Kahane on the Parsha
Parshat Va'Etchanan
WHEN G-D DEMANDS CRUELT-Y
"And
you shall love the L-rd, your G-d, with all your heart" (Deuteronomy 6:5).
Why does the Torah use the word "l'vavcha," which implies plural
hearts, rather than "libcha," which clearly means one heart? The
Mishnah (Berachot 9:5) answers: "You should serve G-d with BOTH your
inclinations- the good inclination and the evil inclination." Rabbeinu
Yona in his commentary on the Talmud explains this as follows: "When a man
does not have mercy on the wicked and is cruel to them, he performs a great
mitzvah and worships G-d with the evil inclination."
The
foundation of foundations of Judaism is ol malchoot shamayim, the acceptance of
the yoke of heaven. A mitzvah is EXACTLY that. A COMMANDMENT. Not an approved
thing; not a thing that was mulled over, considered, and then agreed to, but a
commandment from the Almighty. Do! Don't! Regardless of your approval or
disapproval. To smash the ego and harness it and limit it and bend it to the
will of G-d.
That
is, of course, the exact opposite of what I call "Saulism," after the
first king of Israel, Saul. Concerning the words in I Samuel 15:5
"Va'yarev ba'nachal," the Rabbis (in Yoma 22b) explain that Saul
"struggled," i.e., he struggled with himself over the commandment to
wipe out Amalek, saying, "If the men sinned, why the women? If the women,
why the children? If the children, why the animals?" And a voice from
heaven called forth, "Do not be overly righteous."
Saulism.
The inability to accept the standards of mercy and cruelty that G-d has laid
down. AS G-D HAS LAID THEM DOWN. The inability to accept the yoke of heaven
because of personal views and concepts that are at odds with the Torah.
That
Centrist Orthodoxy is the heir of Saulism is beyond dispute. Let it never be
forgotten that Saul, according to tradition, was a great scholar, av bet din of
the Sanhedrin. This did not prevent him from sadly falling into the sin of
following his own views and concepts and ideas concerning morality and ethics.
He defied the L-rd, refused to bend to the yoke of heaven, because his heart
and mind were shaped by other views and he could not accept what he considered
to be the immoral and unethical command of G-d. That is the original sin of
Centrist Orthodoxy, too. And as one pours over the myriad of sources that
clearly show Judaism's commitment to the hatred and wiping out of evil, one is
appalled at reading an article by Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, an eloquent
spokesperson for Centrist Orthodoxy, as he tells Jews:
"I
know how hard it is for Jews to be self-disciplined and suffer the intifada
until the Arabs learn that it will gain them nothing. Many a time, I, too, am
tempted to say that perhaps only Rabbi Kahane's way is the road we will have to
take. He can base his militancy on Biblical texts. But it is not the truly
Jewish way. It is the way of bringing G-d down to the level of man. Our goal
must be to bring man up to G-d's level. We MUST continue to be patient,
obedient to law and even forgiving. It is a slow road but the only G-dly
one."
Few
statements in my recent memory are more deliberately fraudulent and
hypocritical. It is precisely the Saulists of our time, as so keenly
represented by Rackman and Centrist Orthodoxy, that bring G-d down to man's
level because they pervert Torah and create it in their image. They, the ones
who have been so sadly perverted by worship and adulation of the secular, non-Jewish,
gentilized college and university courses they embraced, find it spiritually
impossible to accept Torah values that are at such odds with what they call
humanism. It is THEY who drag Torah and G-d down to THEIR level, and it is
precisely those Jews who accept the Torah commandments without hesitation and
queasiness of soul and intellect who raise themselves to His level.
Centrist
Orthodoxy, the continuation of Saulism, is the greatest ultimate danger to
Torah verities and purity. And as it becomes ever clearer that they are a
retreating camp with less and less of a future, they will become more desperate
in their attacks on authentic Judaism (which they call
"ultra-Orthodoxy") and more radical in their accommodations with
right-wing Conservatism, with whom they have more in common than they care to
admit.
Written
in The Jewish Press 1989
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