Drug-Smuggling Story

Eli Hecht was a roomate of mine for several weeks when we studied together in the late 90's in a Morristown, NJ Yeshiva for Jews becoming observant. I remember him as a modest personality, mild-mannered, speaking softly and sparingly, and always opting for a low profile.

Over a year ago, I was stunned to find out he was jailed in Spain for possession of illicit drugs. I knew of course he was innocent. Now, upon his release from jail, we learn what happened.

He had worked as fund-raiser for a Kollel in Tsfat for over 10 years. The emissary of the Rebbe at this Chabad Kollel, Rabbi Karombie, stayed closely in touch with Eli and often travelled to Spain to be at his side, and also showed up at all proceedings. The invoices collected from Eli's travels all those years from all over the world he presented as evidence and these helped persuade the 3 judges to declare him innocent and release him.

He fell victim to a "benefactor" in Costa Rica who asked him to please take some clothes to a widow in Spain. The drugs were embedded inside the small valise's walls. The cell they first threw him into also held Al-Qaeda prisoners. Shortly thereafter they transferred him to another cell because the guards sensed his life was in danger.

Once during this long ordeal, Rabbi Karombie had spoken to a well-known prosecutor in Spain. He told the rabbi, "Be prepared to accept a settlement where he'll have to sit in prison for a good few years." Thank God he was proven wrong, justice prevailed and now Eli can go back to his family and back to his work.

Eli met the culprit in Costa Rica in a synagogue! He invited Eli to his home, let him stay overnight, and even gave him a few hundred dollars before he asked for that "favor". Goes to show you where one's head can be while he is supposedly in communion with God. How shameful.

Shiloh - The Masquerading Missionary

Thinking I was responding to some young, lunatic Jew who fell of his rocker and needed to be set straight, I took the time to try and formulate important issues and put these in proper context for him, and spent some time doing so. It didn't add up when I noticed nothing I said, but nothing, could penetrate his numbed skull.

After some 10 comments - that's when it hit me! The bloody creep was a good-for-nothing missionary who would repeatedly quote some verse in Tanach, not knowing what he was saying. He would deride our Talmud and its sages. And no wonder; Because our oral tradition is what anchors Jews to our Torah, something he would find anathema, because his hidden agenda is to tout the "new" book instead of what he wants us to believe is "old".

His ultimate aim is to dissociate Jews from Torah. This guy figures to do it slyly, like the Yetzer Hara does it, by first dissuading the Jew of his Oral Tradition.

Anyone honoring our sages would find this lowlife as nauseating as I do. He signed in as Shiloh. Of course, his name's link leads to nowhere. The coward comments under the guise of being Jewish.

I should have known better. Responding to comments without seeing whom I'm responding to puts me at a disadvantage. I blog to educate or express an opinion, and I figure commenters have sincere intentions, as I do. Not these missionaries, though, who waste not only their own loathsome lives, so they could care less that they waste the time of others, especially Jews whom they despise. And for good reason - for they have nothing themselves of any value. And, they think, by stepping on Jews, they can thereby raise themselves. That's about the only way they know how to "rise" and take on "value".

Shiloh - I spit on you! And on every other stealth missionary.

Appeasing Mankind or Trusting God?

"Political correctness", like a euphemism, means clothing words with inaccurate meanings, to slip through where frankness cannot get through. It is a calculated lie to have its intent deliberately misconstrued.

Torah does not mince words. It does not deviate from laser-straight truthfulness. It tells Jews in no uncertain terms how to achieve peace in the Holy Land.

Before the Jews were to cross the Jordan River, God provided them the exact formula for peaceful existence. To "exist" means for everyone to exist, meaning, without anyone suffering occasional tragedy from hostile or enemy elements.

"And God spoke to Moses ... Tell the Jews that after they cross ... into the Land ... they should drive out its inhabitants." Jews should, according to God, clear away, by chasing away (Rashi), all non-Jews who resided there in the first place, to turn it into a Land for Jewish people, "... Because for you [Jews] I have given this Land to inherit."

And the consequences if not: "And if you do not drive out the inhabitants, and you leave some to remain among you, then they will be a source of hurt for you, like nails in your eyes and like barbs in your sides, and they will continually trouble you. And as I had planned to do to them - I will do to you!" (Num. 33:50-56)

There simply is no other way. As long as Arabs/Gentiles dwell in Israel, as residents, Jews feed their own suffering. As long as political correctness supersedes the dictates of God, God will not slack off. As long as God's word does not take priority over that which the human mind wants to superimpose, regarding policy within Israel, its people cannot achieve the peace they purportedly desire.

This is the saga of the Jewish people. As long as Jews cannot unite under the shield of trust in Hashem, Hashem will not grant us tranquility. He wants to be our God. "I will take you to Myself as a nation, and I will be to you as a God." (Ex. 6:7) He wants to be our God, our Provider, our Guarantor, and He will not let us remain unhurt if some of us, whoever they may be, choose another authority, another benefactor, or another's assurances and gestures for peace.

Political correctness assumes politics of internal or international considerations override the policy God wants to establish for Israel. But as long as God is not given paramount consideration, Jews stand to lose - by continually inviting upon themselves what God had wanted to deal to the enemies of the Jews.

As long as Israel is not a Jewish land for the Jewish people, and for them alone, this sorry saga of occasional tragedy the Jews themselves bring upon themselves (ה' ישמור). If a Gentile owns land in Israel, or resides thereupon, he is actually living on land that belongs to some Jew, wherever he may now be living, because the entire Jewish Land is an inheritance to the entire 12 tribes of Israel and that will not and cannot change.

Obviously this flies in the face of so-called "Democracy", but to give this excuse more validity than it deserves is to give it dimensions of deity.

May God grant Jews iron fortitude and the pride of Jacob in their God and Holy Land, first and foremost to unify, and then to ignore political correctness and pressure, to carry out God's will, and sweep clean the Jewish land of all its Gentile residents, so we can fully achieve eternal peace for each and every Jew. And then God promises, "... you will live in security!" (Deut. 12:10)

Goliath Behind the Shield of David

From COMMENTARY Magazine, Dec. 2011, by Arthur Herman

How Israel's Defense Industry Can Help Save America

Kibbutz Sasa sits one mile from Israel’s Lebanese border. Founded in 1949, it is the site of the tomb of the second-century rabbi Levi ben Sisi. It hosts groves of fruit trees and a dairy farm and has 210 members. Kibbutz Sasa is also the home of the main factory of Plasan, a company that started out making hard plastic containers like garbage cans in 1985. For four years now, American soldiers have driven more safely in Iraq and Afghanistan, thanks to Kibbutz Sasa and Plasan’s CEO, Dani Ziv.

It was Ziv who, in the 1980s, urged the company to take up the manufacture of protective ballistic vests for soldiers and police. In 1989, Plasan won its first contract to make body armor for the Israel Defense Forces, and then for IDF vehicles. When war came to Afghanistan and then Iraq, orders went through the roof, especially from the United States. Plasan’s profits soared some 1,500 percent, from $23 million in 2003 to $330 million in 2007. Today they stand at over $500 million, with 90 percent of the company’s orders coming from Europe and the United States.

Plasan specializes in a very dense plastic composite product that affords ballistic protection without significantly adding to the weight of the vehicle. “Their work is exceptional,” says a senior Israeli defense industry executive about Plasan. “To convince the U.S. military that you are a reliable outfit is no mean feat. They did it all alone, without any help from a former ambassador or defense ministry director general.”

Plasan-armored mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs) have been serving in Afghanistan since August 2009, and contractor Oshkosh Company has another 8,800 on order. In 2009 Plasan even opened a factory in Bennington, Vermont, to do the work for its American contract. But while the 350 or so workers there are American, the technology is decidedly Israeli.

That applies to an even smaller company in Netanya, Israel, called Camero. Its engineers have come up with a way to use ultra-wideband wireless transmissions to see through walls—literally—and detect armed men and explosives on the other side. The Xaver 400 is barely the size of a laptop computer, but it’s dramatically shifting the odds in urban fighting in favor of the technology user, whether he’s an IDF soldier or a United States Marine. Indeed, in December 2010, one of Camero’s top clients became the Department of Defense.

What’s happening at Plasan and Camero is part of a silent revolution sweeping the defense establishments of the United States and Israel. After decades of being the Pentagon’s dependent in terms of military technology, Israel’s defense industry is now gaining a competitive advantage over its overregulated, bloated and lethargic American rival. Indeed, the United States is becoming one of its best customers. Goliath is finding shelter under the shield of David.

This situation is fraught with irony. It’s not only that America is now fighting the kind of wars Israel has been fighting for decades—small-scale, low-intensity, against an elusive terrorist enemy—and needs the skills and equipment Israel has to offer, including remote-detection devices such as unmanned drones, an area in which Israel has been on average 10 years ahead of the curve. Nor is it simply the fact that as U.S.-Israeli relations have cooled during the Obama years, Israelis are realizing that a strong and independent high-tech defense sector may be more crucial to Israel’s future than relying on U.S. help.

The Israeli way of doing defense business is changing the shape of the military-industrial complex. Smaller, nimbler, and entrepreneurial, Israel’s defense industry offers a salutary contrast to the Pentagon’s way of doing things. With the spending and budget crisis in the United States already putting immense pressure on the Pentagon, with all-but-certain declines in the percentage of the U.S. economy that will be devoted to defense in the coming decade, a second “revolution in military affairs” is going to be necessary. We are going to have to get more for less—much less. Israel points the way.

A good example coming from the more expensive end of the military-technology spectrum involving high-tech missiles is Rafael Advanced Systems. They’re the Israeli makers of the Iron Dome missile defense system, built to protect Israeli towns from mortars, rockets, and 155-millimeter artillery shells. Each Iron Dome unit fires four to eight missiles and is equipped with a Battle Management computer system designed by another Israeli company, MPrest Systems. It’s an all-weather mobile system with a range of 70 kilometers (about 43.5 miles)

For the Pentagon, developing and deploying a major new system like this can take more than a decade. By contrast, the Israel Defense Ministry gave Rafael the contract for Iron Dome in 2007, and by March 2009 the system was fully ready for testing. The first true shoot-down test had to wait until July that year. More tests followed in 2010, and by March 2011 Iron Dome was declared operational and has been deployed in towns near the Gaza strip to protect against Hamas’s attacks.

To intercept bigger ballistic missile, Israeli Aerospace Industry (IAI) developed the Arrow antimissile system in cooperation with the United States as part of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. The agreement to build Arrow came in 1989. The first missile, the Arrow 1, got its first test launch in August 1990. Less than four years later came its first test interception.

Although Arrow began as an American-Israeli joint initiative, the irony is that Israel’s interest in developing Arrow sprang from the failure of American-made Patriot antimissile batteries to intercept Scud missile attacks during the First Gulf War. Arrow relies on a coterie of Israeli companies to provide the interception system’s components. Elta, a division of Israel’s biggest private arms firm, Elbit Systems, provides the Green Pine early-warning radar. Tadiran (another Elbit division) makes the Communication, Control, and Command center. IAI devised the Hazelnut launch controls. Altogether, they have constructed one of the world’s most sophisticated defense systems. In 1995 the Arrow 1 was replaced with an even faster, more lethal version, Arrow 2, which, according to its developer, Dov Raviv, has a 90 percent probability of knocking out a ballistic missile—and can tell a warhead from a decoy.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency considers itself fortunate when it gets any successful missile shoot-downs from its land-based system. The first successful test interception from the American version of Star Wars came in August 2005—more than 10 years after the Israelis had done the same thing. Now Israel is looking to sell Iron Dome in the United States. And Rafael’s American marketing partner? Raytheon, the same company that developed the Patriot.

For decades Israel has been seen as the United States’ junior partner in all matters military and strategic. American defense companies were the unquestioned leaders in developing sophisticated modern weaponry, while Israelis focused on more standard items such as small arms (the classic Uzi) or weapons built to suit their unique battle conditions (the Merkava tank). The Patriot missile deployment in the First Gulf War only reinforced the perception that Israelis needed American military technology, and American military aid, in order to survive. Now it may be Israeli technology, in the shape of Iron Dome and Arrow, that ends up defending American cities instead.

The changing situation has also affected the American attitude to technology transfers between the two allies. General Uzi Eilam, former head of the Israeli weapons research-and-development agency MAFAT, remembers that when F-15s and F-16s from the United States arrived in Israel, “they came with systems in locked boxes, which we were not allowed to open.” The rule was, the closer the Israelis were to attaining the same technical breakthrough, the more willing the United States would be to share the technology. Today the Pentagon is speeding up the cooperation process, if only to prevent Israeli advances from heading them off at the pass.

It is striking how the Israeli defense sector keeps steadily leapfrogging from one challenge to the next. This is especially true for the acid test of any strong defense industry: foreign sales. Ten years ago Israel ranked 15th. In 2007 it surpassed the United Kingdom to rank fourth, behind the United States, Russia, and France. The day when it takes France’s place is not far off.

This is a remarkable achievement for a country of some six million people that is treated as a virtual pariah by much of the world. But virtual is the mot juste—for even though Turkey virtually froze relations with Israel two years ago, it’s still among Elbit’s best customers.

Read the rest of this great article here.

The Power of Jewish Blabber

Once it was discovered Moses killed an Egyptian (who persecuted a Jew), Pharoah ordered his execution. With the help of divine intervention, Moses managed to escape and fled Egypt. One source says he was 12 years old (Sifsei Chachomim, Ex. 3:18); Another says he was 18 (Sefer Hayashar, p. 211). At any rate, he was a youngster at the time. By the time Moses returned to Egypt, he was about 80 years old.

Discovery of the Egyptian's murder that forced Moses to flee came as a consequence of two Jews squealing the information to Pharoah. That is to say, because Datan and Aviram tattled on another Jew, opening their mouths when they didn't have to, this led to Moses' absence for a duration of over 60 years!

It was thanks to young Moses, a prince in Pharoah's palace, that Egypt instituted for enslaved Jews one day in the week to be a day of rest - which turned out to be the Shabbat day ("ישמח משה במתנת חלקו"). It was, thanks to Moses, that the Egyptian rapist and torturer was killed. Imagine then how much more he could have helped the Jews had he remained within their sphere for a period of over 60 years.

Yet banished he was - and all because of the blabber of two Jews. And not just any two Jews, for these two were the worst among the Jews. Nevertheless, we see the extraordinary power blabbing has, even by the worst of Jewish elements, with its effect on the highest of Jewish personalities.

If the gossip of a lowlife has such detrimental force, imagine how much more injurious could be the gossip of a finer class.

Therefore, of the immense power of a Jew's "לשון הרע" we should take note and take heed!

It is not for nothing God placed two sets of "guardrails" in front of man's tongue. You first have to breach the lips, and then the teeth, before the tongue can begin to wag. The little wag of a Jewish tongue can whip the daylights out of another Jew. So the Jew must be careful to restrain what he exhales from his open mouth. For bad-mouthing another Jew has the power to kill.

The Fallibility of Man without Recourse to Torah

Some "computer geeks" believe computers can be "taught" to make intelligent decisions as humans can, on the condition the computer gets enough data. But no two people think alike, so what does it mean "enough data"? We would have to exhaust all possible combinations of facts, for every human involved, for the computer to accurately "decide" correctly -- to everybody's satsfaction. Their premise, "on the condition the computer gets enough data", is preposterous.

If that weren't enough, even with the "smartest" computer, won't the computer need updates on a constant basis, because the world doesn't stop for the sake of computer input, does it? And if the world could stand still, can we unload all of what we have in our minds onto paper?

A few more stupid questions, to make a point.

Can a computer: "Become acquainted" with its inventor; "Understand" the urge of a barren woman to have children; Differentiate between a stable or fickle personality; Intuit man's constitution of limbs and inner organs that provide grip, vision, secrete insulin, maintain balance, or digest food? Can it register emotions of pain, love, hate, mercy, cruelty or sympathy?

Can a nest know its bird? Can an explosion understand its etiology? Can milk understand the cow?

Here's the point: As foolish as we deem the assumption of "computer-geeks" to gather all possible data into a machine, as absurd as it is to reckon a computer can understand enough about its inventor, it is infinitely more ludicrous to think man himself can fathom his Creator! After all, the cognitive gap between man and machine is infinitely more minuscule than that between the Creator of the universe and man.

The closest we can get is, we can begin to try to comprehend some things about our Creator, knowing we will never get close. All we can come up with, based on Torah, and nothing but Torah, is that God has certain attributes, and even when we say so, we know we know nothing substantial about Him. For example, Torah says God is benevolent, merciful, righteous, etc., and therefore man, who was created in "God's image", should also aspire to such attributes. How these features help define an infinite God makes no sense to us except that thereby we acknowledge our own need to behave accordingly.

Why Torah? Because this medium mediates between God and man. It is the only and ultimate authority to reckon by. It is this world's "Manual of Instructions". One set of instructions apply to the Jew, whereas another set therein applies to the Gentile.

God can infuse prophecy into a person, but magicians can also infuse or mimic what appears like "Godly powers". So how can man differentiate between the real and the fake? By referring to Torah, and only Torah. The giving of the Torah was a one-time event and no other absolute authority can ever replace it. Only by Torah standards can we decide definitively if something is "kosher" or not.

Can we then ascribe "Godly powers" to a human being? Only if that person measures up to the requirements stipulated in Torah law. One good example of this is the incident of Elijah the prophet, who asked the Jews to build an altar, which Torah prohibits. But, Torah tells us, as long as this is a one-time incident, and otherwise the prophet is God-fearing and Torah-observant, in such a one-time situation we must heed this prophet's demands.

Ascribing "prophetic powers" to someone is one thing. To go even further and say a human possesses divine properties, comparing a man to God, is outright silly. Of course, to justify this belief, they would have to shun Torah, conveniently enough, for example, by saying Torah is outdated or wrong.

But think about the absurdity of this assertion. For, by saying a man is half God or 30% God or somewhat God is like saying man is some percentage of what his mind has no idea of what he's talking about.

What results from such preposterous belief? What else if not absurdities?

Can the mind be deceived? Yes, as sure as people (but never Torah-people!) once thought the earth was flat.

The one and only source of absolute truth is Torah. Torah is virtually the only way to avoid straying into erroneous conclusions. As we learn in Torah, and in its derived literature, Talmud and Chassidus, Torah is, after all -- "the blueprint of the universe"!

What if one believes monotheistically, as do Moslems, who do not attribute Godly attributes to humans; Could they, who are prime examples of heinous hate and cruelty, have access to truth? Of course not, for the simple reason that they too have no anchor to Torah.

The Ron Paul Phenomenon

Funny how freedom-loving persons who happen to harbor anti-Semitism in their marrow can so easily become discombobulated and fight against free speech when this particular nerve of theirs is rubbed. Ron Paul knows enough to cloak his Jew-hatred under layers of economic-sense parameters, or not so adroitly by lending credence to Israel's worst enemies, but his supporters, many at least, don't bother to conceal their contempt for anything Jewish. Like a wild dog suddenly confronted by a stray cat, these supporters erupt into aggressive attack mode and cannot calm down as long as a Jewish issue or presence lingers uncontested. Freedom of speech for Jews or Jewish supporters now becomes anathema to them, and they are blind to the contradiction.

To encounter an Amalekite is quite common a circumstance for a Jew raised or living among Gentiles. It is as definite as the Jewish law - that "Esau hates Jacob", and we sense this virulence in anyone bearing the Amalekite genome.

The Amalekites, as Torah attests, were the first nation in Jewish history to make war on the Jewish nation. They did it for no good reason. After the Exodus, the Jewish people headed South towards the lower tip of the Sinai Desert, parallel to the bank of the Red Sea just East of Egypt. Then, the entire male population of the nation of Amalek, from their land situated in the Northeast of the Sinai Desert, garnered their weapons and rushed Southward to catch up to the Jews, to fight them, to annihilate them. Never did this nation have any interaction with the Jews until then. Their lustful pursuit to kill or fight the Jew has no rationale. They simply cannot help themselves. It derives from an automatic, genetic bitter hatred for the Jew. They cannot stomach the idea of a free Jewish nation. In their loathing, the Amalekites traversed more than half the desert to prey on their unsuspecting victims.

Today, millennia after Sancheriv exiled the Jewish people to far-off places and mixed up the tribes, and scattered the Gentiles as well, Amalekites too have been dispersed where only nature can take each one. As a collective body, therefore, they no longer constitute a nation, but their genes definitely still exist in individuals throughout mankind. The easiest way to discern the real Amalekite is simply to gauge his hatred. If the hate is unprovoked, vile, irrational, suddenly surfaces and the person is willing to practically self-sacrifice for the cause, he is almost certainly one with the Amalekite genome.

Hitler, no doubt, was an Amalekite, as were, of course, many of his cohorts who rose to help him enthusiastically. I suspect Pat Buchanan too. Others who most probably share this feature today are Farrakhan, Obama, Wright and Ayers.

Many Arabs too, no doubt, come from this seed, although they may instead come from the "wild" seed of Ishmael (see here). But here too the distinction is clear. Whereas Ishmael hates the Jew as does the Amalekite, the latter holds no such virulent hate for any other nation, while Ishmael's descendants hate all of mankind, even of their own.

Improvising on Oral Torah

I occasionally surf over to Reform Jewish sites to see what stuff they're putting out. They represent our modern-day "Hellenists" and we have to nudge these good people over to Torah truth ever so carefully and gracefully, lest we shove them further away. Usually my comments get censored out. (Reform "bouncers"). Here's one that made it through.

I responded to a commenter, who knew some Hebrew, who said the following:

"There are no vowels in the Torah. Thus, את השמים ואת הארץ ( heaven and earth) can also be read as, “At hashamaim ve at haaretz”, meaning: "You are heaven and you are earth."

I wrote back:

You can say the same thing about ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום אחד, "And it was one day and one night; Day one." (Gen. 1:5); You can say, since vowels are missing, what it really says is, "There was a crow and there was cattle, one day". Because crow and evening, and cattle and morning, contain the exact same letters, respectively!

There's obviously a problem here. Vowels are a part of oral Torah! The problem is - that part of oral Torah you do accept, as when you accept ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום אחד to mean, "And it was evening and it was day; Day one," but another part of oral Torah you unwittingly deny - by creating your own "oral Torah" - namely, "You are heaven and you are earth."

That's not to say Torah cannot be explored in unique ways, but it must be done under certain guidelines, otherwise you "short-circuit" perfect code and make preposterous sense. This happens when we leave it to our own machinations, instead of relying on our sages.

You cannot twist text where it suits you and leave the rest intact. There are 13 particular ways to expound Torah, as our sages specify. (We read these specifications in our daily morning prayer.) In fact, even our sages carefully trod where no one trodded before. You see this often in Talmud where one sage says something by quoting another sage, in the name of yet another sage.

The very first premise to expounding, however, must be a complete respect for the original as being perfect, otherwise, like I said, you build castles in the air. With that premise in tow, we can cautiously look for our own secrets in Torah. But how wise would it be to look for these secrets if, like yours, they negate Jewish sensibilities (confining an infinite Hashem into finite physical entities)?

Such inventiveness actually denies oral tradition rather than adds to it.

During the Mount Sinai experience and in the aftermath years in the desert, God gifted the Jewish people with TWO Torahs - a written one and an oral one, later transcribed to constitute the Talmud.

If one TOTALLY denies the Talmud, as did the Saduccees in early Jewish history, that's bad enough. But to PARTIALLY accept Talmud is even worse! How can this be?

When Elijah the Prophet rebuked the Jews (during the "competition" he held with false prophets at an ad hoc altar), he declared, "How much longer will you straddle the fence? If you want to worship Hashem, then do so; And if you want to worship the foreign god, then do that!" (Kings 1, 18:39)

Note his precise words. Eliyahu was telling the Jewish people that even idol worship is better than straddling the fence! But why are fence straddlers worse than idolaters? Why does Elijah unleash such contempt for straddlers more so than for idol worshippers?

"Fence straddlers" dip into oral Torah, when and as it suits them, and into their own whimsical terrain, when and as it suits them. Such people seek convenience or self-aggrandizement more than they seek truth. For them spirituality plays second fiddle to self-satisfaction. They delude themselves into thinking they are "Torah Jews" because, after all, much of what they do is congruous with Judaism, and as for what they do otherwise, their love of self easily rationalizes away these "imperfections". Logic cannot budge such people. Much like a sick person who doesn't recognize he's ill.

Worse still is another effect straddlers have. They may influence others who lack insight or knowledge. For straddlers cannot be easily identified for what they are as easily as total deniers can be. A Jew knows enough to realize idol worship clashes with Judaism, but he may not detect the attitude of one who compromises his Judaism, as does his straddler friend. It is for this very reason gentile missionaries often prey on targets among this group of weak Jews by portraying a Jewish facade. A good lie always starts with a bit of truth to it! Rashi (13:27)

Jewish Liberalism's Achilles Heel

I wrote this letter to a Jew who heaped abuse on the Chareidi sector for nurturing the likes of that Jew who committed a chilul Hashem for spitting in a young girl's face.

Dear ___ ,

I returned to reread your tirade against the charedi sector. Why is it, I asked myself, secular Jews, more than their religious peers, tend to adopt "liberal", or leftist, positions, especially vis-a-vis Israel. For example, taking for granted Israel's current awkward jurisdiction over "West Bank" issues, which they unquestionably support. Or, for example, disregarding the plight of Jonathan Pollard because it is a "sensitive" issue for Jews to get involved with. Or, as in this case, one idiot's behavior, used to mudsling at the religious element, as leftists in Israel all too often are just too happy to oblige to.

The answer, I believe, lies in your accredited sources of information.

In American media, for example, the "Palestinians" (a name conjured up in 1967) always get more than a fair share of "concern" for their welfare, let alone their vile hatred for anything Jewish. In Israel, the religious element is ceaselessly vilified in the media. (Only 2 years ago could a "religious channel" finally materialize.)

Religious Jews are, first and foremost, brought up with Torah and its commentaries as a backdrop to the ensuing theater of life. Secular Jews, in contrast, rely on the prevalent media.

This, I believe, is the Achilles heel of secularists; For one simple reason, and that is, because media sources can be bought out and used to promote propaganda!

For example, if a weed in your back lawn could cure cancer, the medical establishment, closely aligned and kept in check by "big-pharma", will never allow any respectable medical journal to publish this finding for it would severely cut into their profit from pushing patentable drugs. Were a journal to publish such an article, its revenue for ads would suddenly dry up because big-pharma's ads are what feeds and sustains this medium.

You tell us right from your article's beginning what your creditable source of information is: the New York Times - the very publication that couldn't see fit to highlight the atrocities done to Jews in WWII; The very one that whitewashes Hamas terrorists as "fighters"; etc. You get my point.

Similarly, when it comes to Torah thoughts, your first sources would probably be your college texts, or books originally written in English, rather than the traditional Jewish literature handed down over the millennia quoting nothing but our sages.

Anyhow - may we all merit God's mercy and finally become a united people, drawing infinite blessings. If you read up to here, thanks for listening.

A Shabbat Niggun

Classical guitar music for the Jewish soul. By Nadav Bachar.