Thursday, August 27, 2020
The Transfer Proposal
Monday, August 24, 2020
ELUL 1977
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Complicit 1980
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
SEEK NO ALLIES!
RE'EH 1988
KAHANE ON THE PARSHA
PARSHAT RE'EH
WHO NEEDS A COUNTRY
"And you shall drive them out and you shall dwell in their land" (Deuteronomy 12:29). The Rabbis ((Sifri, Re'eh 80)say concerning the verse: "The mitzvah of living in Eretz Yisrael is equal to all the commandments of the Torah." Therefore, "A man should dwell in Eretz Yisrael , even in a city that is completely inhabited by gentiles, and not outside the land, though it be a city that is completely Jewish" (Tosefta, Avoda Zara 5).
The rabbis add: " Wh0ver lives outside Eretz Yisrael, is like one who has no G-d".
The halacha is clear that a Jew must live in Eretz Yisrael and woe unto a generation that has lost sight of the clear truth. But dwelling in Eretz Yisrael is not just another halacha. It is an essential, fundamental one. Consider:
When the Almighty freed the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, he did not give them a Torah there. He did not command them to keep His laws and live in Egypt or anywhere they wished to. The question is: Why? If the main purpose was to make the Jewish people a holy people, observing the laws of the Torah, why could this obligation not be placed upon the Jews without reference to where they lived? Just as a Catholic was never commanded to live only in Rome but can be a good son or daughter of the Catholic Church in Austria, Australia, or Brooklyn; and just as a good Moslem need not live in Mecca (he need only go there once in his lifetime on a pilgrimage)- why is it that the Almighty insisted that all the Jews leave Egypt and go to Eretz Yisrael rather than allowing them to settle as good and "frum" Jews in Goshen where they could set up their own yeshivas and shtiebels?
Secondly, we find an amazing statement by the Rabbis in the Sifri (Ekev 43): "Even though I exile you, continue to be marked with mitzvot [i.e., continue to keep them] so that when you return to Eretz Yisrael they will not be new [i.e., unfamiliar] to you."
Astounding! This is the reason for a Jew to put on tefillin and affix a mezuza in the Exile? Merely so that it should not be unfamiliar to him when he returns to Eretz Yisrael?! One would imagine that the reason that a Jew in Brooklyn or Los Angeles or Toronto should put on tefillin is that it is a mitzvah sh'begufo, a mitzvah that is personal to his body wherever he is, his place of residence being irrelevant.
But the truth, the fundamental truth, the, alas, bitter truth to too many observant Jews, is that the Almighty wanted the Jews to live in Eretz Yisrael ONLY, and He gave the mitzvot to be PRACTICED ONLY in Eretz Yisrael. Over and over again, we find the Torah making statements like: "Behold, I have taught you decrees and ordinances...that you should do within the land that you go to possess" (Deuteronomy 4:5)
The reason is succinctly stated by the Ibn Ezra (Deuteronomy 4:10): "For the L-rd knew that [the Jewish people] could not do His commandments properly as long as they were in the lands that ruled over them." And the Sforno (Deuteronomy 6:21) adds: "And since in our bondage we could not acquire the completeness directed from Him, He did wondrously to take us out and bring us to a land where we could acquire that completeness."
There it is! The Almighty insisted and INSISTS that the Jew be removed from all other peoples, isolated ("lo, it is a people that dwells alone"- Numbers 23:9), because He knows the immutable, natural fact that the Jew living as a minority under a majority gentile culture cannot help but be influenced by that culture. Like gamma rays, the non-Jewish culture and ideas and concepts bombard the Jew so that he is subtly and not-so-subtly influenced by his gentilized environment. And, thus, the Torah that he practices is not practiced "properly" (to quote the Ibn Ezra), and is without completeness (to quote the Sforno). It becomes a system of ritual that is bereft of so much of the conceptual content because other concepts, majority concepts, majority non-Jewish concepts, influence us.
That is why the Almighty, from the very beginning of Jewish national history in Egypt, demanded that the Jew live only in one country- HIS country- where he could be as isolated as much as humanly possible from conflicting cultures and concepts. That is why He still demands it today.
And that is, indeed, the clear message of the Sifri quoted above. The mitzvot were never meant to be practiced outside Eretz Yisrael. They were always meant to be kept ONLY in Eretz Yisrael for the basic reason I have mentioned above. But since the Almighty knew that the Jews would be driven out of their land and live in the exile, He decreed that they should continue to observe mitzvot solely for the reason that they not be forgotten when they, the Jews, returned to Eretz Yisrael, the only place where the mitzvot were designed to be kept.
The Jewish Press, 1988
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Barbara Sandra Ginsberg
Otzma Yehudit for Anglos
faLove
Thursday, August 6, 2020
THE MASQUERADE OF FEAER 1987
“ K A H A N E ”
The
magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea
March
– April 1987 Adar – Nissan 5747
MASQUERADE OF
FEAR
A long list of so-called Third World countries, hopelessly
in debt, exists – with no conceivable possibility of the States every paying
off the principal. Banks and bankers in the
west who greedily – like some financial drug pusher – urged every
underdeveloped (and developing country for that matter) to borrow, borrow and
borrow (very much like their rapacious policy of credit card brainwashing in
their own lands), are now faced with paying the Piper. The horrible thought that borrowing states
will simply cancel the debts they owe is so frightening, that the banks have
quietly allowed a score of such states to simply at least pay the interest regularly.
But even that proved to be excruciatingly difficult for
under-developed and developing states who borrowed so often on the delusion
that their economic prosperity of a decade ago would forever blossom. Of
course, the dream has turned into a nightmare as world oil and commodity prices
have tumbled crazily, leaving not only prosperity behind, but something far
more dangerous, punctured expectations.
Few countries were wishfully thought to have the nerve to
simply tell the bankers, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that
they simply could not meet any debt payments, principal or interest, and that,
furthermore, they were not prepared to risk social upheaval, not to mention
political defeat at the polls. Each
debtor state was, indeed, anxious for one of the others to be the first to do
so, for there are many candidates for the second, third and other places. Now Brazil has done it, and beneath the masks
of complacency, the bankers are asking: Can others be far behind?
Surely not. Mexico, a
country with a list of ills that would stage an economic social physician,
itself has a nearly $100 billion foreign debt – as well as one of the fastest
growing populations in the world. There
are not enough jobs; there is not enough hope.
It is only the most likely candidate of half-a-dozen Latin American
states to be the next to jolt the banking world. Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, Uruguay, Peru,
Bolivia, as well as a host of Asian and African states (the Philippines, for
example, with an impossible debt of $28 billion) are all preparing to shake the
banks with suspension of payments.
The world banking system is on the verge of collapse and all
the masquerade and charade of calming statements will help no one. The world is rushing towards economic
holocaust and the social fabric will explode in a deafening explosion of
violence and extremism, the direct result of a four-decade era of prosperity
and rising, ever-rising, unlimited expectations. The poor are rarely disappointed. It is those who once tasted the sweetness of
economic progress who will never agree to quietly return to their misery.
Of course, this is all part of the inexorable Divine process
of measure for measure, the material destruction of a world that left G-d for
materialism. The arrogance and absolute
certainty of men as they prospered and advanced through their own prowess and
intellect. The crowning of Man, the
King, as sovereign of the universe. The
plunge into the unbridled sea of Pleasure and unharnesed desire with not a
thought for Divine purpose and raison d’etre.
These are the ingredients of a universe that buried G-d as a meaningful
factor in the world – and personal – affairs.
“He that sitteth in Heaven laugheth, the L-rd hath them
in derision…” (Psalms 2)
The carnival has started in Rio. The song of the economic Samba can be
heard. But it is a carnival of economic
destruction and a dance of social explosion and the masquerade and masks of
laughter and unconcern, mask only the fearful reality of terrible days before
the final days.
Shabbat Shalom
Barbara
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Kahane article and is not on my personal
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Barbara Sandra Ginsberg
Otzma Yehudit for Anglos