NOT EVERYONE IS INCLUDED IN THE FOUR SPECIES

Rav Binyamin Kahane Sukkot Not Everyone Is Included In The Four Species

The Writings of Rav Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane HY"D- Dvar Torah in honor of Sukkot דבר תורה לכבוד חג הסוכות

NOT EVERYONE IS INCLUDED IN THE FOUR SPECIES

Organs of power at home joining the side of our enemy requires us to take another look at the known midrash about how the "four species" symbolize different levels in Am Yisrael.

It is impossible to ignore the growing and obscene phenomenon, where Jews in the upper echelons of Israeli society mobilize time and time again to further the cause of our bitter enemies. Whenever possible, they rise from within us, under the orchestration of the media, to demoralize the nation during its fight for existence, while furthering the interests of the enemy. The question is: How should we relate to these people? Are they one of us, or are they "beyond the pale"?

THE FOUR SPECIES: A PARABLE FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE

One of the famous midrashim in connection to Sukkot, compares the four species to the unity of Israel:
Just as the Etrog has both taste and smell, so too do the Jewish People have within it people who have Torah and good deeds:

Lulav...has taste and no smell, and so too there are those who have Torah and no good deeds...

Just as the Hadas has smell and no taste...(there are those) with good deeds and no Torah...

Just as the "Arava" has no smell and no taste, so (there are those) who have no Torah and no good deeds.

And what does the Almighty do to them? To destroy them would be impossible! But rather the Almighty said that he will tie them all up in one unit and they will atone for one another". (Vayikra Raba, 30:12)

In view of how we opened this article, this amazing midrash mentioning how the Aravot are held tightly together with the rest of Am Yisrael, seems to shed light on the subject, and must be further analyzed.

WICKED, BUT WANT CONNECTION

The worst kind of Jew spoken of here is the Arav, who is not destroyed, because the righteous atone for him. They are Jews "who have no Torah and no good deeds." True, we are not talking about the cream of the crop - but we are talking about Jews who are ready to be part of the union of Am Yisrael, connected to them so that the righteous can atone for them. We are not talking about Jews, who G-d forbid, sever themselves from the collective and detest their own Jewishness. We are not discussing Jews who the sages spoke of when they said that in the days of the Messiah, there will be Jews who will identify with and join forces with the enemy. About such Jews, the above midrash does not speak. On the contrary. The idea of the midrash is two-fold. On the one hand, G-d does not desire to see the wicked of Israel destroyed. One the other hand, the wicked mentioned here are those willing to join and be a part of Klal Yisrael. Only they merit this special atonement. It is an atonement reserved for one who feels belonging to the collective of the Jewish Nation.

It must be known: Relatively speaking, there really are only a few Jews who seek to cut themselves off from Am Yisrael. In Israel today, this miniscule band of haters, though they wield tremendous control, are a tiny minority. Through all the generations, and especially in this final era before the complete redemption, there were always Jews who took themselves out of the collective, and deep inside of them, identify more with the goyim than with the Jews.

SOME JEWS ARE BARRED

And so, it is a great mistake to identify such people as the "Arava" described in the midrash. for while the Arava is still only an Arava, it still has a belonging to the Jewish collective. While it has no taste or smell, at least it does not give off a putrid or damaging smell. The Arava sees himself as part of the four species and does not nullify his Jewishness, nor does he want to be like a gentile. By this very fact, he is able to absorb within him the smell and taste of the others. We must also remember that there are certain things that disqualify the four species from being Kosher. And so, though we are never happy about disqualifying a Jew, there are those who are rejected, and not tied together with the rest of the four species.

The nation is willing to absorb the individual sinners, and to cover and atone for them so that they will not perish with their sins. (Even though this causes us great suffering as a people). It is ready to hold on tightly to them with all its might in order to unite them, for we Jews are all guarantors for one another. But the nation is not ready to carry under its wing he who in his very essence is an aberrant traitor. Such people remove themselves from the Sukkah of Israel, and as much as it hurts to say, they are beyond the pale for us.

Chag Sameach!

Please continue your prayers for Rivka bat Talya the 20-year old daughter of Binyamin and Talya Kahane, may G-d avenge their blood.

Anyone reading this Rabbi Meir Kahane or Rabbi Binyamin Kahane  article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles and would like to be, please contact me at:

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AMMAN AND JERUSALEM

Beyond Words

Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,

1960-1990 

Volume 1

Amman and Jerusalem

November 22, 1968

There is great agitation and indignation within the United Nations today.  It all centers around demands for return by Israel of the land won from Jordan last year.  What land?  The area that is commonly known as the West Bank of the Jordan.  There is really more than a little irony in this demand.  Indeed, it approaches the heights of chutzpah.

It is not only that a state which attempted to destroy another one and lost has the gall to demand terms more properly suited to a victor.  It is not even the fact that the land Jordan demands was never legally and rightfully annexed by it in the first place.  It is really the fact that the state that calls itself Jordan is an entity that is illegal, per se.

As the great holy war swung into its full gear, the little king of the little Kingdom called Jordan began to rain his shells into Jewish Jerusalem.  His troops crossed the armistice line and seized territory in the no-man’s land in the city.  His words and acts were thrown into the battle to wipe out Israel and decimate its inhabitants.

Alas, Allah was unkind to Russia and the king’s legion, and uniforms flung aside, aircraft burning, shoes cast away – the Jordanians fled east.  From the plunderer came forth plunder and the Israelis swept to the Jordan to put an end to the insanity of a border that, in one place, was only fifteen miles from the Arab devil to the blue Mediterranean Sea.

The land that was taken, however, was not “Jordanian.”  It was part of pre-1948 Palestine; it was part or Eretz Yisroel, it was Jewish soil from the time of Abraham.

Here was the Old City of Jerusalem where Abraham brought his son Isaac for the Akeda; here was the city where David and his dynasty ruled; here was the sacred Temple Mount with its Western Wall waiting to be redeemed.

Here was Bethlehem were Rachel wept for her children on the way to Efrat.  Here was Hebron where the Patriarchs impatiently lay in anticipation of a speedy redemption.  Here was Jericho where the walls crashed down to herald the inheritance of the Holy Land by the Egyptian exodees.  Here was Judea and Samaria and all the places and sites that have become familiar to a Jewish and non-Jewish Biblical world.

Here was Jewish Eretz Yisroel, a land that had been reluctantly left outside the borders of a Jewish state in 1948 as the Jews of Palestine sorrowfully agreed to temporarily accept partition of their land in their desperate need of some land to house the displaced of Europe and the oppressed of greater Arabia.

But the agreement was conditional and the Arabs, predictably, relieved the Jewish state of any need to adhere to that condition.  The Arabs in psychopathic consistency refused any idea of compromise and rejected partition.  Their armies rushed in to battle the yahud, and the U.N. sat in an impotence that was destined to become its favorite pose.

It was Jewish blood that won and secured a Jewish state, and the plan that was rejected by the Arabs was buried, unmourned and unlamented.  And the West Bank of the Jordan? Under the U.N. plan it was to be given to an Arab Palestine state; under the Arab plan it to be given to an Arab Palestine state; under no circumstances did anyone foresee a usurper Jordan annexing it.

And yet, that is exactly what happened.  Possessed of a British-trained and run Arab Legion, King Abdullah proved to be the only foe that Israel could not overcome.  His army seized the West Bank and Old Jerusalem and decided that Israel would not have it and neither would an Arab Palestine be created.  From now on, it was to be part of Jordan.

No one accept this.  The U.N. denied the legality of the move; the Israelis refused to recognize it and the Arab states themselves fumed at the annexation.

On December 13, 1948, Egypt’s King Farouk served notice that he did not recognize Jordan’s right to the West Bank.  The Arab League threatened expulsion of Jordan from the body (Abdullah yawned and welcomed the move).  Faced with a fait accompli, the Arab League never did recognize the grab but adopted a resolution on May 13, 1949 “to treat the Arab part of Palestine annexed by Jordan as a trust in its hands until the Palestine case is fully solved in the interests of its inhabitants.”

So much for the Jordanian claim to the West Bank.  The land it claims is Jewish land, sorrowfully given up in return for a peace and friendship the Arabs never gave.  Their rejection of the latter doomed the former, and the land returned to tis true owners.

What is more important, however, is the need to examine the very basis of the travesty that calls itself Jordan.  In itself it is an illegality, a travesty of justice, a robbery of Jewish possessions.

There never was Jordan until perfidious Albion – the British Colonial Ministry – decided to invent one, and the story is one that more should know about.

When the Balfour Declaration backed the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, there was never any country that was known as Jordan.  The historic boundaries of ancient Israel included the east bank of the Jordan, and Balfour himself made this clear in a memorandum dated August 11, 1919:

 “Palestine should extend into the lands lying east of the Jordan?”

What happened?

A desert chieftain named Abdullah ibn-Hussein and his brother Feisal, fleeing the Arabian wrath of Ibn Saud, were offered in 1920 the thrones of Iraq and Syria, respectively.  Unfortunately for the Arabs, the French, who were given mandatory powers in Syria by the League of Nations, informed Feisal that he was most unwelcome in Damascus.  The Arab took the Gallic hint and departed

Since both brothers were British pawns in the struggle by the Colonial Office to make the Middle East British, Feisal was given the throne of Iraq by the British Foreign Office, while Abdullah was left holding an empty kingdom-bag.

Faced with this, Abdullah began to make all manner of bellicose sounds about marching on Syria and ousting the French.  While Paris hardly lost sleep, the British did not relish the idea of a confrontation between their puppet and the French and so, in 1921, Winston Churchill met with Abdullah and offered him an annual subsidy and established a new country to be known as “Transjordan” for Abdullah to rule.

It little mattered that such a step was illegal and that it robbed Jewish Palestine of a major share of its land.  Whitehall proposed and Whitehall disposed.

Transjordan came into being, a comic-opera illegality, ruled in theory by Abdullah but in practice by London.

This was the state that on May 31, 1967 signed a defense agreement with Nasser to destroy Israel; this was the state that declared through its king, on that same day: “With the help of G-d and the solidarity of the Arabs we will see the victory of truth over the lie-s of the enemy”; this is the state whose radio declared during the terrible days of June 1967.

“How long did we wait and prepare for these hours of honor and for the day the Arabs would advance . . . Be ready to meet on the soil of eternal Falastin [Palestine].” (June 1, 1967)

“Free citizens, heroic sons of Jordan.  The hoped-for moment has arrived.  Forward to arms, to battle, to new pages of glory.  To regain our rights, to smash the aggressor, to revenge.”

                                                                                                                        (June 5, 1967, 0915 hours)

“We are living through the most sacred hours of life . . . Long did we wait for this battle in order to erase our shame.”

                                                                                                            (The Premier, June 5)

“Today the soldiers of Hussein have brought doom to the Jewish strongholds in Jerusalem . . . They destroyed the Knesset and have liberated the holy soil from the Zionists.  The heroic soldiers are marching forward towards Tel Aviv.”

                                                                                                            (June 5, 1800 hours)

“Froward toward your meeting with Rabin in Tel Aviv.”

                                                 (June 5, 1155 hours)

Rabin was waiting, but the Jordanians never came.  They busily were heading in the opposite direction, where they sit today, and demand the return of a territory that was never theirs to a state that was illegal from its inception.

Please continue your prayers for Rivka bat Talya the 20-year old daughter of Binyamin and Talya Kahane, may G-d avenge their blood.

If you did not receive this article personally and would like to be on my weekly Rabbi Meir Kahane article e-mail list, contact me at: BarbaraAndChaim@gmail.com

To view articles written by Rabbi Meir Kahane and his son Rabbi Binyamin Kahane go to blog:

www.barbaraginsberg-kahane.blogspot.com

To view Rabbi Meir Kahane site of You Tubes, Videos. CDs posted by Michael Miller go to: Or Haraayon אור הרעיון Jewish Idea הרעיון היהודי    link: www.youtube.com/c/kahane22chai

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ELUL 1977

From Barbara Ginsberg’s Desktop

 

R A B B I   M E I R   K A H A N E

ON JEWS AND JUDAISM

2 Elul 5737 - September 2, 1977

Elul

The Jewish calendar is full of notations, red letter days that are meant to be both particular reminders as well as part of a uniform one:  time is passing; the sands of life have run out just a bit more; the beard is a little grayer and the limbs just a touch heavier.  Time.  The Jewish calendar is a watchman of time, ram’s horn that blows not once a year but every time that a new time cycle begins.

Every week is marked by a Sabbath that notes not only the end of the week passed but the beginning of a new one. It is both a reminder of seven full days passed out of our life – so soon! – as well as the opportunity to make the next period fuller, more meaningful, a reason for being.

Every month is marked by a Rosh Chodesh, the consecration of the new beginning of yet another lunar cycle.  The wheel of heaven has revolved yet another thirty days – so soon! – and we are that much older.  The L-rd now gives us another month to prove that we are also that much wiser.  It is not only another month, it is a new month.   Above all, it is called Rosh Chodesh, the “head” of the month.  Is there perhaps here a hint to see how much wisdom has filled our heads during the mistakes and sins of the past one…?

And every year has its Rosh Hashana, that peculiarly Jewish day in which there are no parties and drinking and abandonment of restraint; in which there is no hilarious laughter and noise that is a frantic and frenetic attempt to convince all (and oneself) that he is happy; there is no frantic clutching at pleasure before it escapes and – worse  - before I pass on; too soon, too soon.  There is Rosh Hashana, the time past.  Another year gone by – already?  So soon! – and it is a time to see what the gray hairs and the added wrinkles and the slower reflexes have taught us.  Rosh Hashana is one step closer to the gateway out of this world and into the next one.  It is a time to rehearse the speech that we will make – all of us – some day, before the Supremest of Courts, as we attempt to explain the meaning of our lives below.

Life is too short for fools.  It is too long for those who know it was not given for happiness (if that comes, how wonderful, but how often does it appear, only in insignificant measures and at rare times, as drops of rain that fall on a parched desert leaving no impact, changing nothing so that the traveler never knows it fell).  Life was given for holiness and sanctity, so that we might rise above ourselves; so that we might consecrate and hallow that animalism within us that threatens at every moment to escape and express itself in selfishness, ego and greed – sins that are themselves only the corridors to the crimes of cruelty and hurting others.  Life is not a happy thing – it is a beautiful thing, and when one becomes the artist and artisan of that beauty that is called holiness, when one practices the supreme holiness that comes of loving and giving of oneself.

“Ani  l’dodi  v’dodi li…”  “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine…”  the words of the greatest of love poems, Song of Songs; great because it is that purest of love, between the Almighty and the House of Israel.  Consider them, for do they not contain the essence and the secret of true love?  “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”  When I am my beloved’s, when I give to her and give of myself and live to do for her and make her happy – then I am guaranteed that she is mine for she will, in turn, be doing the same for me.  The lovers who think of giving to each other must receive from each other.  This is love, this desire to give, this desire to sacrifice and do for the other.

Not for nothing was the Song of Songs called by the incomparable Rabbi Akiva, “the Holy of Holies” of all the books of the Bible.  For the kind of love expressed in it IS holiness.  Holiness is to escape from the selfishness and greed of the animal; it is to smash the passions and desires of the ego; it is to master the will that makes man seek only his own gratification.  And is not love just that, in practice?  Is not love exactly that, if it is true love?

And not for no reason did the rabbis see in the Hebrew letters of the month of Elul the first letters of  “Ani l’dodi v’dodi li – I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”  Elul is the month of Tshuva, return and introspection.  It is the month of scraping away the ego that has settled and crusted on our hearts and souls.  If Passover calls for searching out he leaven in the home, Elul decrees removing it – the yeasty and bloated ego – from the soul.  It is a time to note the calendar, the graying and aging, and to realize: Not for nonsense was I born and not with nonsense must they bury me.

Be good.  Love.  Love selflessly; cease speaking evil, cease thinking evil; cease searching out evil in your fellow human beings.  Cease seeking to grow at the expense of others.  For one who climbs on top of the man he has just chopped down is not taller.  He is the same dwarf standing on his victim’s height.  Be wary lest you hurt the one you love.  Think before you act towards the other person.  Be good as a person, as an individual, and your part of the world will become holy.  Then, if others emulate you, the world will suddenly and automatically turn beautiful and hallowed.  It is Elul.  Think of your beloved – all the people of the earth – and think of your particular beloved.  Give of yourself and you will receive that which no amount of grasping and scheming can ever bring you: self-respect.  Love the other and you will learn to like yourself.  Be holy, for the One who made you is Holy and for this He placed you on this earth.  It is another Elul, yet another one.  How many more are left?

Please continue your prayers for Rivka bat Talya the 20-year old daughter of Binyamin and Talya Kahane, may G-d avenge their blood.

Ayone reading this Rabbi Meir Kahane or Rabbi Binyamin Kahane  article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles and would like to be, please contact me at:

barbaraandchaim@gmail.com

To view articles written by Rabbi Meir Kahane and Rabbi Binyamin Kahane go to blog:

www.barbaraginsberg-kahane.blogspot.com

 To view Rabbi Meir Kahane site of You Tubes, Videos. CDs posted by Michael Miller go to: Or Haraayon אור הרעיון Jewish Idea הרעיון היהודי    link: www.youtube.com/c/kahane22chai

Facebook Links:  Michael ben-Ari- Jewish Strength:

https://www.facebook.com/…/Michael-Ben-Ari…/1531135183822770

Barbara Ginsberg – www.facebook.com/barbara.ginsberg.78