Divrei Torah for Passover 1977

K A H A NE
The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea
Shavat –5737 February – 1977

DIVREI  TORAH

“And Pharaoh called to Moses, saying: Go and worship the L-rd. Only your sheep and cattle will remain – your children will also go with you. And Moses said: You will also give us offerings and sacrifices for the L-rd our G-d, and our flocks will go with us…” (Shmot 10:24-26)

The ninth plague-darkness – has struck Egypt with a vengeance and Pharaoh breaks. Step by step he has retreated and after the eighth plague – locusts – he was prepared to allow the Jews to leave except for their children. Now he surrenders almost entirely as he agrees that all the Jews can leave. He only asks one thing, one compromise, one small victory for himself, that the Jewish cattle remain behind.

Consider; the Jews have been slaves for 210 years. They have lived in misery and persecution. They suffered decrees such as the one casting their male children into the sea. They cried out unto the L-rd for freedom and salvation. Now, apparently the great moment has arrived! Pharaoh agrees that they shall go free! What does it matter that he asks for their cattle? Give it to him! The main thing is peace and salvation and we are willing to give up cattle for peace!
But Moses knows that this is not the purpose of the freedom of the Jewish people and of the story of the slavery and exodus. He is not prepared to compromise one inch because he knows what the purpose of G-d is. When Moses first entered the presence of Pharaoh and said: “The L-rd, G-d of the Hebrews, has said: Let my people go!” Pharaoh contemptuously answered: “Who is the L-rd? I know not the L-rd and will not let Israel go!” Here is where the battle was joined. Here is the purpose and aim of creation – to have the world recognize the dominion and kingship of the L-rd being challenged. Pharaoh must be made to recognize and totally acknowledge the sovereignty of the L-rd over him and his people. He cannot make compromises; he cannot strike bargains. He must submit totally!

“And I shall be glorified through (the defeat of) Pharaoh and his army and Egypt shall know that I am the L-rd.” Only the total defeat of the wicked can raise and honor the name of the
L-rd, says the Biblical commentator Rashi. This is why there will be no compromise with Pharaoh. He must totally submit, he must totally surrender.
And even when he apparently does this, after the plague of the first born, when he runs to Moses and says: “Get out, take your flocks with you, just leave and ask the L-rd to bless me!” Moses refuses and in the words of the Mechilta; “And he called unto Moses and Aaron in the middle of the night and said: get up and leave! Said Moses unto him: No, we have been ordered not to leave our houses until morning. What are we, thieves that we should slink out in the night? No, we will leave only in the morning with an upraised arm before the eyes of all the Egyptians!”

Not one inch of retreat here. The lesson of the L-rd being the Omnipotent, King of the universe must be seen and acknowledged.

The lesson is an eternal one and must be learned in our time, too. The question of peace in the Middle East is a question of the Arabs and the world acknowledging the total sovereignty of the All Mighty. There can be no compromise on this. It is only a peace that comes with Arabs submitting to the yoke of the heavenly kingdom that will be a permanent one and the Jew who gives up part of his land as a compromise, violates the entire purpose of the rise of the Jewish State and the demand of the All Mighty that the nations acknowledge Him as King. There can be no retreat from land because that is in essence a retreat also from the Kingship 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 sent Rabbi Kahane articles go to:
http://www.barbaraginsberg-barbara.blogspot.com/

The Great Sabbath -1989

“K A H A N E”

The magazine of the authentic Jewish Idea

Nissan -5749   April-1989

D I V R E I  T O R A H

THE GREAT SABBATH

It is the necessary, the indispensable preface and introduction to Passover.  It is the explanation that cries out the ultimate message of the holiday, the basic lesson of the feats of our freedom.  It is the foundation of foundations that raises Passover from an insipid, saccharine social custom beginning and ending with recipes printed in the New York Times women’s section; from a golden opportunity for Manischewitz to return to Jewishness through capitalist Passover profits even as the truly frum, raise their level of religiosity by raising the level of prices; from a Jewish people that marches on its Seder stomach even as it moves on to the annual national lie. “Next Year in Jerusalem.”  It is the Great Sabbath, which attempts to save Judaism from myopic ritualism, to make the Jew, Jewish and the Orthodox, religious.

Sabbath Hagadol, the great Sabbath.  The Sabbath preceding the Passover, the Sabbath that cries out the basic, the ultimate message of the enormous Exodus from Egypt, of Passover itself.  Sabbath Hagadol that gives us the lesson without which Passover, the Jewish people itself, lose all reason for being.  Sabbath Hagadol commemorating the basic lesson of Judaism: Faith, real faith, faith in G-d who really is greater than the mighty Pharaoh, or the regal Reagan or the burningless Bush – Sabbath Hagadol. The great Sabbath, that began more than 3,000 years ago on a Sabbath in Imperial Egypt.

“Speak unto all the congregation of Israel, saying: In the tenth day of this month, they shall take to them every man a lamb…”

It is a special, an awesome commandment, one that is given to every Jew, hence the unique words “Speak unto all the congregation.”  Take a lamb and bind it up for four days.

You believe that this is a simple commandment.  Hardly.  The lamb is more than an animal; it is the very god of Egypt.  It is a deity, a hallowed creature before whom the Egyptian bows and whose meat dare not touch his mouth.  And the Jews, “every man” thereof, are commanded to take this lamb, this Egyptian god, the deity of their masters, and tie it to their beds, to their posts, bind it up.  And when the astonished and outraged Egyptian masters will ask: “What are you doing? The answer shall be: We shall soon slaughter this lamb, the deity, your god, and eat it.

Do you still think this is a simple, bland commandment?  It is a commandment fraught with danger to life, a commandment that surely sent fear down the spines of the Jewish slaves, that, without a doubt, led scholars to rush and ponder whether pikuach nefesh, danger to life might perhaps demand the postponing of the dangerous commandment.

Nor does the Almighty stop there.  He insists on a policy of extremism, of goading the gentile.  Not content with a commandment that cries desecration of the Egyptian god, that taunts him with the sight of his deity bound up, the G-d of Israel insists that the Jew add salt to the wound.

“And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roasted with fire… eat it not partially cooked, nor boiled in water, but roasted with fire, its head with its legs and with its insides complete.”

Awake and consider!  This is what Passover is all about; only this! This is Judaism what Judaism is all about; only this!  This is what the duty and the role and the essence of the Jew is all about; only this!  To affirm to the world, but first to ourselves that the L-rd, the G-d of Israel, is.  That He truly does exist, that He is the One, the only One, that He, only He, directs the world, the fate of man, the destiny of His people.  That whatever will be for the Jew will be only because He so decrees.  That the gentile has no relevance to the Jewish fate, that the Pharaohs of all time, the ones in Egypt and the ones in Washington are utterly irrelevant to what will be with the Jew.

On the Great Sabbath in Egypt, the L-rd taught us the lesson that we trampled in the dust, the dust of secularism and the dust of the yeshiva world alike: The lesson that the Jew must raise high, must flaunt the glory and Omnipotence of his G-d.  That the world must be compelled to see their deities, their gods and idols, bound up and humiliated and destroyed.  That one must goad the gentile in order to raise high the banner of the L-rd.  That Kiddush Hashem, the sanctification of the Name of the G-d of Israel, demands an open, fearless, flaunting sacrifice of the idols and deities of the gentiles that deny the uniqueness of the G-d of Israel, His exclusiveness, His Oneness!  The lamb is openly tied and those who tremble and whisper: “But we dare not goad the gentile,” are silenced with thunderous contempt.  The lamb is slaughtered and roasted whole and fully and openly.  It cannot be hastily covered in a pot where it will not be seen.  Its identity cannot be disguised by cutting its body into pieces.  We cannot escape the danger of the gentile by avoiding confronting and goading him.  No.  Precisely the opposite!

The same gentile who thundered and thunders: “Who is the L-rd?  I know not the L-rd and will not let Israel go!” must be taught the eternal lesson of: “The L-rd is G-d, the L-rd is G-d!”  The gentile does not wish to “know” G-d, to acknowledge His exclusive kingship.  He must be taught that lesson in an open and bold and humiliating way.  He and his idols must be humbled and broken.  The lamb is taken openly.  The lamb is slaughtered openly.   And those who cringe in populism and whisper:  “But one dare not goad the gentiles…” are silenced by the thunder of the L-rd, whose commandment is eternalized by the Rabbis of the Great Sabbath, Sabbath Hagadol.  So, let that Sabbath be understood and appreciated and embraced.  For without it, there cannot be a Passover, an understanding of what that Passover really is.  And without that, when the Jewish child asks for the meaning of this night, the pathetic father who knows not what to tell him will doom his child to become a pathetic as he: practitioner of Jewish ritual, but never, never a religious Jews.

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 sent Rabbi Kahane articles go to:

http://www.barbaraginsberg-barbara.blogspot.com/

Madness and Desecration - 1987

From Barbara Ginsberg’s Desktop

Beyond Words

Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,

1960-1990

Volume 5    1985-1988

“Beyond Words” is a newly-published seven volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings 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.

Index of articles by subject, title, and Torah sources.

If you are interested in buying this new collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane's writings, write to Levi Chazan at: Levi1@hotmail.com

MADNESS AND DESECRATION

Let me tell you what is even worse than a Jewish mother burned alive in a car after a firebomb was thrown through the window.  Let me tell you what is worse than this attack near the Arab town of Kalkilya that also tragically burned 80% of the bodies of her children Tal and Adi, five and eight years old respectively.  Let me tell you of Arab cruelty and Jewish madness – the two partners in the murder of Ofra Moses and the cruel disfiguring of her small children – so that you will be furious enough to do something and prevent the deaths and mutilations of other Ofra  Moseses and other Jewish children.

In the years following the creation of the State of Israel, the town of Kalkilya was one of the worst vipers’ nests of Arab terror.  Lying less than five minutes from the Jewish city of Kfar Saba, Kalkilya became a symbol to the Jews of Arab terror and murder and, for years, Jews dreamed of the day when they would take vengeance on the town and its Arab inhabitants.

And then the miracle occurred:  the Six-Day War erupted and Jewish soldiers drove across the Green Line into Samaria – into Kalkilya; the entire Arab population fled.  Knowing what they deserved, fearing that they would get precisely that from the long suffering Jews, they fled in terror towards the Jordan River, hoping to cross into Jordan.  The town was deserted, free of the terrorists and the terror they carried into Israel.  The Jews of Kfar Saba and the surrounding area were ecstatic as they poured into the deserted Kalkilya, walking freely and securely for the first time.

And then.  And then, there occurred a thing so incredible that no normal person could ever hope to believe it.  Moshe Dayan, Minister of Defense and hero to the UJA-Israel Bonds-Hadassah jet set, issued orders to the Israeli paratroopers to rush to the Jordan and bring the Arabs of Kalkilya back.

Yes, I know that the words are almost inexplicable, let along believable.  Bring them back? Bring back Arabs who fled?  Bring back the vipers to their nest?  How is that possible?  It is not possible?  It could never have happened!  Was Dayan mad?

No, he was not mad; not in the clinical sense.  But yes, it did happened.  Because as Dayan himself said: “G-d forbid that the world should think that there is another wave of refugees.” No, he was not “mad.”  Merely the product of a gentilized lack of any faith and trust in the G-d and destiny of Israel.  The same Dayan who objected to the capture of the Golan Heights in 1967 because there were Soviet advisors there and this would “surely” bring in the Soviets.  And the tragedy of madness and desecration as Israeli troops forced the Arabs of Kalkilya to return.

They did and prospered.  They did and turned the area once again into a vipers’ nest.  Jews fear to ride through the area where a new breed and generation of Arab has arisen, thanks to the insanity of Dayanism.  And Ofra Moses is dead and her children disfigured and Jews frustrated and frightened and appalled.  We are a people that took the miracle of 1967 and threw it away.

We are afflicted by a sickness of soul that is the very essence of that ghetto and Galut that the Hellenists of Dayanism so contemptuously attacked.  But they the secular Zionists who fear world opinion and who question their real right to be in Judea and Samaria, are the most intense of the ghetto-ites, the most extreme of the Galut Jews.

Kalkilya must be wiped off the face of the earth as a lesson, the clearest and most brutal lesson, to the Arabs.  Its inhabitants must be thrown across the river into Jordan and every building leveled, as a permanent example of what will be done to every other Arab town in whose region terror strikes at Jews.  And that, of course, is only a prelude to the real Jewish, Zionist and logical step – the removal of all our enemies from Eretz Yisrael.

A government that is incapable of or unwilling to take any and all actions to protect the lives of its people loses all legitimacy or right to exist as legal authority.  The only right that any government has to regulate and restrict and rule over human beings rests on the premise that individuals give up their totality of freedom in exchange for the protection and security of life and property that the government promises them.  When governments cannot or is not prepared to fulfill its share of the covenant, it loses all right to rule over the lives of citizens.  It becomes illegitimate, a bandit authoritarian.

The government of Israel stands, today, at that political red line.  Years of failure – either through helplessness or haplessness, or worse, deliberate political decision – contributed to the deaths of hundreds of Jews and the wounding of thousands of others in terror attacks that could have been prevented by the removal of the Arabs from the land, or at the very least, by a powerful fist that would have struck terror into the hearts of the Arabs – people who are, at least in heart and in mind, all terrorists.

Written May 1987

If you did not receive this article personally and would like to be on my weekly Rabbi Kahane article e-mail list, contact me at: BarbaraAndChaim@gmail.com

To view previously e-mailed Rabbi Kahane articles go to:

www.barbaraginsberg-barbara.blogspot.com

Light on Purim - 1986

Beyond Words

Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,

1960-1990

Volume 5  1985-1988

“Beyond Words” is a newly-published seven volume collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s writings 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.

Index of articles by subject, title, and Torah sources.

If you are interested in buying this new collection of Rabbi Meir Kahane's writings, write to Levi Chazan at: Levi1@hotmail.com

LIGHT ON PURIM

I have always been bemused and amused at the delightful sight of gentiles attending Jewish religious affairs and being asked to don yarmulkas, there not being the slightest reason in the world for imposing headgear on a goy.  (Fortunately for the Pope and the Jews of Rome, there will be no need for such a thing on his historic, exciting, breathtaking, joyful, spine-tingling visit to the Great Rome Synagogue since, as opposed to Alexander Schindler, the Pope always wears a yarmulke)  nevertheless, the yarmulking of the goy, for me, has always been an apt symbol of American Judaism itself, especially on the part of the Moderdox. I refer to the taking, not of the gentile, but of the gentilization, and the yarmulking of it, i.e., taking gentile concepts, gentile values and turning them into “Judaism.”

One stands in sheer awe at the perversion of Judaism and Jewish values by the Hellenists, the gentilized and the Moderdox, in their desperate efforts to prove to the gentile and, of course, to themselves, that western civilization with all its secularized gentilized values, is Judaism.

They whip out their semi-verses, these semi-learned, and “prove” that evil is good and good evil, darkness light and light darkness (and is that not also a verse?).

Born into Western gentilization and denizens of the fleshpots of those values, they join to decry such “non-Jewish” concepts as vengeance, joy over the destruction of the enemy, basic difference in status between Jews and gentile, and the claim that democracy and Judaism are at opposite polls.

And so, what better time than Purim to shed a little light on the fog and dark ages of the Hellenists and Moderdox alike, for few holidays more clearly emphasize all the authentic Jewish values that the yarmulkasizers of the Jewish earth so desperately attempt to bury and forget.

So, if on Purim for the Jews there was “light and gladness and joy and honor,” let us indeed shed a little light on real Judaism as seen from the holiday itself.

Lesson One:  We must never seek vengeance or be happy at the fall of our enemy.

(Megillah 16a) [When Haman came to lead Mordechai on the king’s horse] “He said to him: Get up and ride.  Said Mordechai: I am weak from fasting.  Haman thereupon bent down [to allow Mordechai to climb on him].  When he bent down, Mordechai kicked him.  Haman then said: does it not say in your books ‘when your enemy falls, be not glad’?] (Proverbs 24:17)/  Said Mordechai:  That concerns Jews [when a Jew has an enemy who is a Jew], but with you [gentiles] it is written, ‘And you shall trample on their high places’(Deuteronomy 33:29).”

What is the Talmud saying?  One, joy over the fall of a gentile enemy of the Jewish people is permitted, more, it is a mitzvah. Indeed, the whole nature of Purim, the rejoicing over the death of Haman, the stamping of the feet at the mention of his name, is rejoicing over the fall of the enemy of the Jewish people.  And that is because of the next lesson: that vengeance against the enemy of the Jewish people – an enemy that is per se, the enemy of the G-d of the Jewish people – is a joy and commandment because only through vengeance, through the fall of the enemy, is G-d vindicated.  For the same enemy who crowed when success smiled upon him, “There is no G-d in Israel”, by his fall proves that there is indeed One!  And what does King David say?  “The righteous one shall rejoice when he sees vengeance, he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.  And men shall say:  There, indeed, is a G-d that judges in the earth!” (Psalms 58:11-12).

But what does that do to the Hellenist-Moderdox lesson?  Answer: It destroys it.  And at the Purim feast, as we rejoice in the vengeance against Haman, let us drink a toast to the demise, too, of this gentilized nonsense with the yarmulka perched on its empty head.

Lesson Two:  Since all people are made in G-d’s image, they must be totally equal and treated with mercy.

(Megillah 11a): “Rabbi Levi would begin [his introduction to the Megillah] with the verse: “And if you shall not drive out the inhabitants of the Land [of Israel] from before you, they will be as thorns in your eyes’ (Numbers 33:55).”

To the obvious question, what does this verse have to do with Purim, Rashi says: “So were these Jews of Persia punished because Saul had pity on Amalek [and allowed their king Agag to live].”

What is the Talmud saying?  It is emphasizing that the mitzvah to drive out the inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael was a Divine, Jewish commandment and that failure to observe it would lead to punishment. It teaches that a similar injunction to wipe out Amalak, also brought down Divine wrath in the era of Purim, because it was not followed.  In short, in the struggle against the enemy it is a mitzvah to fight without mercy, for as the Rabbis say: “When you go out to battle against your enemy, know that they are the enemy and not your allies.  As they would have no mercy on you, have not mercy upon them” (Tanchuma, Shoftim 15).

But you say, does this not contradict the teaching of the three L’s that we must always have mercy on all people?  On our enemies?  The answer is, yes, it does contradict it. Because there was never such a teaching in Judaism.  Mercy and pity are reserved for people who are not our enemies.  For those who are, Purim teaches us something very different.

And a final less from Purim:

The Rabbis ask (Hullin 139b): “Haman min haTorah minayin?” (“Where is there a hint as to Haman in the Torah?” And they answer from the verse (genesis 3:11): “Ha’min ha’eytz asher tziviticha l’vilti echol mimenu achalta?”(Have you eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat?”)

The obvious question is: Why in the world must there be a hint of Haman in the Torah when Haman’s story occurred long after the Torah was written?  And more – because the word “Haman” and the word “ha’min” sound alike, what is the connection between them?

The answer is, what the Rabbis are really asking is:  Where in the Torah is the lesson of Haman hinted at?  And the answer is that G-d, in His totality of wisdom, placed a word that sounds like “Haman” into a Torah passage that carries with it that central lesson.  The passage is G-d speaking to Adam and chastising him because he disobeyed the one law that G-d gave him. He followed the dictates of his own heart and cast off the yoke of Heaven.  And this, indeed, is the central lesson of Purim: The whole rise of Haman, his threat to wipe out the Jews, the near-Holocaust, came about because the Jews refused to obey G-d’s law – the wiping out of Amalak.  

And of course, they disobeyed it because of ethical and moral reasons!  Of course, it was because they could not believe that Judaism would ever countenance such a thing!  And so, the Rabbis tell us that all that night Saul fought with himself, saying:  “If the men, why the women; and if the women, why the children; and if the children, why the animals?”  (Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer 43).  Saul, a Jew who had his own ethical sense of values and concerning whom the Bible thunders: “Do not be overly righteous” (Ecclesiastes 7:16) – “Do not be more righteous than your Maker …” (Kohelet Rabbah 7).  The yoke of heaven!  Whether we “agree” with a mitzvah or concept or not.  This is the central lesson on Purim.  This is where Saul failed.

How many Sauls are there today!  The Sauls of the world still live, good people, righteous people, more so than their Maker. And they too will bring down on us Divine tragedy.

Written April 11, 1986

If you did not receive this article personally and would like to be on my weekly Rabbi Kahane article e-mail list, contact me at: BarbaraAndChaim@gmail.com

To view previously e-mailed Rabbi Kahane articles go to:

www.barbaraginsberg-barbara.blogspot.com