Labor Day- Reflections on Early American Jewish History

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Labor Day- Reflections on Early American Jewish History

Our Torah reading today opens with the words: Shoftim ve shotrim”- You shall establish judges and executive officers, or what is in modern Hebrew, police. It is appropriate that this reading falls this year on Labor Day weekend when we celebrate the role of the working man and now woman in developing America. This day came about as the result of the struggle of workers to secure essential rights in the workplace 130 years ago.

 Establishing fairness and justice for all levels of society suffuses this portion as well as the portion before and after and this atmosphere certainly has served as a prod to challenge America to attempt to create “ a more perfect union”. By this, I don’t mean, of course, a more perfect “Labor union”, but as intended in the preamble to the Constitution, a better run and functioning society.

It might seem natural that as Jews, we would take a keen interest in the society around us. Thus, the prophet Jeremiah advised us as we began on our first exile to distant lands:

Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."( Ch 29). Getting involved in our societies would seem to be the very Jewish thing to do.

As I wrote this, however, I couldn't help but think of a  joke that was especially popular when we had the first Jewish candidate for vice-President , Joe Lieberman. The story goes that he is one day elected President, and his mother is invited to the inauguration. She turns to the woman next to her and says proudly, “You see up there. Standing next to the President? That’s my son the doctor!”

 Everybody talks about “My son the doctor” or “my son the lawyer”. Naturally, all Jews become doctors or lawyers. But do we ever talk about,” my son the governor”, or “my son the judge”?

But I guess, that when the mother of either Rahm Emanuel or Jack Lew saw their sons, they told their friends, “See,my son, the President’s Chief of Staff.”

Truth is, it has been just as natural for Jews to enter government as it is for them to be in any business or profession.

We have a long history of it, even before Moses. After all, Joseph in Egypt is second to the Pharaoh. Later on it was Mordecai to Ahashaverosh. Last week, we read love poetry by Samuel the Nagid, the Vizier of Granada. In early modern Germany, the was a Jud Suess Oppenheimer , advisor to a German prince ( tragically,executed when his political fortunes fell)

We have also made excellent Prime Ministers, ever since Moses. Disraeli in England, Leon Blum and Pierre Mendez France  in France.

Even in countries that we associate with heavy anti-antisemitism, Jews had a role—Walter Rathenau in Weimar Germany, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kaminev in the USSR. Notably, all of them were eventually murdered.

It is no surprise ,then ,if Jews play part in government in anti-Semitic lands or lands in which Jews were barely tolerated, that in US there should  also be Jews taking  active part in government in a free, open democracy, as equals.

So , if you allow me, I want to touch upon some celebrated and some unknown examples of how Jews, in the very earliest years of American society , took their place in making for a “more perfect union”.

Jews began to take active part in America’s politics already during the colonial and revolutionary period. To the most parts, we tended to side with the revolution, even though some Jews were prominent on the British side. Perhaps it was appropriate, for example, that

 when the British left Rhode Island, the local legislature convened in the Newport synagogue, rather than in one of the local churches that may have been bigger.

Attaining full rights in this land was not an easy done deal. Some of you may remember that we dedicated a Friday evening service to Jews in America. One of the readings was a letter by George Washington to the Jews of Rhode Island.

The Jewish community had good reason to ask for a letter from the great President. Just because we had a constitution that stated” no establishment of religion” did not yet mean full equality. That was a clause for the national government, not yet a clause for the individual states. For example, it was agreed that any new state, number 14 through 50, would need to abide by the Bill of Rights on religious equality , but the original states, 1-13 were grandfathered in. This had nothing to do with Jews, but everything to do with getting all the original states to go along with a new union.

So, we had to slog it, state by state. It was a struggle, not just for Jews, but for Baptists, Catholics and other Christian groups as well.

In I784, there was an attempt in Virginia to declare Christianity the state religion, but it was defeated. It took Jefferson, Madison and Mason two more years to remove religious discrimination in Virginia and Jefferson made sure that his fight for religious freedom was inscribed on his tombstone.

Gradually, Georgia, Pennsylvania came aboard. The Bill of Rights, with its great First Amendment, was not adopted till 1791. But, as I said, even that was no ironclad guarantee.

The Jews of Rhode Island gave the State legislature its first meeting place and President Washington wrote his great letter of acceptance to them, but the people of Rhode Island did not grant Jews full rights till 1842. The irony here is that Rhode Island was founded by people seeking freedom of religion from the oppressive leaders in Massachusetts.

 New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland and North Carolina held back till after the Civil war and after the 14^th Amendment, guaranteeing rights to all citizens.  

Here are some examples of the fights.

Maryland, for example, was an unusual case. The State Constitution, going back to the colonial era, required a public official to declare belief in Christianity. Any blasphemer or one who denied divinity of Jesus was liable for capital punishment. This proved to be troublesome for the colonies first Jewish doctor in the 1650’s who was tried on blasphemy but spared by  a general amnesty when Cromwell took over the reins of Britain.

The fight over religion continued until, in 1825, what was called “ The Jew Bill”, was passed by a majority of one vote. It was enough to declare "Belief in a future state of reward and punishment." The irony in all this is that Maryland was originally intended as a refuge for Catholics fleeing Anglican oppression.

Jacob Henry in North Carolina won election to the state legislature in 1809 but was denied the right to take his seat. He gave stirring defense of liberty and equality and was finally seated on technical grounds: Jews have legal right to make laws, but not to enforce them.

For all of this, keep in mind, we weren’t given our rights; we earned them.

I go back to the part that Jews took in helping administer and advice governments.

In the early revolutionary years, as I mentioned, Jews took an active part in fight.

Here are some examples

Frances Salvador from a prominent Jewish family in London, came to the colonies to save the family fortune, and built up farm lands South Carolina. He went from silk stockings to leather stockings, a real frontiersman, and soon was elected to the provisional congress

As a representative of South Carolina, he was authorized to stamp new American currency.

Keep government costs down, and took part in drafting the state constitution. He would die in battle for the newly emerging State

Then there was one Mordecai Sheftall, Chairman of the Parochial Committee of Christ Church Parish, effectively, the governor of that part of Georgia. This stunned the British colonial governor James Wright, who protested, "One Sheftall, a Jew, is on the parochial committee. This fellow issues orders to captains of vessels to depart the king's port without landing any of their cargoes legally imported!.”

He was captured as a rebel and imprisoned. Here we learn how Yiddish is useful. While the British captures tormented him with pork, he chatted with the German-nationals in the British forces in Yiddish and made friends.

He escaped and was recaptured and was finally released. Later, US Congress would repay Sheftall for money he loaned to the government. Congress owed him $139,000 and he got back about 20 cents on the dollar. Not a good loan.

I’ll add a colorful American Jew, from the early years of the new country, Mordecai Manuel Noah. We could have used him in the middle east today.

During the War of 1812, he was appointed US consul to Tunis, to obtain the release of captured Americans.. He obtained favorable treatment of Americans by proving to Moslem leaders that, by constitution, the US was not a Christian country and it therefore deserved special treatment, unlike Christian Europe. Sending a Jew to a Moslem country even then did not make sense but he did not let the fact out, but his personal political rivals enemies did let the fact get out and he was recalled.

He then became newspaper publisher and next, High Sheriff of New York. His enemies declared” What a pity that Christians are to be hung by a Jew"!

To this he retorted: What a pity that Christians should have to be hung by a Jew!”

Of course, we best recall him for his grand dream of a Jewish homeland near Niagara Falls to be called Ararat. That, however, was not his first choice. His first choice was Palestine and in his very fertile imagination, he had accepted the consul position in Tunis in order to raise a Jewish army that would free Palestine from the Turks. What a dream, long before Herzl!

.

  Now, I will add a colorful American Christian to my list of early American Jewish leaders. Just as a Jew was consulate to a Moslem state, so a Christian was appointed consul to Jerusalem, originally in hopes of converting the Jews to Christianity. Warder Cresson, a Quaker, soon discovered that the Jews, despite tremendous poverty, could not be moved by the missionary’s lures. He began to study Hebrew, then Talmud, and Kabballah and in 1848, to the surprise of the Jewish community, asked to be accepted as a convert with the name Michael C. Boaz Israel !

Upon return to the US, his family had him thrown in jail on charges of insanity. The court released him on the grounds that conversion to Judaism is not proof of insanity. He returned to settle in his adopted city of Jerusalem.

Here was another victory in the battle for rights; in previous ages and in other lands, for a Christian to convert to Judaism must have been a sign of insanity because it was tantamount to suicide, it was an act punishable by death. In this country freedom of religion also came to mean freedom to choose religion or to switch religion or even  to opt out of religion.

We as Jews in America took part and parcel in creating a society that was open to freedom of conscience and, true with fits and starts, a society of justice for all. That is a key part, in the modern world, of a society of “ shoftim ve shotrim”, of judges and magistrates. We have benefited greatly from this society; so may others, of all backgrounds, benefit  and may this spread across the globe in this era of growing religious intolerance elsewhere.

Portion Reeh What is the Genius of the Jew

Portion Reeh   What is the Genius of the Jew   

            It never was easy being a Jew. Forget the anti-Semites; we had to deal with a very powerful and demanding God on top of that!

            Do you remember the line from Fiddler On the Roof:

            He has just announced that his daughter is to be married and the local Russian official comes up to congratulate him. He then says,

               Tevye,

               Yes, Your Honour?

               I have some news I think I should tell you as a friend.

               Yes, Your Honour.

               I'm giving you this news because I like you.We have received orders that sometime soon this district is to have a little unofficial demonstration.

              What?

               A pogrom

               Here?

               No, no, no.  Just a little unofficial demonstration.

Then Tevye goes on

               Dear God,  Did you have to send me news like that today of all days?

              I know, I know we are the chosen people.

              But once in a while, can't you choose someone else?

Here is another take on this odd question by a British poet, William Ewer:

               How odd of God

               To Choose the Jews.

                

To this, there have been several retorts all attributed to a variety of authors:

 But not so odd

As those who choose

A Jewish God

Yet spurn the Jews

Or

               Not odd of God. / Goyim annoy 'im,-- attributed to Leo Rosten.

But finally, this one is most apt:

                "Not so odd / The Jews chose God”

Did we choose? As we have it in the Torah, we can see that not only were we chosen, but we were set up as well with serious demands and expectations.

     Our  Torah reading opens with these words:

            “Reeh anochi notayn lifneychem hayom brachah vklalah

            Behold., I set before you this day a blessing and a curse

            The blessing-if you observe the Commandments of the Lord your God,

            The curse--if you fail to observe the commandments.

            (Deut. 11:26)

They are echoed again,at the end of the Torah--Reeh natati lefanecha hayom et hahyim ve et hatov veet hamavet ve et ha ra(30:15)

Behold I have set before you today  life and good  and

death and evil...I call on heaven and earth to bear witness today that I have given you life and death, blessing and curse--therefore uvaharta bechayim--therefore choose life.

            It is a doctrine, one of the few dogmas that we Jews cherish, beside the belief in one God, that whatever our circumstances, whatever our fortune and fate--rich or poor, healthy or ill,--ultimately the choice of good or evil, and the consequences, are in our hands. But we have the choice.

            God may have indeed chosen us, as we say at the Torah blessing” Atah Bachar banu”- You have chosen us form among all peoples. We too, have our “ choosing”, as we have it in these verse from the Torah.

            This has been at the essence of Jewish existence-- to choose--Torah versus licentiousness, Judaism versus disappearance.

            Judaism preaches choice, and we Jews have remained Jews, over the centuries by choice, solely by our free choice. We didn’t have to remain as Jews.We are the product of generations that chose to remain as Jews.

            I want to quote for you from an essay my father wrote, and I excerpted it in my book, Courage of the Spirit. This is from his essay, "A Heroism that hasn't been recorded."( P.4)

( For information on thebook, go to www.courageofspirit.com )

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"Genius has been defined as the infinite capacity for taking pains. Jews had no doubt more than any group in the world the infinite capacity for taking pain. However, I think that taking ridicule requires even more of true genius than the capacity for taking any other kind of pain.

To be a Jew was to invite a firing squad, and the worst of all was a roar of laughter and ridicule.

Everyone was free to take out his heart on the Jew; he was the only one who could not retaliate, for the offender had the police, the church, the army, and the whole society lined up before him.

All of this was not something irremediable, for every Jew could easily and at any time change his status of a pariah into that of a highly respected citizen.

The historian, Louis Golding wrote, "The acceptance of a single drop of baptismal water was enough to entitle him to remain and enjoy his property, the scenes in which he had been brought up and the land where his fathers lay buried... he could have thrown off his rags and clad himself in scarlet and enjoyed peace and affluence, by pronouncing one single word, a word which he did not pronounce". 

 The Jew was the only one who turned a deaf ear to all the calls to exchange security for his way of life. He alone remained out of the general swim, in fact, against the crowd. People scoffed and jeered and mocked and made sport of him, and he went on, unheeding, undismayed and undiscouraged.

            In all the history of mankind, no nation ever displayed such a civil bravery as the nation of Israel. It is a history with the leitmotif that a hero is one who conquers daily his temptations toward cowardly conformism. The Jew took dirt, misery, hunger, fever and ridicule in stride and seemed to have inexhaustible reserves of strength.

            The emblem of a Scottish University has on it

." They say", "What say they?  Let them say! They scoff. Let them scoff!

            This was the  motto of the Jew.  He walked majestically with his caftan, beard, and ear locks through a hostile world like a soldier marching to his goal through searing flames and minefields.

            The capacity to endure laughter and ridicule day after day and the smallness of stupid, prejudice- bound minds; the epic of sacrifices in the day by day life of the Jew, this is the unsung unique heroism of the Jew, and there were no historians to record this day by day heroism.

   How as such a heroism possible?

            He was armed with antidotes to the Gentile climate of opinion. The strongest was the consuming sense of the presence and reality of God , with a compulsive urge to magnificence. He was able to stand aside as long as he considered his own way of life the constant and that of others as the variable.

            He lived in his own world, he enjoyed the full benefits of a universally shared world vision--klal Yisrael-- a body of belief, a complex of metaphysics and myth. The fence around the Torah was his castle.

            Out of his intimacy with God, the Jew considered his destiny inseparable from him, whose shekhinah  --divine presence--went with him into exile. He knew  that with him is the shekhina begaluta-the divine in exile.

            The Jew was armed to suffer sneer, the smallness of stupid unthinking prejudice and rudeness, for he was convinced that "The stone which the builders rejected will become the chief corner-stone of a better world, and that they who sow in tears shall reap in joy. They scoff-let them scoff.

            This is the history of the Jew of yesterday."

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My father then ended his essay on the question of “what of today?.

"The Jew of today? He ran out of convictions and therefore the Herculean task of battling against a whole world is not his anymore."

            Today, we seem to have it all. Our Jewish community is wealthy, as has no community before in Jewish history; we are highly educated, as has no other community been before; we hold high positions in government, are leaders in business, in academics, in the culture and arts, and entertainment.

            This is also the age that has seen the creation of the State of Israel, a testimony to the vigor of our people, to rise out of the ashes of the destroyed communities of Eastern Europe, of North Africa, of Western Asia.

            Yet, for all that is good, we are concerned. Yet we must ask the question--have we indeed run out of our convictions. Have we indeed abandoned the herculean task of going against the main-stream? What have gained, with all our well-being, if we have traded in our yiddish neshamah, our Jewish souls in the consequence. The demographics surveys and the Pew Polls all speak of the shrinkage of Jewish numbers in this nation, of a dangerously high rate of marriage out or just plain dropping out.

            As I said at the opening, Moshe Rabbenu challenged us. Behold I set before you this day a blessing and a curse.

            The challenge, then, is for us, to make the choice, which Moses taught us only we can make, each and every one of us, to choose life, to choose the path of heroism, to choose the path of Judaism. Our ancestors could do it, under fire, under siege, under the greatest adversity. May we be granted the courage and the vision, Amen.

Isaiah and the Idea of Messianic Hope- Thoughts after Tisha B Av

Isaiah and the Idea of Messianic Hope- Thoughts after Tisha B Av

           

            If you were to ask me to list who were the people who made the greatest impact on human thought, you might expect to hear the traditional triad of Marx, Freud, and Einstein.

            However I wish the privilege of changing that list and mentioning instead, two figures who never received the due credit for affecting the way we perceive the future and ourselves, namely Yeshayahu ben Amotz and Yehezkiel ben Buzi, or, as they are known in English, Isaiah and Ezekiel.

            From Isaiah, modern civilization derived its idea of a messianic redemption, of a vision of a better world in the future, far greater than anything the present offers.

From Ezekiel, the world received the concept of the individual, of personal responsibility, of the ability to choose.

            Now, I will propose a third question: “Who made the profoundest impact on the Jewish personality?"

            To which I will answer, Yirmiyahu ben Hilkiyah, Jeremiah, who taught us how to muster our moral courage and survive the first great  disaster of Jewish history.

            These three names are cardinal in the Bible as the three great literary prophets whose works have been extensively preserved for us. Two weeks ago, as we entered the period of the three weeks of mourning, from the Seventeeth of Tammuz till Tisha B Av and the beginning of heavy fighting between Israel and Hamas, I spoke of Jeremiah. At another point, I will speak of the message of Ezekiel.

            For this Shabbat, I will focus on Isaiah. Last week, the Haftarah was the opening chapter of Isaiah, which spoke of the impending doom facing the people of Judea. It was chanted to the melody of Aicha, Lamentations, the reading of Tisha B’Av. This Shabbat, we read again from Isaiah, this time from Chapter 40: Nahamu, Nahamu Ami—Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. The same book of doom is the book of hope and deliverance.

            We here felt in our hearts the fear of the people of Israel in their time of struggle in the last several weeks; we felt an extended mood of Tisha B Av over us. We also watched as Jews in Europe were attacked. They were attacked  by Moslems in Europe, but we could understand that Moslems  would  with fellow Moslems. They were attacked  not by neo-Nazis, and this too  we could understand because they were being  true to their miserable roots. But we were shocked and pained by the attacks by the enlightened and supposedly tolerant Left, the Greens, the Socialists, the left-over Communists, who were only too eager to blame the Jews. We felt shock here too, when entertainers and celebrities were only too eager to jump on the band-wagon to condemn first, ask questions later. We felt shock when UN, European and even US officials rushed to condemn Israeli bombs on schools even before the evidence came in if the bombs were indeed Israeli or Hamas. We were let down by news correspondents who only after they left Gaza had the courage to announce that they cooperated with Hamas by refusing to show scenes of rockets firing from schools and hospitals.  We were even more stunned to see that the most powerful support came from Israel’s Arab neighbors, Egypt and Saudi Arabia!

             Now, there is a cease-fire with  the hopes of a working solution to the threat of the Hamas gangs who rule by terror in what was the historic Land  of the Philistines, Gaza.

             ( PS. The word  Palestine, is taken from Philistia, the same Gaza Strip invaded by foreign Mediterranean Sea Peoples, not indigenous to the region,  around the same time as the Exodus. The Roman Empire imposed the term “Palestine” on the former Kingdom of Judea in a willful measure to erase any identity of the ethnic Jews in what is today Israel.)

            After Tisha B Av, comes then, the hope. Hence, the reading from Isaiah , Nahamu : Comfot ye, Comfort ye, is so important. We all so desperately need that message.

            Where is the comfort in Isaiah?

            It is in proposing the possibility of a new social order on earth the likes of which had never been imagined before. All of the religious and political movements of the Western world, would be driven by that vision .This phenomenon of modern society, of trying to achieve the end of history and the perfection of human society, is the ultimate outcome of the teachings of Isaiah, the preaching of a Messianic era.

            Who was he?

            To be fully fair, today, it is commonly assumed that he was at least two, if not three people. The Isaiah of “Nahamu Nahamu”, Comfort Ye, Comfort ye” that we read today, preached   two centuries after the Isaiah wrote Chapter 1. This Second Isaiah is preaching, challenging and encouraging the Jews who have now been brought back to the Land of Israel before the destruction of the Temple. The first Isaiah, of whom I will speak, is preaching and warning sometime in the 8^th century before the common era as the northern  Kingdom, Israel, is falling, long before the southern kingdom, Judea, and the Temple fall.

      Isaiah was a court prophet in Jerusalem, continually and regularly in contact with the king. Perhaps he was of royal blood, and possibly even the grandson of a king of Judea. Certainly, he had ready access to all the nobility, spoke to them personally, and was the advisor to King Hezekiah.

     As a result of his background, Isaiah, more than any other prophet spoke in monarchial tones, envisioning God as enthroned King. It was out of this milieu that his vision of the ideal future king grew.

            Isaiah was not the first prophet to make mention of a redemption or an end of days.

         Amos referred to the "Day of the Lord" as a common folk belief in ultimate national triumph. In the words of Amos, however, it was to be a day of ultimate reckoning.

            Some of Isaiah’s words also appear in the preaching of Micah, a contemporary.

            Isaiah, however, was the first to give this concept its full expression

            (Chapter 11) A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
    from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
. . .

⁶ The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling^[a] together;
    and a little child will lead them.
⁷ The cow will feed with the bear,
    their young will lie down together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
⁸ The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
⁹ They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

¹⁰ In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. 

            It is this vision, that one day, a descendant of King David, the ideal King of the past, would once again sit on the throne in Jerusalem, bring back all the lost and scattered tribes of Israel, and usher in a universal era of peace for Jews and for all nations around. An ancient tradition even stated that the Messiah would be born on Tisha B’Av—the redemption would come out of the depths of sorrow.

               The utterance of this statement marks a turning point in the history of Jews and of mankind.

            From this moment on, we learned to move from the past and look to the future.

   No longer was the golden age in the past, and the future bleak. The time to come held out hope and promise of an ideal soon to be attained.

            Hope is one of the most powerful of drugs. It can keep us alive. It can also drive us with     impatience. No longer could one sit patiently, knowing that there was no choice; no longer would one just fold awaiting disaster.

             Thus, Jews, Christians and Moslems have for the past two thousand years and more been looking for the Messiah to come; for Christians and Moslems ,it is a second time around, for us, the first time. ( The Second Coming of Jesus is significant in Christian belief and the return of Isa is an essential step in the final triumph of Islam in the end of days).

            So, we, Jews wait, in anticipation. We marked off the calendars. In all generations, we set dates for the redemption. Speculation on the nature of the end of days was rampant.

       Havlei Mashiach, it was called. The world is going through birth pangs to-give forth a Messiah

            What would it be like?

            The youth would revolt against their elders, insult them, make them stand up while they sit. The generation would be dog-faced and. arrogant. Places of study would become places of ill repute.  Sound just like today, doesn't it.  Every generation felt that it was the last, that it was experiencing the birth pangs of the Messiah.

            Would- be-Messiahs arose in every generation.

            Bar Kochba led to the death of half a million Jews at the hands of the

Romans.

            Aboulafia was jailed. when he tried to convert the Pope.

            Shabbtai Zvi ,became a Moslem and dragged many  of his followers into Islam with him.

            Jacob Frank, the most bizarre of all said that all Jews must be sinners before the Messiah will come.

            But even as the idea of an ideal “ Once and future king” created so many crack pots and delusionists, it served to keep the Jewish people alive. Even in modern times, as Jews abandoned traditional belief, we stuck to the Messianic ideal and translated it into aspirations for  all the new movements of the last two centuries.

            Liberalism and Rationalism, then the Nationalisms of the lands of our exile, then Socialism, and Communism were new Messianic movements for Jews to latch on to. In many ways, Zionism and the birth of Israel has served as the new manifestation for us of the ancient Messiah ideal, but we know to take it realistically as a project, not as a mindless Utopia..

            It powered European Civilization as well. It was transformed into the idea of Utopia, into the idea of Progress, into the ideas of the American and French. Revolutions which set in motion the events of our times, both for good and for bad. To paraphrase Charles Dickens, It was the best of ideas and the worst of ideas.

      There is one great caveat that the Rabbis brought to the discussion of the Messianic era or King: Ain Dohin et Ha Ketz-Don't hasten the end. Don't speed things up by force. The Messiah cannot be created by “ Reigns of terror” or by the fanatical mobs. It will come, of its own, in God’s time, as long as it takes,”af alpi she-yitmameha”, even as long as he may delay.

            We do our part, we build and repair the world, Tikun olam, restoring the world, one stone and one brick at a time, encouraged and buoyed by a faith that there is a ultimate redemption.

            We go back to Isaiah. In the first chapter, he warned of impending doom for the wayward of Israel. But already in the second chapter he looked to the future:         

                 In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
and all nations will stream to it.

. . .The law will go out from Zion,
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
⁴ He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
 and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.

That is the Messianic ideal we are still hoping and praying for, speedily, in our day.

            It is therefore appropriate for us, that the next week on the Jewish calendar, is Tu B’Av, the 15^th of Av, the happiest day of ancient Jerusalem, when young men and women would find their matches.  We move on the calendar, from mourning to celebrating. So may it always be. Amen.

            

Hamas and Evil Disguised as Righteousness

Hamas and Evil Disguised as Righteousness

             As you know about Jewish jokes, many of them are funny and make you want to cry. So I share this one with you a propos of the current situation in Israel.

             A visitor came to Israel and saw the Western Wall. Not being

too   versed  in religious aspects, he inquired of another tourist about the significance of   the wall.  The other tourist explained, "This is a sacred wall. If you pray to it, God may hear you."

       The visitor walked close to the wall and started to pray.

        "Dear  Lord,"he said, "bring sunshine and warmth to this beautiful land."

         A commanding voice answered, "I will, my son."

         The visitor said, "Bring prosperity to this land."

          "I will, my son."

          "Let Jews and Arabs live together in peace, dear Lord."

          The voice answered, “ Dir redt zu dem vant-"You're talking to a wall!.".

In the last weeks, we have  watched as our family in Israeli have been, literally, talking to a wall.

            In the Jewish calendar, we are in the period leading up to the Ninth of Av, so we are generally in a mood of blue funk, even when nothing is wrong. How much more so than when we are worried about Israel in a shooting war.            

            In this mood, I wish to bring to mind a popular song, some years, that went: to everything, turn, turn, for every season, turn turn, For everything, a time and place, under heaven.

            It then went on with a litany: A time to be born , a time to die, a time to laugh a time to cry.

            As we listened to the song, we recognized, of course, that the singers had taken the verses of Ecclesiastes, the third chapter and set it to music.

            La kol, zman va et , lachol hefetz tachat hashamayim.

            A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven.

            A time for being born, and a time for dying and so forth

            The end of the litany is

            “A time for war and a time for peace."

            The wise man. Koheleth told us, knows not to make sweeping generalizations. Vague platitudes, broad sweet sounding phrases or blanket condemnations can not be applied to all situations. There is a time for weeping and there is a time for laughing.

            How many times have we seen a time for laughing, only to have it overturned in the blink of an eye. The euphoria of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty was swept away by the First Lebanon War; the euphoria of the PLO_-Israel  accords in 1993 gave way to a series of bloody massive murder of Israelis by bombs on buses and cafes. The last chance for an agreement between Arafat and Barak was soon upended by the brutal 2^nd Intifada. The voluntary withdrawal  from the Gaza strip by Israel in 2005, with money invested from abroad, the chance for open borders, open harbors and an infrastructure for agriculture given by Israel—upended again and again by Hamas.

            There is a time for loving and a time for hating, a time for peace and a time for war.

            The stance of the moralist calling for Israel to exercise restraint, or to cease-fire unconditionally is inherently immoral for it allows free reign to the human capacity to evil without check. It is one thing to avoid war, it is one thing to pursue peace with an enemy in the hopes of turning an enemy to a friend. It is another thing to face an enemy that hides it weapons underground but puts it civilians on roof-tops in the line of fire , an enemy that has been seen to hide its headquarters in a  hospital and its rockets in a school building.

            At the core of the rioting is not the anger of Palestinians of Gaza towards Israelis because they are occupying them. Israel stopped occupying Gaza almost a decade ago.

            It is true that the Palestinian Authority, in the West Bank, what we historically call Judea and Samaria, have made their accommodation with Israel, a begrudging accommodation. So ,too, for sure, have the Egyptians and Jordanians and even the Saudis, who fear the Islamicist or Salafist jihadi movements, such as the Moslem Brotherhood, Al_Qaeda, or the very worst, the Islamic Caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

            Israel, for these entities, is for now, the enemy of my enemy. Gaza is very much so in the hands of such Salafists, known by the abbreviations in Arabic, Hamas, "Islamic Resistance Movement"). (Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah)

            We need to know what they think about Israel and about Jews, even though they declare that they are tolerant of Jews. When speaking to the Western public, they sometimes try to cover up. The diplomats who speak glibly of “ even –handedness” also cover it up. However, in their official pronouncements inside Gaza, they take the words of this platform very seriously. Here are just some of the comments about Jews:

. . . the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.  . . .”

. . .Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.

"I swear by the holder of Mohammed's soul that I would like to invade and be killed for the sake of Allah, then invade and be killed, and then invade again and be killed." (As related by al-Bukhari and Moslem). . . .

“With their money they [that is, Jews] stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.”

“There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.”

“. . . They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. "May the cowards never sleep." (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp )

If any of you have ever read the text of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or Hitler’s Mein Kampf, you see that Hamas is all of these ideas supercharged on steroids.

      We know that diplomats believe these words can be dismissed as mere puffery. They take at face value the statements made by Hamas leaders of their respect for Jews at face value. However, founding documents mean what they state. When Nazi Germany began World War II, Hitler put aside his avowed hatred of the Soviet Union and authorized the notorious Ribbentrop- Molotov Treaty. The profession of  peace was swiftly put aside in the blitzkrieg that swept across to Stalingrad the moment Hitler saw his chance. Fanatics mean what they say.

It is with this gang that so-called humanitarians ask for negotiations!

            So what can be the recourse of the people of Israel?

                       

The same book of Ecclesiastes says:

            Al tehe Tzadik harbe ve alterasha. Do not be overly righteous and do not be evil.

            The first part is al Tehey Zadik Harbeh-- Do not be overly righteous, or you will be dumbfounded. Do not let the wicked get a way. Do not allow the perpetrators of evil to be rewarded for their deeds. You will pay a horrible price for it in the long run.

            The second half is also significant. It also says V’ Al terashah .Do not be wicked, lamah tamut belo itcha Why should you die before your time. Do not let the need for justice become an excuse for wickedness, for it , too can only be your undoing.

            The recourse of the people of Israel is that which was clear to our sages--It is not to roll over and give the perpetrators of evil what they want, for appeasement can only breed further evil.

            It is also not to descend to the level of the perpetrators, for that, too, is the path of destruction. As the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Col. Richard Kemp, stated just this week, “No other army in the world has ever done more than Israel is doing now to save the lives of innocent civilians in a combat zone.”( http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4548821,00.html )

            The people of Israel now face the difficult challenge of continuing in the struggle for peace, as they seek and find legitimate partners for peace, all the while taking their right and due course to uproot those responsible. It is a fact that when the Israelis went into the West Bank towns and put down the Second Intifada, they set the stage for a Palestinian Authority with whom accommodation, if not yet real peace, is possible.

            I don’t see any alternative for Israel, for its survival, as the only one homeland for the Jewish people , other than to grind down an enemy who is willing to fight to the last drop of someone else’s child,  and defang this gang of Nazis of its rockets and its tunnels. Perhaps then, the people who care more for their children than for their hatred will be ready to lead to a new world and a new future.

            We know that the people of Israel have no other recourse. Colonizers, like the French in Algeria, could always go home when defeated. The Jews, rightful historic heirs to the Land of Israel, not colonizers, have no home to go to other than Israel.

            Therefore, to Hamas we must quote the verse from the Quran that recognizes the promise of the Land of Israel to the Jews:

            And thereafter We [Allah] 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.'" [Qur'an 17:104] (http://www.templemount.org/quranland.html by Shaykh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, head of the Italian Muslim Assembly).

            For the people of Israel we have are the words that we say at the end of today’s Torah reading, when we conclude the Book of Bamidbar, Numbers:

Chazak, Chazak, V nitchazek.Be strong, be strong, and may we be strengthened!