Rabbi Kahane's Last Articles "Numbers 23:9"

RABBI KAHANE’S LAST ARTICLES

Rabbi Meir Kahane, may G-d avenge his blood, wrote weekly columns for over 20 years for The Jewish Press.  Below is a copy of one of his last articles which appeared in The Jewish Press. His final thoughts to all of us 

Numbers 23:9
“Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone and not be reckoned among the nations” (Numbers 23:9)

Numbers 23:9.  The reality; the reality of Israel against the world.  The reality that is so terrifying to so many; the reality that cannot go away – for upon it is based all of Judaism

 

I ponder the phenomenon of synagogues – including Orthodox ones – that incredibly ban me from speaking, that, in effect, have declared a view of halachic a of a rabbi and talmid chacham as banned from the synagogue.  And the words of the Prophets acquire new and real meaning for me; words spoken by seers and visionaries of broken hearts, who proclaimed in their hurt: “They hate him that rebuketh in the gate and abhor him that speaketh uprightly” (Amos 5).  And: “And I raised up from among your sons, prophets, and from your young men, Nazarities … but you gave the Nazarities wine to drink and commanded the prophets,  saying: ‘Prophecy  not’” (Amos 2).  And: “For it is a rebellious people, children who lie, children who will not hear the Law of the L-rd.  Who say to the seers:  ‘See not!’ Who say to the visionaries: ‘Envision not, unto us correct things, speak unto us smooth things envision deceit.’” (Isaiah 30)  

 

And so they invite the delusions and the deceit of the leaders who speak to them that which they wish to hear, and the prophet weeps and cries out: “Peace, peace and there is no peace…”

 You think it pleasant to speak painful truths that cause pain to those who refuse to listen and who then react with pain and hate against the one who speaks?  You think it is tranquil to be the messenger that brings forth the reaction, “Kill the messenger?”  You think it is comfortable to be the one who compels the blind to see and the deaf to listen – because a Jew is compelled and commanded to love Jews – even those who defame and smear and destroy him?  Hardly.  But that is the decree and that is the statute of love of Jews.  And that, too, is the days of yore and there is nothing new under the sun; “Hear, ye deaf, and look, ye blind – that ye may see.  Who is blind but My servant, or deaf as My messenger I sent?  Who is blind … as the L-rd’s servant?  Seeing many things but thou observes not, opening the ears but none heareth…  Who among you will give ear to this?  Who will hearken and hear for the time come?” (Isaiah 42).  And: “We wait for light – and behold darkness, for brightness and we walk in blackness.  We grope for the wall like the blind, as if we had no eyes, we grope; we stumble at noon day as in the night….”

But though we refuse to see and hear, and though we shut out the messenger – the voice will cry out, causing pain because it itself is in pain, pain for a people that refuses to be chosen and climb the mountain.

For those who wish to see and who refuse to blind themselves to reality, it is clear that two fundamental processes are, today, unfolding for the Jewish people.

 

One: Events in the Middle East are leading to inexorable international pressure on Israel to make terrible, mad concessions.  The “new world order” of which George Bush speaks will bring together the nations of the world – east and west, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., Moslem and Christian – to try to impose tragedy on the Jewish state and people.

Two:  Events in the Middle East are joining together with the galloping economic collapse and unraveling of the social fabric in the United States to create a political explosion and horror that will bring anti-Semitism and tragedy upon the American Jew to a degree beyond his worst fears.

For those secular Jews and all the ones of little faith who perceive the Jewish people and state as similar to all the others, of course, the obvious and growing isolation of Israel and the clear and present danger to its very existence are terrifying.  To such people, the fear of losing allies and especially the United States is frightening.  To them, there is nothing more important than Israel’s pursuing policies that will not incur the wrath of America and the world.  To them, Israel cannot exist without the support of the United States and the Western world.

For those secular Jews and all the ones of little faith who see the Jewish people in “practical” and “realistic” terms of realpolitik, the U. S. and the West are seen as home and heritage and future.  There is nothing more frightening to them than the thought of a tidal wave of anti-Semitism that would threaten their lives there.  To them, the fight for the preservation of Jewish life in the exile is the most important thing on their national agenda.

But for the Jews of authentic, classical Judaism it is clear that the birth and future and destiny of the Jew and his State are based precisely on isolation and on a Jewish State in which live all the Jewish people; that faith in the G-d of Israel (and, of course, Jewish strength based on that faith) is the only hope of the Jew and his State; that fear of the world and reliance on the nations and allies are not only illusions and delusions but, worse, a desecration of the name of G-d and a declaration that it is not He but human beings who hold our fate in the balance; that the gathering together of nations against Israel and the ultimate collapse of Jewish life in the exile are things that are sadly immutable.

 From the birth of the Jewish religio-nation, a number of divine iron laws of history were decreed for the Jew, nation and state:  

 

1.      The Jewish people were selected by G-d to be His unique, chosen and holy people from all the nations on earth.

2.      This special chosen-ness imposed upon the Jew, the obligation to accept the yoke of heaven – the laws and commandments of Torah along with the immutable consequences:  Acceptance of the obligation would lead to glorious and majestic redemption, while refusal must lead to punishment and tragedy.  There is no escape from this iron law of Judaism

3.      The Jewish people are a people that dwells alone, separate and isolated from the nations and it is the Almighty alone who is their Redeemer and Savior – when they are deserving of it.  Those who fear the nations and look to them for salvation are swamped by delusion and lack of faith in the G-d of Israel.  For real faith in Him means that He is stronger than both Baghdad and Washington; that He is the Decreer and Decider of history; that if the Jew looks to Him and does His will, then and only then will the Jew be spared the tragedy that looms; that Israel must look to its own interests without fear of what the nations will say.

4.      The exile – all the lands that lie outside the Land of Israel – can never be anything more than ultimate punishment and suffering for the Jew.  It can never be aught but tragedy for a Jewish people commanded to dwell alone.  It is not the futile fight against tidal wave of hatred of the Jew – the inevitable product of the coming U.S. socio-economic collapse – that should be the main item on the American Jewish agenda,, but rather the return home, to the Land of Israel, where the Jew must dwell alone, that should obsess us.

5.       And above all, let it never be forgotten:  It is precisely the isolation of the Jew and his ultimate aloneness, without allies or gentile support that is the key to Jewish redemption in this final era of redemption.  It is precisely the apparent hopelessness and impossibility of Jewish survival in isolation that will most prove the Omnipotence and Kingship of the G-d of Israel.

Faith in the G-d of Israel, and not trust in the nations of the world.  An end to pleading for American economic aid that, on the one hand, causes Israel to tremble lest it anger Washington and thus threaten both its alms and arms, and that also leads the Jewish state to refrain from following the normal, logical and sane policies that are its own interest.  And leaving the lands of the exile, the ultimate lands of tragedy for the Jew – to come home and to be a nation that shall indeed dwell alone, fearing

G-d and not the nations.  That is the Jewish way.  That is the only way.

“Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone and not be reckoned among the nations.”

Indeed, how tempting and deductive to say those pleasant and soothing things that the public and masses would like to hear; that the Jewish leaders mouth in sterility and emptiness, to the detriment of our people.  But the iron law of Judaism is immutable – “if you walk in My statues” or, “and if you shall reject my statues…”  

 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 previously sent articles by Rabbi Kahane go to:

 www.barbaraginsberg-barbara.blogspot.com

 View MK Michael Ben-Ari a student of Rabbi Kahane, actions and words at:

www.mkmichaelben-ari.blogspot.com   

 

What Is It All About? - 1975

 K A H A N E
The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea
Cheshvan 5737 – November 1976

(This article was written when Rabbi Kahane was incarnated in Federal Prison, Manhattan, May 7, 1975)

What is It All About?

The problems of Israel are many; that us a thing that is hardly new to the Jewish people.  What is new is that for the first time in 20 centuries, Jewish leaders have not the slightest concept of why these problems exist and what the only solutions are.  They are totally and absolutely off the track; their frame of reference is completely wrong!  They have not the slightest understanding of the historical process that is taking place; they are intellectual goyim of the first class; they wander about hopelessly lost, with no sense of direction and not the foggiest notion of what the Jewish crises today is all about.

Their plans, their programs and their ‘solutions’ are impotent and irrelevant and, above all, tragic because they bring down with them the Jewish people.  Once cannot find answers if he does not understand the questions; one cannot find solutions unless he perceives the problems.  One cannot understand the Jewish destiny if he is, intellectually, a gentile.

All that is happening today – the problems afflicting the Jew in Israel and the problems that envelope the Jew in the Exile – all these are one.  It is time that we understood what it is all about.

When Moses first entered the palace of Pharaoh and said to him: “Thus saith the L-rd, the G-d of Israel; Let my people go…” the Egyptian monarch, supreme ruler of his land and of the greatest empire of its time replied:

 "Who is the L-rd that I should hearken unto His voice to let Israel go?  I know not the L-rd…”

The course of human history has been that of G-d’s effort to make man “know the L-rd.”  The purpose of man is to rise to holiness through the bending and subjugating of his will, his ego and his self to the L-rd.  Man, the animal, becomes man the creature “a little lower than the angels” only through humbly making his will subordinate to his Maker.  The knowing of G-d, the recognition that there is a G-d and that he is the L-rd, the G-d of Israel, is the first step to the smashing of one’s ego with all its ugly and sordid selfishness and its obsession with self and self-gratification.  To be free, and to do “one’s thing” and to cast off restraint is not to know G-d but to place oneself on a divine pedestal from which one can be worshipped.

To know G-d and to know specifically the L-rd, the G-d of Israel, is the way – the only way – to create a human race which is humble and small, holy and good.  It is the only way to understand the concepts that comprise holiness, the ultimate goal of man. It is the only way to understand the methods that lead to the attainment of that holiness which will put an end to the self-centeredness from which stem all the evils of the world.

The Jewish people is the instrument of G-d, chosen by Him to teach the world to “know the L-rd.”  It is the Jews who were directed to practice the theory of holiness, to bring into reality the Man that is just “a little lower than the angels.”  Jewish history begins with the election of the Jew, with his selection as the Chosen People.  Jewish history is the story of the success and failures of the Jew in his mission, and the rewards and punishments of G-d.  It is a history that is filled with the tragedy of both gentile and Jew seeking to escape from the yoke of heaven, denying the existence of the authority of the L-rd, stating: “I know not the L-rd…” and choosing self-gratification over humble holiness, with all the selfish and sordid evils that stems from this.

The end of this historical trek is told a thousand times over in the Bible and the Talmud.  The end of days will see the earth “filled with the knowledge of the L-rd.”  The ultimate future will be one of, “on that day, the L-rd will be One, and His name One.”  The destiny of man is to ultimately know the L-rd, G-d of Israel, as the Omniscient and Omnipotent, and conversely to know himself – at long last – as the created, the finite, the humble being who stands eternally at the mercy of His Maker.  How that will come about is dependent on the Jew understanding his historical and immutable destiny   

“I am the L-rd, in its time will I hurry it (the redemption).”  The words of Isaiah (60).  And the rabbis explain:  “If they, the Jews, merit it, I will “hurry it.”  If they do not merit it, it will come “in its time.” (Sanhedrin 98).

The final redemption can come in one of two ways.  Either through the Jew meriting it and acknowledging the L-rd, shouting out “I know the L-rd” and “I accept His will and His commandments,” or refusing to.  In the case of the former, redemption will come swiftly and with majesty and G-d will show His truth and reality and Omnipotence before the world as He brings awesome and speedy victory for His people Israel, a victory that will lead the nations of the world to acknowledge and “know” him and His sovereignty.  In the case of the latter, of the refusal to bow to G-d; in the case where the Jew will not merit redemption, that redemption will, nevertheless, come but not before the wrath of G-d will bring tragedy and disaster upon the Jewish people – terribly and needlessly.  The moment of truth and the time of choice are at hand.  The final era is upon us.

The end of days, the era of final redemption, shows its signs all about us in our time.  What is happening today is part of a Divine plan, part of a directed destiny.  The Jew has entered the period of atchalta d’geulah, the beginning of the final redemption.   It is an era that has seen great prophecies begun to be fulfilled.  The terrible holocaust, the incredible resurrection of a Jewish State, the breathtaking return of Jews from the four corners of the earth, the awesome military victories and liberation of Jewish lands, east, north and south.  These mark the determination of the All Mighty to make His name known and His power felt and His truth evident.

The Jew must understand that everything that is happening today is part of the Divine decree.  Everything!

The crises for Israel and the Jewish people,  the worsening situation in the world, the turmoil among the nations, the  ascendancy of the forces of aggression and despotism, the movement of the brink of nuclear warfare, all these are coming  to make a mockery of the plans and certainties of man.  All that he proposes begins to crumble as the One whom he refuses to “know”, ultimately disposes.

The Jew must “know the L-rd” and know what the L-rd demands of him in these days. We have an America committed to the Roger Plan and UN Security Council Resolution 242 to force Israel to give up all the liberated lands; a Lebanon which will be free of PLO pressure only because it has become a Syrian protectorate, which is a far greater menace to Israel than the PLO could ever be .  An Israel which sees its own people split on the issues of foreign policy and which knows that American Jewry – fearful of the fallout from anti-Semitism in the event of an Israeli-Washington clash – will pressure the Jewish state to make concessions; and Israel with a growing problem of Arab rioting and bloodshed in the liberated lands and demonstrations against the state by Israeli Arabs which will bring Israel to the brink of a Northern Ireland; and Israel in grave danger.  

Reality is the Exile growing ever more untenable – a graveyard for Jewish hopes, Jewish souls, Jewish bodies.  Assimilation and alienation rage even as the Jew sups noisily from the fleshpots of Galut.  And overhead, the skies darken and cloud grows bleaker as the threat of physical anti-Semitism becomes more real with every passing day. Whole communities face the threat of elimination; Rhodesia, South Africa, Argentina.  They are the next dominoes in the inevitable and immutable process of the liquidation of the Exile and MUST be because it is ordained in the Book of the Righteous.  And America?  Bicentennial or not the Jew will not escape the fate of the others.  This is the reality.

But how swift is the possibility of redemption!  How near it is to us and we need only touch it, open the door for it.  It seeks to embrace us.  As a bride seeking her lover so does salvation seek the Jew who need only give her the dowry, the dowry that shall bring salvation.  That dowry?  The payment?  Faith, “And thou shalt be betrothed unto me with faith, and thou shalt know the L-rd.”  Faith.  Such as simple thing, such a difficult thing.  Real faith; the one that demands of us courage and strength and the ability to throw off our fear of man to do the bidding of the L-rd.

 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 posted articles by Rav Kahane go to:

www.barbaraginsberg-barbara.blogspot.com

To view MK Michael Ben-Ari’s actions and views go to:

www.mkmichaelben-ari.blogspot.com