Reviewing Jewish tradition

Jewishness is a question of religion, yet many Jews are atheists, perhaps unwittingly. They seem unaware of theist arguments to respond to skeptics, such as the statistical impossibility of evolution by mutations. The rabbinate must try to explain Judaism to Jews, not just command them to believe.
The Talmudic tradition should not be static. It postulated originally that later rabbis’ opinion prevails. There is no reason to say tradition stopped developing centuries ago and left Judaism as a fossil. Even the opinions of the sages are open to argument. Ancient theologians cannot dictate for modern humanity. Arcane food laws, for example, are confusing and impede acceptance of core teachings. Kashrut may remain a valuable tradition for those willing to accept it, just like the other people’s revulsion for eating dogs and roaches, but not an absolute rule on equal footing with the commandments.
Sages greatly expanded the rules to protect the core commandments from inadvertent violations. That created wide no-man’s land around Judaism, preventing violation but also impeding enjoyment by making legitimate actions like eating cheeseburger off-limit to Jews.No-man’s land, deliberate desolation of some territory to protect another, is just one measure against violations; there are other, less wasteful. People build fence before starting a house; religion also requires a fence of additional prohibitions. They should be, however, minimized, so that the fence does not become a tall wall, closing the outside world to the house’ inhabitants, the Jews. They concentrate on auxiliary Talmudic prohibitions rather than the commandments.

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Interpreting the Commandments

Understanding the commandments is practically important to avoid unnecessary guilt when someone sees others observing them strictly. Torah’s recommendations are practical, natural, and easy to follow: no need to look for loopholes. Laborious interpretation makes them unrealizable, like the prohibition of killing instead of murder, or hypocritical, like having goyyim children work in Jewish houses on the Sabbath, though no foreigner may work in Jewish homes on that day. Interpretation is arrogant, since elucidation requires reading the mind of the one who wrote the book. Torah speaks a language of man, and that language is Hebrew. The depth of meaning is lost in translation.
There is little need to dwell on the first commandment. What could be clearer than the unity of God? But look deeper and you will see society competing for your unconditional allegiance and replacing the Mosaic law with human codices. The demands to worship the state come clad in the guise of national interest. People who lose religion wander around bowing to anything superficially suitable: stones in India, communism in Russia, movie stars in America. Universities opened on Sabbath, judges requiring an oath on the New Testament, sport events where crowds stand motionless listening to a national anthem—all whisper to forget religion. Secular requirements contradicting Jewishness need not be discarded, just not followed wholeheartedly. Remember your primary allegiance.
The second commandment does not prohibit images; it prohibits treating any object, a book of scripture, a flag, as a god by swearing by it or dying for it, for example.

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The biblical society

Judaism is a practical religion for individual people. It has no requirements or conditions that make normal life impossible or cannot be fulfilled in reality. Minute regulation developed only in Levitical and especially in late rabbinic interpretation; the law of the Torah is not oppressive.
Judaism is not a religion in traditional sense. Jews need not believe in supernatural events like eternal nirvana or someone’s resurrection. Even ostensible miracles in Judaic epos may be explained according to the laws of nature. Judaism is a system of ethics which can be understood, evaluated, and consciously accepted. Atheists are uncomfortable with the Creation—strikingly similar to the Big Bang—but the issue is practically unimportant. Some critical people doubt that God dictated Moses the commandments, but what changes if Moses already knew the laws and wrote them down for the judges to apply, as Jethro told him? In the end, Judaism is the law; all events in Tanakh only demonstrate validity of the law. Any other view makes Judaism a pagan religion whose tribal deity favors one ethnic group above others. Jews are chosen to observe the law, and remain chosen insofar as they are expected to observe it. Unlike sectarian radicalism, Judaism is not maximalist. The world is not divided between good and evil. According to Talmudic tradition, it is enough for men to be one-thousandth good and enter the heavenly realm. The commandments do not require absolute obedience in the sense that transgression does not preclude righteousness. The more a man keeps, the better, the easier is the Way. Transgression is cause for repentance, aimed at not repeating the mistake.

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Neither Arabs, nor peace

Why is the whole world fixated on peace? Is there peace in Europe? That depends on your definition of “is.” Sixty years after a cataclysmic war—is it peace or armistice? Twenty years after a major military opposition between the two mega-bloc—peace or armistice? The world is a dynamic system, and there is no permanent peace. Yes, there will be wars in the Middle East. Yes, Jews and Arabs will fight—as will the Europeans among themselves, the Americans with Asians, Russians with Muslims, and everyone else. Why should we seek the illusion of lasting peace? Fine, we signed a peace treaty with Egypt—so what? Our army is still expanding. Wars violate treaties. We could sign peace treaties with all the Arabs, and we would still need a large army.
A Palestinian state in the West Bank would not bring lasting peace. Other Arabs do not care about Palestinians, and there was no peace for decades before the Palestinian question appeared. The important thing is to make life between wars comfortable. To do that, we should rid ourselves of the enemy within—of Israeli Arabs, who are anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, and anti-Western. They will not join us in our wars, in worship, or in singing the Jewish anthem. They are—and will continue to be—worthless in our technological economy. But most of all, they are foreign to the Jewish values of the Jewish state. The transfer of Arabs to Jordan would not bring peace; Israel would still have to fight intermittently, whether her enemy be called Jordan or Palestine. The transfer would bring comfort to each people.

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Be fruitful

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Jews and the Arabs numbered about 30 million each. The balance and the associated power drastically changed. Arabs thrived on Western medicine, agricultural technologies, and the oil racket. Jews dwindled from the Holocaust, assimilation, and their lifestyle which now calls for more entertainment, less children.
The long-range approaches, such as ending Western cooperation with Muslim countries, are beneficial. Occupying the oil fields to end the Arabs’ affluence and make their populations diminish to levels sustainable by their own capabilities would be great. Countering assimilation with proudly “Jew-only” nightclubs in the Diaspora, aggressive and controversial Israeli policies, and supporting anti-Semitic groups in the West would be marvelous.
A confrontational attitude is good, even if it endangers the nation; it also increases its cohesiveness, and causes widespread condemnation and anti-Semitism, thus preventing assimilation.
Jewish women who have sex with Arabs must understand: Arabs are not making love to them. In his cognitive framework, the Arab screws the Jewish enemy and triumphs over the Jewish nation.

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Islam dies

The West is not at war with Islam. A few thousand casualties on the Western side are not wartime losses. Only the incessant coverage by media makes these mild skirmishes look like a war. Suicide explosions kill far fewer people than car accidents; no one claims that America is at war with General Motors. Radicals are fewer among Muslims than hooligans among the Americans. Both the mujahedeen and bank robbers enjoy folk popularity, but far below the threshold required for the masses to follow their radical ways.
Islam is a moribund culture. It has produced almost nothing of value throughout its history. It doesn’t promote study like Judaism, scientific inquiry like the Enlightenment, or work-ethics like Protestantism. Even if Muslims miraculously change, they won’t acquire the unique mix of those three traits for generations. By that time they will die out economically. The West keeps Muslims on a lifeline by buying oil from them and selling them weapons, besides taking careof them in the UN. Just cease that collaboration, and the world of Islam is dead. Over-breeding Muslim populations wouldn’t even be able to sustain their swelling numbers with their primitive agriculture. Absent the West, they would die out. The Western atheist believers in evolution conduct the most anti-evolutionary policy: they support a culture more inefficient than a tyrannosaur in Alabama. One that will meet a similar fate.

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Can’t help killing them

Why can’t the Jews hate? They are used to an oppressed state of being. Arabs act normally. Few Jews fought against the British—the anti-Zionist majority submitted to the Europeans, passive Zionists submitted to the British, and most submitted to fate. The majority lacks pride and will. They seek to substantiate their claims with blubbering about historical and religious rights. Unwilling to assert their demands and fight, Jews want Arabs to peacefully agree and allocate Israel a shred of existence.
Normal people hate those who hate them, and no other argument is required. They don’t discuss the merits and national aspirations of their enemies.
Hatred is also an escape of hopeless weakness. Unwilling to admit their own failures, people hate others. Leftist Jews know that their collaboration with enemies is immoral, and so they hate the religious Jews, who are a constant reminder of their moral bankruptcy.

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Kahane at 80: In Retrospect

Op-Ed: Kahane at 80: In Retrospect

Published: Wednesday, August 01, 2012 3:11 PM

Rabbi Meir Kahane, had he not been murdered, would be turning 80 this week. Beloved by his followers and reviled by his detractors, he was of a different mold than today's American Jewish leadership. In memoriam.

Att'y Steven M. Goldberg

The writer is National Vice Chairman of the Zionist Organization of America, Vice President of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Los Angeles. He practices law in Los Angeles.

The writer has requested that we add that the opinions stated in this article are his own and not necessarily reflective of the positions of those organizations in which he is active (nor necessarily those of Arutz Sheva).

It is painful, without anesthetic, to ponder the current leadership of American Jewry. Masters of fundraising and virtuosos in the art of holding dinners and bestowing awards on their wealthiest donors, these so-called leaders are AWOL when it comes to staking out bold policies and engaging in effective activism.

The same could not have been said about Rabbi Meir Kahane, who would be turning 80 on August 1 had he not been murdered by a Muslim terrorist in a Manhattan hotel room in 1990. No American Jewish leader has been more controversial. Beloved by his followers and reviled by his detractors, Kahane was anything but milquetoast. His Zionism was a powerful brew, undiluted by political correctness.

Kahane was a precocious activist. When he was only 15 he was arrested for throwing eggs and tomatoes at British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevins, who was responsible for restricting Jewish immigration into Palestine after World War II.

Subsequently, after becoming both a rabbi and a lawyer, Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in 1968. The JDL escorted elderly Jews attending Shabbat services in marginal neighborhoods and physically confronted anti-Semites.

Under Kahane's leadership, the JDL also began actively protesting against the Soviet Union's institutionalized oppression of Jews and refusal to allow Jews to emigrate and make aliyah.

Kahane himself made aliyah in 1971. He founded Kach, which advocated Israeli annexation of all of the territories liberated in the Six Day War and transfer of Israel's Arab population to the neighboring Arab states, a policy which Kahane described as "completing the exchange of populations" that had begun in 1948 when the Arab states forcibly expelled approximately 750,000 Jews.

Kahane won a seat in the Knesset in 1984, and he and Kach were gaining in popularity and likely to win additional Knesset mandates in 1988 when the Israeli government adopted a law for the specific purpose of banning him from running for the Knesset. So much for democracy and free speech.

Israel sorely misses Kahane. When Arabs gleefully attack Jews on the Mount of Olives, throw stones at cars and buses driven by Jews and set forest fires, all with impunity, it is apparent that there is a gaping void in Israeli leadership. Kahane was not shy about expressing his views. He said, '"Nothing is more justified than revenge in the right time and place."

There is little doubt he would have organized civilian groups to defend Jewish lives and property, including with physical force, where the police have failed. Arabs attempting to murder Jews by throwing rocks with them or assaulting them on the roads would be met with a devastating response from Jewish self-defense groups.

This is not to endorse vigilantism in the normal course. A healthy state should have a monopoly on the use of violence. Israel, however, has become dysfunctional. The police look the other way as Israel's Jews are violently attacked by Arabs.

When the state no longer protects its citizens, the citizens have the right and the need to defend themselves. This inextinguishable human desire explained the popularity of Charles Bronson in "Death Wish" and Clint Eastwood in "Dirty Harry." The American-born Kahane understood that Jews have the need for human dignity that only self-defense and retribution can provide.

Kahane had the rare virtue of being a realist but not a defeatist. He held a sober, clear-eyed view of the Muslim world. He did not hesitate to say that the reason for the ongoing Arab war on Israel is Islamic anti-Semitism, not Israel's policies.

It cannot be disputed... that he was fearless in his devotion to the Jewish people and his willingness to tell the truth as he saw it. Today's Jewish leaders are missing the honesty gene that was so dominant in Kahane's DNA.
Kahane understood that the Arabs will never accept an infidel Jewish state on what they believe is holy Muslim land, and that territorial concessions and economic inducements will not ameliorate the Arabs' hatred of Jews. He unapologetically argued that peace would only come to Israel when Israel's Arabs relocate to a neighboring Muslim state. It was impolitic to say then and remains so today, but history is proving Kahane to be correct.

Today's Jewish leaders are missing the honesty gene that was so dominant in Kahane's DNA.

Israel's Prime Minister gave a disastrous speech at Bar-Ilan University supporting the creation of a Palestinian state, and continues to offer unilateral concessions to the Palestinian Authority, to solve what he believes is a political problem, i.e., the perception that he is not as peace-loving as the media and academic elites who act as his moral critics.

In the United States, it is impossible to find the leader of a major American Jewish organization with the courage to state the blunt but unpopular truth that the Oslo Accords are a proven failure and the so-called "two state solution" is dead. They are either blinded by wishful thinking or intimidated by fear of being branded as extremists.

Kahane was a flawed human being and some of his policy prescriptions were profoundly misguided. For example, his views on sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews were theocratic, priggish and hypocritical.

It cannot be disputed, however, that he was fearless in his devotion to the Jewish people and his willingness to tell the truth as he saw it.

On August 1, the 80th anniversary of his birth, the Jewish people should give a prayer of thanks in his blessed memory. May we be inspired by the courage of Rabbi Meir Kahane, a Jewish hero.

The Rise Of Tikkun Olam Paganism - 2 (Steven Plaut)

let us state what is not covered under the heading of Tikkun Olam:

1. There is nothing in the Torah concept of Tikkun Olam that can justify government programs that take people`s private wealth and property away from them to help the poor. There is, of course, a Jewish religious precept requiring charity for the poor -- at least 10% of one`s income in two years out of seven -- but never to exceed 20% of one`s wealth, even if one is feeling ultra-compassionate. This charity, however, is privatized welfare and generosity, never state-run confiscation of property in the name of doing good. There seems to be rabbinic disagreement over whether government taxes that take away more than 10% of one`s income, especially to finance the welfare state, exempt one even from this 10% tithe. The only other biblically-mandated income redistribution involves supporting the Levites.

2. There is nothing in Tikkun Olam that can be considered to be a judgment holding that income and wealth disparities are evil in and of themselves. Wealthy people are expected to give charity to help the poor; the poor are expected to give charity to the poorer. No one is expected to give charity to those too lazy to work or who are poor because they are drunks or addicts.

3. There is nothing in Tikkun Olam that can be regarded as a condemnation of materialist desires and pursuits. Quite to the contrary, Judaism is not embarrassed at all about asking G-d to make us rich, such as in the Havdala prayers, where we ask for lots of silver.

4. There is nothing in Tikkun Olam that could be remotely regarded as justifying affirmative action programs that discriminate against Jews. There is nothing that can justify pursuing ethnic "equality" through quotas, through lowered standards and preferences, and certainly not through programs that give other ethnic groups preferences ahead of Jews.

5. There is nothing in Tikkun Olam that can be regarded as sanctioning homosexual relations. Indeed, the Torah makes these a capital offense.

6. There is nothing in Tikkun Olam that can be regarded as supporting the public school monopoly or single-payer health care system. People who want such things should have the intellectual honesty to come out and debate these on their own merits (if they have any), not by hijacking the concept of Tikkun Olam.

7. There is not even the tiniest inkling of a rationalization in Tikkun Olam for granting Palestinians or anyone else territorial rights within the Land of Israel.

8. There is no basis in Tikkun Olam for refraining from retaliating militarily against those who attack Jews.

9. There is no basis in Tikkun Olam for claiming that animals have "rights."

10. There is no basis in Tikkun Olam for refusing to acknowledge that human environmental goals must be traded off against other social and private goals.

11. There is no basis in Tikkun Olam for abortion on demand.

12. There is no basis in Tikkun Olam for opposing capital punishment for convicted murderers. To the contrary, the Torah explicitly endorses capital punishment for murderers.

A first giant step toward real Tikkun Olam would be the renunciation and discrediting of Tikkun Olam Paganism.
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Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa
This article first appeared in the Jewish Press on December 24, 2002.

The Rise Of Tikkun Olam Paganism

I have long had a pet peeve about the vulgar misuse and distortion of the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam (repair of the world) by assimilationist Jewish liberals in the United States and elsewhere.

Elements of American Jewry have fallen captive to what can only be described as Tikkun Olam Paganism. Tikkun Olam Pagans are people who misrepresent Judaism as nothing more and nothing less than the pursuit of the liberal social action political agenda, all in the name of a suitably misrepresented Tikkun Olam. It is the banner waved by the countless "social action" committees at synagogues across America and in other liberal Jewish circles in support of liberal-leftist causes, including some that are harmful to Jews and some that are just plain wacky.

The Tikkun Olam Pagans` pseudo-religion consists of the following reductionist "theological" foundations:

1. Judaism in its entirety is essentially the advocacy and promotion of social justice.

2. Tikkun Olam means pursuit of peace, environmentalism and economic equality.

3. Justice, peace and equality are synonymous with this week`s PC liberal-leftist political fads.

 Ipso facto, all of Judaism is reduced to the pursuit of being a nice liberal. Now, as it turns out, each one of the propositions listed above is totally false.



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