More Wisdom from Dr. Mordekhai Kedar

(My colleague, who I finally met just two weeks ago, says it better than anyone I know):

במדינת הסמרטוטים
במדינת הסמרטוטים / רעש מהומה
ממשלה של מושחתים / עומדת ערומה
למרות כל הכשלונות / בשלום ובמלחמה
שטיקים, טריקים, מעטפות / בושה, חרפה וכלימה
ובראש כולם עומד / אהוד א' המפחד
מחפש לחיצת יד / ומקבל ציחקוק בצד
וכך כולנו גם נראים / רכרוכים ונכלולים
סושי, סרט וכריכים / וחיזבאללה צוהלים
איך ניצחו את ישראל / המעצמה האזורית
שיודעת אך פוחדת / לטפל בטרוריסט
התקשורת כבר ניצחה / את העם והשרים
עם אג'נדה חזקה / יותר מכל הסמרטוטים
פראפרזה זו על שירו הקלאסי של א. אמיתן "במדינת הגמדים" עולה בראשי בכל פעם מחדש כשאני שומע ורואה איך רואים אותנו אויבינו. הם קוראים אותנו, שומעים אותנו ומבינים אותנו יותר ממה שאנחנו מבינים את תהליך החיסול העצמי שאנחנו מבצעים במו ידינו.
אויבינו רואים מולם עם היסטרי, רגשני, בכייני, מושחת, נהנתני, רכושני, מתירני, אינדיווידואליסטי, עם של חטוף ואכול, חסר שורשים היסטוריים, חסר אידיאולוגיה, ערום מערכים, נעדר תחושת סולידריות, רוצה הכל עכשיו ומוכן לשלם כל מחיר מבלי להביא בחשבון את התוצאות של התנהגותו המופקרת.
יריבינו רואים תקשורת שתפסה צד, השקיעה שעות שידור ללא קץ ודפי עיתון ללא גבול כדי לייצר מלודרמה תקשורתית מדמעה של רעייה ומאנחה של אם, וכך יצרה דעת קהל עם תחושה שראוי לשלם כל מחיר עבור הישג מיידי. מי מינה את אנשי התקשורת לקבוע כך את סדרי העדיפות הלאומית? מי קבע שראוי להחזיר שני חללים תמורת רוצח חי? מישהו בתקשורת חשב על ההשלכות לעתיד של הלחץ שהתקשורת הפעילה על ממשלת הסמרטוטים?
כל מי שמכיר את הבסיס הפשוט ביותר של עסקאות במזרח התיכון יודע היטב שברגע שצד לעסקה מראה שהוא לחוץ, תג המחיר עולה, וככל שהלחץ גדול יותר כך המחיר גדול יותר. ההתנהגות התקשורתית והציבורית שלנו בכל ההתנהלות שלנו מול אויבינו – אלה שבלבנון, אלה שבסוריה ואלה שברצועת עזה – מראה להם שככל שהם ילחצו יותר כך אנחנו נהיה מוכנים לשלם יותר עבור הקלת הלחץ, בין אם זה לחץ של טילים ובין אם זה לחץ פסיכולוגי. הפאניקה התקשורתית והציבורית שלנו יצרה מצב שאנו במו פינו מעלים את מחיר כל עסקה לגובה שאנחנו לא יכולים לעמוד בו.
כך היא ההתנהלות האווילית שלנו מול חמאס בעזה, מול חיזבאללה בלבנון ומול סוריה, שכן בכל יום אנחנו שומעים בתקשורת את "חכמי ציון" מדקלמים כמו תוכי את המנטרה: "כולם יודעים מה הוא מחיר הפסקת האש / החזרת החטופים / השלום עם סוריה", וכאשר אויבינו שומעים זאת, למה שידרשו פחות ממה שאותו טיפש אומר ש"כולם יודעים"?

חוץ מזה, השעון שלנו שונה מזה של אויבינו: אצלנו ממשלה ממוצעת מכהנת שלוש שנים, ולכן אם היא רוצה להספיק משהו היא צריכה לפעול מתוך לחץ שהצד השני קולט אותו במהרה.

המוסלמים, בעקבות הקוראן, מאמינים ש"אללה מע אלצאברין" – אללה הוא עם בעלי הסבלנות, וסבלנות כאן היא בשני מישורים: מישור הזמן ומישור הסבל. אללה עוזר למי שדרכו אינה אצה לו והוא ממתין בסבלנות להתגשמות מאוויו, ובנוסף לכך הוא מוכן לסבול בסבלנות את הסבל הכרוך במאבק ובציפיה לניצחון שיגיע, אינשאללה. נסראללה עשה לכולם בית ספר, ובגדול.

עם שאין לו סבלנות, שרוצה את הכל עכשיו ושאין לו יכולת לסבול את כאבי הישיבה בסביבה הענייה, העשוקה, הרעבה, הצמאה, החולה, השסועה והקיצונית המקיפה אותנו, אין לו יכולת לשרוד במזרח התיכון הכל כך ישן, שבו השיעים עדיין נלחמים על השלטון באיסלאם 1,400 שנים לאחר שהוא נלקח מהם, ושבו עדיין מושגים כמו דמוקרטיה, זכויות אדם, זכויות מיעוטים, חירות נשים, חופש דת וחופש מדת, הם חלום רחוק, רחוק הרבה יותר מקוצר הנשימה שלנו.

רק עם חדור אידיאולוגיה, בעל תחושת שליחות וביטחון בצדקת דרכו, חש שהוא חלק מתהליך היסטורי, מוכן לסבול ולשלם את מחיר השרידות בדם, ביזע ובדמעות, רק עם כזה יכול לשרוד במזרח התיכון. האזור הזה הוא לא מקום לסמרטוטים פוסט יהודיים שהם בהכרח, במוקדם או במאוחר, גם פוסט ציונים.

ד"ר מרדכי קידר, המחלקה לערבית, ומרכז בגין-סאדאת למחקרים אסטרטגיים, אוניברסיטת בר-אילן

Herschel Grynszpan was Innocent!!!!

Herschel Feibel Grynszpan

On 7 November 1938, a young Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan, was accused of murdering a Nazi diplomat, named Ernst vom Rath. According to the story, Grynszpan murdered Vom Rath to protest the expulsion of his family from Germany, along with thousands of other Polish Jews.

The result was the infamous Kristallnacht, in which all the synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were burned and thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps. It marked the effective start of the implementation of the Endlosing der Judenfrage.

Now it appears that Grynszpan was innocent. Today's Maqor Rishon reports that the Nazis staged Vom Rath's murder in order to create an alibi for their planned action. Vom Rath was a good target, because he was reputedly an anti-Nazi, career diplomat.

When I heard this, I immediately recalled that many years ago Prof. Ruth Bevan of Yeshiva University showed me an architects plan for either Dachau or Buchenwald, that was drawn up in the mid-1930's. It clearly showed an as yet unbuilt area of ther camp, slated for completion in time for the action that was planned for November 1938. I had thought that the Nazis planned the attack and waited for an excuse.

Now we know that they created it.

A Day of Ignominy

Yesterday, July 17 2008, a date that will live in ignominy, the State of Israel, led by a corrupt politician, an incomepetent Leftist wanna be, a disgraced former Prime Minister and a Haredi politico who would sell anything for a handout, capitulated to terror. By releasing Samir Kuntar for the dead bodies of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, Olmert/Livni/Barak/Yishai declared that terror pays; that Jewish lives are cheap and that Jews will not fight for their safety and right to self-determination. These are not the rantings of a right winger, but the cold observations of Shlomo Avineri and Ari Shavit. Both lean left, politically. Both are loyal Israelis, Jews and Zionists.

Of Qumran and Bene Brak

Friday's post about the delayed recognition of an American Orthodox conversion generated two types of response.

One, objected that the Jewish Week had misreported and/or distorted the facts of the case. I was wary of that possibility, which is why I wrote in the conditional voice.

The other response (actually, just one comment), took umbrage at my comparison between Qumran and Bene Brak. For purposes of fairness, here is the comment Iin italics) with my reply.

benei brak is not like the essenes. the essenes were one [deviant] sect among many. hareidi judaism are a legitimate part of jewish tradition.

We now know that some of the Essenes were an offshoot of the Saducees and represented a serious portion of Second Temple Judaism. They also had close relations with the Pharisees (e.g. Shammai's predecessor Menachem). More to the point, they withdrew from Jewish Life because they denied fundamental Jewish legitimacy to anyone but themselves.

also, hareidim do not isolate themselves, as did the essenes. generally, they are an important part and contribute substantially to judaism wherever they exist in significant numbers. (satmar bikur cholim and hatzolah are 2 such examples.)

I don't know to which Haredim the commentor is referring, but the leadership and all of the official mouthpieces of the Haredi World are aggressive separatists. This, per se, is their privilege. What I object to is the attempt to foist their standards of Avodas HaShem on the rest of Orthodoxy. Furthermore, the ongoing and vicious delegitimation of our Rashe Yeshiva, Rabbanim and Battei Din is worthy of the strongest condemnation.

Noone can take away the merits of Hareidi Hesed initiatives. However, there are very different winds blowing in that community, which I will not mention for fear of Hillul HaShem.

so far your banner of 'spreading torah and halakhah and yirat shamayim for the greater glory of god' does not seem to be working; rather, the hareidi version is. even though the rz internal discussion is that they are the wave of the future, i believe this to be largely an internal discourse, unrelated to the broader israeli reality.

The RZ world has plenty of faults. However, while they are highly touted, every recent study shows that Hareidi failure to bear in the tax, defense and civil burden, along with the corrupting way it gets funds, are (together with the intolerable way that Hareidi-dominated Rabbinate treats Jon Q. Citizen) are the single largest factor in the negative attitude to Torah that we are trying to fight.

Conversion Scandal: A Battle of Morristown

According to the Jewish Week, the Rabbinate recently put a young, observant man (who was converted as a child), through the seven fires of Hell before allowing him to marry. This was despite the fact that the head of the Bet Din of America, R. Gedaliah Schwartz, certified the validity of the conversion. In the end, the conversion was recognized. However, as the Rabbi in charge of conversion certification put it: '“a conversion will not be automatically recognized just because Rabbi Gedalia Schwartz says it’s OK. ”

If this story is accurately reported, it is not only a vicious and abhorrent slap at at outstanding Talmid Hakham, R. Schwartz. It is not only a violation of 48 Torah prohibitions against oppressing a convert. It is not only another, now less unprecedented violation of the integrity of fully comnstituted Battei Din. It is a flagrant betrayal of the concordat between the RCA and the Rabbanut.

Now, other sources assert that the case is all the result of a misunderstanding. I trust that that is true. The trouble is that the long record of disregard and disdain that far too many Israeli Haredi members of the Rabbanut display toward American Gedolim and Talmidei Hakhamim (staring with the Rav זצ"ל and even, mirabile dictu, Reb Moshe Feinstein זצ"ל, lends credence to the concern that this will not be the last of such misunderstandings. These people have an agenda. [Indeed, if I am correct, the rabbis who was quoted as not respecting R. Schwartz, has carried on a campaign of delegitimation against young, YU type rabbis.] At best, American Orthodox rabbis, especially YU musmakhim are in for a very difficult time in the foreseeable future.

It is clear, that a significant portion of, and the powers Ha that stand behind, the Haredi dominated Rabbanut is out to delegitimize everyone but themselves. I see no other way. The Israeli Chief Rabbinate must be ignored, and another system of Battei Din and Community Rabbis be established. In this, I agree with Rabbi Benny Lau, who was interviewed in the sane issue of the Jewish Week.

I am sitting in Prague, as I write this. This community was the scene of more than a few controversies that tore Jewry apart. I am well aware of the implications of that which I am advocating. However, this sort of flagrant בזיון התורה and בזיון תלמידי חכמים can't be ignored. Let these so-called rabbis be like their predecessors in the 2nd cent. BCE and seclude themselves in Qumran/Bnai Brak/Meah Shearim. We'll go on and spread Torah and Halakhah and Yirat Shamayim, for the greater glory of God.

Pigua in Jerusalem

Efrat Unterman עמו"ש, daughter of Batsheva הי"ד

This picture of little Efrat Unterman, whose life was saved by her mother, before their car was crushed by the murderer from Zur Bahur, says it all about the nefarious crime that took three innocent Jewish lives and the religion that spawned it.

בכל דור ודור עומדים עלינו לכלותינו.

Ribbono shel Olam, תצילנו מידם.

Send us more heroes like this young man.

און וו איז רייזעל פארקס?

[The Rabbinic Transport Commission is trying to force girls to the back of Egged busses, and the rest of us out of Jerusalem. Who'll pay taxes for them when the rest of us are gone?]

[Hat tip: Life in Israel]

A Remarkable Department

This afternoon, Bar Ilan's Talmud Department held its end of year Faculty Meeting. As with most such gatherings, the tone was subdued, the discussion grim. For many different reasons, Jewish Studies (along with the Humanities and many Social Sciences), finds itself at an extreme disadvantage with the Natural Sciences (I refuse to call them exact sciences) in funding, budget lines, faculty hires and even promotions.

We're not unique in that. The same prejudice for body over soul, physical over spiritual, quantity over quality, the So-called Primary over the so-called Secondary characteristics (a la Descartes, Hume, Berekeley etc.) increasingly threatens to overwhelm all of the Israeli universities. There is something both tragic and infuriating in this, since it is specifically now that Israel needs its academic scholars of Judaica, as much as it needs its scientists and its rabbis.

Check that. Israel needs its positively commited Jewish scholars more. It needs them more because it needs values, while science is (at least ostensibly) value neutral. It needs them at least as much as its rabbis, because the latter don't know how to communicate the precious heritage of Judaism and Jewish History to the non-observant, or to the skeptically observant. I know that of which I speak. Fifteen years of teaching at Bar Ilan has driven that home to me.

For a lot of the time, I saw the kind of deep and abiding interest in Judaism that marks the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis in the unique Basic Jewish Studies Minor that is required of all students. In recent years, though, this has spilled over into my home department, the Talmud Department. This is a remarkable development, because one might have thought that non-observant, non-yeshiva trained students might find us a bit forbidding. That, however, is not the case. In the past three years I've seen a steady increase in the number of non-majors who register for courses in our department. In those classes they meet and interact with Orthodox students (Often for the first time); they challenge and are challenged in turn, by those fellow students. What emerges is a moving, intellectually stunning interaction which gives birth to the common Jewish cultural language that this country desperately needs to survive.

This phenomenon is faculty-wide. As I looked around the room today, though, I had a chance to understand why our department is a particular draw. It is an unusual department. Its faculty members are incredibly diverse; Men and Women, Haredim and National Religious, American and Israeli, Sephardim and Ashkenazim, Rabbis and Laypersons, Leftists and Rightists; and every shade of gray. It is also unique, in the world, in the breadth of its interests.

Nowhere else in the world can a student register in one department and study: Dead Sea Scrolls, Mishnah, Midrash, Talmud, Rabbinic Thought, Talmudic Interpretation, the History of Prayer, Rabbinic Historiography, Jewish Popular Religion and Customs, Jewish Intellectual History, the Interaction of Jewish Law and Spirituality, the impact of the Encounter with Christianity and Islam on Rabbinic Culture and Literature, Mishpat Ivri, History of Halakhah, Contemporary Halakhic Issues, Codes, Responsa Literature, the History of the Jewish and Hebrew Book and a dizzying number of other disciplines. At Hebrew University, for example, one would need to enroll in three to five different departments (in two different faculties), to have the same opportunity.

More importantly, my colleagues are menschen, a rare enough commodity in the terrarium that is academia. They care about their students. It's no wonder that we draw students from around the university. Class acts usually do.

It just gets Worse

From Ben Chorin:

To fully appreciate the insanity of today's cabinet decision in favor of releasing killers for two Israeli captives, note that Israel admits that it does not really know if the captives are alive or dead.

News flash for the brain dead: if they were alive this morning, they are dead now.

If they are returned dead, Kuntar should be returned the same way.

What do you think R. Meir of Rothenberg would have said?

Thank You, Reb Meir

This afternoon, I took a break both from medieval Ashkenaz (the book is coming along nicely, though) and the depressing present (the papers reported a 28% rise in the use of anti-depressants among all Israelis). I spent an hour listening to a shiur delivered by R. Meir Lichtenstein, in memory of his grandfather מורי ורבי Rav Soloveitchik זצ"ל on the topic of The land of Israel and the State of Israel in light of the Rav's teachings. The shiur was delivered as part of YU in Israel's annual 'Torah in the After Noon,' last Yom Yerushalayim.

His message is one that I endorse fully. His unself-conscious passion is inspiring.

A treat for Erev Shabbos, especially Erev Shabbos Parshas Korach.