Like a Pauper at the Door

LIKE A PAUPER AT THE DOOR

"Pharaoh took his ring off his own hand and placed it on the hand of Joseph" (Genesis 41:42). What a divine revelation! What an open miracle! Mere minutes before, Joseph was a lowly prisoner. Now, in the blink of an eye, he had become Pharaoh's viceroy by whose command all food would be distributed in Egypt.

This sudden turnabout was a devastating response to Joseph's lack of trust in G-d when he asked the chief steward to save him. The Midrash states, "Joseph really only deserved 10 years in prison...yet because he asked the chief steward, 'Remember that I was with you...say something about me to Pharaoh' (Genesis 40:14), two years were added [to his sentence]" (Shemot Rabba 7:1).

A Jew who seeks help from a non-Jew out of despair and fear, lest G-d not help him, commits a grave sin. Had Joseph approached the steward with a DEMAND, because the steward OWED HIM A FAVOR, his act would not have been considered a sin. But instead he approached him with a REQUEST, indicating that he needed a favor from a non-Jew, and thus profaned G-d's Name by implying that he did not trust the Almighty, only flesh and blood.

From here we derive a major principle regarding aid from non-Jews: If the non-Jew offers support as part of a MUTUAL aid agreement, or payment for what he owes the Jew- we may accept it. Otherwise, we must reject it. Approaching a non-Jew or a country with a REQUEST for support- like a pauper standing at the door- demonstrates lack of faith in G-d and constitutes the ultimate Chillul Hashem.

The Jewish Idea

Shabbat Shalom and Chanukah Sameach!

Kahane on the Parsha can be purchased at Amazon.com

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Barbara Sandra Ginsberg

Anglos for Otzma Yehudit

Down with Chanukah 1972

Barbara Ginsberg’s Desktop

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

Down with Chanukah

Written December 15, 1972

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.

CHANUKAH SAMEACH: May each candle that you lite brighten your life. I pray for the miracle of good over evil in the times we are living in today. May we all celebrate next year in Eretz Yisrael, a country that is liberated and annexed in all our Biblical boundaries. 
Barbara and Chaim

Anyone reading this Rabbi Meir Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rabbi Kahane 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

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Barbara Sandra Ginsberg

Anglos for Otzma Yehudit

An Oylem Goylem

 “Beyond Words” is a published seven volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings  from 1960 – 1990 that originally appeared in The Jewish Press, other serial publications, and his privately-published works.

“Beyond Words” also includes a number of extra features:

Chronology of Rabbi Kahane's life.

“Beyond Words” now can be bought at Amazon.com.  On the search line, type…  Beyond Words Kahane.

Beyond Words

Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,

1960-1990

Volume 6

AN OYLEM GOYLEM

What Alexander Hamilton said in his day (“the masses are asses”) was a mere echo of a famous Yiddish folk saying, “der oylem iz a goylem”. The golem, one recalls, is that brutish being, incapable of independent thought, and keyed to the will of its master. Alas, the more things change, the less anything in the Jewish world does. The oylem, the Jewish audience, remains a goylim…

I speak of the incredible willingness of the Jew to want to believe any lie, fraud and cynical manipulation – as long as that allows him to preserve his illusions of heroes. I speak of the almost absolute ability of politicians to do and say anything, in the knowledge that their idolatrous followers will see only divinity and truth in them – despite the fact that if the same act would be done to by a politician they despise, they would be crying for “the traitors scalp.” And I write this, as the cult of Ariel Sharon spreads among the oylem that is a goylem, the masses of asses.

There is an apparent need on the part of human beings, and certainly Jews, for a hero. There is a need for man to worship. Alas, G-d lacking enough charisma for the modern Jew, he seeks something more exciting. And in every decade there is someone else to worship, some other god with feet and mind and soul of clay. Now, it may be legitimate to raise high the banner of a leader, but only the goylem refuses to see his feet of clay and his nakedness of principle.

In the past it was Moshe Dayan, he of the one eye and the lion heart of Judah.  Jews of the Exile, humiliated for two millennia, ached for a hero and here was the Jewish Samson who smote the gentiles and gave every Jew in Levittown pride and self-respect. Little matter that Dayan was a man of tiny faith and immense fear of the gentiles, who along with Golda Meir (yet another Jewish winner), refused to allow the Israeli Army to strike a preventive blow a day before they knew the Yom Kippur War was to begin, out of fear of the American reaction.

No less than 4,000 Jewish boys fell because of that criminal decision by Moshe the lion-hearted, who was quoted in the first week of that war that seemed to be a debacle, “we are seeing the destruction of the Third Temple”. And who recalled, or cared to, that it was Dayan, who  in the Six Day War, opposed reaching the Suez Canal and capturing the Golan Heights lest Israel get involved with the Soviets. (It was Divine Providence that saw the Israeli Army outrun Dayan’s pathetic orders). And who recalls, or cares to, that it was Dayan who refused to expel the Arabs in 1967, when the world stood awe-struck, lest as he put it, “the world think that there is another wave of Arab refugees.” Indeed, he ordered the army to return thousands of Arabs who had fled on their own, and the tragedy of today is in such large measure the doing of Moshe Dayan, hero of the Jewish people. And yet he continues, incredibly, to dwell in the private Pantheon of millions of Jews.

Indeed, an  oylem goylem.

And Golda, the architect of the murder of 4,000 Jewish soldiers because of fear of the world. The architect, too, of the saying that will surely enter the Hall of Fame of Insanity, as she declared: “I can forgive the Arabs for having killed our soldiers but I can never forgive them for making us kill theirs.” And yet, this person still remains in the eyes of millions “the only gever (man) in the Israeli cabinet…”

And Begin. What shall we say about a man who will go down in history as the saddest and weakest of all Prime Ministers, while, at the same time, continuing to reap the kudos and hurrahs of millions who make up his oylem goylem. Had Peres given up the Sinai, with its huge oil supplies and land area, knocked down Jewish settlements and dragged out Jews; had Peres stopped the Israeli Army in Lebanon from annihilating the PLO and its leadership and thus cause more than 650 Jewish soldiers to die for nothing; had Peres allowed his army officers to take the blame for Sabra and Shatilla – Begin and his groupies would have taken to the streets calling for the head of the “traitor”. But since it was Begin who did it, the goylem accepts it as the decision “forced upon him”. What an oylem! What a goylem!

Every decade, every year, the goylem finds himself another hero. Shamir. He is better than Peres. Why? Only G-d knows why a man who arrested and prosecuted the Jewish underground; who is Prime Minister of the intifada; who lied on every issue (except money) to the religious parties; who speaks loudly and carries a small twig –is lionized by the oylem goylem.  And worst of all  - is Aharon

Ariel Sharon.  Latest hero of the masses   He is the “hawk.” He is the no-nonsense man.  He is the salvation.  Masses. Asses, Oylem, Goylem.

It was a Saturday night and Begin was on the verge of signing the infamous, insane Camp David Accords. The sticking point was Sadat’s absolute refusal to allow Jews to remain, hence the need to dismantle the settlements and remove the Jews. Begin feared one man. Sharon. He called him from the U.S. to ask if he would support the plan. What else was said we can only guess. But what is known is that Sharon agreed to support it, voted for the Camp David accords in the Knesset (Shamir did not) and then was appointed Minister of Defense.

And as Minister of Defense, it was Ariel Sharon, hawk, hero, salvation, who hovered over the area in his helicopter directing the knocking down of Jewish settlements (and creating a precedent for Judea and Samaria) and bodily dragging out Jews from their homes. If Peres had done that, what would the hawk have said? What would the hero have shouted? What would the salvation have exclaimed? Masses. Asses. Oylem, Goylem.  I know of countless cabinet ministers in the world, and even some in Israel, who resigned over principle. If the handling of the “intifada” is so terrible (and it is!) and if Israel is headed toward disaster (and it is!), why does     not Sharon resign?  And what can one say about a man who, in November 1987 and then again in December of that year and again after that, called for the drafting of Arabs into the army and who condemns Meir Kahane for his proposal to expel them instead?

Donkeys, asses, are programmed in their limitations. They cannot see; they cannot grasp reality. Human donkeys are different. They can – but they are worse than the four-legged brand because they refuse to see and admit truth and reality. The same Ariel Sharon is a man whose word is suspect (and I attempt to be kind). In an interview with the newspaper Ma’ariv on the eve of the 1973 elections, he told the paper that he supported equal rights for all wings of Judaism – Reform, Conservatism, as well as Orthodox, and was for public transportation on the Sabbath. Today he goes to the Lubavitcher Rebbe for his blessings in his battle against Shamir’s elections plan, and the oylem goylem goes wild in ecstasy.

Anyone reading this Rabbi Meir Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rabbi Kahane 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

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Anglos for Otzma Yehudit – Jewish Strength

But, There is a G-d in Israel

THEY MUST GO – written in 1980, printed in 1981

RABBI MEIR KAHANE

But, There is a G-d in Israel

The analysis and proposed transfer of Arabs from Israel that I have set down are not personal views.  They are certainly not political ones.  This is the Jewish outlook, based on halakah the law as postulated in the Torah.

 

The removal of all Arabs who refuse to accept the exclusive, unquestioned Jewish sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael is not only logical and normal for any Jew with a modicum of an instinct for self-preservation; it is also the Jewish halakic obligation.  It is important that we know this in order to realize what true “Jewishness” really dictates and in order to instill in ourselves the faith and assurance that if we do this, all the nations in the world will be incapable of harming Israel.

           

The Jewish people are not merely one more nation.  “Though I put an end to all the nations among whom thou art scattered, but I will never put an end to thee” (Jeremiah 30:11).  Israel is indestructible.  It is unique, it is holy, it is the Chosen of the L-rd; it has a reason for being.  Its national uniqueness is built on an idea, on an ideology, that it alone has.   The Jew is selected and obligated to be a religio-nation, commanded to obey the laws and follow the path of Torah.  The covenant.  The Jewish people took upon itself the yoke of the L-rd, acknowledging Him as G-d and observing His laws.  The Almighty chose them as His unique people, pledging that they would be indestructible and would live in peace and prosperity in their own land, Eretz Yisrael.

           

The land was given as a reward, as a blessing.  But it is more, much more, than that.  The people of Israel have more than a right to the land; they have an obligation.  “For you shall pass over the Jordan to go in to possess the Land which the L-rd your G-d gives you, and you shall possess it and dwell therein” (Deuteronomy 11:31).

           

A unique people given, uniquely, a particular land.  Unlike all the other faiths that are not limited to one special country, the Jew is given a particular land and commanded to live there.  And for a reason, as Moses explains:  “Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the L-rd, my G-d, commanded me, that you shall do so in the Land whither you go to possess it. (Deuteronomy 4:5).

           

It is impossible to create a holy, unique people that dwells as a minority within lands that belong to others.  The majority culture must infiltrate, influence, corrupt, woo, tempt, pervert.  The Jew is commanded to create for himself a holy nation, and that can only be done free of others, separate, different, apart.  That is why the unique nation, chosen for holiness and unique destiny, was given a land for itself: so that it might create a unique, holy society that would be a light unto the nations who would see its example and model.

           

And as the Torah clearly commanded: And you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you…But if you will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come to pass that those which you let remain of them, shall be thorns in your eyes and thistles in your sides and shall torment you in the land wherein you dwell.  And it shall be that I will do to you as I thought to do to them” (Numbers 3:52-56). 

Far better than foolish humans did the Almighty understand the dangers inherent in allowing a people that believed the land belonged to it to be given free and unfettered residence, let along ownership, proprietorship, citizenship.  What more natural thing than to ask to regain that it believed to be rightly its own land?  And this over and above the need to create a unique and distinctly separate Torah culture that will shape the Jewish people into a holy nation.  That “uniqueness” can be guaranteed only by the non-Jew’s having no sovereignty, ownership, or citizenship in the state that could allow him to shape its destiny and character.

           

This is Torah.  This is Jewishness.  Not the dishonest pseudo “Judaism” chanted by the Liberal secularists who pick and choose what “Judaism” finds favor in their eyes and who reject what their own gentilized concepts find unacceptable.  They weigh “Judaism” on the scales of their own intellectual arrogance – arrogance, incidentally, of intense ignorance.

And if this is not only the right of Jews but their obligation, what do we fear?  Why do the Jews tremble and quake before the threat of the nations?  Is there no longer a G-d in Israel?  Have we lost our bearings that we do not understand the ordained historical role of the State of Israel, a role that ensures that it can never be destroyed and that no further exile from it is possible?  Why is it that we do not comprehend that it is precisely our refusal to deal with the Arabs according to halakic obligation that will bring down on our heads terrible sufferings, whereas our courage in removing them will be one of the major factors in the hurrying of the final redemption?

What is wrong with us?  Who blinded us and blocked from our memories the existence and power of the G-d of Israel?  Did a Jewish people exist for 2,000 years without state, government, or army, wandering the earth interminably from land to land, suffering pogroms and Holocaust and surviving powerful empires that disappeared into history, just by coincidence?  Did a Jewish people return to its land from the far corners of the earth to set up its own sovereign state – exactly as promised in the Bible – through mere natural means?  What other nation ever did such a thing?  Where are the Philistines of Goliath today?  Where is imperial Rome with its Latin and its gods?  Who defeats armies in six days, and on the seventh they rest?

           

Who if not an Israel because there is a G-d in it!  The Land of Israel is His divine Land; the State of Israel is His divine hand.  History is not a series of random events, disjointed and coincidental.  There is a Creator, a Guide, a Hand that plans and directs.  There is a scenario to history.  The Jew has come home for the third and last time.  “But the third shall be left therein” (Zechariah 13:8).  The first redemption was that from Egypt; the second, the redemption of Ezra.  The third will never end” (Tanhuma, Shoftim 9).

We live in the era of the footsteps of the Messiah, the beginning of the final redemption.  The rise of the State of Israel from the ashes of Auschwitz marks the end of the night of black humiliation and agony, of Hillul Hashem, and the beginning of the dawn of the final, total redemption, of Kiddush Hashem, sanctification of G-d’s name. The State of Israel is not a “political” creation.  It is a religious one.  No power could have prevented its birth and none can destroy it.  It is the beginning of G-d’s wrath, vengeance against the nations who ignored, disdained, and humiliated Him, who found Him irrelevant, who “knew Him not.”  But, it is only the beginning.  How the final redemption will come, and when, depends on the Jews.

The exiles shall be ingathered only through “faith” (Mechilta, Exodus).  If we have it, if we truly believe in the existence of the Creator and Guider of history, the G-d of Israel, we can bring the final redemption today.  “When will the Messiah come? ‘Today, as it is said:  “Today, if you will hearken unto my voice’” (Psalms 95:7, Sanhedrin 98a).

The Arabs of Israel represent Hillul Hashem in its starkest form.  Their rejection of Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel despite the covenant between the L-rd of Israel and the Jews constitutes a rejection of the sovereignty and kingship of the L-rd G-d of Israel.  Their transfer from the Land of Israel thus becomes more than a political issue. It is a religious issue, a religious obligation, a commandment to erase Hillul Hashem.  Far from fearing what the Gentile will do if we do such a thing, let the Jew tremble as he considers the anger of the Almighty if we do not.

Tragedy will be ours if we do not move the Arabs out.  The great redemption can come immediately and magnificently if we do that which G-d demands.  One of the great yardsticks of real Jewish faith in this time of momentous decision is our willingness to reject fear of man in favor of awe of G-d and remove the Arabs from Israel.

The world?  The nations – united or otherwise?  What do they matter before the omnipotence of the Almighty?

“Why do the nations rage…the Kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together, against the L-rd and against His anointed…He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, the L-rd shall mock them…”  (Psalms 2:1-4).  The Jewish people and state cannot be destroyed.  Their weapon is their G-d.  That is reality

Let us remove the Arabs from Israel and bring the redemption.

Anyone reading this Rabbi Meir Kahane article and is not on my personal list to receive the weekly articles written by Rabbi Kahane 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

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