Corrosion Of Conformity

Please forgive me for sounding like a hoarse parrot – but I just can’t keep quiet. Wherever I turn I see dishonesty, cunning, and an absolute disregard for truth and honesty. Yes, of course, I know that “ שערי תרוצים לא ננעלו – the gates of excuses were never locked”, but come on…

The heilige “Hamodia” endorses Hillary… Yes, yes, of course, I know all the teirutzim on the book… it’s only for the Democratic nomination blah blah blah… so why no endorsement for a Republican candidate? Because Orthodox Jews are never Republicans? Humm, I thought Dov Bear paskened that we’re all “GOP Juden”… I guess even He can be wrong once in a while…

And let’s face it: besides her Presidential Majesty, Hillary Innocent Clinton, who would give a damn about New York’s hook-nosed cloak-clad population? Barack Non-Terrorist, Non-Hussein O’Bama? Mitt Romney who wants to throw our dear Mexican builders out of the country, and then all our dropouts will have to start working in supermarkets? Hucklabeery Finn the evangelist? John McCocaine?

Obviously, only Her Eminence Queen Clinton –wink wink- will remember –wink wink- how we put her in office, -wink wink-. And how our innocently jailed non-criminals were pardoned –wink, wink- by her “husband”. Oh, her husband’s closest friends are murderers, rapists, shakedown experts, con artists, world-class terrorists and pornographers? So what? Why not lighten the picture by throwing in a few rabbis? Hey, for money, isn’t everything kosher veyosher?

I just can’t understand it. When Mordechai the Jew banned Seudas Achashverosh, all the Persian bloggers made fun of him, said he’s a fanatic, and invents new chumras everyday. Then, when he refused to bow down to Hamany Clinton, they all screamed that he endangers all Jews. But now those who claim to be Mordechai’s representatives shamelessly bow down to the worst possible people. How come these heilige hassidim don’t back up from a promoter of homosexual marriage?

And it gets even better: the “Hamodia” is endorsing her! There are also a bunch of paid ads and letters from America’s best and brightest swindlers, shakedown experts and con artists with shterimels supporting her!

Just a little note of warning: being a bit too close to the Clinton Clan can be somewhat dangerous! But I guess one has to have a good teacher to become a pro criminal!

And I thought people falling for Hucksterberry Finn, who stays in the race for the sole purpose of stealing Romney’s votes is bad… I thought falling for serial liar, amnestizer, tax-raiser, and spinmeister (helped block 150 seats of good Supreme Court District judges and now boasts about having helped Alito and Roberts… cockroach!) leftist bum who runs on his lie “I’m a Reagan Conservative” was bad… I guess I was wrong!

I guess holy men are at the White House's most ethical president's side.


© Joseph Izrael 2008

A Stranger In Us All

A few days ago I came across an interesting post on Ben Chorin’s website. In short, the post quotes an article about Israeli football fans who booed during the moment of silence in honor of Rabin’s memory. In his analysis, he claims they did so to protest against their humiliation, i.e. the moment of silence is really meant force them to “…affirm the virtuousness of the secular Ashkenazi left and the barbarism of everyone else, first and foremost, people like themselves. Their reaction was a sign of healthy self-esteem combined with a certain, um, lack of inhibition.” An angry commenter there remarked -in typical leftist conceit- that those barbarians are indeed incapable of such deep analysis, and were just acting as, well, barbarians.

In the last few years I have been working around non-intellectuals, to say the least. They come from many backgrounds: WASPs, Jamaican Blacks, Hispanics, American Blacks, Africans – what not. I can affirm you with the greatest certainty that even primitve and uneducated people are not necessarily stupid, and they most certainly aren’t oblivious to their feelings. The Ego is an extremely powerful part of us, and is extremely sensitive. He loves himself more than anything and anyone else, and woe to the one who’d dare insult him.
Such people are probably not conscious or analytic of the world exactly in the way we are – perhaps their brains analyze reality differently. Those Beitar fans probably didn’t analyze reality in the same way Ben Chorin did. But they certainly felt it, to the deepest of their souls. This beside the prevalent Sepharadic complex of inferiority and resentment of the elitist Polish intelligentsia of Israel.

The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner is one of the greatest masterpieces of English poetry. The epic poem tells the story of a mariner who kills an Albatross –a bird of good omen- for no apparent reason. The rest of the crew are angry at him, but later justify him. Then a terrible curse, a thirst and draught begins as vengeance. In the end all the crew dies except the Mariner, who is doomed to live and tell his horrible tale wherever he goes.
Literary critics have written entire libraries of analyses about the poem. A point many ponder about - what exactly the morale of the story is? One lesson I believe we can learn from here is that idle bystanders who know a wrong has been done may be guiltier than the actual criminal. For we cannot know what posessed him in the momoent he carried out his act – but the others understand it is evil, yet later they justify the criminal. (Or just don’t denounce him.)

Yesterday I saw something that literally made me sick. Someone made the most odious, repulsive, puke-inducing and repugnant comments about our saints of saints, Yaakov Avinu and Leah Imeinu. I can’t even repeat what the putrid coward hiding behind the blog D.B. said. Go see for yourself if your stomach is strong enough.

Quite often we witness people outraged at their Rabbis being denigrated, or even not addressed with proper respect. Sometimes numerous articles are written against this or that journalist or blogger if they “mistakenly” ommit a rabbi's due title, or if one chas veshalom dares questioning this or that decision of one’s Gadol. A flurry of angry comments flood the site after such a snafu, and the war of words rages for days on end. The fierce defenders of Torah stand up with fire in their eyes to protest the disrespect showed to their Leader by that nasty individual, who must immediately apologize… or hang.

Yet… yet here… total silence. Not one protest. Not one condemnation, not an iota of outrage showed. I know, I know. There are a million excuses. He wants the attention, it’s better to ignore him, etc.

Are we really that shallow? What are we standing up for when we protest a Rav’s humiliation? Are we really standing up for Torah or that rabbi or gadol? Or are we standing up for our own little narcissitic ego? How come a little carelessness about a contemporary rabbi generates such emotions, yet when Yaakov Avinu is dragged through the mud, called a swindler, when Leah Imenu is compared to a Playboy bunny no one has anything to say? How can we not go crazy when we hear such utter defamation taken directly from ageless, classic anti-semitic propaganda? How can everyone keep quiet when one who proclaims to be an observant Jew quotes from Third Reich textbooks and pub-mob?

I think this is precisely our problem. Our idiotic sectarianism isn’t about truths anymore. It’s not about principles. It’s about me and myself and I and my. When a rav is insulted, it is not the insult of Torah or righteousness we protest. It’s our own insult we stand up against. That’s how low we got. Yaakov Avinu doesn’t matter anymore. Apparently, he’s not a treasured figure in our History. Apparently, he’s not a fundamental part of Yiddishkeit.

Well, he wasn’t in our club.


© 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.