Capture of Osama

                                                                                                             B-H

The day when Osama Bin Laden was killed: the day when justice was ignored (again).

I can only imagine what some of you are thinking at this moment: “I knew this ger must be cuckoo... it was only matter of time until it came out.” I will say something different from ‘everyone’ else not the first time in my life. But please be patient and read this essay to its end before passing judgment on my sanity.

As was stated in my post about my convictions, I believe in the revealed word of the Creator, as deposited with His chosen nation, Yisroel.

Likewise, I believe that as the Jewish sages transferred it through the generations, it was the Creator’s will that nations, tribes, societies, and groups of people should establish courts of justice for themselves and between themselves. The Jewish people must be the highest example of such organized life, among whom lynching, anarchy, and rule of mob has no place.

This is the ideal which the nations of the world must emulate as they come to recognize G-d. According to our Neviim (prophets), the nations will come to recognize the wrongness of their ways and, together with Yisrael, all will serve the Giver of Live in unison.

Before it can happen, many generations must be educated. Generations of Jews must be educated in order to understand their special role in the Tikkun (restoration) of the world, and generations of Goyim (other nations) must be educated to learn justice according to the example and teachings of Jewish prophets and Sages.

It is impossible to evaluate where in that process we are situated today, but it can be said that this process of dual (Jewish and Gentile) education doesn’t ascend linearly. It rather resembles climbing up a sinusoid: up and down, up and down, but ever progressing.

Whoever is familiar with the writings and commentaries of Rav Hirsch may have been saddened by his nineteenth century optimism—predicting an imminent moral advancement of humanity—knowing what would happen little more than half of century later.

Rav Hirsh believed that the moral enlightenment of nations would permit the chosen nation to shine in her full glory. This in turn would inspire the rest of humanity to follow the example of the people of G-d, and that Geula (salvation)—the coming of Mashiach and the return of Jews to their land—would be the next stage of human history. This is how Rav Hirsch and other sages understood Prophetic predictions of the Bible describing the future of mankind.

Sixty years later, the ‘enlightened’ nation whose language Rav Hirsch so masterfully employed to teach Torah, attempted to erase Jews from history. It didn’t happen. Another nation inspired by the teachings of Jewish prophets was blessed and won this horrible war, a war which killed over fifty million human beings, including six million descendants of Yaakov.

It was Russians who entered Berlin and paid the greatest tribute of blood to win this war, but it was Americans who lead the allies in moral matters. America is a nation whose Constitution was written while its author was “keeping the Bible on his lap.” Indeed, Thomas Jefferson attended Unitarian services on regular basis, at a time when Unitarians were the most progressive religious movement in the civilized gentile world. America was built on justice, where an independent court system guaranteed even the greatest criminals, judgment, defense, and honorable death when it was the sentence of the court.

In 1946, a year after the allies defeated Nazi Germany, many captured officials of the most notorious regime in history were put to trial. People directly and indirectly involved in the death of over fifty million people were called to justice in order to make them and the rest of the humanity understand that there is justice and no one can escape the fate of the dictators and their accomplices. If they escape by dying before they are brought to trial, still the court of historians and thinkers will judge them as they deserved.

Nazi officers were brought to trial in court, and many of them were sentenced to death or life in prison. Among them Borman, Hess, Frank, and Goring, yimach shemom, were sentenced. One year later, Hoss and Goth, Y-SH, people directly involved in killing prisoners of the concentration camps they ran, were tried and sentenced to death by hanging by the Polish court.

I don’t want to go into the details of these trials, as some criticized them as a ‘fraud’ and ‘lynching party’ of the winners. Even if it was human (i.e. very limited) justice and even if justice was abused (e.g., Ribbentrop was accused of signing a pact with Molotov —which de facto was the last step before invading Poland and starting WW2—while Molotov was still member of Russian government, one of the victors), we may find countless examples of such abuses of justice. Nevertheless, it had at least the appearance of justice.

And even the appearance of justice—and I believe that the Nuremberg Trials were more than that—is better than Darwinian anarchy and the rule of unrestrained power. That’s what civilized government is supposed to protect and that’s what the nation pretending to be the leading democracy is supposed to represent. That is what the fathers of this country intended when they created a system of independent courts where a citizen can defend himself, and even a foreigner can seek the justice. I will not go here the ‘lawyer way,’ and I will not distinguish between the citizen and the foreigner as American law does in certain cases.

We guaranteed the right to a trial to much bigger murderers than Osama Bin Laden, and by these actions proved that the American nation stands above all the mass murderers, political criminals, and bloody dictators. In doing so, America, Humanity itself, climbed higher in the direction of real justice and away from dark ages of Darwinian anarchy where it was enough to have stronger muscles and a bigger club or gun.

The day when Osama Bin Laden was killed, justice was ignored, but as our prophets promised, the day when the G-dly justice will prevail is our goal and will happen. But much work must be done.

Matys Weiser

Below another expert from Rav Hirsch's "Collected Writings" on topic of Sfira.

I will post I-H small fragment of his works on this topic, every week until Hag HaShvios.

"Even when we still swung the sickle over our own plowed fields on our own national soil, we had to count the days and weeks from the festival of our freedom until the festival of our Torah, from Zman Harisayni to Zman Matan Torusaini. And we started counting at the first swing of the sickle, We had to take to heart the fact that our perfect salvation is to be found not in freedom and land, but rather in the Law—the Law of God. We had to remember too, that freedom and soil for us are rooted only in the Divine Law and have worth and meaning for us only through the Divine Law.

This was true when Judea was still a nation among the nations, and Jewish existence was sustained by possession of its own land. How much more poignant has this treasure become,—this Sefirah-counting which serves to elevate the Torah, the Divine Law, above all else—now that Israel had lost its land and soil! Since then, in ways which are visible even to the casual onlooker, this Divine Law has remained the only bond that ties the sons of Israel together in the greatest dispersion. It has remained the only ground, the only property upon which the sons of Israel stand. And it has proven itself as that benefit which has miraculously compensated its possessors for the loss of all other benefits. Indeed, every year that passed added new splendor to the aura of this Law, and caused those who embraced it to impress it ever more deeply upon their hearts as the unique treasure of life. Torah has ready a soothing balm for every new distress, a trans-figuration for every new joy. As time passed, and experiences accrued to the Jewish People on their long journey, new meanings for ancient text became illuminated. Israel would feel even more clearly with every step the difference in value between Torah on the one hand and land and freedom on the other. The land was lost and its freedom had wasted away, but Torah, the Divine Law, had remained. And Torah had become for the people the soil upon which the blossoms of an ever fresh youthfulness unfolded. Torah had become sword and lance, helmet and suit of armor, which to gain and preserve the proudest freedom amid all outer humiliation."

Sfira by Rav Hirsch

                                                                                                             B-H

I was not able to write it. What is 'it'? My srangerz view on the topic of orthopraxy.

Hopefully next week I-H. I’m aware that it will be month after original article was printed in Ami Magazine but you know... Pesach preparation, than Pesach, than aftermath of Pesach.

Instead read, please read this expert from Rav Hirsch's 'Collected Writings'.

It is on topic of Sfira but with much broader implications, as usually when my Master touched the paper with the ink.

Matys Weiser

"There was a need to impress upon the mind of the Israelite who possessed freedom and land the value of the Torah. There was a need proclaim to the State as a whole and to each individual in it: "The land which you own, the fields which bloom for you and the fruits which ripen for you these are not your gods and your goods, these do not constitute you a nation nor are they the objects of your strivings as peoples and individuals. All these have been given to you for the sake of the Torah; for the sake of the Torah you possess them, and without the Torah you would lose them. All this land with its abundance of milk and honey, and all the rich and free national life which flourishes on it, are only a means and have only one object, namely, with this freedom and abundance to develop a communal, collective and individual life such as your God and Master has prescribed for you in the Torah." To impress on our minds and hearts this unconditional value of the Torah and the conditional value of all other possessions this was the purpose of the sfira, of the days and weeks which both, the heads of the community and every individual in Israel, had to count from the first setting of the sickle to the corn up to the festival of the giving of the Law.

I In course of time Israel forgot this counting. It ceased to count up to its Torah and to see in the Torah the principal element in its national existence .It began to look for freedom and independence to its land and soil, to which it had the same right of possession as any other people to its own land. It imagined that it was entitled to count by its land, that it could dispense with the Torah and retain bread and soil, freedom and independence without the Torah, and "Judah's gods became as numerous as his cities."' Then it lost land and soil, freedom and independence, saving nothing but the Torah up to which it count-ed no more in the land itself, and it wandered in strange lands for two thousand years.

The seasons go round, the sun shines and the dew falls, but for the Jew no seeds sprout, no fields bloom, he no more puts the sickle to his own corn. And why? Because he wanted his activities to end with this sickle, and he was not willing to begin from this sickle to count to his Torah. From the time that he deified the sickle he lost the sickle!

And yet we still count! On the injunction of our far-sighted Sages we still count, though without land and fields, not from the day on which we put the sickle to our corn, but from the day on which our ancestors on their own soil once swung the sickle over the newly ripened corn. We count days and weeks to the day of the Torah. Is this counting a mockery, is it just disconsolate mourning? Without land, without fields, deprived for two thousand years of all right to a soil of their own, do we still require the warning not to overrate this right to a soil, this ownership of a land? Do we, too, still require the admonition to value land and soil only as a means for the full performance of the Torah and to regard them as worthless if their possession does not lead to the Torah?

Have we not seen the sons of Israel so dazzled by the mere hope of the "sickle brilliance" as to imagine that the bands of the Torah would fall off along with those of the Galuth? Have we not seen the supposed trumpet-call of freedom shatter the pillars of the Jewish sanctuary? Israel was prepared in the hope of a "shirt" to throw off its "robe." God put us to the test, and we have stood it badly.

Anyone who looked deeper must have told himself even then that the great and unique drama of the Jewish Galuth could not end so pitifully. Judah was sent into the Galuth because it prized land and soil as the bulwark of its freedom and belittled the Torah. The Galuth cannot, therefore, end with the same delusion. We can really be delivered only when the centuries of the Galuth shall have taught us their lesson, which is that when we have assured our freedom and independence and recovered possession of the land which has been waiting for us for thousands of years we must use them purely in the service of God on the altar of the Torah; that with the "sickle" placed again in our hands we must not cease to be Jews, but “when first the sickle is laid to the corn on our own land” we must then really begin to be Jews, to perform our Jewish task in still fuller measure, and with all our powers to strive forward with heightened zeal to the goal of the Torah.

This test, the second act of our Galuth trials, still awaits us.

The first, the trial of suffering, Israel has already brilliantly surmounted. It is just these Sfira days in which Israel during centuries furnished the clearest proofs that it knew how to preserve the Sfira spirit in suffering. It showed in these days how it was able to count as nothing all earthly goods and joys, the whole of earthly life however sweet and dear, if it should for their sake be compelled to let go of its God and His holy word. It showed how at every moment it was prepared to cast away the earth and hasten into the arms of its God. Almost two thousands springs passed in bloody procession over Israel's head in this Sfira season, and when Israel began to count from the old deliverance and the lost sickle to the eternal Torah, there rang trough the dark clouds which enveloped them with ever new terror the repeated and awe-inspiring question of the Almighty to Israel, “Art thou still Mine, Israel?" "Thine in life and death," answered Israel, as it died." 

Rabbi Shimshon Refuel Hirsch or Samson Raphael Hirsch if the first spelling is find objectionable by anyone. 

Freedom

                                                                                                             B-H

What is the freedom? This question has consumed me since my early teen years.

B-H, it was an interesting time in the corner of planet Earth where I used to live when I was trying to understand and experience freedom for the first time.

I didn’t find it in political independence. Although, as you see in my post about Egypt and its revolution, I still relate to the human desire to speak and express oneself freely.

I understand this craving of the masses to break out from the chains of all the “protectors of the people” who most often are protecting nothing but their bloody money--sometimes even not their own families. Dictators are all the same.

I didn’t find freedom even after the shackles of Communism fell off my wrists and the muffle over my mouth was untied. As the Janis Joplin song went, “freedom is just another word for nothing more to lose.” Once I was dreaming that maybe these guys I saw riding their Harley-Davidsons on Nevada’s Highway 50 with the wind caressing their faces and ruffling their hair know what freedom is.

I tried that too...  in our family minivan though. I enjoyed it very much, but when I drove Highway 50 with the wind blowing through the window, waiving my payos, I knew already something more about freedom than those guys on their Harleys would ever know. I knew that freedom given to us from above is about much more than great space around me and blue sky above me.

Most important, I enjoyed having my family with me, my two little boys and my cute little daughter, fighting and hugging each other alternatively on the back seat of our minivan. My wife always worried what would happen next, but was always at my side.

At that time, I knew already that there is more than the starry sky above me and the moral law in my chest.

Chairus on two tablets: don’t read written, says Chazal, but rather read freedom. Freedom on the tablets.

Freedom on the tablets is different from our bechira-freedom of choice; in this freedom we may choose to rebel against the commandments of those tablets. It isn’t the freedom of refusing to believe in the G-dly character of those tablets either. It is Freedom on the tablets. Are those tablets some kind of symbol of Freedom, or perhaps there is a formula in them about how to achieve this Freedom?

It is not a big surprise that the first commandment on the tablets is asking us to be free. Anoichi Hashem Elokeichu asher chotzaisichu mi eretz mitzraim mi bays avudim. I’m the Merciful One who took you out of Egypt – the house of enslavement. Egypt, as Chazal teach us, in the very implication of the shoiresh (the root of the word), means bondage, oppression.

You are free! You are out of oppression! declares our Liberator. As a free man, you are called to do all of following on those tablets: the next nine commandments, and all that those nine represent – the Taryag Mitzvois – 613 commandments of Torah. You may do them, you still may perform those commandments, without being free, but you will lose most of its value.

It is my request from you, says HBH, that you should do what I am asking you to do, not because of any external pressure, but from your free motivation. You should hold back yourself from wrongdoing not because your environment will require it, but because you should seek in My commandments the path to even more perfect freedom – freedom of dominion over your corporeal desires and instincts.

Use that great gift which I invested in you: your Saichel – intellect. Conquer and balance the hormones flowing in your blood, through your heart, with calm and thoughtful self-restraint. Invest your time and property where you may share it with others like you. They are made in My Likeness, they represent Me; by respecting or even noticing them, you respect and recognize Me.

This is what the first commandment of the Luchos Habris (Tablets of the Covenant) seems to tell us. This is how, with great assistance from heaven, the author of these words is trying to direct his life.

We again are exiting Mitzraim, going from bondage of slavery. Let us all with Hashem’s grace understand the gift of freedom and use it wisely, to climb higher and higher; to walk in this freedom and achieve our full potential.

Kushere ve Sameach Pesach.

Matys Weiser

Lamed Voov Tzadik

                                                                                                            B-H

A great Tzadik left us last Shabes (Zuchor).

No, you didn’t hear about him; he was one of the Lamed Voov – the hidden Tzadikim in whose merit the world exists. Thanks to those few individuals, we have an opportunity to struggle to elevate ourselves to the level of who we should be.

The first time I read about Rav Zev Vava Moreino, I was just beginning to learn about my country’s horrible past, about the Holocaust which happened there and about the stand of my landsman and coreligionists at that horrifying time. This was still in the hardest years of communist Poland, when the state of war imposed on its citizens by the communist regime was merely suspended.

In the main communist weekly ‘Polityka’ there was article about Rav Moreino, the last chief rabbi of Poland. Actually, most of the article was criticizing the municipal government of city of Lodz, which had seized the apartment of Rabbi Moreino and tossed all the furniture and Sefurim (sacred books) through the window into the melting snow of the Polish spring. Among the books were some historic manuscripts recognized as such by the communist journalist who himself was Jewish.

You may wonder if such criticism of the government was possible at all under communism. Well… it was possible for Warsaw to criticize lower levels of government, but it was punishable to criticize the communist establishment from the Polish capital.

It was I think 1985 or 1986 when I read this article; Rav Moreino left Poland in 1973. For ten years there was no one single rabbi in the country which for at least 500 years has probably had more rabbis than all the rest of the world together.

I spoke then with some of the members of the local synagogue who knew him personally. Everybody agreed that this man was simply not normal. He was a good man, they said, but he was too extreme.

Only many years later I understood what was so abnormal about Rav Moreino. He was living as if the war just didn’t exist, as if there was no communism in his country. Only the pain of losing six million of his brothers and sisters affected him.

He stayed a Shomer Torah ve Mitzvois (a Servant of the G-d of his ancestors) and ohev Yisruel (lover of every Jew) while thousands of others lost most of their faith. Among them were those who told me about the ‘mental condition’ of Rav Moreino.

I can not judge them, but I can admire him.

When I came to this country I learn about Rav Moreino more from my rebbi, Yosef Bruzda ZTL. Rabbi Bruzda, himself a Lamed Vuv Tzadik, remembered Rav Moreino from after the war in Lodz, where Rabbi Bruzda spend two years before escaping from the communists to France. He spoke about Rav Moreino with great esteem, wondering about his Geoinus (scholarship), unknown in post-war Poland and superior even to the knowledge of our brothers who were less harmed by the war.

Yet as long as there were people in Poland who needed him, he stayed, even while others were rebuilding their moisdois in different parts of the world.

Rav Moreino possessed all the organizational skills needed to establish himself somewhere else. He was a lawyer, speaking Latin and French. This last skill helped him to survive the war as POW in a German camp for French soldiers. Above of all of this, he studied the Heilige Toirah in Baranovitch and Kamenetz Yeshivos.

Just these two lines are fascinating in the overall description of this Tzadik, aren’t they?

I didn’t meet Rav Moreino until few years ago. I was sitting in my car on the corner of 15th Avenue and 46^th street in Boro Park where I was building a house for someone. Almost everyday I saw this, an alte Yid mit a rabeishe Poilishe Hit vus hot gevokt yeide tug mit zain yinger Rebbetzin – an old Jew with hat characteristic for rabbis from Poland, who walked with his much younger Rebbetzin taking the stroll to refresh rigid bones. But one day while they passed my car I was stunned when I overheard their conversation. No, I didn’t listen to what about they were speaking about, but in those days you couldn’t here my native Polish on the streets of Boro Park, at least not coming from people looking like this. At first I didn’t know even who it might be, but after evaluating the facts it came to my mind that it could be Rav Moreino. I had assumed if he was still alive he lived somewhere else besides BP.

I visited Rav Moreino and his Rebbetzin, together with my wife and my brother and sister in law. My brother-in-law wanted Rav Moreino to play significant role in his upcoming Hasune (wedding). Unfortunately, Rav Moreino, at the time over 90 years old, was not able to participate. That meeting will be not forgotten, as I was already aware of with whom I was visiting.

Two weeks ago a great man left this reality. He was one of those who others see--through the prism of the confusion of this world--as individuals going against the stream; not normal, they say.

Like his great-grandfather Avraham, Rav Moreino was not worried what others will say. He did what was right.

To learn more about this great Tzadik click: http://matzav.com/a-tribute-to-rav-zev-moreinu-zt%E2%80%9Dl-two-weeks-since-his-passing

and here: http://matzav.com/rav-zev-moreinu-ztl-two-weeks-since-his-passing

Matys Weiser

Pastures

                                                                                                             B-H

I write this blog because I read the blogs.

I’ve enjoyed others people’s writings my whole life (except for six years of my childhood and three years after immigrating to this country). Then, after settling in the US, I neither spoke nor wrote English at all. Now B-H I’m trying both. Before that happened however, I read blogs by other people.

One of them is the blog of Hershel Tzig (my neighbor), called Circus Tent. I don’t even remember for how long he has written it. Even though I have disagreed with his opinions and conclusions countless times, I have enjoyed it for many years.

He is alumni of the Spinka Hader (a stream of Satmar, for those who are not familiar) who became Lubavicher; I’m a ger who is Satmar-affiliated. I never had much exposure to contemporary Lubavich, besides studying Tanya on a regular basis with one of Bnay Maluchim (sort of Satmar-affiliated Lubavichers, for those who are not familiar).

Although I often disagree with Hershel Tzig, I never posted my comments on his blog because of my poor English skills. He doesn’t even know that I exist, but I like his writings. Why? The answer is simple: I see him as genuine seeker of the Derech Hashem (path of service of G-d) that is proper for him.

From time to time he hosts other writers who post their articles on his blog. Most of the time, I enjoy those essays, too. Last week Reb Hershel posted an essay by an individual calling himself Meyer Shimanowitz. I read this essay with the great sadness and pain. The flow of words and ideas served only one reason: self-justification of the author’s weakness, going as far as threatening the world with a self-pitying suicide.

I’m certain that author of this post is highly intelligent person; his English skills are superior. His ability to observe the world is truly unique. Unfortunately he uses his talent to justify his own moral degradation, blaming his faults on a lack of scholarly freedom and intellectual inability, and, more than that, on intellectual slavery by the members of frum community.

He writes supposedly about himself: “His eyes are wide open; a Heimishe yingerman’s olfactory receptor cells have picked up tantalizing scents of fresh intellectual pasture.”

But soon he describes his conscious submission to desire. Men of all intellectual levels have these desires, the strongest ones in our bodies. He actually suggests the one was the result of the other: that his intellectual struggle and striving pushed him straight to the open arms of a woman who is not the mother of his three daughters.

Then he describes different types of human characters, suggesting that in fact there is no difference between adherents of Torah and, let’s say, big game watchers. Among both these and those are some who are fans, some who are to a certain extent skeptics, some who are intelligent observers, and some who stay where they are just for the comfort of being there.

I have to admit that his observation of different characters and temperaments is brilliantly and skillfully described. He dreams perhaps that no one before him did this job of classifying and categorizing humans. He must enjoy his writing as I enjoy mine. Does it make us equal?

Like him, in certain moments of my life my “olfactory receptor cells have picked up tantalizing scents of fresh intellectual pasture”--or pastures, rather. I read and read and read. Everything. From classic and existential philosophy to social philosophy. I read theology and history books and then the history of theology. (Rarely classics of world literature, as I saw them too diluted with ideas, but nevertheless I enjoyed some of those works as well.)

I went through these pastures in all possible directions, but I was not content with what my eye could grasp on the surface; I wanted to know more. I cannot make the claim that I left no stone unturned in this field of ideas and ideologies, but I certainly can make the claim that I picked up all the major stones, regardless of size and weight. I ended, and in part went through this adventure with my wife and three kids.

Today, I wear a shtreimel and shainy beketche on Shabes. I know, it is only outward, it does not necessarily represent the value of the person inside the beketche. I may be naïve, but I’m not an idiot. But I chose it carefully and after years of observation.

I learned Mussar Sefurim, the best descriptions of human characters and personality... books which open my inner eyes to see myself--who I am and what life is about. Hey, Shimanowitz! When you’ve stuffed yourself with these strange grasses, let me know what you found there that I did not.

Or maybe it is not the pasture that attracts you …

Matys Weiser

Again

                                                                                                             B-H

Again it happened. Blood on the sidewalk of the Holy City – Yerushalaim – Jerusalem – Al Quds.

This is not the time to share my thoughts about the Holy City. It is too early to talk about all these political scavengers, feeding themselves with the blood of innocent people. I hate them and it will be difficult for me to distance myself today from the tragedy which must touch every Jewish heart. It will be difficult, because I see it as usual through the prism of my own experience, reflections, and convictions.

But on the other hand, how could I write about something else when the fresh blood of the victim of Amulek is still there? I must…I must or it will eat me up and result again in a sleepless night.

**********************************************************************************


I am reading a book called The Rebbe. One day when I finish it I will try to write my own review of this book, but today I want to talk about a phenomenon of constant rescue (I used word ‘resurrection’ but my editor saw this expression as too strong, I guess) of the Jewish people from every catastrophe.

Three and a half thousand years, and so many attempts to relegate this nation to the history books. Those attempts never worked and never will work as long as there are these three factors which are necessary for the Jewish people’s restoration: Scriptures, the people, and their leader.

Scriptures will stay; they are here for a long time already. In fact, there is nothing older written which could be read, copied, and transferred from generation to generation. There is no older living document on this planet than the Jewish Bible. It will stay as long as it is needed.

There are always children of Yisroel who are living for It and because of It. Sometimes only few in numbers, sometimes counted only by thousands: Shearis Yisroel – the remainder of Jewish Children.

Many times this remainder is persecuted not only from elsewhere but even from within—members of their own family—by children of Yaacov who are separated from the Scriptures and from the spirit which those Scriptures transmit.

The last factor of the three: the leader.

Our first national leader was not persecuted, although many times cried because of his people and more than once he cried for his people. One thing we can be sure of:  without Moishe Rabayni, this people wouldn’t exist. It was his leadership, devotion, and sacrifice which enabled this nation to be created and set in motion the reality which we are still part of: Klal Yisroel.

There were many other leaders who deserve a few words of mention, but this is a blog and I cannot allow myself to be bigger nudnik than I sometimes am. :)

Let’s jump over a big part of Jewish History until the time of the first destruction and its aftermath. I want to remind to everybody our great national leader, Ezra Hasofer. Even his name Hasofer has to do with the Scriptures: Sofer means scribe.

Ezra was an significant organizer for the first generation of the Jewish people following the destruction of the first Temple. As historians agree, Golus Buvel (Babylonian Exile) should have marked the end for any nation taken from its land and replaced by other people, with members of leadership exterminated. This in fact happened to all other nations taken first by Sancheriv and then by Nebukadnetzar. Those two imperial conquerors exiled and resettled many other nations. Those nations, lost in the melting pots of the history, became the leaven of other, new nations, new chapters of history.

Ezra Hasofer, together with only few others carried the nation of Scriptures and Mesora (Tradition) through the destructive storm of history.

The second destruction once more required such a leader. This third exile is long and the leader of generation had to deal with a nation destroyed and divided, split over their understanding of Jewish mission, Scriptures, and Tradition itself. Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkay was strong enough, smart enough, and possessed enough wisdom to be such leader.

Once more in Jewish history, only a fraction of the nation remained faithful to its foundation and to their G-d. Tzedoikim, Notzrim, Essenes, Shomroinim, Boetusim, and others who chose or were fooled to detach themselves from the life stream of Jewish Tradition became detached from the Jewish nation. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkay, Rabbi Ben Akiva, and Rabbi Meir were the champions and preservers of our national treasure. They and a few others were able to guide us through that valley of darkness.

Again I will skip a long time and many of greatest individuals ever walking on this planet. I will skip until a time which many of us can still remember. Not me; fortunately I was born twenty years after European Hurban, unfortunately in the country where it happened. Unfortunately also because I did not have a privilege to see another individual thanks to whom I was able at a certain moment of my life to drink from the source of uncompromised tradition of holy people of Yisroel.

Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum (Divrey Yoel or Vayoel Moishe), took the responsibility to save his people, against all odds, and sometimes against people whom he loved so much, exactly as his predecessors 

Matys Weiser

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Es Zaicher Amulek

                                                                                                                B-H

In memory of five precious souls—five of many victims of Amulek.

"The general ideas on Nature, G-d and Man were so completely opposite to the Truths which were to be realized in Israel and through Israel; Nature and its Laws were thought to be so completely absolute and above any other power whatsoever; the gods themselves to be similarly bound by these laws; and Man to stand so powerless under the double ban of the blind powers of both Nature and gods, the step to Jewish conceptions of these matters was such a tremendous and overpowering contrast, that we really can not wonder if these basic ideas which lie at the root of Jewish thought and actions only became firmly established in the minds of the first people of G-d very gradually, and that it required all the great and wonderful experiences of our history, which was then 'List at its commencement, to make these truths really and truly and safely fixed in our consciousness. For the very foundation of Jewish Teaching is based on recognizing:

(a) Nature as being a creation of a completely free, Almighty unique G-d, Who still retains completely free mastery over it, and is in no wise bound by it, or the laws He has made to govern it;

(b) G-d, as the One, Personal, Free, Almighty Creator with completely unlimited powers of governing the world and

(c) above all, Man as being created by this free Creator as a personality with complete free will of his own, to whom given, again by the free Creator, the mission of raising himself above the forces of Nature which stand far below him, by, of his own free will, subjecting his own will to that of G-d, to become the first free servitor of G-d.

All the experiences which Israel — destined to become thy Nation of G-d — had hitherto made, since its entry into the wilderness, Mara, quails, Manna, Sabbath, water-from-the-rock, taught it to know its future relation to Nature, taught it what independence of the forces of Nature it was to gain, simply by subjecting itself to the Will of G-d. They still had one experience to make in these preparatory weeks for the reception of the Torah. It remained for them to learn what the position of the future People of G-d was to be, as a nation amongst the nations; its position in relation to human forces and for the future of human violence. This experience they were to have while still in Rephidim, the means of teaching was Amalek.
In the same way that the Spirit of Esau, in its night attack on Jacob who was on his peaceful way to his individual independence, made Jacob live through the whole struggle and fight that the descendants of Esau would impose on the descendants of Jacob throughout the night-centuries of world-history, and proclaimed the final ultimate victory of Jacob, so it was Esau 's grandson, Amalek, who was the first and only nation that completely unprovoked and unthreatened, attacked Jacob's grandson, Israel, on their way to national independence.
However weak and tired out by their wanderings, this people with women and children seeking a homeland must have appeared, the Might of G-d which hovered over them protecting and guiding them, had become so imposingly evident, that the fear of it paralyzed all the other nations, even those not immediately threatened. Philistia feared, Edom remained stunned, Moab trembled, Canaan was quite dumbfounded, it was only Amalek, completely unprovoked, who hurried out of his way to gain renown and take up arms against the Force which had laid even a Pharaoh low. He alone lo ire Elokim, did not fear G-d. He alone, was the heir of that spirit which chose the sword as his lot, who sought to realize the seeking renown in laurels of blood and the naseh luni sheim with which old Nimrod started the history of the world to the destruction of the happiness of nations and men. This seeking renown by the force of arms is the first and last enemy of the happiness of mankind and of the Kingdom of G-d on earth. The policy of the Pharaohs — using force ruthlessly to further their own interests, certainly has interest in keeping: up slavery, but it can even be a friend of freedom, when freedom serves its interest. But Amalek's renown-seeking sword knows no rest so long as one single pulse beats in freedom, and pays no homage to it, so long as any modest, quiet happiness exists which does not tremble before its might. Similar forces, armed to the teeth like himself, Amalek does not bate, but rather sees in such measures a sign of recognition and fear of his sword. He wages war against them of course, but honors opponents who acknowledge him and have similar principles to his own. But in Israel he sees an object of mortal hate and complete disdain, where one dares to think the sword is dispensable, where one dares to trust in spiritual moral powers, powers of which the sword has no idea, and which are beyond its reach. In the representative of the idea of the greatness which Man can attain by Peace, Amalek sees the utter scorn of all his principles, sees in it his one real enemy, and senses somehow his own ultimate collapse. "Amalek came and made war on Israel in Rephidim". Perhaps if Israel's faintheartedness had not caused Rephidim to be transferred from a passing station to a camping ground, Israel would long ago have already been led on to, Horeb, and Arnalek would not have caught them in Rephidim. But as it was, Israel had to endure this fresh anxious and worrying experience.

Attacked by Amalek, Israel had to wage war, but it is not Israel’s sword but Moses' staff that conquers Amalek and it is not any magic power in the staff but the Emuna - faith which is expressed and brought to the minds of the people by the uplifted hand, the giving oneself up with complete confidence to G-d that achieved the victory. Emuna "so his hands remained as an expression of confidence until the sun set".

(…)Aaron and Hur were at the side of Moses as the representatives of the People. Not the confidence in G-d of the Leader, but the confidence in G-d of the People, which the Leader inspired, led to victory.

Vayachlosh – root Chlsh whereas root Chltz means the loosing of a constricting band i.e., freeing, Chlsh is the loosing of the natural forces which hold one together; i.e., weakening. Joshua only weakened Amalek. His final defeat remains for the distant future. Israel itself is not yet mature. Until Israel attains maturity, the existence of Amalek as a contrast is necessary for the development of Israel's education.

(…) Es Zaicher Amulek - It is not Amalek who is so pernicious for the moral future of mankind but Zaicher Amulek, the glorifying of the memory of Amalek which is the danger. As long as the annals of humanity cover the memory of the heroes of the sword with glory, as long as those that throttle and murder the happiness of mankind are not buried in oblivion, so long will each successive generation look up in worship to these "great ones" of violence and force, and their memory will awaken the desire to emulate these heroes, and acquire equal glory by equal violence and force. Only when the divine laws of morals have become the sole criterion as to the worth of the greatest and smallest of men, and no longer in inverse proportion but in direct proportion to greatness and power do the demands of morality grow, and the greater and more powerful a man is, the less any lapse in the laws of morality is excused, then and then only will the reign of Amalek cease for ever in the world. That this is the final goal of G-d's management and direction of the history of the world is expressed here after the first weakening of Amalek, "I will utterly obliterate the keeping up the remembrance of Amalek from as far as the heavens reach". So also in Ps. IX,7, the thought is poignantly expressed, that only with the doing away with the remembrance of devastations and conquests will the perpetrators of these deeds disappear.

Vayiven Moishe Mizbeach - Just as Jacob, after he had won the name Israel by his night-long fight with the genius of Amalek, built an "altar for remembrance" Vayitzav Sham Mizbeach (Gen. XXXIII,20 see notes there), and there. by immortalized the acclamation Kal Elokai Yisroel so did Moses here build "an altar of remembrance" after the first victory over Amalek, and after the meaning of this victory had become clear to him. Amalek's greatness lies in "destruction". Israel's mission is "building", the peaceful human building up of everything earthly up to G-d. This building an altar, this final raising up of the whole earth to form an altar to G-d, is the antithesis of Amalek's Sword. (Compare Ch. XX,22). This altar of Moses in the wilderness starts the war to be waged against Amalek, that is why he called it H Nsi -"G-d calls me to the fight and shows me where I am to fight". Nes is neither a weapon nor a defense. Nes is the sign that is held aloft to give the fighter the direction and the place where the fight is to be fought. The work that G-d lets Moses start and found, has not got for its object simply the internal constitution of Israel. The object of the building up of the nation of Israel on the development of every humane feeling and ideal, is to fight and overcome everything ungodly and inhumane on earth. This development does not attack, but it is attacked, as by Amalek here, and in this defensive fight, Amalek gets defeated.

Vayomer (see the text in Hebrew) He gave it this name and thereby expressed that etc.; or, He said this because etc., Kas does not occur elsewhere. It is manifestly the incomplete Ksa, just as Yid Key is only a part of the Name of G-d. It is evident, as our sages say – “As long as the memory of Amalek is thought of as renown, neither God's Throne nor His Name is complete.” G-d then only rules in Nature, but not in the world of Mankind. At most G-d's Mastery is recognized and acknowledged as being over Nature, but not as being over the world of Man, as long as Man does not subordinate his actions to G-d's Will, as long as the ideal of Man's greatness is fixed on might and power, and not on his showing his homage to G-d by completely carrying out His Law of Morality. So here Moses proclaims: The governing (or directing) (Yad) power of the Throne of G-d — incomplete though the Throne may still be, and incompletely recognized though His Name may still be - is nothing else but a war for G-d, i.e., for His complete recognition, against Amalek from generation to generation. The underlying idea of G-d's direction of history is naught but war against Amalek until the Goal of Time is reached."

Rabbi Shimshon Refuel Hirsch or Samson Raphael Hirsch if the first spelling is find objectionable by anyone. 

Parshas Zuchor, Purim – There is a lot to write about this topic, but this first year I decided instead to post a comment of my beloved RSRH. 

You may find original of this comment in "Hirsch's Chumash"

There are many explanations who Amulek is, as the Torah has seventy faces. This Perish (commentary), however, defines our mission and struggle to build a new reality like no other commentary known to me.

Last week on a frum media outlet, someone referred to pacifists as “useful idiots.” The person even cited the source of this description of people believing in nonviolence: he quoted Lenin. 

According to Rav Hirsch, pacifists are followers of spirit of Yaacov/Yisrael, the arch enemy of …Amulek.

I’m proud to be one of these idiots... as long as it is not Amulek who uses me! Whom do you allow to use you? Are you follower of Yaacov or admirer of Esaw? You can’t be both… can you?

Matys Weiser

Good and evil

                                                                                                               B-H

Last week, my Havruso and I came across a difficult piece of Gemurah. It seemed to say to that certain prohibition from the Torah was stated explicitly, even people anyway have a natural  aversion to it. That’s how it appeared at first glance, even with usual machloykes (disputes) between Rashi and Toisfos. Later, we learned that even in the Shulchan Aruch (codex of Jewish law from almost 1000 years later), the issue is still not clarified.

A later Gemura stated that sometimes people profit from the that very act which is supposed to be repugnant. It is not so clear that the prohibition was unnecessary; not all the people are reluctant to do it.

What surprised me was that the Gemura doesn’t clarify this issue, but I guess that is part of its beauty—to leave open a field for further research and learning. Besides, the Gemura rarely discusses philosophy, a subject which I enjoy so much.

Can it be that a Torah prohibition could depend or be dependant on peoples’ likes or dislikes?

Can it be that something most people enjoy is designated by HBH as a mitzvah because they like it, and something most people naturally dislike is prohibited because majority loathe it?

It may happen that someone has a natural aversion to acts designated by Torah as an Aveira (sin), and it may be that something called by the Torah a Mitzva (good deed) may be enjoyed by certain individuals. Does our dislike of those acts make them evil; or does our enjoyment of the good deeds makes them good? It cannot be.

Since humanity resigned from the original path of justice taught to the father of all nations, Noach, people can no longer define good and evil for themselves. Many tried: Hamurabbi, Greek philosophers, Zooraster, Konfucius and Budda to name a few.

They taught their path of life and taught more or less peaceful coexistence between the neighbors and nations—but with mixed success. In part, that’s because people like to admire their teachers rather than listen to them, that’s a known phenomenon. What is then the primary reason for the lack of success in creating a human definition of good and evil? It is weakness of the human heart, rather than the human brain.

Sifrey Mussar (Jewish works of ethics) and Sefer Hatanya (one of the major works of Hasidism), teach that the human psyche is located in the brain and must conquer and dominate heart, the center of human desire. The heart, the central organ of our body, pumps through our veins streams of blood which carries hormones, enzymes, and other chemical substances largely responsible not only for the functioning of our organism but also for our behavior. It is center of our struggle, according to the Tanya, to prevail over desires located in the heart, and dominate them with our Sachel (intellect).

Rabbi Hirsch writes that using this gift of heaven, intellect, people may achieve an understanding of basic good and evil. Even without the tradition received from Noach, people can understand the good and evil of the Seven Mitzvos of Humanity. (I will come back to the topic of seven Mitzvos bnai Noach and how the natural phenomenon can make person aware of it, in the future I-H.)

In many places Chazal gives us examples of animals and other aspects of creation which from it we may learn certain proper traits. But it is obvious that first we must know what is proper, or else what good does the knowledge do us?

Within one block of New York City might reside thousands of rats.

Imagine these disgusting animals dancing on the table early in morning, where you kids fifteen minutes later will eat their breakfast. Or imagine that you put you foot to your slippers and there it is: a fat, hairy rat. Even worse, imagine in the morning light you discover dirty little footstep marks on your pillow.

Immediately you call you super or landlord and demand he takes care about the problem. He lays traps and poison; rats eat the poison and die somewhere in the sewer. Is it moral act, to kill those animals?

On the same block there is a restaurant that serves exotic food—so exotic that they serve fried and cooked rats, all with elegant salads and fancy beverages, as high class restaurant are supposed to. But again, innocent animals are killed in order to fulfill the human desire to taste novelties or fill the stomach. Is it ethical thing to do? Is it right? Is it good? There are, after all, alternatives: vegetables and the like.

That’s what the PETA people claim. They protest outside the restaurant with signs and posters calling on them to stop the senseless suffering of the poor rats. They are specializing in protection of animals, even if it requires undressing themselves in the public (which they do not consider immoral); causing damage to private property; or inflicting physical harm to individuals who do not share their understanding of morality and ethics. Can it be what they understand without the doubt in their minds to be righteous and good can be called so?

Is killing rats good or evil? Is eating them good or evil? Is protecting rats good or evil?

I do not believe that those three stances can ever be reconsiled. Each member of those groups justifies their understanding of morality and definition of good and evil in a different way.

This is only a small sample of how hopeless humanity is without a set of rules telling us how to distinguish between good and evil.

We all came to this world with a Carte Blanche for recognizing morality. It is only our environment, our parents and teachers who teach us about good and evil.

We are privileged to have acquired a set of regulations from the Creator of the World which leaves us without such doubt.

Torah is the only and ultimate measure of what is moral, ethical, good or evil.

Matys Weiser

My book is now available to the public.

                                                                                                               B-H
As I promised readers of this blog (as well as myself) I will write shortly about the first reactions of those who within the last few days had the opportunity to read it.

I would like to thank to all who expressed their admiration... but as I wrote in the book, it happened to be that I was in the center of an interesting chain of events. There was no one else who wished to describe it—especially because most of those events have something to do with me.

Most of the people are going to the grave in the same religion which they were born.

Some people, however, choose to convert to a different faith. They believe that whatever they were taught was the truth is not worth continuing. They are either looking for change or are persuaded by missionaries.

Of course every, or almost every convert believes that his new religion is the only one and truth. Such is my belief. What my path to change was and why it led me to Judaism, my book describes in detail.

What are the first reactions then?

Overall very positive. The story was ‘written’ by the Great Stage Designer and if I or the other people described in this book made any positive choices, we don’t really know when it happened and how much of our free will was really involved in the process. It is a great but difficult topic. I discuss Bechira—freedom of choice—in my book in depth, and I will came back to it many times in the future I-H.

The book however has more aspects than story it describes. With Hashem’s help, I was able to describe the events in a manner that flows; it is not boring, and some people told me that it pulls them in (one can read it for hours without a pause).

With all this sweet feedback came also some criticism which I welcome even more than the compliments. I have learned that if I want to find out about myself I should listen what my enemies have to say about me. B-H, I have no enemies; the criticism came either from my friends or from people who began to know me from the book.

As it is known from my website www.anotherconvert.com , English is not my first language and I have used it for only one third of my life. I never had the opportunity to learn it in school, as I came to this country with a family of five; for most of the time I was this family breadwinner B-H.

I learned to read and later to write, however both my speech and my writing are far from perfection. All my texts need editing to be understandable. Likewise with my book, and I’m disappointed that some of the editing was not done to the perfection.

I asked my editor to fix what I wrote in a way that made it readable but retained my original style of writing. Is the bad impression of some readers coming from the fact that I asked the editor to keep it rough? I cannot judge; my knowledge of English does not allow me to evaluate it and until publication of this book I could not find anyone to help me with this.

What I can promise is that if the number of copies printed will be sold and there will be still demand for this book I will try to do better job in the future.

The other subject of dislike is the price of the book. I’m aware that a book of 300 pages could cost a few dollars less than mine. There are however several reasons for that (and greed is not one of them). First, I spent a lot of money to bring this story to the public.

I wrote it (except for two chapters) fourteen years ago. I tried two times to give it to publishers, but to no avail. Most of those years I made B-H enough money to self publish it without any harm to my family budget. But I was not too much in to it. In fact, I was even thinking to leave it until after a hundred and twenty.

Some events of the last two years led me to take this project out of drawer and get it published. It happened unfortunately at the time when I did not have the resources for this purpose. In fact, I have used, in part, credit to finance this project. It cost more than I expected.

Everyone who read this book admitted its uniqueness.

There are many biographies and many books about religion or philosophy. There are many books about historical and political evens which turned the paths of history (or individuals) in diametrically different directions. I don’t know however any other book combining all of it, and more.

This alone raises the market value of this book to the level where I feel safe to ask those few dollars more; it should pay for itself and other projects attached to it (for example,  gertzedek.com). Will people pay for it as much as I ask? I don’t know—but I know that people are paying more for less. Hashem should help.

This is enough for this week.

Matys Weiser

Anti-Semitism 2

                                                                                                            B-H

It was taught in the Beraisa: Rabbi Akiva said: “When I was an am huoretz (uneducated person), I said, ‘Give me a Talmid Chacham (Sage of Talmud) that I might bite him like a donkey.’ Said his students to him, “Rabbi should you say, rather, [like a] dog?” He answered them: “When donkey bites, it break the bones, while a dog doesn’t.” (Talmud Pesuchim 49b)

The Maharal from Prague explains this Gemura in Sefer "Beer Hagola" (as translated by Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein) in the following way.

While the bite of the dog may be painful and leave marks on the body, the bite of the donkey smashes the tissue together with the bone, destroying it beyond recognition. Basically, it annihilates the bitten part of the body. Enemies of the Torah are upset not by the fact of what adherents of the Torah do; they can not accept their very existence. His - the enemy, greatest desire is to destroy them completely. This is how Rabbi Akiva should be understood over here, and this is how "Beer Hagola" explains this Gemura.

So was also the case of Amulek, the ultimate enemy of the Jewish people. This nation of adversaries couldn’t accept the fact that the people of Torah becoming a reality when they attacked Jews soon after Yetzias Mitzraim (leaving Egypt). They can’t allow it today.

This, unfortunately, is what an uneducated Jew has in common with the very worst enemy of the holy Nation. This is what rabbi Akiva is saying about himself. If he would say it about someone else, for some, his creditability wouldn’t be so strong as when he is giving his personal testimony.

Why do they hate?

Chazal—rabbis and sages—describe the nature of the human being in various ways: It is Body and it is Spirit. It is matter and form. Man is built from two conflicting elements, allowing him to exercise his freedom of choice. One of the descriptions used, states the higher part of the body is that of an angel and the lower part of the body is that of an animal. It is very deep and profound teaching which we cannot discuss in this short essay. It would also enter the area of holy teachings, where I’m more a stranger than for the rest of Torah. I will talk only how I understand this on my poor and inadequate level, as the deeper knowledge is limited to me.

It is our body where the presence of all the enzymes and hormones, together with other chemical and electrical reactions within our brain and rest of the body, constitutes us as humans. This is where the Yeytzer Haraa – the evil urge dwells. This is what we have in common with created with the world of animals. However, as it was said last week, man was created as intelligent being. He has potential to engage his animalistic nature in service of intellect. The only key to do it is his will—the freedom of choice. This is exactly what the Creator wants him to do, and what He desires from humanity—the submission of the corporeal to the intellectual and the intellectual to the spiritual.

However, to keep the balance on the playing field of Bechira—choice—the evil urge is created and kept strong. The power of egoism, self-gratification, hunger for instant pleasure, indulgence in temporariness; make our struggle difficult.

Many if not most are giving up. Many are unwilling to join the common struggle toward betterment. The sin has a sweet taste.

But there is also this implanted sentiment that we are something better than this low animalistic creature, that we can and we deserve higher. For most people, this emotion, takes form of Gava—haughtiness. Haughtiness in turn, is causing them to sin to an even greater extent. But deep, deep in their hearts they know that this is not the direction which they should choose; they can recognize with their intellects the basics of Good and Evil. They choose Evil and they hate themselves for it. They hate that better part of themselves; they hate this mechanism of conscience which is accusing them of doing Evil.

However the mechanisms of self-preservation are not allowing them to direct mental or active hate toward themselves. That’s why they, the evildoers, need scapegoats, to put it on the altar of the Devil. They find this scapegoat in the people who choose to fight their nature. People whose very existence is a constant accusation—the fact that they are and they fight their moral imperfections—are inconvenient for them to the highest degree, even when their conscience is completely inactive. The fact that someone chooses good is an accusation they can not tolerate.

The Nation of Torah fit this purpose of being their scapegoat in the best possible way.

Matys Weiser