Fear, The New Zionism - 1986

 

Beyond Words

1985-1990

Volume 5 

FEAR, THE NEW ZIONISM

Written January 10, 1896

If there is anything left of secular Zionism to prove its success in the wake of its ideological tatters and bankruptcy, it can only be the claim that it took the Jew out of the ghetto, out of the exile, out of fear and terror, and created a state of security and safety for the Jewish people.  Alas, the truth is that what has occurred is that Israel is in the process of creating a new Minsk, Pinsk, Sa’ana and Brooklyn.  Fear has become a permanent resident of Israel, moving into the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of Jews who fear the night, fear to hitch rides, fear to drive in the evening through Arab villages, fear to allow their children to play alone in the streets.

Four Jews have been stabbed within two months, within the Old City of Jerusalem, capital of Israel, home of Teddy Kollek and his Arab friends.  One was Yossi Martin, a tank commander, whose girlfriend blurted, “I will never again enter the Old City.”  Fear. It is hard to find Jews who are prepared to use the Damascus Gate to walk to the Western Wall.  Fear.  The Jerusalem weekly paper Kol Ha’ir printed a survey asking, “Should we continue going to East Jerusalem?” Fear.     

As yet another soldier, waiting to hitch a ride, was murdered in cold blood (just three kilometers from his Petach Tikvah home), the response from hysterical politicians was, “compel public transportation to give rides to (female soldiers!”  Which led, of course, to outrage and the brave new Zionist demand, “free bus transportation to male soldiers, too.”  And, since this leaves civilians to the pleasure of the Arabs who move freely and without fear about Israel, naturally a columnist in the Histradrut paper Dvar wrote an article, “Home Before Dark,” in which he outlined his terror, driving through Jerusalem late at night.

That secular Zionism from its beginning was the bankrupt and naked of all ideological meaning was obvious to me long ago.  But here, we see in the State of Israel, that rose in order to sanctify G-d’s name through Jewish power and strength and victory, the exact opposite – Hillul Hashem, desecration of G-d’s name – as the same fear and terror of the Exile is recreated in Hebrew on the soil of the Holy land.

The nations, the gentile, understand Jewish destiny and truth only in terms of power and victory.  If for two millennia they were able to persecute, trample, humiliate, burn, gas and massacre the Jew – to them this was proof not only of Jewish impotence, but of the very non-existence of the G-d of the Jewish people!  Defeat, humiliation and weakness of the Jew have always been the yardsticks of gentile desecration of G-d’s name, whereas power and victory of the Jew over his enemies have always been proof to the gentile that the G-d of Israel is One and the only one.  Kiddush Hashem, sanctification!

The pitiful secularists of Israel, joined by the ghettoized ritualists, have institutionalized fear in Israel.  They desecrate G-d’s name daily.  The answer to Arab arrogance, to attacks on Jews, stoning of Jews, stabbing of Jews, murder of Jews – is not to have Jews fearfully ride public buses or use the “Jewish” Jaffa Gate rather than the “Arab” Damascus Gate in the Old City.  It is not to tell Jews to keep a watchful eye out for bombs and explosive devices.  This is the policy of Minsk and Brownsville, Brooklyn.  This is pandering to the fear and humiliation of the ghetto and Exile we left.  This is the reincarnation of Hillul Hashem in the Land of Israel, the Land of Kiddush Hashem.

The answer to the Arab who desecrates G-d’s name by attacking Jews is to rise up with the Jewish wrath of G-d and drive the contemptuous Arab from the land.  For in the end, the removal of the Arab is the removal of desecration.  Jewish power and strength and pride and confidence – walking with the G-d of Israel – are the Jewish reply to Both Arab and Hellenized Jew.

Anyone reading this Rav Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rav Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at:

BarbaraAndChaim@gmail.com

To view previously e-mailed Rabbi Kahane articles go to:

www.barbaraginsberg-barbara.blogspot.com

Down With Chanukah 1972

DOWN WITH CHANUKAH 

Written in December 15, 1972

Rabbi Meir Kahane Writings (5732-33) (1971-73)

If I were a Reform rabbi; if I were a leader of the Establishment whose money and prestige have succeeded in capturing for him the leadership and voice of American Jewry; if I were one of the members of the Israeli Government’s ruling group; if I were an enlightened sophisticated, modern Jewish intellectual, I would climb the barricades and join in battle against the most dangerous of all Jewish holidays – Chanukah.

It is a measure of the total ignorance of the world Jewish community that there is no holiday that is more universally celebrated than the “Feast of Lights”, and it is an equal measure of the intellectual dishonesty and of Jewish leadership that it plays along with the lie.  For if ever there was a holiday that stands for everything that the mass of world Jewry and their leadership has rejected – it is this one.  If one would find an event that is truly rooted in everything that Jews of our times and their leaders have rejected and, indeed, attacked – it is this one.  If there is any holiday that is more “unJewish” in the sense of our modern beliefs and practices – I do not know of it.

The Chanukah that has erupted unto the world Jewish scene in all its childishness, asininity, shallowness, ignorance and fraud – is not the Chanukah of reality.  The Chanukah that came into vogue because of Jewish parents – in their vapidness – needed something to counteract Christmas; that exploded in a show of “we-can-have-lights-just-as-our-goyish-neighbors” and in an effort to reward our spoiled children with eight gifts instead of the poor Christian one; the Chanukah that the Temple, under its captive rabbi, turned into a school pageant so that the beaming parents might think that the Religious School is really successful instead of the tragic joke and waste that it really is; the Chanukah that speaks of Jewish Patrick Henrys giving-me-liberty-or death and the pictures of Maccabees as great liberal saviors who fought so that the kibbutzim might continue to be free to preach their Marx and eat their ham, that the split-level dwellers of suburbia might be allowed to violate their Sabbath in perfect freedom and the Reform and Conservative Temples continue the fight for civil rights for Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Jane Fonda, is not remotely connected with reality. 

This is NOT the Chanukah of our ancestors, of the generations of Jews of Eastern Europe and Yemen and Morocco and the crusades and Spain and Babylon.  It is surely not the Chanukah for which the Maccabees themselves died.  Truly, could those whom we honor so munificently, return and see what Chanukah has become, they might very well begin a second Maccabean revolt.  For the life that we Jews lead today was the very cause, the REAL reason for the revolt of the Jews “in those days in our times.”  

What happened in that era more than 2000 years ago?  What led a handful of Jews to rise up in violence against the enemy?  And precisely who WAS the enemy?  What were they fighting FOR and who were they fighting AGAINST?

           

For years, the people of Judea had been the vassals of Greece.  True independence as a state had been unknown for all those decades and, yet, the Jews did not rise up in revolt.  It was only when the Greek policy shifted from mere political control to one that attempted to suppress the Jewish religion that the revolt erupted in all its bloodiness.  It was not mere liberty that led to the Maccabean uprising that we so passionately applaud.  What we are really cheering is a brave group of Jews who fought and plunged Judea into a bloodbath for the right to observe the Sabbath, to follow the laws of kashruth, to obey the laws of the Torah.  IN A WORD EVERYTHING ABOUT CHANUKAH THAT WE COMMEMORATE AND TEACH OUR CHILDREN TO COMMEMORATE ARE THINGS WE CONSIDER TO BE OUTMODED, MEDIEVAL AND CHILDISH!

           

At best, then, those who fought and died for Chanukah were naïve and obscurantist.  Had we lived in those days we would certainly not have done what they did for everyone knows that the laws of the Torah are not really Divine but only the products of evolution and men (do not the Reform, Reconstructionist and large parts of the Conservative movements write this daily?)  Surely we would not have fought for that which we violate every day of our lives!  No, at best Chanukah emerges as a needless holiday if not a foolish one.  Poor Hannah and her seven children; poor Mattathias and Judah; poor well meaning chaps all but hopelessly backward and utterly unnecessary sacrifices.

           

But there is more.  Not only is Chanukah really a foolish and unnecessary holiday, it is also one that is dangerously fanatical and illiberal. The first act of rebellion, the first enemy who fell at the hands of the brave Jewish heroes whom our delightful children portray so cleverly in their Sunday and religious school pageants, was NOT a Greek.  He was a Jew.

When the enemy sent its troops into the town of Modin to set up an idol and demand its worship, it was a Jew who decided to exercise his freedom of pagan worship and who approached the altar to worship Zeus (after all, what business was it of anyone what this fellow worshipped?)  And it was this Jew, this apostate, this religious traitor who was struck down by the brave, glorious, courageous (are these not the words all our Sunday schools use to describe him?) Mattathias, as he shouted: “Whoever is for G-d, follow me!”  

What have we here?  What kind of religious intolerance and bigotry?  What kind of a man is this for the anti-religious of Hashomer Hatzair, the graceful temples of suburbia, the sophisticated intellectuals, the liberal open-minded Jews and all the drones who have wearied us unto death with the concept of Judaism as a humanistic, open-minded, undogmatic, liberal, universalistic (if not Marxist) religion, to honor?  What kind of nationalism is this for David-Ben-Gurion (he who rejects the Galut and speaks of the proud, free Jew of ancient Judea and Israel)?

And to crush us even more (we who know that Judaism is a faith of peace which deplores violence), what kind of Jews were these who reacted to oppression with FORCE?  Surely we who so properly have deplored Jewish violence as fascistic, immoral and (above all!) UN-JEWISH, stand in horror as we contemplate Jews who declined to picket the Syrian Greeks to death and who rejected quiet diplomacy for the sword, spear and arrow (had there been bombs in those days, who can tell what they might have done?) and “descended to the level of evil,” thus rejecting the ethical and moral concepts of Judaism.

Is this the kind of a holiday we wish to propagate?  Are these the kinds of men we want our moral and humanistic children to honor?  Is this the kind of Judaism that we wish to observe and pass on to our children?

Where shall we find the man of courage the one voice, in the wilderness to cry out against Chanukah and the Judaism that it represents-the Judaism of our grandparents and ancestors?  Where shall we find the man of honesty and integrity to attack the Judaism of Medievalism and outdated foolishness; the Judaism of bigotry that strikes down Jews who refuse to observe the law; the Judaism of violence that calls for Jewish force and might against the enemy?  When shall we find the courage to proudly eat our Chinese food and violate our Sabbaths and reject all the separateness, nationalism and religious maximalism that Chanukah so ignobly represents?  …Down with Chanukah!  It is a regressive holiday that merely symbolizes the Judaism that always was; the Judaism that was handed down to us from Sinai; the Judaism that made our ancestors ready to give their lives for the L-rd; the Judaism that young people instinctively know is true and great and real.  Such Judaism is dangerous for us and our leaders.  We must do all in our power to bury it.

Anyone reading this Rav Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rav Kahane and would like to be, please contact me at:

BarbaraAndChaim@gmail.com

To view previously e-mailed Rabbi Kahane articles go to:

www.barbaraginsberg-barbara.blogspot.com