens from such violent attacks.
We pledge to stand with our brothers and sisters in Israel and to speak out on their behalf whenever and wherever necessary until the attacks stop and they are finally living in peace and security with their neighbors. "

Pastor Hagee is a close friend with the Orthodox Rabbi of San Antonio and with many other Jews in Texas and supports Israeli charities. I can vouch for this first hand.

These are the easy endorsements.

What about the Moslem world?

Here too, there are some surprising voices that have good things to say!

(http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/28575/allah-is-a-zionist)

This is from “ Allah is a Zionist”. By  Italian Muslim communal leader and Quranic scholar Sheik Abdul Hadi Palazzi :
1 On the accusation by the Palestinians that there never was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in antiquity:
From the time of the Revelation of the Noble Quran until recently, all Muslims unanimously accepted that the Haram as-Sharif, or Holy Esplanade, on which the Dome of the Rock today stands is the same place where Solomon’s and Zorobabel’s Temples once stood. Accepting that Solomon’s Temple was in Jerusalem is compulsory for every Muslim believer, because that is what the Quran and the Islamic oral tradition, called the Sunnah, teach. . . .
2. As for the right of Jews to have a State of Israel:
The Biblical notion that God granted the land of Canaan to the Children of Israel is confirmed by the Quran.:
We settled the Children of Israel in a beautiful dwelling-place, and provided for them sustenance of the best.(  Surah of Jonah, verse 93)
We made a people considered weak inheritors of the Land in both Eastern and Western side [of the Jordan river] whereon we sent down Our blessings. The fair promise of thy Lord was fulfilled for the Children of Israel, because they had patience and constancy, and We levelled to the ground the great works and fine buildings which Pharaoh and his people erected. ( Surah al-Ahraf  verse 137)
3. Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel was never abolished
Moreover, the Quran explicitly refers to the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel before the Last Judgment when it says in the Surah of the Children of Israel, verse 104:
And thereafter We [God] said to the Children of Israel: ‘Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd.’
Therefore, from an Islamic point of view, Israel is the legitimate owner of the land God deeded to her and whose borders were defined by Abraham in Genesis.
The third entry of the Jews ( 1948) to their divinely appointed land—is not mischief but rather a fulfillment of what Imam az-Zamakshari reminds the Jews: “God swore it and wrote in the Divine Tablets of Predestination: that it is yours, belongs to your people and do not turn back from it.”

Sheikh Palazzi has many detractors for sure, in the  Muslim world, but there is a sect, based in Pakistan, the Ahamdiya, followers of Mirza Gulam Ahmad,  who espouse some similar views.

Here is an example of their teaching on respect of others beliefs, especially Jews.

“Islam teaches you must respect and care for the sentiments of other people. This includes religious sentiments and the feelings of others in relation to general social issues. On one occasion, in order to safeguard the religious sensitivities of a Jewish man, the Holy Prophet sided with the Jew after he reported an argument that had taken place between him and a Muslim. To spare the feelings of the Jewish person, the Holy Prophet rebuked the Muslim by saying that he should not claim that the Holy Prophet was superior to Moses, although he knew that he had brought the final law-bearing book. This is the manner in which the Holy Prophet took care of the feelings of others and established peace within society.
- Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, World Crisis and the Pathway to Peace

What about Israel?
Here from Wikipedia on the Ahmadis:

The Ahmadis believe that the coming into existence of the State of Israel is in accord with the prophecies contained in the Bible [2]and the Holy Quran. Inferring from the words in 17:105: '...We shall bring you together out of the various peoples', at the time of the "Promise of the Later Days";.[3] The Second Khalifa of Ahmadiyya Mirza Basheer-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad in his ‘’Invitation to Ahmadiyyat’’[4] writes:
Therefore in verse 17:105 the warning of the latter days relates to the period after the second coming of Jesus. The words 'shall bring you together' refer to the present influx of Jews [written 1924] into Palestine. Jews from different countries are offered facilities of travel and rehabilitation. The revelation of the Promised Messiah said, 'I will relieve the children of Israel.' This indicated a great change in the position of the Jews. It indicated the end of the opposition which nations of the world had made for so long to an independent home for the Jews.[5][6]
“ The prophecy has been remarkably fulfilled by the return of the Jews to Palestine, under the Balfour Declaration and by the setting up of the so-called State of Israel.[7]


So what can is say, I we can get Catholics and Protestants and some Muslims to say good and positive statements about us Jews and Israel, maybe, just maybe, we can get to a day when it is not just a few, but it is truly, all of them, to say good things about us and about each other. We can have our Kumbaya moment, our "Why can't we all just get along" moment. And then, we can return the favor!

Sunday, December 20, 2015

It Is For Us The Living - Thoughts for the Tenth of Tevet, the Day of Communal Kaddish for the Martyrs of the Shoah


Rabbi Dr. Norbert Weinberg
It Is For Us The Living - Thoughts for the Tenth of Tevet, the Day of Communal Kaddish for the Martyrs of the Shoah

From the  Prologue to
Echoes of The Holocaust: Survivors and Their Children and Grandchildren Speak Out
By Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg  pages 25-26

Link to book

[ Note: The Tenth of Tevet, a traditional fast relating to the destruction of Jerusalem, was adopted by the Israeli Rabbinate, as a day for the recitation of Kaddish in memory of the martyrs who actual date of death was unknown]

Several years ago, when my mother, Irene Weinberg, of blessed memory, passed away, I realized that so many of her generation, the last witnesses of the great horror that befell the Jewish people, were soon fading from the world scene. I set about researching and writing about her experiences as well as those of my father, Rabbi Dr. William Weinberg, who had passed away some years before.  *
There is a great burden that falls upon us, already an aging 2nd generation and an adult 3rd and even 4th generation, to act as witnesses. This is so vital, as we see blood libels once again used against Jews today by supposedly enlightened intellectuals in Europe and even in the United States under the guise of anti-Zionism. As the past recedes, people who should know better make unconscionable statements. Thus a student leader in South Africa, a child of victims of racial apartheid, could praise Adolf Hitler for his “charisma” and hope for such a leader for his own country.
We also have a double challenge. One the one hand, we continue as witnesses to the hell that our people went through but we also have a second challenge, to keep alive the flame of Jewish teachings, the sacred teaching that said that all humans are created in the “ Tselem Elokim”, in the Image of the Divine. It was this very teaching which Hitler and Nazism sought to erase along with the people who had preached it to the world.
I can only think it fitting to paraphrase the words of President Lincoln, at the Gettysburg Address:
It is for us the living, children and grandchildren of our martyrs, to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they were persecuted, the teachings of the great a noble heritage of Judaism and the Jewish people-- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have lived in vain, that the lives of these, our people, shall not have been without enduring meaning.
I thank Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg for putting together this collection of recollections, essays, and poetry from the children and grandchildren of our survivors. I greatly appreciate Rabbi Rosenberg’s keeping the focus on the Shoah, or Holocaust, as an event unique to the Jewish people. While it is true that many millions died in this horror, only the Jews were selected and targeted for annihilation in total and only the demonization of the Jews could serve as a force to galvanize otherwise civilized men and women into unspeakable acts of cruelty and horror.  When we universalize the account, in hopes of building alliances, we dilute the significance of what happened.
I want reiterate my thought, a thought for the generations: For all that we Jews have gone through in history, as horrible as it may have been, we are blessed to be the heirs of a tradition going back to Abraham and Moses and on down to our days, a tradition that speaks of a courage to face all obstacles, a tradition of hope and faith in a universe created for good and guided by Divine Providence to an ultimate redemption of all humanity.
______________________________________________________________
Rabbi Dr. William Weinberg, my father and my teacher, served as the first State Rabbi of Hesse, Germany (region around Frankfurt) after World War II. I have published the account of our family origins, his youth and education, his persecution by the Nazis and escape to the Soviet Union and back, in my book Courage of the Spirit. Irene Weinberg, my mother and my teacher, was a native of Lwow, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) who outwitted her Nazi hunters by hiding in the open as a Pole in both Lwow and Warsaw. I hope to have her account published in the near future.

Monday, December 14, 2015

Antiochus Takes the Witness Stand



Antiochus Takes the Witness Stand     Chanukah 2015



Prosecuting Attorney to Jury:

        Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury:

We have succeeded in capturing the notorious mass murderer, Antiochus, and have brought him here to stand before this court. The evidence against him is overwhelming:
Expropriated the religious ceremonies of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
Confiscated the funds of the treasury.
Forced the imposition of foreign worship and beliefs.
Denied an entire nation its legitimate rights to follow its religious conscience.
Forbade such essential Jewish practices such as infant male circumcision.
Forced removal of civilian populations.
Mass executions and ethnic cleansing.

However, because we believe in justice, we have brought him to you, the jury, for a fair trial.
I call upon the accused, Antiochus, to take the witness stand:
Mug shot of the defendant

Antiochus:

You are such an arrogant lawyer. You are full of what we  Greeks call hubris.You call it chutzpah. You dare threaten a god!
First, introduce by my correct title, King Antiochus The IV, Deo Epiphanes. Deo Epiphanes means "the god manifest" and I have been sent by the gods to restore civilization and all the great values that Alexander the Great sought to bring to the world when he set forth on his great conquest.

Attorney To jurors:
You may strike that from the record. It is well known that he is actually called, by people in the know, as Antiochus “ Epimanes”, which means Antiochus the Mad One.



Antiochus:
 Lies, Lies, all spread by my enemies who doubt my sanity, but I say that they are all demented. They don’t understand me. I am a Man of great vision and talent; I have even performed in the theater; once in. Antioch, I even got up on the stage and danced together with the actors.
I am a likeable man with a sense of humor. I like to walk out into the streets and mingle with the people, chat with them, converse with them, sometimes, even play jokes on them. Once, I went to the bath house and poured oil all over the heads of all the bathers. You should have seen them tripping and falling all over themselves, me included! I also like to throw gold rings into the crowds, and join any good drinking party around.
Believe me, if we had Saturday Night Live in our day, I would be starring on it all the time.

Attorney:
You realize that we could arrange for change of venue. This is a Jewish jury, a Jewish court:

Antiochus:
I know what I am doing. First, I can get myself a Jewish attorney, that’s the first step. Then, you Jews are really such patsies when it comes to law and order. You don’t even execute terrorists you capture. You exchange them at a rate of a 1000 to one. Then, you have the strictest rules about evidence submitted in a murder case, and on top of that, I don’t have to pretend I was just following orders. I just have to admit that I was giving orders, and that is not a capital crime in your law codes while following orders is! Hah!

Attorney:
I want to go back to this line of “ Epiphanes”. You make this claim of being a god in the flesh. Can you explain what that means?
You understand we have inherited the civilization of Alexander the Great, who was so great that he deserved worship as a god. Hellenistic rulers first instituted the worship of Alexander, and then, well- why quibble- we all decided we were gods!  We had our statues in all the temples, offerings and libations. My father made the cult of the ruler a central pillar of our Seleucid Empire. I just followed suit by being the first of our dynasty to stamp coins with my name as a god, Theos Epiphanes. Believe, the public loves it—that how we become celebrities.

Attorney: How do you explain your rise to power if you are so nice?

Antiochus:
My older brother, Seleucis IV, was assassinated, so I took over the thrown after him. Why should I have waited for his son, Demetrius. He was being held in Rome as a hostage, so I did the only honorable thing to do. Of course, I had a cover- I appointed Seleucis’ infant son as co-regent, and then , a few years later,  had him done away with.
Please, don’t look at me like that! That’s the way things are done in our part of the world.

Attorney:
You have a sloppy track record as a king. Some wins, some losses—but the biggest loss- Jerusalem. How do you explain your performance as a king?

Antiochus:
You have to realize that being King is not easy, even for a god-king.
To the West, I have those barbarians who call themselves Romans. They really have no culture,
Their whole civilization is built on conquest and warfare. I should know; I was held by them in Rome as a hostage when my father lost to them. They are imperialists with their eye on everything. You know what they did to those Carthaginians!  They have already taken the Western Mediterranean and have their eyes
turned east.
Now, I have to balance them off against yet a worse enemy, the Ptolemys of Egypt. They are even worse.
At least with the Romans, I know they are barbarians, but the Egyptians? They claim to be civilized Greeks, just like us in Syria--but they are so inferior. They have adopted all of those foolish Egyptian. customs and way of dress, and they too are such-war mongers, also eyeing our territory to the south.  I should know- I also lived among them for a while. They are also relatives, so I get the inside scoop.
I almost had them cornered in the last war . I was up to the gates of Alexandria, when the Romans took their side. Do you know the famous “drawing a red line.” Your President didn’t invent that phrase, the Romans did—but they meant it.  The Roman Consul drew a line in the sand around me and said, "Before you cross this circle I want you to give me a reply for the Roman Senate". In public! I had to withdraw. So humiliating! And just then, you Jews cheered in Jerusalem when you thought I had been killed! Oh, I don’t forget these things!!

In the last wars, we also lost our territories to the east, where the Persians sit. Oh, those Persians, Have you ever tried to negotiate an anti- catapult treaty with them!
Look, we are a peace loving people, but we have been stabbed in the back too often; we must have our living space.

Attorney:
 Did you have any long range goals?

Antiochus:
 All my actions are for the sake of progress and civilization and science. If
I wish to preserve our nation and the values that it stands for, then I must,
once and for all, complete the task that Alexander the Great began, in cultivating the devotion to
philosophy, science, and wisdom of the Greek culture. That is what we call “Hellenization.”
I have granted every Greek living in my territory special privileges and I have established a new Temple in Athens. I have founded new cities just for Greeks. I am erasing non-Greek culture and having all these subjects restructure their cities into Greek ones. We must work to further the interests of the master civilization.

Attorney:
You were able to implement these policies?

Antiochus:
 I think that everything would have proceeded smoothly, had it not been for those
Judeans. They will send me to an early death, for sure.  I have nothing against Judeans,
 just as I have nothing against Idumeans or Phonenicians, but I cannot understand their behavior.
 They are completely irrational and consequently a danger to civilization.

Attorney:
 You are profiling an entire people!
Antiochus:
 First of all, there are some good Jews. However, a great -number of them just refuse to assimilate. They refuse to adopt Greek names, or offer a libation to Zeus, or any other activity that a self-respecting pagan would do. They won’t celebrate my cult as a god, for sure. I really think they hate human beings. They won’t take our women for wives unless they brain-wash them first! They won't eat our food; they take off one day a week out of laziness. They pretend to be modest and saintly, but they are simply racists. They just can't stand anyone who is different. They won’t just go along, like the other barbarians.

Attorney:
 But you have engaged in disproportionate actions to attain your ends!

Antiochus:
Disproportionate! For a Syrian ruler! Till today, the rulers of Syria use poison gas and mass bombardments on their own people. That’s the normal way to create social harmony and peace.
You know, the more I think of it, the more I think they deserved it when I marched into Jerusalem, slaughtered thousands of the pests, and sold the rest into slavery. They were cheering when they thought the Romans did me in!

Attorney:
Some people would call you the first real anti-Semite.

Antiochus:
Anti-Semite? All my subjects are Semites. It is just these miserable Judeans who will be the death of me for sure.
They don't even belong in the land they call Israel; they claim their ancestors got it centuries ago, but they really took the land from the native Philistinians. They are a nation of robbers. They should be expelled and sent back to Mesopotamia where they all came from.
They are everywhere. In every position, in every town, I find someone who is a Jew. I know there were Jews who even infiltrated Aristotle’s  and Pythagoras's schools, and who allowed pernicious notions to slip into our society. Ideas like” All men are created equal”, aah!. It is all part of a Jewish plot.
They are also savages.
Do you know what they do to Greeks? I will tell you. My intelligence agency has just uncovered it, and I am about to send a Tweet on it. Yes, we use “Twitter” but it is with real messenger birds!  Every year, they capture a Greek, keep him jailed in their Temple, stuff him full of food, and sacrifice him. They also keep a statue of Moses riding a donkey in their Temple. It was this Moses who gave them laws to hate all of us. It is really my duty to solve the Jewish problem. I must come up with a final solution.

Attorney:
 Do you have any character witnesses?

Antiochus:

Yes, I would like to call on the stand my dear friend, Menelaus, the High Priest of your own Jerusalem!

Attorney:
I call to the stand, Menelaus, High Priest, Kohen Gadol, originally known as Menahem, or Mendele to his mother.

Menelaus:
 Hello, there, Menelaus is my name, assimilation is my game. As you know, I call myself Menelaus; it's such a beautiful Greek name, a hero in the Iliad by Homer. I dropped my old Jewish sounding name, which I never use and have even forgotten what it was. I picked Menelaus because it sounds so-lovely; everything the Greeks produce is so lovely. Did you ever read Homer? It's so lovely, but, to tell you the truth, I haven't read it yet myself because my Greek is not good enough yet.

Attorney:
What made you decide to go along with Antiochus plans?

Menelaus:
I told my friends, "look what kinds of troubles we are bringing on ourselves. All this anti-Judeanism that we are suffering from; it's all our fault.” I told them, "Let's make a covenant with the nations around us; let's be like everyone else! It's only since we have cut ourselves off from the others that we have all this trouble!"
I told them my plan, and they really liked it. You have no idea how many hundreds, or even thousands of intelligent, sophisticated Judeans, from the finest families have seen the light. They have realized that it is about time to leave off our old ways and superstitions and be progressive. We are progressive, we are modern, we are cool, we are hipsters.
. .
Attorney:
So Antiochus’ plan was really your plan?

Menelaus:
For sure! It was a matter of competition between me and Jason, the other High Priest, as to who is more Greek!  The first step, of course, was to make the capital, Jerusalem, look like a real Greek town. We needed a gymnasium, just like everywhere else, so we built it. Not a Bally’s or a Gold’s Gym but a real Greek Civic Center -- a place for drama, theater, music, and sports. A stadium where all the finest young men run around, wearing the hat of the runner, Hermes. I have heard some complaints about our boys running around naked; it's true, but how else can you run? Besides, these Judeans are so uptight!
Now, of course, in order to look all right, we have to get rid of that custom of circumcision. It makes our runners look ridiculous and some of them have even had to undergo plastic surgery so they wouldn't look so Jewish.

Attorney:
 This had political implications?

Menelaus:
Of course, we had to change our city government. We established a polis, called it Antioch, not Jerusalem, and run it through a council of Elders, gerousia, on the Greek model. Then, we could have the authority to really bring everyone into line.
Those Judeans who still call their children by names like Judah or Mattathias, and who still keep kosher and keep the Shabbat---well, they will either have to toe the line or leave town, because we can't let these unregenerate primitives ruin our image.

Attorney:
 What religious agenda have you considered?

Menelaus:
 We must, above all else, reform our worship. The way the old priests mumble in the sacrifice! And there is absolutely no decorum ! Everybody just runs around wherever he pleases, and the talking! Every five minutes a messenger comes in ringing a bell . We will change that.
For example, we cannot go on calling our God just by his Hebrew name. This is a new and open society. We will call him Zeus Olympius; this way, we can recog¬nize that all religions, polytheist, and monotheist, are at core, the same. Now we won't put up any idols in the Temple, because that is out of fashion even with the Greeks, but we will put up a sacred stone just like in any good Temple. I be¬lieve that we should reform the service as well, doing things in the sacrifice which make sense to us, not to our ancestors, things which are relevant, like pouring libations of wine, or sacrificing that which the Greeks sacrifice everywhere, a pig, in honor of the king.

Attorney:
What did you expect to gain in the long run?

Menelaus:
 Believe me, if we do these, then we will finally be accepted in the right circles. We will be able to move into the best neighborhoods, join all the Greek clubs, move into the best positions in business, and there won't be any anti-Semitism.

Attorney:
Thank you. I call Antiochus back on the stand. Antiochus, do you have any other witnesses?

Antiochus:
Yes, I want the jury to seek what nudniks I had to deal with. I call upon Honi to speak for the Hasidim. Now you will see what I had to deal with.

Attorney:
Mr Honi, Please introduce yourself to the jury.You are considered a Hasid, a Pious man.

Honi:
 Me, a Hasid? A pious man? I am not so arrogant as to call myself that. I am just a simple Jew who wishes to follow what God has commanded me to observe; that is all. I like to bring offerings to the Temple, or at least I used to, till they turned it into a pagan playground.
I mediate an hour before and after every prayer, three times a day nine hours every day, and I am very careful about Shabbat. If I have to bury any thorns or glass in the ground, I make sure that I dig it at least a foot deep, so my plow won't push it up to the surface. God forbid, someone should trip on it and then get hurt on my account!

Attorney:
What do you feel is the cause of your suffering?

Honi:
 As for our woes, they have come upon us as a consequence of our sins which are so many. The Holy One, Blessed be He, is chastising us for our falling by the wayside, just as he punished our ancestors when they followed idols, and as a result, the Temple was burned to the ground. Once again, we have sinned. So many Jews have abandoned the commands of the Bible, have abandoned their beliefs, their practices, their names. They go gallivanting naked without shame; they eat anything and offer up terrible abominations in the very Temple itself. Eyen the high Priests live and think like gentiles,

Attorney:
What did you do about this?

Honi:
As for me, I want nothing of it. I have gone off, with hundreds of others like myself, into the wilderness, where I can be together with Jews like myself, who will still follow the commandments, In the wilderness, in our little caves, we will be able to keep Shabbat and circumcise our children, and bide our time. Some of us talk about taking up arms against the Syrian overlords and our Hellenized Jews, but I am against it. This is all part of God's plan, and if in the course of it, we must suffer, then so be it. Surely, speedily, and in our day, God will send us once again, his anointed King, the Moshiach, who will destroy the rule of wickedness, when in the end of days, the sons of light will champion over the sons of darkness.
In the meantime, we shall be patient. If they come to attack us during the week, we will defend ourselves, but if they attack us on the Shabbat, then let us die, obeying God's command, rather than desecrate the holiest day by taking up arms in our defense.

Attorney:
Thank you, Mr. Honi

Antiochus:
 You see, I told they were cuckoo! And those are the pacifists. The militants are a thousand times worse! They see flaming chariots flying down from the skies to fight for them! They believe they will come back from Hades!

Attorney:
No outburst in the courtroom. Just answer the questions.
Now, Antiochus, one last question. If you were beaten in battle by the Romans, it was by a vastly superior army. But you were defeated by an old man and five brothers and a few followers with no military training. How do you explain that?

Antiochus:
This a shame that I will never be able to live down. My death is rumored to be of horrible disease that afflicts me when I hear of my armies defeat.
They used unfair tactics, what you call guerilla warfare. A hand full of volunteers could defeat the greatest armies. I predict people will be teaching this Judah-fellow’s tactics in military school two thousand years from now.
I will tell you how he did it. You know, we Greeks have the best method for conventional warfare—the Phalanx- we run our men in rows of 16 men across, 16 deep, each holding a long lance, up to 20 feet long. We march with multiple units of those on an open field, and we just walk over the enemy. But those treacherous Jews! They wouldn’t fight in flat open fields—they fight in the mountains. They fight us from on top, the sides, and behind. Have you ever tried to turn a mass of 250 men, locked tight, in a narrow canyon, as the spears get in the way? Our guys were sitting ducks!
Then, where are the PETA people when you need them. We march down on their armies with our trained elephants (yes, we trained them long before the Ringling Brothers) and their soldiers go under the elephants’ bellies and slash them from below. I assure you that no elephants were harmed by our side.

Attorney:
You have one last chance to call up the Macabees and cross-examine them. Do you wish to do so?

Antiochus:
Oh, No. Please spare me. I can't stand the thought of them. Hang me please, so I don't ever have to hear of them again!

Attorney
That concludes the testimony from the defense. Antiochus has had the benefit of the best attorneys his empire could provide in preparing him for this deposition. I turn to the jury and ask,” What say ye?”

Monday, December 7, 2015

Islamism Today A Look Back 22 Years ago From the Viewpoint of the San Bernardino Massacres

Islamism Today     A Look Back 22 Years ago From the Viewpoint of the San Bernardino Massacres

My friends, the past two weeks have seen a spate of successive and horrendous hits by terrorist groups operating in the name of Allah- I don’t need to go into details. Now, the horror has hit home, this time, in San Bernardino, only an hour’s drive from where we sit. The son of one of our dear friends had worked in that same building up to a few years ago; he was spared simply because he had switched careers.
 I need to repeat my opening thought that I stated three weeks ago, that “ Don’t kill people- Ideas kill people.”
I found myself looking back at files of my pasts sermons and I see that it is “ déjà vu all over again”.
I found, from over 25 years ago, this scenario for a horror movie
A radical religious fanatic, a blind man, sets out to overthrow the ruling government of his country. He is arrested, tried, cleared, but he leaves to find asylum elsewhere.
He enters US on visitor’s visa and then a green card; who would deny a visa to a blind man, after all? From the US, he issues directives to his followers to massacre tourists in his home country, so that the one good source of income would collapse. He hopes that the ensuing economic catastrophe would force the downfall of his regime, and he would return as the great leader.
In the meantime, he sets up a religious center, masterminds an assassination, and then proceeds with his great ambition--to destroy the American Satan by crippling its financial center.
His followers obtain explosives and a van, and drive it into the basement parking lot of the World Trade Centers, the twin towers, the tallest in the US, which headquarter the major financial offices of this nation.
Do you think any movie producer at that time would have bought the script? Would I have been laughed out of Hollywood for this Grade B horror movie?
But it was no horror movie. What could have been just another grade B thriller had become a reality, when the foundations of the World Trade Center were rocked, 6 people were killed and 1000 injured, and major financial institutions had to move their operations out of New York.
A radical Islamic clergyman on the lamb from his native Egypt, who had been accused of masterminding the assassination of Anwar Sadat, had been here for several years, sitting in New Jersey, sending out his decrees for attacking cruise ships on the Nile,blowing up tourists drinking coffee on the sidewalk cafes of Cairo, and killing a thousand of his fellow Egyptians. It this same clergyman, Omar Adel Rahman, who had inspired the  explosion at the World Trade Center.
Keep in mind that we are always told that the cause of our current terror is the reaction to America’s invasion of Iraq. But this happened long before that war.
Since then, we had the far more horrendous and successful destruction of those same Twin Towers on 9/11. That did not follow an American attack on a Moslem country. That came but a few years after the United States successfully saved Moslems from Christians in Bosnia.
The more things change, the more they seem the same.
We can no longer delude ourselves that the two great oceans keep us immune from the insanity pervading the Middle East. We cannot look at France, with its 10% poor and alienated Moslem population, and say that it is their problem.
We are now on edge.
During the seventies and eighties, we could sit in relative safety. The mass terrorism of a Baader Meinhoff gang or The Red Army Faction or the IRA was something for the Europeans to worry about;we were protected by the great Atlantic ocean, and our borders were watched by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Now, we have been reminded that troubles in one part of the world have an echo in our part of the world.
With the Soviet Union no longer the pied piper and mastermind of these terrorist groups, we had believed that the conflicts of ideology would have been laid to rest.
It is not First World versus Second World.
It is a new ideological conflict, the conflict of modern technological and secular society on the one hand and the resurgent world of religious reaction to modernity, most pronounced in its Islamic form, perhaps better termed as “ Islamism”..
ISIS or the Wahabi of Saudi Arabia are not the voice of Islam. Islam does not have a Pope to speak for it, but that can be both for good and for bad.
For this reason, it is possible to find Moslem voices that speak of reason and tolerance. However, no single Moslem figure, or even school, can define the faith for the rest, and no institution in the world of Islam is in a position to ban or expel any other movement that speaks in the name of Islam. That is the great danger that we face. The great fight will be within the world of Islam as it faces the liberal West ( and Orient).
However, we, whether as citizens of the world in general, as Americans, or as Jews, will also be the collateral damage of this war.
It is a horrid tragedy unfolding.
As far as Islam itself goes, we, as Jews, share very much in common with it, both historically and in terms of certain common beliefs and practices.
   When Mohammed was born, Saudi Arabia had a heavy Jewish population, as well as Christian, and when he fled his native Mecca, he made his way to Yathrib, a city founded and populated by Jews. It was to them that he first preached.
Islam reflects its Jewish connection.
Islam is, like Judaism, and unlike Christianity, an emphatically monotheistic religion.Like Judaism, Islam does not associate God with any son or physical appearance. Even the word for God in Arabic, Allah, is itself a cousin of the Hebrew word, Elohim. Allah is described with as rachman--the same as in Hebrew, for merciful.
A Moslem is bound to pray, not three times, but five times a day, he is obliged to give charity, to have the sons circumcised, to refrain from pork. A Moslem may not eat the meat from our supermarket shelves, but he may eat the meat from our kosher butchers, because it meets his requirements for kashrut,  Halal.
The language of Islam, Arabic, is so very close to Hebrew, and it reflects it in key words. Islam from Salaam, peace, our shalom; one follows the law, din, in Islam as in Judaism, and one studies in a madrasah as one studies in a bet midrash.
Even more significant, besides the similarities between Arabic and Hebrew, was the close interaction between Jewish and Islamic scholars through the heyday of Islam.
Jewish thinkers and scholars were deeply involved, directly, side by side with the Moslem thinkers and scholars. Our philosophers influenced theirs, and their philosophers influenced our way of thinking.
In general, Moslem society, although not ideal, was more tolerant in its day than was Christian society, all things being relevant. This was more true of the Sunni societies than of the Shiite societies, although today, for Shiite Azerbaijan, Israel is a friend, while for Shiite Iran, it is the Little Satan.
Tolerance is relative; the Ottoman Sultanate built its empire of the backs of conquered Christians that it enslaved and made to serve as cannon fodder in its Janissary.
Tempus mutandis, or, as Bob Dylan used to sing,” The Times They Are a Changing.”
Tables have turned. Christian Europe ceased being Christian; since the Renaissance, it became secular, this worldly in its orientation, interested in empire, power, wealth, in this world, not in heaven. Secular western civilization has taken the lead in the world for the past four centuries. Industry, commerce, rational skepticism, the primacy of the individual, all have become part of the common faith of western society, even among religious Catholics and Protestants. Live and let live.
So while , just 350 years ago, the Ottoman Empire was at the gates of Vienna, since then, the Moslem peoples have been simply swamped. The history of the Turks, the Arabs, and the Iranians has been one of coming to grips with a secular world. That has meant the rise of nationalism and the state, with or without socialism, within societies that were still built upon a system of tribes under the umbrella of Empire.
What has happened?
Some Moslem societies made the successful transition to the contemporary technology and industry driven and then technology society.
However, there has been the reaction.
The ideological father of the people who bombed the World Trade Tower, Sayid Qutb, declared: The leadership of western man in the human world is coming to an end... the western order no longer possesses that stock of "values' which gave it its predominance... The turn of Islam has come. " He was executed  by Nasser, an Arabist and socialist, in Egypt in 1966, but his preaching lived on.
In Iran, the modernized and westernized regime of the Shah, while authoritarian, was done in by the spell of resurgent Islam, with a radical twist.
The Moslem world is caught between these two extremes--between the push to modernize and secularize, and the push to turn back to the Islamic state, an Islamic Camelot.
The results have been horrendous for the Moslem world. Who has paid attention to the 100,000 murdered in Algeria in the civil war against the Islamicists, to give just one example?
What does all this mean for us?  As Jews, it is our umglick to be caught in the midst, for Israel, our Israel, sits in the heart of the Moslem world, and in the heart of the Islamic world. Israel is above all else, the symbol, to the radical reactionaries, of the failures of all the Arab states; it is the symbol of the west and of powerful America; it is the symbol of the ancient rivalry with, of all things, Christianity.
To add to the turmoil, Israel sits on top of the Palestinians, whether it wants to or not. The Palestinians are perhaps the people most failed, most abandoned by all the promises of Arab nationalism, of Arab socialism, of Arab unity.
I know this conflict will not end quickly. The religious wars in Europe took centuries, until entire populations were decimated, until the Christians saw that there was no choice other than tolerance. The same process is happening in our day in the Islamic world, and this is a horrendous thought.
Ultimately, from a Jewish perspective, both Islam and Christianity serve the same purpose, as Maimonides explained in his code of Jewish law; these religions came to prepare the world to worship God with one accord. We can only pray that those who preach peace and understanding on all sides have the final upper hand, when in the words of the Prophet Micah, all the nations shall come to God’s Holy Mountain, each in the name of its God, while we shall go, forever, in the name of The Lord, our God.



Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Introduction to Echoes of The Holocaust: Survivors and Their Children and Grandchildren Speak Out


Rabbi Dr. Norbert Weinberg    Introduction to
Echoes of The Holocaust: Survivors and Their Children and Grandchildren Speak Out
By Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg

Several years ago, when my mother, Irene Weinberg, of blessed memory, passed away, I realized that so many of her generation, the last witnesses of the great horror that befell the Jewish people, were soon fading from the world scene. I set about researching and writing about her experiences as well as those of my father, Rabbi Dr. William Weinberg, who had passed away some years before.  *
There is a great burden that falls upon us, already an aging 2nd generation and an adult 3rd and even 4th generation, to act as witnesses. This is so vital, as we see blood libels once again used against Jews today by supposedly enlightened intellectuals in Europe and even in the United States under the guise of anti-Zionism. As the past recedes, people who should know better make unconscionable statements. Thus a student leader in South Africa, a child of victims of racial apartheid, could praise Adolf Hitler for his “charisma” and hope for such a leader for his own country.
We also have a double challenge. One the one hand, we continue as witnesses to the hell that our people went through but we also have a second challenge, to keep alive the flame of Jewish teachings, the sacred teaching that said that all humans are created in the “ Tselem Elokim”, in the Image of the Divine. It was this very teaching which Hitler and Nazism sought to erase along with the people who had preached it to the world.
I can only think it fitting to paraphrase the words of President Lincoln, at the Gettysburg Address:
It is for us the living, children and grandchildren of our martyrs, to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they were persecuted, the teachings of the great a noble heritage of Judaism and the Jewish people-- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have lived in vain, that the lives of these, our people, shall not have been without enduring meaning.
I thank Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg for putting together this collection of recollections, essays, and poetry from the children and grandchildren of our survivors. I greatly appreciate Rabbi Rosenberg’s keeping the focus on the Shoah, or Holocaust, as an event unique to the Jewish people. While it is true that many millions died in this horror, only the Jews were selected and targeted for annihilation in total and only the demonization of the Jews could serve as a force to galvanize otherwise civilized men and women into unspeakable acts of cruelty and horror.  When we universalize the account, in hopes of building alliances, we dilute the significance of what happened.
I want reiterate my thought, a thought for the generations: For all that we Jews have gone through in history, as horrible as it may have been, we are blessed to be the heirs of a tradition going back to Abraham and Moses and on down to our days, a tradition that speaks of a courage to face all obstacles, a tradition of hope and faith in a universe created for good and guided by Divine Providence to an ultimate redemption of all humanity.
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Rabbi Dr. William Weinberg, my father and my teacher, served as the first State Rabbi of Hesse, Germany (region around Frankfurt) after World War II. I have published the account of our family origins, his youth and education, his persecution by the Nazis and escape to the Soviet Union and back, in my book Courage of the Spirit. Irene Weinberg, my mother and my teacher, was a native of Lwow, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine) who outwitted her Nazi hunters by hiding in the open as a Pole in both Lwow and Warsaw. I hope to have her account published in the near future.