Anti-Semitism 1

                                                                                                            B-H

Many times I was asked by my fellow Yiden, “Why do the goim hate the Jews”?

Why is there such a thing as anti-Semitism?

In this weeks post, with Hashem Help, I will try to explain my understanding of this issue from one angle and then next week I will try to explain it from a different point of view I-H.

First we have to ask ourselves a question, how do the goim see us in general?

This question alone can have more than one answer.

There is a big part of the population that heard the word “Israel” and “Jews” somewhere in school, news, a conversation or in the church but they don’t know anything more than terms.

We tend to think that if someone hates us he must know whom it is that he hates, it is not the case. Majority of people shape their opinion on what they hear from the sources listed above without a deeper analysis of what the subject of information is. They stay on a very superficial level of knowledge. So is their hate toward the Jews. They don’t understand and can’t comprehend or explain not only their feeling toward the people of the Bible; they can’t explain almost anything in logic and in a consequent manner. They lack the intelligence necessary for this task or disengage from a deeper analysis of reality. Many other people are limiting themselves, and they using their intellect in irreverent matters. They are masses that most of the times; hounded, provoked and justified, were direct executors of anti Jewish persecutions and pogroms.

But higher in the social echelon there are others, these are the people who know Jews. Sources of their knowledge are school, mass media and literature. Yet another possibility is, that they live near a Jewish community and know some Jews firsthand. Many of them tend to think themselves as some kind of specialists regarding Jewish life and religion.

Those are the guys who always know better. From them are recruited people who are the leaders or provocateurs, the shapers of the opinions and views; they influence masses impressing them with their knowledge and erudition. Some of them, as politicians and people of media, advance to a position that enables them to direct and influence others as only people of this kind of power can do.

Above that there are cynical manipulators of public, they don’t really care by which means they will fulfill their desire of power, fame and luxury. They will use any opportunity to achieve their goals without moral considerations blocking their conscience. We will not talk more about them here.

All the above somehow explains the mechanism of anti-Semitism in short but it dose not clear up the reasons and the reasons behind reasons of it. Let’s shortly dwell on the topic of reasons.

The Macharal from Prague explains the first chapter of the of Bible, with support of targum Onkelos - its Aramaic translation, that man was created as a “talking being” talking though possessing intellect.

Even a person with low intellect, understands that there is – “good life” and “not so good life”.

He observes it in his surroundings and if he considers his own life as that of “not so good’ he has two choices.

One choice is to work toward improvement of his life by labor on his character which in consequence will help him to achieve more, and regulate all the disorder – improve disability the that he is living in.

The second choice is to do nothing but find justification for his unfortunate state and explanation why the guy with the “good life” is prospering and he can not.

He will not blame the lack of his own initiative and intellectual and moral laziness.

Instead he will set up his mind the way that he will see himself as the victim of some kind of scheme. The one behind his misfortune will be the guy who has a better life than him. It doesn’t have to be a Jew but there are some other reasons why he finds the Jew as such a convenient object of blame.

A Jew living by the standards of Torah, regardless of his intellectual qualification, will always stand on the higher level of society than someone who must operate without Torah.

Even the person that engages himself in a progressive way of life will lack what the Jew posses. Already at the beginning of his life, a Jew stands on the privileged position. He was born in a society equipped with the map - the manual of life, and all the other means of helping him grow socially superior but otherwise equal to the (in non transcendental matters) gentile. One more time – it is the Torah that the Jewish people are living by, it makes those descendents of the same father – Adam, moral aristocracy of the world. This higher quality of Jewish life generates jealousy, which is the direct reason for hate.

They hate people of Torah because they are aware that this Torah is the real reason for Jewish success. 

TBC

Matys Weiser

Egypt

                                                                                                            B-H

Last Friday I was informed that my book will be ready to pick up on the coming Monday.

I hope this will be the truth, but as long as it’s not being sold, this post will still be about something other than the first reactions of this new publication.

The Egyptian revolution is unbeatably the first topic all around the world, every place that information can circulate without restriction, meaning where there is no dictator, junta or any other power able to keep a gag on people’s mouths and make sure that their eras hear and eyes see only what the rulers want them to perceive.

Egypt is on its way to becoming a society without such powers, it’s on the way but not there yet.

On the seventh of Adar at the Al Tahrir square of Cairo, the city of Maymonides, the Muslims were getting up from their knees after their evening prayers as their dictator stepped down.

On the seventh of Adar year 2368 from creation, the greatest son of Egypt was born, and on the same day 120 years later he died - Moses the Lawgiver – Moishe Rabayni.

Is there any correlation between these two historical events besides for the date?

I’m to small and to uneducated to see more than just the date but I know that there are no co incidents, it is not merely some philosophical knowledge, as I learn throughout my own life.

I was thinking and talked about this with my family and friends over Shabbos but besides the maybe farfetched link between Moishe Rabayni and the Egyptian revolution I find no other relationship between those two events.

Before the Jews emerged as a nation there was only one way that nations and governments were born. It was what Darwin called – by the way of ‘natural selection’ or ‘survival of the stronger’. It was not a matter of survival however, when the first dictator in the history of the mankind submitted subjects to himself, but until then people were free individuals. Nimrod was smarter than others perhaps, and certainly stronger. Over all, his Gava, his ambition was bigger than any one else’s. He was the first ruler, first king, and first dictator. After him all other nations of the world followed his ways. Rulers kill the enemies, scare others to became loyal, and with them have power over the population. Than they fight with everyone who could endanger the position of the dictator. Those are only a few recipes of how to control societies, this tactic was used in history again and over again, by almost every ‘Nimrod’.

This was the mode that was picked up by the one who killed Nimrod, he - Esaw, was stronger in this; by this ‘Nimrod’ like behavior, we can characterize all his spiritual decedents including the most important one of them - Amalek. This is “the way” until today, its how ‘Esaw’ nations are dealing with the rest of the world.

The Jews were the first and only nation in the history of the mankind to emerge not only without their own land but with a different kind of leader than all the other nations.

It was not a warrior or knight; it was not a king or a ruler who stood above his people, it was a teacher. Moishe - a man who tired, working day and night and many times was ruined by his pupils, but none than less he taught them the laws of Almighty.

Rav Hirsch in his comment on Parshas Amulek explains that this was precisely the reason why Amulek attacked the Yiden when they – Amulekim, learned about the different character of this new nation - Jews; a nation whose existence and survival was not depending on their might, power, military or even political skills, but on the fulfillment of Gods law. Amulek saw it as an endangerment for their justification to use power as they wanted, to enslave the people and subject them to his philosophy. Amulek can not stand the fact that a free person from his free choice guided only by the teachings and not by power, can lead his life toward a perfect freedom of serving G-d. Amulek is furious at seeing people talking rather than fighting, it takes away all justification for Amuleks existence.

The same Rav Hirsch explains that the reason behind creating seventy nations instead of one humanity was so that they should learn from each other in peace, an oneness in the plural.

He gives a Similar and beautiful explanation for the fact that there were twelve Shvutim – tribes within one Klal Yisruel. Every Shavet, by performing a different task, serves in a reality the same goal of submitting this nation to the Creator and by this service, the Jews are giving an example to all the other nations.

Ulayni or Alenu if you prefer -  it is our mission to bring all humanity to the recognition of one Creator and his service by setting a positive example, by giving an alternative to the ways of Amulek. It takes time for us to understand this and to learn to achieve this, it also takes time for others to recognize the greatness of the nation of Torah but this is our goal and ultimate destiny.

For almost a quarter of the century I was living under a dictatorship. I had to watch what I’m saying and to whom, what I do and where. I was part of a controlled society without hope for any change in our lives. When in desperate attempts of a scream for freedom I was building barricades and fighting communist police on the streets of my city, I knew that if communism will fall it will happened only if we walk in blood up to our knees. The Bolsheviks revolution was a street riot compared to how much blood must be spilled in order to gain political freedom.

Soon after that my life changed and I began to seek a much grater freedom, a freedom of living for my Creator.

Eight years later the communist were pushed to talk with opposition. It is impossible to explain for someone who never went trough a similar experience, what we felt when we saw the Polish round table, the Berlin’s wall cracking and when finally we were able to enjoy freedoms that the democratic world takes as something guarantied.

All of this was without bloodshed, without destroyed goods, and without war so common in European history. Something changed. Some new value, new spirit, was in the air. People learned to live together despite their differences and sometimes even animosity. Did the education of the Jewish Torah started to work? I don’t know but I sure do hope so.

So I good luck to Egypt and its people, as one more time I saw the powers of Amulek on its way to being erased from the memory of mankind!

Matys Weiser

Abraham's DNA

                                                                                          B-H

In 1948 a child was born. He had to be hidden due to the threat from the head of the country.

He was like one of those genius children who can learn writing and reading at the age of two and play the violin by three. However he used his genius in a way that not necessarily pleased his parents. His parents were worried about him and that it would affect the whole family.

When he was in his forties, the government of his city decided to build the biggest tower in the world. The goal of this undertaking was to “Make a name for themselves”.

That was the when our matured genius clarified something he had begun to understand at the age of three: There is only One who is Real and whose Name should be respected and glorified.

He objected the government upon this issue. He performed an iconoclastic act within his own family which became known to the public.  He was arrested, tortured and sentenced to a terrible death.

He miraculously survived however he is not now 53 years old, as a simple calculation would suggest.

His stubborn and rebellious DNA is changing the current and motion of history of the world for the past 3,800 years. His name is Abraham son of Terah – Avruhom Avinu and 1948 is the year he was born according to the Jewish calendar.

This biography is common for countless of his decedents as they had comparable situations but not necessary similar goals.

How many times did the Jews risk their lives for a cause that their father Abraham would not necessarily wish for?

It reminds me a story from my old country. There was a father and a son, they were born Jewish but they chose not to be identified as Jews. The father was a member of the Underground Polish Communist Party. This was illegal within the two decades between the two world wars; it was punishable with jail time or worse.

The father was caught and arrested. He later described his experience of how the Polish police knocked him with clubs of their rifles. Hi didn’t give up, he survived the torture and lived long enough to see his son fighting against communism in the 60ies and 70ies of the last century.

The son, was called an enemy of the state, when he was barley 17.  He spent 11 years of his young life in the communist jails for his anticommunist activities. It is quite difficult to find a more ironic story. What a waist of ……What?

It is a fact, that not only Jews produced all kind of revolutions, canvassers, rebels or people using their talents in a positive but still revolutionary way throughout the history of the mankind.

However, there is a great overrepresentation of the Jews among those extraordinary people. There are spiritual explanations for this fact in the Jewish Tradition but this is not the subject of this essay.

It seams to be, that some kind of special craving for something higher, something unknown, and transcendental, within the Jews is stronger than among other nations. This may be the reason why in so many historical events, there is usually someone of Jewish origin.

No, not every Jew is like this. Most of the children of Yaacov are dominated by the mix of genes inherited from their father Yisrael; working hard, raising a family, and trying to bring holiness to the valley of tears that is the sorrow in the reality of exile.

There are few others who are like the forefather Yitzchok. They are quieter but filled with the sense of responsibility in the continuation of the heritage that was passed to them. They are stubbornly pushing through their legacy despite the hardship.

There is no question in the veracity of what is written above. Everybody observes this extraordinary dynamism of the Jewish people in the history of human civilization. Some people love it, some admire, but some can’t stand it. No person that is aware of history could ignore the phenomenon of Jewish involvement.

The query is, was there any reason for the preservation of this specific genetic pool trough the ages? Why was so much invested in this one stubborn nation among so many others?

In above question, there is already answer.

It is self understood that this didn’t happen by chance, it is no coincidence. By multiple natural reasons this nation should only exist in history books. However, it didn’t happen that way.

If there is preservation then there is a Preserver, if there is an investment there is an Investor.

The Jews were chosen and equipped for one specific reason. Their only task is to serve God and by doing that, glorify the Name of the Creator to all humanity.

No Nobel winners, no baseball players, no revolutionists, no composers or musicians, no politicians or filthy rich billionaires are the people that please their Creator. G-d of Yisrael is only delighted when his people fulfill his Torah by applying it to their daily lives. When they can take what was given to them - wealth, talents and potency - and serve Him with it. But above all, what is expected of us is our close bond to Him – Hakudoish Burich Hee.

Matys Weiser