הן עם לבדד ישכון

You say we are fools
We say look at you
Long ago we were just a few
Still say we don't need you

We don't want to belong
We said all along
We just wanna be left alone



Think that we must have lost our way
Running from the blaze
You were wrong
We chose our cause
Counting up the days
Enduring your rage
We got strong

We don't want to belong
We said all along
We just wanna be left alone

You denied everything that's good
Reacting as you would
With your shame
So we turned
And left you all behind
We don't need your kind
You're to blame

We don't want to belong
We said all along
We just wanna be left alone

In years to come
You'll hear my name
When darkness falls
On Judgement Day

They say we are fools
We say look at you
Long we know we are just a few
Still say - we don't need you

Think that we must have lost our way
Running from the blaze
You were wrong
We chose our cause
Counting up the days
Enduring in a rage
We got strong

We don't want to belong
We said all along
We just wanna be
Left alone

Another one that speaks for itself.

© Joseph Izrael 2008

Disneyland-Birkenau

The radical left wing, i.e. the agitators flaunting themselves as “out of the box” and “anti-establishment” champions of social justice under false monikers such as “liberal” and “progressive” are at it again.
This time they deplore the haredim’s lack of education on the holocaust - a favorite "topic" (read: invention) of the Israeli secular media. Oy vey. Little haredi kids won’t know that Hitler wanted to annihilate Zaide – because, as we all know well, no haredi was murdered in the holocaust, and it would be loshon hora to say these things over to the kids.

The holocaust is the sweetest and most comfortable excuse for a Jew to be a total goy and yet parade himself as a “proud Jew” and sleep well at night.

The Israeli Ministry Of Truth organizes regular visits from all schools to the Israeli version of Disneyland, better known as Yad Vashem. (We will not go now into the details as how absolutely incompetent directors who have zero experience in the field are appointed there, and how they rob the taxpayer blind – that’s another story for another day.) Trips of horny teenagers clad in minmal “clothing” to Auschwitz are organized every summer – often in “mutual appreciation groups” i.e goups comprising Israeli “Jews”, Palestinians™ and Polish Gentiles. There they can witness first hand how pure madness and fanaticism caused the brutal murder of six million humans, based solely on their DNA.

Thus, the young Israelis’ bissli and porn laden shriveled minds are programmed to know that
a) The biggest crime against Jews was committed on a racial basis, which means that “Jew” is defined by race.
b) Fanaticism is very dangerous, and leads to genocide. Fanaticism – as in: haredi, right-wing, settler, etc.
c) All previous pogroms in history are dwarfed by the holocaust and practically non-existent (by receiving practically zero attention in the curriculum). The Catholic Church’s 1000-year anti-Jewish propaganda and pope “Pious” XII tacit (and in two occasions implicit) approval of the Nazis are quasi non-existent.

Then of course there is the conspiracy of silence about communism. Over a hundred million people brutally murdered, torutured and starved to death recive virtually zero mention in academia and PS curricula. This is not surprising, as Israel’s founding falters and its ruling elite emerged from the NKVD and the Yevsektzia’s torture chambers. I don’t think anyone mentions that secular Jews gleefully joined the Soviet torture squads and committed the most horrible acts of torture and mutilations in order to convince their frum “brothers” that they’re mistaken in their old-fashioned beliefs.
In fact, all of the notoriously cruel and sadistic capos, those who volunteered to become capos, and most Nazi collaborators were all enlightened freia Juden. I wonder how many times that is mentioned in the “official” history books – those who have the exclusive copyrights on Truth and Accuracy™.

Truth is, what these crypto-commies really crave is to dig their tentacles in guise of the government’s educational branch, into the haredi consciousness. Unfortunately for them, the “haredim” will never deep-throat their raspberry-cherry flavored version of the holocaust.

Despite the un-academic and often shoddy way of historical education, the European Destruction will live on in the haredi consciousness in the same way the Kishinev pogroms, גזרות ת"ח ות"ט and other calamities live on in our minds.

PS – notice how the latest piece of vomit comes from a website that staunchly refuses to report on Israel’s growing problem of Nazi gangs from the FSU. I guess they have a ready solution: Convert ‘Em All. (No, it’s not an album by Metallica – it’s a socio-political program by Haim Druckman).

© Joseph Izrael 2008

Thank G-d for The Bomb

“If that’s the only thing that’s stopping war
Then thank God for the bomb”
“Thank God for the bomb”, Ozzy Osbourne (The Ultimate Sin, 1986)

A mushroom shaped cloud arose above Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945, and that picture became engraved in my mind forever.
A picture of hope, valor, vigor, victory and survival.

A picture of determination, a picture of defiance and a will to demonstrate that there is a judge and judgment in the world.

A picture showing that pretentious, false righteousness and false compassion haven’t surpassed the true sense of wrong and right, truth and lie, life and death.

A picture symbolizing that when pushed to the wall, humanity still has in it the sense of defending itself from utter cruelty and barbarism.

What about the innocent civilians, men women and children who had nothing to do with the war? The babies who committed no crime, the mothers who didn’t know what their country was fighting for?
They were identical to the innocent of Berlin and Dresden: they did not rise up against their dictator. The babies of Dersden, Berlin, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not murdered by the allies’ wickedness, as the communist propaganda machine would like you to believe: they were murdered by their parents who tacitly or actively supported their government, and were raising their babies to become good Nazis and Shintoists.

Still, the incessant chest-beating, phony penance and endless apologetics and museums, documentaries and memorials show, that at a certain point, there is an iota of truth and sincerity in this abhorrence of homicide. This is the iota that’s completely missing in our enemies, the scintilla of regard for the other human being, this last remnant of humanity - of the image of G-d. They despise those who respect ‘life’ or ‘humanity’ in the way we do, especially those who worship “life” in its physical form only, and for whom the saint and the child-rapist and decapitator are the same, and have an equal “right” to life. They look down in utter spite and contempt on those who would spare their lives rather stan stand up and fight. And they now have the bomb.

So I still see the picture of mushroom-shaped cloud, but it’s no more the cloud of a glorious yet reluctant flash of deadly light.

For it hangs over Tel-Aviv.

© Joseph Izrael 2008

Raining Blood

On this day, the 27th of Nissan, the state of Israel celebrates the deaths of six million Jews with different ceremonies, the most important of them a minute of silence to remember the murdered.

The greatest celebration, however, is reserved for a group of misfits, - long-time splinters in the enlightened throat of the enlightened secular Israelis – who refuse, even in public, to stand still for one minute, trampling the martyrs’ memory.

The “alternative media”, i.e. extreme-leftist bloggers, can’t have enough harping about how the Belzer rebbe gave a speech promising that all will be well, while he fled Hungary in Januray ’44. With this story, which the mainstream media has dropped a while ago, they cunningly imply that the Belzer is in fact responsible for Hungarian Jewry’s massacre. (Because they know for a fact that all Hungarian Jews – including the anti-religious and anti-Zionists- would and could have escaped otherwise.[1])

Judging the Belzer rebbe is not my objective right now; for the moment, I’ll focus on what happened between the time the Belzer fled and the end of the war.

In March ’44, Hungary was invaded by their German allies. Eichmann immediately sets his death machine (which, in his trial, he dubbed “a medical experiment”) in motion.[2] The Hungarian population voluntarily packed the Jews from all over Hungary and Transylvania on cattle-cars and shipped them off to Auschwitz-Birkenau, to be gassed and burned.

But Eichmann is not the kind of guy to take chances – he needs the oven-fodder itself to take part in his medical experiment. So he summons Rudolf Kasztner, a Jewish Agency Rescue Committee factotum, befriends him, and trusts him with placating the Jews and keeping them docile. For the sake of fairness, and as hard as it may be, it shall be stated that this was an unnecessary precaution; the Jews loved pleasing their Hungarian masters. In mass graves discovered after the war, searchers found photos of Horthy in dead Jews’ pockets – the heiliga Horthy who oversaw two Jew-killings between the wars, and who authorized the transports (under Allied threat he had the power to stop them). This is the Horthy who is now hustled by Yad Vashem as a חסיד אומות העולם. But Israeli academia and its chihuahuas on the internet need to blame all the Jews’ (including the anti religious ones) docility on the Belzer. Now that’s what I call stellar honesty!

But let’s look at a few more facts:

Fact: Kasztner was possibly the only one who knew exactly what was going on and how. He knew of the gas chambers, the crematoria and where and how the transports were going. He was the only Jew in Hungary to have a private telephone line and an automobile. Yet not only he warns no one – he tells them that they are being relocated to Kenyérmező – literally meaning “Breadfield”, a non-existing 'transition camp'. The Klausenburger Ghetto (also known as Cluj or Kolozsvár), was guarded but by twenty arrow-cross guards, and is three miles from the Rumanian border. In short, Kasztner was a Holocaust denier[3], and still historians and medias are whitewashing him and his handlers.

Fact: The day before deportations begin, Eichmann sends Joel Brand to Palestine to negotiate a deal with the British to free Hungary’s Jews against trucks, coffee, tea and sugar. Is Eichmann serious? Would the British –now hell bent on ending the war- give it even a consideration? Probably not. But one thing is sure: Horthy caved in to allied pressure and stopped the deportations on June 8th. The heads of the Jewish Agency (Ben Gurion, Sharet, Kollek[4], et al) knowingly and purposely delivered Brand to the British’s hands. Brand was arrested and prevented from returning to Hungary. Had they concentrated all their efforts on rescue, the Allied could have possibly pressured Hungary to stop the deportations. They didn’t.

Fact: Scores of people testified in the Gruenwald case, accusing Kasztner of different degrees of collaboration with the Nazis and neglected his efforts to help Jews. Anna Szenes’s mother charged he gave her the cold shoulder when she begged him to intervene on behalf of her daughter. He refused to do as much as let her get a package to her daughter.

Fact: Even the Supreme kangaroo court, which was split on whether Gruenwald was guilty of libel, unanimously agreed Kasztner knowingly exonerated Kurt Becher and Hermann Krumey, saving them from the noose. (Note: the two Supreme Court Judges who reversed all of the district court’s other findings have sons now serving as supreme court justices. Mere coincidence, no question. Note: Becher later owned a grain company and traded with Israel. He died a rich man. Many Israelis accused Kasznter of splitting a suitcase full of gold -from teeth pulled out in death camps- with Becher.)

Fact: Joel Brand was ostracized, vilified and denied employment during the rest of his life.

Fact: Moshe Sharett refused to testify about the Brand affair during his entire life. Instead, he staged an idiotic memorial ceremony that ended in tragedy.

Fact: The Yishuv, the Jewish Agency and their media knew well what was going on in Europe (In fact, Chaim Weitzmann explicitly declared that the Jews of Europe must be abandoned to their fate[5]) yet refused to participate in any and all ways of rescue and raising awareness. In fact, in several instances they actively prevented rescue efforts[6].

Fact: At the onset of the war, Ben-Gurion declared that there was nothing they could do for European Jewry, hence there was no point wasting efforts and resources on them. Whatever subsequently happens to the Jews should be treated as “natural disasters”. The war should end by giving [the Jews] their own state. That should be the “political compass” to guide the Zionist movement during the war. [7]

All of these facts are unknown to the average Israeli, for they are not taught in schools and colleges, and the books dealing with the affair from an undesirable angle are all blacklisted from academia and bookstores. This, however, shouldn’t surprise anyone, as Israelis are largely ignorant of their own heritage (Tana”ch, Gmora) and history, for similar reasons. And these people and their political descendents have the gall to blame others for not resisting or not encouraging Aliyah prior to the war!

When you hear the siren wail, know that you hear the sound of murder, coverup, coercion and vilification. When you hear the wail, know that it is meant to suppress the wail of the gassed martyrs who have been used by the Labour for their own game.

So next time you hear the siren wail, don’t just stand there like an Isra-zombie. Walk, head held high, and defy the lie, defy the coverup, defy the betrayal.

_______________________
Endnote: ‘Raining Blood’ is a stage classic of American thrash metal band ‘Slayer’. The band has been accused of Nazism, due to their image, logo and lyrical themes. They half-heartedly denied the accusation, stating that they are merely “interested” in the subject of Nazism and the holocaust ודי למבין.

© Joseph Izrael 2008

Welcome To The Machine

Have you seen the movie “The Matrix”? Gigantic machines have enslaved mankind, sucking the energy out of humans to sustain themselves. Men are attached to tubes and wires, and live in an imaginary reality, simulated by computers wired directly to their brains. Men feed on recycled, liquefied dead humans. To me, it was a documentary, plain and simple. The only difference between reality and the movie, is that reality doesn’t need big bloodsucking machines nor sophisticated and conscious computer programs to subdue the masses. People feed very well on puke, and willingly slip into imaginary worlds.

The Kasztner train just rolled out of town to its final –yet originally intended- destination. To save a few hundred Jewish traitors from going down in history as what they are – traitors, murderers, power-mad maniacs who care about nothing but their own status, fortune and halo. So much so, that even in the afterworld, in which they don’t believe, they want to be seen as saints.

Two articles slipped under bloggers’ radars: one outright whitewashes Kasztner, while the other claims charedim hush the holocaust because the Gerrer and other rebbes escaped it while abandoning their flocks. Furthermore, claims the article, the Shoah is a taboo subject because charedim are unwilling to deal with the question of ‘where was G-d during the holocaust?’. Why are they doing this right now?

It seems that as ingenious as they are, evil men are prone to shoot themselves in the leg. Had Ben-Gurion’s mafia ignored Grunewald’s accusations against Kasztner, today probably no one would have remembered him and his actions. But they chose to stir the pot, sued Grunewald, and not only Kasztner’s crimes, but the entire Mapai party’s organized and willful collaboration with the British, and their purposeful prevention of Hungary’s Jews’ rescue came to the fore. Consequences were null, (except Kasztner’s assassination by Ben Gurion’s henchmen to prevent him from talking more), but certain facts that Weitzmann & Co. would have better liked concealed was made public.

Now, too, it would have been wiser for them to just keep quiet and let the public sip Hollywood’s morphine. But their egomania wants to placate even the few scholars who may accidentally bump into Perfidy, the Wyman institute or any other scholars and studies that may incriminate the fiends who ruled the state from day one. Just as the Nazis wanted to eradicate all memory of the Jews, the Labour wants to eradicate the Jews’ memories. They have no doubt that the stupefied masses – the coke drinkers, baseball watchers, partygoers and little academic wannabes who feel oh-so-important by parroting their professors’ lectures – lectures tailored to suit the politicians who fund them – will swallow any sweet lie, hook, line and sinker.

I have a terrible revelation for those unfamiliar with charedim: first, in what you call “charedi society” there is nothing ‘official’ but Talmud. Anything else is dealt with amateurishly or traditionally, i.e. from father to son, from teacher to student, from buddies to buddies schmoozing during leining. To a modern-day Western man this doesn’t sound all too professional, and it definitely has many pitfalls. But organized education is centralized and ruled by one mindset only. Deviation from its bias, corruption, peer pressure and orchestrated blacklisting inevitably carries failing grades, ostracism, ridicule and obstruction of advancement. The Israeli curriculum alone is completely purged from the slightest mention of Rumkowski, Stephen Wise, or that Weitzmann publicly stated that European Jewry must be abandoned to its fate and many other 'inconvenient truths'.

Of course, learning only this side of the coin, as many Meah-Shearim children do, is rather idiotic. What the know-all intelligentsia forgets to tell you is that this narrow knowledge will be completed, not to an academic level by any stretch of the word, but to little more realistic dimensions, in the course of the average charedi’s lifespan. Purposely instilling hatred against Zionists is questionable, especially in the minds of those who do the same to charedim - yet deny it. Not that honesty is an outright excuse, but c’est la vie; it wasn’t charedim who forced little chiloni children to wear pajes and tsitses. Neither did they sink shiploads of refugees for political gain (Struma, Patria et al).

And what about that ultra super-duper education the exalted freia kids get? Well, they probably couldn’t find the Pacific Ocean or the USA on a world map, but they sure know all the topography of Britney Spears. They learn a lot about Dovid and Yehonoson being homosexuals, but someone forgot to remind them that Adolf Hitler was really a homosexual – based on historical facts, not some professor’s phantasmagoria.

But slowly, there is a suspicious change in attitudes. The frontal attacks, at least in academia, have been toned down to a large extent. Lo and behold, the “official” charedi party line is also changing. The Deiah VeDibur article is fairly frightening. Did the Yated Ne’eman suddenly contract “YUfrenia” (‘insatiable desire to crawl in academic colon’ disorder - IDCACD)? Are they suddenly concerned to be seen as moderates? Or is there a silent pact of “I don’t criticize yours, and you don’t criticize mine” between the charedi mouthpieces and the Israeli establishment?

What’s so frightening is that the only thing that possibly charachterizes all charedim - their unbending opposition to the secular establishment's official hogwash - seems to be slowly eroding. Surely, many enlightened leftists who drool at the mere thought of Arafat, Castro or Clinton will say this is a welcome change in charedi approach. Until now, the dreaded charedi tiger (chumera frummis annoyensis), with its uniforms, fire-eyed “leaders”, trashcan-burning armies, oppressed wig and headscarf wearing women, threated not only Israel, but all living civilization. They are intolerant, they force their agenda on others, they withhold degrees from those who disagree with them.

But now the tiger has been tamed, it shed its fangs and there will be no more opposition to undeniable academic truths. All dissent will be suppressed and excoriated – even from charedi outlets. Long live the ministry of truth!

So welcome my son, welcome to the machine.

© Joseph Izrael 2008

Operation: Mindcrime

Our times are often touted as “the age of information”. But it is also the age of misinformation. Because information inconvenient to the powers-that-be is not only suppressed and purged from all forms of academia, but countered in big, glossy official misinformation campaigns.

Says Ruth Linn of the Technion: “Ever since I saw the Lanzmann documentary, this question stayed in my mind: Am I the only crazy Israeli who fell asleep in class when we studied this in the Holocaust? Or maybe we never studied it ... In terms of literature, [Escape from Auschwitz: I cannot forgive] is in the class of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, first-class novelists of the Holocaust. But then I turned the book back and forth and I see on the cover, “First published 1963”, and the year is 1994. I said to myself, “Where has this book been for 31 years? I never read about it in Israel.” [*]

We need not suspect Linn of being a charedi stooge. I honestly doubt the Gerrer Rebbe is investing money and time to alter the course of academic consensus. But she is clearly in a very small minority of historians who ever address the subject. In her book escaping Auschwitz: a culture of forgetting, she further alleges that a “family of Israeli historians” have spinned Rudi Vrba’s story to fit their agenda. Who is this “family of historians”? They are the stooges of the Labour party, the ruling bureaucrats of the State of Israel, whether they are actively in power or not. Their ‘leader’, so to speak, is Yehuda Bauer, a dye-in-the wool apparatchik of Mapam and Mapai.

But what am I talking about at all? I’m talking about the willful, premeditated and purposeful obfuscation, purge and confusion of the Kasztner affair and its extended implications (namely, that the leftist-Zionist ruling elites knowingly sabotaged any and all rescue efforts during the Holocaust in order to retain power, further their ideology and defeat their political opponents).
In mainstream Israeli curricula there is absolutely zero mention of the entire affair. In higher education, the affair is being misinterpreted and presented from the sole point of view of the mainstream left. But the mainstream left has two little thorns in its ribs: the hardcore left’s historians, now marketed as “new historians”, and the eternal splinter in Israel’s eyes; the evil, filthy, degenerate charedim, those vermin who plague Israeli society, rob it of its freedom, its identity and its wonderful welfare services.

The new historians are in sync with the mainstream left about Kasztner – but little else. According to them, the Revisionists, and especially their armed divisions, the Lechi, Etzel and “the Stern gang” are simply terrorists, no different than Hamas, Fatach and Hizb’Allah. So far, this is fairly in line with the Mapai (now Labour) party line, albeit a bit too explicit to the Peresoid Wizards of Oz(rael). But to their misfortune, the new historians hold Mapai, Ben-Gurion’s party, as almost equals of the Revisionists. To them, Mapai were hatemongers who instigated a “30 years war” (now 60) with the Arabs. And to this end they are willing to shed light on many crimes that were taboo for a very long time in Israel’s academia and history curriculum.

To the Labour’s even greater horror, the works of certain historians and authors “have been harnessed” to the “charedi conspiracy theory” that Kasztner and his clique, indeed, collaborated with Nazis to a great extent.

This trend is, however, very far from reaching anywhere near ‘mainstream’ status, in either academia or even popular distribution. The Labour, though, is now in high gear to counter this tiny and sadly insignificant trend. It’s well known that Ben Hecht’s Perfidy was censored for a long time in Israel. (Later it was available only with a “refute”, published by Mapai. The “refute” was so childish and idiotic that the Israeli censor soon realized it harmed their position more than Perfidy itself, so it was pulled off the shelves.) But it is in print again, and is widely available. New studies and information reaffirming all that was said therein emerge all the time, but the internet makes it hard to censure completely.

Thus, any book or opinion which runs contrary to “academic consensus” (read: what Labour wants you to think) is being suppressed and purged from any and all educational institutions. New books, reports and exhibitions in different Holocaust research and commemoration establishments (mostly Yad Vashem) are being aggressively promoted. According to Yehuda Bauer, people should learn about the Holocaust only from Yad Vashem.

But why the panic? Haven’t Israel’s traitors learned that the best censorship is freedom of speech? Isn’t “let ‘em say whatever they want, we’ll just ignore them” the modus operandi of contemporary Western pseudo-democracies? What are they afraid of, why the sudden rush?

Because we stand at the end of an era. The last eyewitnesses of the Holocaust are joining the eyewitnesses who didn’t live to tell their tale. And with them will die the memories of betrayal, the memories of Weitzmann and Ben-Gurion’s steamroller that flattened all hope of salvation for two million Hungarian Jews, paving the way for the Mapai State. So Jewish children don’t learn about Joel Brand, how he was arrested, they do not learn about Stephen Wise and Sally Myer, teachers don’t tell them about Henry Morton and the Evian convention, just as they ignore Hillel Kook (a.k.a. Peter Bergson), Michael Bear Weissmandl, Rudi Vrba, Alfred Wetzler and others, who have a tale different than Mapai’s.

Now is a crucial time for the ruling elite to clear their name forever, and determine how History will portray them.
And that is why they are on a rampage now. Every trick and tactic will be used to rewrite history and mislead the public. Historians, librarians, websites, books, magazines, spin doctors and every imaginable vehicle of information are now being revved up to put a thick layer of gloss on the Mapai leaders’ crimes. It is imperative not to let History be misshapen, not let the Left’s crimes be forgotten, and not let them become the Jewish Nation’s saviors.

And there is an even greater, more sinister, and more pressing reason to examine the past from an independent point of view. For “מה שהיה הוא שיהיה ומה שנעשה הוא שיעשה ואין כל חדש תחת השמש- For that which has been is what shell be…” Just as then the Labour were betraying their brothers to the Nazis for political gain, today they sleep with the Arabs while abandoning us again. And just as back then different factions were busier warring one another than concentrating on rescue and salvation efforts, so too we’re busier today with concerts and bans and politics and vindication and finger-pointing.

And, with our now-characteristic docility, we merrily march to the slaughter again.


© Joseph Izrael 2008

The Ghost Of Cain

“Because ideas have consequences” – Hillsdale College motto.

What constitutes a red line, not to be crossed at any cost? According to “anti-establishment” luminaries of free speech, such as Dov Bear, Shmarya Rosenberg, UOJ and Harry Maryles, it’s anything that anyone disagreeing with them says – especially Michael Savage, anyone who dares wear a hat and a jacket, and of course yours truly.

But a תלמיד מובהק (faithful disciple) of theirs, a graduate of Dov Bear’s brown shirt academy, has crossed a line I believe all of us must stand up against. Not that the aforementioned openly endorsed or encouraged what he said – they’re smarter than that. But their endless spewing of hate, sneer and denigration of great people has bore its bitter fruit.

So Mr. Secular Jew, as I mentioned, frequent commenter and darling at Shmarya and Dov Bear’s sites, a mere two days after Rav Shmuel Berenbaum’s passing compares him to a Nazi! That’s right: he said it plainly, overtly, proudly, - unlike his mentors’ cunning weasel words.

But first, let us deconstruct Mr. Secular “Jew” the fallacity of his disgustingly vicious claim:

Rav Berenbaum’s “ban” did not factually ban anything. Any living man on planet earth, regardless of race, creed, color or religious affiliation, could, at any moment, walk into any bookstore carrying the book and buy it. Now it is true that many “ultra orthodox” stores refused to carry the book, but the store next door did! Following his argument, we should indeed join MK Yair Tzaban (MAPA”M) in his statement – which he made publicly, from the Knesset’s podium, no less- that the Torah is comparable to Mein Kampf. (Actually, I’m pretty sure that Dov Bear and Secular Jew agree with Tzaban).

Interesting to note that Mr. S. Jew didn’t feel compelled to compare the Israeli government to the Nazis; the Israeli government that banned, from all bookstores, Ben Hecht’s book perfidy, which documents in great detail how the Mapai party and Jewish Agency betrayed the Jews of Romania and Hungary and not only refused to help in rescuing them, but boycotted and sabotaged any efforts of others in the salvation efforts.

Barry Chamish’s book “Who killed Yitzchak Rabin” was also taken off the shelves by the Israeli government. Mister Secular didn’t have an urge to compare them to Nazis for that.

When Jews were being dragged out of their homes by Israeli soldiers –who were all, without exception, given the option not to do so- at a time when Arab terrorist were (and still are) shooting mortar shells into Israel and Ukrainian Nazi gangs were roaming the streets of Haifa and Tel-Aviv and the media turned a blind eye to them, Secular Jew hasn’t found enough outrage in him to compare the actions of his secular government to the actions of the secular Nazis.

Perhaps Mr. Secular is really appalled by the fact that Charedi rabbis don’t want their students exposed to the Theory of Evolution, a sacred secular cow of the secular academic establishment. Maybe Mr. “Jew” is not aware of the fact that the very same academic establishment –and very probably not independently of their infatuation with Evolution- promotes moral relativism, a school of thought that equates the Nazis with their victims, the Israelis with Apartheid and Nazism, decry religion of in all forms (except Islamic Jihad) but condones, and in several instances even fiscally aided terrorist organizations, and covered up, aided and abetted terrorists in their midst.

But I think that the real reason for Secular “Jew”’s odious words is entirely different. I believe that Mr. Secular is trying to outscream his conscience. He is trying to outscream a conscience that reminds him, every time he sees, hears or reads about and observant Jew, that he is doing the wrong thing. The mere existence of the orthodox Jew, who lives his life as a Jew, is a reproach to someone who bases his ‘Jewishness’ on mere genetics. In other words – racism. For if not the Torah, what gives Mr. Secular the right to call himself a Jew, to abstain from marrying Gentiles and to live in the land of Hittites, Canaanites, Jebusites, Philistines and Palestinans?

Since Mr. Secular found an inspiration in the form of hateful blogs, he only took it a step further and said what others only dared to hint at.

So thank you Dov Bear.
Thank you Smarya.
Thank you UOJ.
Thank you rabbi Maryles.
Congatulations on the great faithful disciple you’ve produced!

© Joseph Izrael 2008

Tears Of Fire

In case video fails click here.

Jew's Syndrome Pt. I (Sad Wings Of Destiny)

Have a great Shabbos, and don't forget to talk to your rav about EJF! Truth must prevail!


© Joseph Izrael 2007

Demolition (Israel Syndrome - intermezzo)

Includes vague references to Part I
Part II
Part III

מי האיש החכם ויבן את זאת ואשר דבר פי ה' אליו ויגדה ל מה אבדה הארץ ונצתה כמדבר מבלי עבר
Who is the wise man who shall understand this, which the mouth of G-d spake to him, and tell why the land was lost and desolated as a desert with no passers through

The gmora in Bove Metsie (85a/b) interprets this posuk as a question “why was the land lost?” i.e. the Temple’s destruction and the exile. The sages, the prophets and the angels could not answer it, so The Holy One Bessed Be He answered himself “עַל-עָזְבָם אֶת-תּוֹרָתִי, אֲשֶׁר נָתַתִּי לִפְנֵיהֶם; וְלֹא-שָׁמְעוּ בְקוֹלִי, וְלֹא-הָלְכוּ בָהּ. – for they have forsaken my Torah that I gave before them and haven’t heeded my word and haven’t gone in it[s teachings]”. The gmora explains that this doesn’t mean that there was no Torah learning – but that the people wouldn’t “שלא ברכו בתורה תחלה…. They [the people] didn’t bless the Torah first”. According to the commentators, this means that the Torah wasn’t important in their eyes and was disrespected. Which is an oxymoron – how is it possible to toil day and night over the Torah and not holding dearly important?
But this explanation does not match any of the reasons given in various gmoras. According to the simple understanding, this refers to the first Temple’s destruction, as this is a verse in Yirmiyohu. But in Yirmiyohu’s times the Torah was literally abandoned – the sages and prophets needn’t have to be consulted on the matter. We also know that idol worship, adultery and bloodshed were ubiquitous, and this reason for the destruction is spelled out in scriptures. Furthermore, the land was not ‘lost’, in the sense that the Jews returned from exile seventy years later.

Joseph’s dreams have come true in a way he never dreamt himself; the tribes were not separated anymore – for they were lost… And still, there was no unity between them.
In the era of the second Temple’s destruction, there was intense Torah learning, and it was destroyed because of sinas chinom, baseless, vain or “free” hatred. So how was the land lost due to a lack of proper Blessings for Torah? And why was that so terrible as to cause the destruction and the exile?

Our sages explain that the word ברכה is rooted in בריכה – pool, in the sense of container, a storing of sorts, or source, from which the ‘blessing’ emanates. In other words, when we “make a brocha”, we acknowledge that G-d is the source and giver of that which we have. Meaning that it’s not us who ‘bless’ the Creator, but rather acknowledge him as the source of our blessing. This word ברכה is always used with the preposition על - on (for). We make a brocha on an apple etc. But here the gmora states “ שלא ברכו בתורה תחלה…. They didn’t bless in the Torah first”. This makes absolutely no sense. Blessing in something has no meaning. So why does the gmora expresses itself this way?

The utmost disrespect for something, or someone, is to know it well, deal with it on a daily basis, and blatantly ignore it, flying in its face. Achdus Yisroel, the unity of the Jewish people is the absolute crucial and central concept of the Torah. The revelation of the Torah would not have been possible without perfect and sincere unity. Toiling in torah has for its purpose the perfection of the soul, the polishing of the self, to achieve closeness to the Infinite. And perhaps the clearest indicator to such closeness and perfection is the love, the true brotherhood to the fellow Jew. And it’s also the hardest. Since the Torah has so many facets and aspects, and our History and backgrounds are so turbulent and different, it is a real challenge to respect one another without compromising our beliefs and the way Torah is. But it must be achieved – and it can; to cite “e pluribus unum”, for the sake of a cheesy cliché.

Maybe this is the true meaning of “שלא ברכו בתורה תחלה…. They didn’t bless in the Torah first”, they wouldn’t acknowledge that the blessing was in the Torah, the obligation of unity and solidarity. That the fulfillment of this commandment is also a condition, - a condition for G-d’s bestowing his blessing and protection on us. If there was sinas chinom, if the crucial concept in Torah, the very condition for its deliverance in the hands of our Nation, is abandoned, that is the utmost disrespect. And if the cornerstone is missing, the entire building collapses. Than all other rituals are meaningless motions – the Temple lost its unifying power, and as a result was destroyed.

May we open our eyes and begin to unite – in sincere brotherhood, despite our differences.

May we merit to be united, in life, and see our Temple’s building soon.

Sin After Sin (Israel Syndrome Pt. III)

(loosely continued from part II
includes refernces to part I)

Yossef sees his very own brothers before his eyes, after an absence of twenty-two years. Instead of jumping in their arms, he starts a seemingly cruel charade of confusion and obscurity. The most dazzling part in this familiar story, in my very humble opinion, is that the scriptures never actually tell us why Yossef had to harass his brothers at such lengths. If admission of the brothers’ guilt was the objective, it was right there after the first accusation was made. But it seems that Yossef wanted more than that.

Rashi points out that the one who found the money pouch in his pack is Levi, based on the word “the one”, referring to his being the single one remaining of a pair. It is not clear whether Rashi himself intended to hint to it, but it seems that this was no mistake; the posuk states: “ויפתח האחד את שקו לתת מספוא לחמרו במלון, וירא את כספו והוא בפי אמתחתו - And the one opened his sack to give fodder to his donkey in the inn, and he saw his money, and lo, it is in his pack’s mouth.” The verse gives a lot of seemingly unnecessary information, namely the location of the occurrence, the reason for opening the pack, and the location of the money in the pack. The last detail repeats itself when the other brothers open their own sacks at home: “והנה איש צרר כספו בשקו - …and each one’s money bag is inside his sack…” Presumably, each had to feed his donkey at one point or another on the road. Yet none found it in the mouth of his pack (אמתחת), rather inside their sacks, while emptying them. Did Yossef intentionally plan for Levi to find his moneybag on the road? Was it intended to signal them to come back to him while still not too far (not more than one donkey's "tankful" away)? And if yes, why?

In his initial encounter with the brothers, Yossef uses the word “Elokim”, in all probability not the most frequent expression in idolatrous Egypt. This sure should have lit a red light, especially after three days of captivity. Upon their second encounter Yossef acts even more weirdly – feasting with them, seating them according to their birth dates, giving them presents, and again mentioning “Elokim”. Even in Yehuda’s final argument, it seems that Yossef didn’t actually plan to ‘out’ himself at that point. Was he begging for them to recognize him? Or to admit and acknowledge something beyond their guilt in selling him?

After Yaakov’s passing, for no apparently valid reason, the brothers, suspect that Yossef still harbors ill-feelings against them, and come with a fabricated plea from their father for Yossef to forgive them. But Yossef never explicitly forgives them: he only states that he is not G-d’s representative, and that his transfer to Egypt was beyond their control.

By his peculiar antics and strange behavior, Yossef was probably trying to get his brothers to admit their initial mistake regarding their original dissent. It is possible that he tried hinting to them that their view of having status of Ovos like their forefathers was ultimately proven wrong. By singling Shimon and Levi out, he may have been trying to hint to them that just as they had judged the citizens of Shchem for their distorted ideology of agreeing to injustice (i.e. accepting Hamor’s behavior and reasoning), - so too they should renounce their own mistaken belief.

It seems that both the brothers and Yossef stuck to their initial beliefs until their deaths, and there was no definite solution to their machlokes. Yossef’s dream of a definitively united and bound nation never materialized, and he possibly held his brothers culpable for it, as it depended mostly on them.

________________________________

Note another parallel, or at least similarity, between Yaakov and Yitzchok: both blind before their passings, and in somewhat similar ways, exchange the firstborns with their juniors.

In the baker’s dream the birds freely peck at Pharaoh’s pastries, without being chased away. At the bris bein hab’sorim, Avrohom chases the buzzard (or whichever bird of prey it was) away. According to Rashi the bird symbolizes David who tries to defeat Israel’s enemies, but is prevented by Heaven from doing so. In the baker’s dream, the verse uses the word “ והעוף - the bird”; the simple meaning is just a general reference to birds, an oft-occurring expression, (although anywhere else this expression is used without a ‘heh’/”the”) yet can be interpreted as the specific bird. In our case, probably a heavenly intervention to keep Yossef from realizing his dreams the way he saw them.

--(Cont.)--


© Joseph Izrael 2007

Dreamer Deceiver (Israel Syndrome Pt. II)

(Loosely continued from here .
Generally based on the Parshas Drochim and other
commentators, with some individual seasonings)

When in a state of anger, people tend not to pay attention to details. Which is a pity; had Yossef's brothers taken the pain to listen to his words, they probably would not have misinterpreted them. In the first dream he relates them, Yossef clearly states that all of them were in the field and that the wheat sheaves bowed down to his sheaf - which clearly eliminates the hypothesis of the sheaves impersonating the brothers themselves. In the second dream, however, the brothers are clearly portrayed by the stars. Another oddity is that the first posuk stresses that Bilhah and Zilpah were Yaakov's wives. Note also how the brothers hate Yossef immediately when they notice their father's favoring him, and add hatred when he tells them about his first dream. Strangely, envy is only mentioned after he relates the second dream to his father in their presence.

In a sinister turn of events, Yossef is brought to Egypt, where he eventually reaches a status of power, yet doesn’t inform his father of his whereabouts until far later. Yaakov, according to Rashi, was punished for being away from his father so long, even though he had to leave forcibly, his life threatened, which lichorah should exempt him by law of pikuach nefesh. But no such punishment is mentioned about Yossef. Perhaps Yaakov could have avoided his father the harsh enlightenment caused by deception. Maybe there was a way to draw Yitzchok’s attention to Eisov’s true character, or to reveal him the Bechorah deal. In this case, even if Red’s wrath couldn’t be restrained, Yaakov would have been a complete oinus, and spare Yitzchok a great deal of suffering. Nevertheless, when Yossef is freed from jail, one would expect him to immediately contact his father, instead of keeping silent. Isn’t Yossef accountable for his actions?

According to one well-known theory, the brothers believed that Yossef pretended to be Yaakov's sole heir and wanted them disinherited in the same way Yishmoel and Eisov were cast aside. This pshat is usually intertwined with the idea that there was a dispute between Yossef and his brothers pertaining to their status; Yossef claimed that they were B’nai Noach, whereas the brothers believed that they had a status of B’nai Yisroel. The practical implications of the machlokes would include Yossef’s allegations against his brothers (related in midrashim and commentators) that they ate eiver min ha-chai, called Bilhah and Zilpah’s sons “slaves”, etc.
In the three sets of two dreams recurring in the different episodes of this drama, each contains one vision evolving around wheat in different phases. Yossef’s first dream perhaps tries to convey that the brothers should agree to his opinion, rather than literally bow down to him – the sheaves alluding to an achievement, the result of one’s toils, an idea developed by one. The main subject of the dispute might pertain as to their being Ovos like the patriarchs to engender twelve separate nations, or that the Ovos era is sealed and that from now on they shall bond into a single, united people. Yossef seems to believe in the latter – hence his view that they are no longer permitted to keep the Laws like the Ovos did, before Matan Torah. This is the view to which he tried to bend his brothers’ minds, but got suspicion and hatred instead. They who believed that a higher level is their lot, interpreted a brother’s opposition as a trick to become the sole heir to Yaakov. Yossef’s second dream alludes to this; the brothers, represented by the celestial bodies, striving for equality with Yaakov and his wife (absent in the first dream) will be eventually forced to bow down to him, retaining his humble, human shape.

In this entire chronicle, the baker’s is the only dream which seems to have absolutely no relevance to the story and no effect on the outcome. Yossef might understand this as a message to him: the pastries in the basket – the final stage of wheat – may represent the outcome of his belief. The baker makes no attempt to chase the birds away and save his pastries from waste, may hint him not to try to fulfill his dream and to stay idle awhile. This might be Yossef’s prevention from communicating with his family immediately upon his release.
Left in the dark, both his dreams unfulfilled, it is hard to encompass Yossef’s feelings while in Egypt. Was he wrong indeed and became the ultimate loser in this struggle? Were they indeed meant to be the forefathers of separate nations, with only him left out? Or is there still hope for a final reunion, an eternal brotherhood and national bond? Not until Pharaoh relates Yossef his second dream does he see a ray of light for his kin and himself. – Wheat again, growing from the stalk – a new beginning, maybe the seeds of salvation.

--(Cont.)--

Sad Wings Of Destiny (Israel Syndrome Pt. I)

Who could possibly fathom the anguish, hurt and agony of Yaakov Ovinu, whose entire relationship with his father is summed up by the posuk (25,28) " ויאהב יצחק את עשו כי ציד בפיו ורבקה אהבת את יעקב - Yitzchok loved Eisov for the game in his mouth and Rivka loved Yaakov*"? Leah, probably. Living her whole life in fear of becoming Eisov's lot, when Yaakov finally arrives, she is ignored and rejected. Seven years went fast for Yaakov and Rochel - but extremely slowly for Leah. When Yaakov is tricked in a way reminiscent of Yitzchok’s duping, Leah still has to live in Rochel’s shadow. During these seven years, did Yaakov exhaust all possibilities for Leah to find an honorable match, thus avoid Eisov and the pain and humiliation of being turned down, while her sister is blissfully engaged? In the absence of explicit scripture, we can only surmise that Yaakov’s acceptance of Leah as wife instead of rejecting the marriage as “mekach to’us” or otherwise, indicates that he may not be totally independent from causing his deception. At any rate, it seems that both Yaakov and Rochel accept that Leah has at least a certain degree of legitimacy to her claim of being Yaakov’s rightful spouse (30,15: “… isn’t it enough that you took my man…”, probably based on Yaakov being the rightful bechor, she therefore being his rightful wife).
Perhaps Yaakov displays a tacit admission that he may not have dealt properly with his father, yet Leah’s conduct (e.g. naming her children) indicates that he repeats a favoritism similar to that of Yitzchok, which had caused him so much suffering.

At this point Yaakov Ovinu seems to succumb to some kind of determinism, an unconditional acceptance of his fate and refusal to try to affect his destiny – this being exemplified by his scolding of Rochel and refusal to act on her behalf, as well as not intervening in the rivalry between his wives. The animosity appears to culminate with Leah, who already has four children, allowing her maidservant to bear two of Yaakov’s offspring – seemingly a rather cruel act. Not until the birth of Yossef does the narrative shift away from the two sisters’ twisted relationship – which looks to pass over as inheritance to their progeny, and set the stage for the ensuing tragic saga.

* I gave this murky translation in order for the verse to best reflect its original versatility as well as better lending itself to the various interpretations.

--(Cont.)--

From Nazareth To Medzhybizh To Las Vegas… at your expense

It was of utmost importance to stress, ever since the first budding of our nation, that our forefathers, prophets, leaders and rabbis - even those, an extremely rare occurrence, born with predestined greatness or superior powers - were flesh and blood, born of flesh and blood. As such it was obvious –nay, even stressed- that they were subject to the same urges, impulses, feelings and desires as everyone else. Their greatness emanated not from magic powers or charm, but from their conquering, limiting, and channelling their powers to serve G-d and the Jewish people. Therefore, it was understood that they were not infallible – and fail they did. Their failings were rare, and of extreme finesse – they were sins only compared to their own greatness. And though they were criticised only by G-d, these criticisms were made beknown to the children of Israel and engraved forever in our history. And from the generation following Moshe Rabeinu and on, criticism came from peers – prophets, judges and fellow rabbis. From the Beis of Bereshis until the last line of the Talmud, it is impossible to find even one leading figure or authority who wasn’t criticized for one reason or another. Our leaders were accountable and responsible for their words and deeds. This distinguished us from all other nations, where the kings, holy men and leaders were demigods who acted at will with no accountability.

From the Mishnaic era until the fall of the Roman Empire, Jews answered to one body of authority – the Tannaim, Amoraim, and the Reish Galusa systems. The people or communities were never led and instructed by a single leader – rather, a large group of scholars and rabbis who worked together and were interwoven with the general society. Even until the times preceding emancipation, Jews were grouped according to geographic constrains, not party affiliation. This meant that there was ample communication and collaboration, between most prominent Rabbis and community leaders. The leaders were readily accessible and reachable by the common man, and despite many halachic disagreements, had no party affiliation. The followers of Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai never refrained from intermarrying despite their disagreements. This meant that no single rabbi, or small group of leaders catered only to their own small community’s interests. All the rabbis looked after all of Klal Yisroel, or at least all Yidden living in their vicinity.

With the event of emancipation and the emergence of the Haskala movement, an urge for tighter separation and a more enclosed community emerged. Hassidism was also a major contributor to this trend, especially with its cult-like glorifying of the Rebbes and mystical aspects. Slowly, different groups of Yidden were formed, and started to segregate and distance themselves from each other, not only from the Gentiles and maskilim.

Yet never before was this tendency so strict and extreme as in our days. After the great Disaster some sixty years ago, the remnants of the Jewish people and their few great leaders undertook the near-impossible task of rebuilding of an almost extinct nation. This gigantic project wasn’t faced with few obstacles or little challenge, and yet, step-by-step, the Jewish phoenix rose again. But one unfortunate side effect was a radical fragmentation and factionalization of the Orthodox world. Not only the ideological disagreements between the three prevalent streams – Agudah, Mizrahi and Eidah Charedis, but also the different Hassidic and Yeshiva leaders caused the nation to split in different groups. With time the rift became more and more extreme, with each group catering to its own institutions and reaching the point of total estrangement, no marriage between different groups and a culture of separatism.

Hassidism bred an especially fertile ground for unfettered corruption. A crowd vastly ignorant of Jewish law and almost completely ignorant of all other matters, yet particularly meticulous about customs, clothing, the near-tribal folklore, and the legends about mythical Rebbes with supernatural powers, were extremely malleable at the hand of a single powerful and charismatic leader. As the old Hassidic song goes, „Wenn der Rebbe lacht, lachen alle Chassidim, wenn der rebbe weint, weinen alle Hassidim…“ (When the rebbe laughs, all the Hassidim laugh, when the Rebbe cries, all the Hassidim cry). In our days the song would ring more true with the lyrics “When the Rebbe doesn’t forbid theft, theft is permitted”

Unfortunately, this mentality and lifestyle have influenced the Yeshiva world and even the MO/Mizrahi communities. The advent of small, self-segregated groups strictly looking at their own advancement and interests, coupled with yeridas hadoros, lack of cooperation between rabbis and the desire to improve their image, the internal discipline and moral codes in most groups shifted more and more towards external marks and superficialities, while core principles of vital importance slowly waned and lost their objective importance. Among most such groups, behavior that is intolerable in most human societies is the norm, all the while appearing as holier than everyone else. The more isolated a group is, the less they are subject to scrutiny, the leader is not answerable to any authority, and as a consequence the unsuitable behavior becomes more and more radical and rampant.

This situation has created a climate of complete immunity to scrutiny and criticism. Many community leaders consider anything happening outside of their group totally irrelevant, and won’t address these issues. Another factor is that rebuke from someone not free of blemishes isn’t well received. Under such circumstances it was only natural that each group forms its own Beis Din. Is it any wonder that those Batei Din became quasi irrelevant? How can rabbinical courts obtain a get for a defenseless woman if it has no power and influence? How can debts be returned? If a Beis Din has zero authority outside it’s strict “jurisdiction”, how can anyone not defy them with impunity? Is such a community able -and willing- to moderate widespread deviance at all?

The recent wake of Loshon Hora awareness is vastly abused to hush painful subjects that are uncomfortable to hear. But as the Chofetz Chaim points out, loshon hora is the product of sinas chinom. A father who loves his son does everything to keep his son in the right path. When we see a Rebbe build a $4 million shul – especially when he already had an absolutely good one- yet sends his Hassidim who need a kidney transplant to knock on our doors, we should know that something is very, very wrong with us. When members of groups who’s largest source of income are our tax dollars, for the most part fraudulently obtained, who despise us, who wouldn’t make shidduch with us because the shape of our hats, yet come to schnorr in our shuls - isn’t providing them with “charity” a tacit seal of approval and encouragement to their despicable behavior? Isn’t closing our eyes to the widespread phenomenon of Hassidim – our brothers - spending their welfare checks and HUD-Sec.8 income in casinos and houses of ill repute, at least as great a Chilul Hashem as the act itself? If we refuse to acknowledge these problems –and, unfortunately, much more- and act upon them, we become full-fledged accomplices. Raising these unfortunate, and uncomfortable, issues is not sinas chinom.

Sinas chinom is looking the other way.


© Joseph Izrael 2006