“ K A H A N E”
The
magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea
Summer 5743 -1983
VIEWPOINT
THE FIRE OF JEALOUSY
“O that my people would hearken unto me and Israel would
walk in my ways!
I would soon subdue their enemies and turn my hands
against their adversaries.”
(Psalms 81:14-15)
The great day of the L-rd is near… a day of wrath, a day
of trouble and distress… a day of the horn and alarm… and I will bring distress
upon men… because they have sinned against the L-rd… neither their silver nor
gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the L-rd’s wrath, but the
whole earth shall be devoured by the fire of His jealousy…” (Zephaniah 1)
One walks among the revelers and cries out in dismay: But
can you not see the cloud? One watches
as the people swims in gluttony and splashes about in the cool waters of
self-indulgence and laughter and self-assurance and confident plans for tomorrow. And the seer shouts to them: “But do you not
see the fire of His jealousy?” And they
see it not and hear him not and go about their lives of merry heedlessness. Who wishes to hear the sound of terror in the
midst of the summer of content? Why this
discordant note to disturb our melodious symphony of mental sloth? And so the joyous revelers skip mindlessly
through life, the joyous city that dwelt without care, that said in her heart:
“I am there is none else beside me…”
But the signs are all about us, the signs that a jealous and
angry G-d – whose mercy still overtakes His wrath – sends us, beseeching us to
notice and to act. The signs are all
about us, who can ignore them? The signs
are upon us, how much time is there?
The Israeli planes that went out into the night to demolish
the atomic reactor outside of Baghdad, brought joy and pride into the hearts of
Jews throughout the world. Joy and
pride, but not careful and deep thought.
The destruction of the Iraqi atomic facility prevented the creation of a
nuclear weapon. But for how long?
How much more time will it take for the Iraqis to rebuild the
facility? And what of Pakistan that
stands today on the very verge of exploding its Moslem bomb? How does Israel bomb Islamabad?
The truth is that the bomb that Iraq and Pakistan and
Libya and, only G-d knows how many others, are building is a thing that no one
will prevent. And it is part of a
worldwide fact of horror. Within a few
years, tens of countries, including those cursed with mad and unstable regimes,
will have flood of fire that will consume themselves and a world that said: “I
am, and there is none else besides me.”
The fire is theirs; but it is the fire of His jealousy.
As some Adam, drunk with the wine of the Tree of Knowledge,
man revels is his own intellect and progress.
He throws off the chain of the Maker and convinces himself that He,
the created, conceived Him, the Creator
“Because thy heart is lifted up and thou hast said: I am a god… yet thou
art man and not G-d.” (Ezekiel 28). For
his arrogance and for his pride, the L-rd who brought upon a generation of Noah
a flood of water that consumed an earth, will this time decimate the arrogant
with the flood of fire. A flood that is
measure for measure, irony of ironies: the fire of man’s own making, the fruit
of his own prideful intellect, the fire of the brilliance and ingenuity of the
King of the Dust.
The gentile is doomed because of his prideful arrogance and
judgment is upon him for his persecution of the Jews. “Because thou has a hatred of old and hast
hurled the Children of Israel unto the power of the sword in the time of their
calamity… I will prepare thee unto blood and blood shall pursue thee… I will make thee perpetual desolations… And
you shall know that I am the L-rd.” (Ezekiel 35).
The end is upon a world that knew not the L-rd, and His
jealousy for His name that was mocked, humiliated and defiled is come. For a world that humiliated the people of G-d
and thus showed their contempt for the G-d of Israel. “For the day of vengeance
that was in My heart and My year of redemption will come… And I trod down the
peoples in Mine anger… And I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.” (Isaiah
63).
The cloud of atoms and their nuclear crash and the hydrogen
explosion will shatter a world that attempted to cast G-d out of the Garden of
Eden of fools. There is nothing that
will prevent that and it only remains for the Jew to understand that his fate,
too, lies in the balance. The Jew can be
part of a world that turns into ashes or he can find redemption. He can choose to remain with the revelers,
with the self-deceivers, with those who suck in slothful contentment, or he can
shake off the chains of self-indulgence and stop the race for mindless
pleasure. He can cut the chains that tie
him to the gentile and the gentilization and flee to the chambers: “Come my
people, enter thou into thy chambers.. until the rage passeth; for, behold, the
L-rd cometh forth out of His place to visit upon the inhabitants of the earth their
iniquity,” (Isaiah 26)
Those that daily defile the name of the L-rd and choose the
Exile as their home, in contemptuous contentment and rebellious revelry – will
share the fate of their fellow gentiles.
Those who scorn the desirable Land of Holiness will fall in flames and
ashes with the gentiles they preferred to worship. The Jew who refuses to
climb Mount Zion and set there his home will be twice cursed: He will fall
victim to the plague of hideous Jew-hatred that will send him reeling in
Holocaust II; and he will share the fate of the gentile-who ironically will
fall because of his treatment of the Jew.
For the Jew, the punishment for refusing to flee the impurity and
desecration of the Exile will be double fire: That of the gentile and that of the
jealousy of the L-rd.
The bitter-joke is the Jew who wraps himself about in his
mantle of religion, even as he treads daily in the dung of the Exile. The one who, despite his study and because of
a corruption of G-d’s Law and Commandments, speaks precisely as the
irreligious, the atheist. All share the
same blindness: All look at the Jewish State and see there the danger. None understand the salvation and safety the only
in the Land of Israel. The
irreligious without the rituals and skullcap may be excused – they know nothing
and understand exactly that. But the
irreligious with the kattans and heavily embroidered prayer shawls; the
practitioners of ritual – what can we say about these?
“For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those
that escape…” (Joel 3) How is it possible that the students of the law shall be
so ignorant? Ah, possible it is; and
there were such times, in the past. The
priests said not: “Where is the L-rd? And they that handle the Law knew me
not.” (Jeremiah 2)). And the great
Biblical commentator, Rashi, explains: “They that handles the Law: The
Sanhedrin…”
The two millennia of the
Exile have twisted and corrupted us. It
is not possible to remain a normal people without a normal existence of 2,000
years. Being without a state and
government and army, makes one a people that cannot understand such
things. Having no land for twenty
centuries makes one forget how sweet and dear it is. The religious atheist becomes one who
believes in the general power of the
Almighty to do anything but flees to the gentile’s right arm in every
particular case.
The wearer of the Kaftan
and layer of tefillin becomes a practical man; he seeks logical answers. He will find them with his gentile fellow
citizen. He who lacks faith and trust in
the logic of the G-d of Israel, will fall beneath the double fury of the
jealousy of the L-rd. But on Mount Zion
and in Jerusalem, in the Land of Israel, there will be redemption. No, not for all – “And it shall come to pass
that whoever calls on the name of the L-rd shall be delivered.” (Joel, ibid)
But for those who contemptuously scorn the Land because of fear of G-d’s
impotence – there will be no redemption.
Together they will fall, the ritualists and the non, for both share the
ultimate sin, an ultimate belief in the logic of man rather than faith in the
Almighty. For the Jew, there IS a choice: Zion and salvation or the fire of His
jealousy.
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