October 2005

Efraim Karsh and Rory Miller write on TNR online that the Iranian president’s remarks that Israel should be wiped off of the map is nothing new: the destruction of Israel is the policy of quite a number of States and organizations in the region. What’s new, they argue, is that someone is that the international community cares:

Indeed, while the international community’s uncharacteristically harsh response to his comments was certainly welcome, one wonders whether it was motivated by real concern for Israel’s safety–or by the West’s growing frustration with Iran’s dogged drive toward nuclear weapons. Whatever the reason, we can all hope that the West will now take a stand against all those who call for the destruction of Israel. Otherwise, there will be only one lesson from this tawdry affair: that countries should feel free to advocate genocide against the Jewish people–as long as they aren’t developing weapons that can be turned on London, Paris, or Moscow once they’ve finished the job in Tel Aviv.

Ahem.

Not to beat the president of Iran’s words to death, but I’m mulling over the constant usage of the word “arrogant” and I can’t help think that the president of Iran is trying to tell us something important: his hatred of Israel and the West doesn’t come from a feeling of inferiority, but rather from the feeling that his rightful place as the leader of the world is usurped by those who should be humble enough to accept their lowly place. And I thought the Jews had problems with the whole “chosen-ness” thing.

Meaning, by using the word “arrogant,” he is exposing the arrogance that goes with that type of fundamentalism–Hamas, too, thinks it has God’s support in pushing Israel into the sea. Maybe its time the president of Iran remembers that “Islam” means submission–the ultimate act of humility–and gets off his high-horse to accept the fact that the world has worked out in a way that, well, doesn’t have him on top.

In fact, he can learn a thing or two from Zionism: most of us Zionists gave up our messianic belief in the day all the nations would bow to our Truth long ago, and settled down in the messy reality of living as a people amongst the nations.

Here’s the Beeb’s roundup of Arab reaction to the Iranian President’s comments. Did you know Iran is guilty of occupying some Arab land? So they say. Read the article.

Is Aliyah good for the shidduch? One man endeavors to find out.

Read president Ahmadinejad of Iran’s speech on a “World Without Zionism” for yourself.

In what is probably the most thorough look at the links between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism on the Left, Nick Cohen–not a Jew–concludes, “It’s not that the left as a whole is anti-Semitic, although there are racists who need confronting. Rather, it has been maddened by the direction history has taken. Deracinated and demoralised, its partisans aren’t thinking hard enough about where they came from or - and more pertinently - where they are going.”

The article is a must-read. Here’s a part that blew my mind:

While we’re at it, don’t excuse Hamas and Islamic Jihad and all the rest by saying the foundation of Israel and the defeat of all the Arab attempts to destroy it made them that way. Anti-Semitism isn’t a local side effect of a dirty war over a patch of land smaller than Wales. It’s everywhere from Malaysia to Morocco, and it has arrived here. When the BBC showed a Panorama documentary about the ideological roots of the Muslim Council of Britain in the Pakistani religious right, the first reaction of the Council was to accuse it of following an “Israeli agenda”. The other day the Telegraph reported that Ahmad Thomson, a Muslim lawyer who advises the Prime Minister on community relations of all things, had declared that a “sinister” group of Jews and Freemasons was behind the invasion of Iraq.

To explain away a global phenomenon as a rational reaction to Israeli oppression, you have once again to turn the Jew into a supernatural figure whose existence is the cause of discontents throughout the earth. You have to revive anti-Semitism.

That’s one way to answer people like Mark Mazower who think much of today’s anti-Semitism is Israel’s creation.

You gotta love this one: the Islamic Republic News Agency citing a “prominent” American Jewish Rabbi supporting President Ahmadinejad’s and defending him from accusations of being anti-Jewish. It also turns out that the Torah bans land owndership “including Palestine and other parts of the world.” The Islamic Republic must love these type of Jews.

The European Jewish Press asks individual Jews what it’s like being Jewish in the UK today.

This past Shabbat Parshat Breishit, the 1st Parsha of the Torah was read. On the very 1st word of the Torah, “Breishit” (”In the Beginning”), Rashi - Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (February 22, 1040 – July 17, 1105), the unequaled Biblical commentator, asks the following famous question:

R. Yitzchak said: The Torah should have begun with [the verse] “This month shall be [your first month],” it being the first precept that the Israelites were commanded. Then why does it [the Torah] begin with “In the beginning”? This is because [of the concept contained in the verse,] “He declared the power of His works to His people in order to give to them the inheritance of nations.” Thus, should the nations of the world say to Israel, “You are robbers, for you have taken by force the lands of the Seven Nations,” they [Israel] will say to them: “All the earth belongs to G-d. He created it and gave it to whomever He saw fit. It was His will to give it to them and it was His will to take it from them and give it to us.”

Anyone reading this Rashi can appreciate how appropriate his words are today, where not a moment goes by that the Jewish People and State of Israel are forced to justify their right to the Land of Israel.

However, consider that Rashi wrote these words at some point before the year 1100. From the year 1100 until 1948, a period of nearly 850 years, this Rashi made almost no sense.

Can you imagine a Jewish father teaching this Rashi to his son in the midst of the Crusades, the Inquisition, pogroms, persecutions and the Holocaust. For 850 years, the conversation might have gone something like this:

Father: So, Rashi is teaching us that the reason that the Torah starts with the story of creation (even though the Torah is not meant to be learned as merely a story book), and not the 1st commandment that the Jewish People were commanded in, of sanctifying the new moon, is because one day the nations of the world are going to say, “You are robbers, for you have taken by force the lands of the Seven Nations”…

Son: Abba (father), what in the world is Rashi talking about?

Father: What do you mean?

Son: Well, Abba, here we are, living in Exile for the last thousand+ years, under daily persecutions, living in a ghetto, and you’re telling me that one day the Jewish People are going to be able to move to Israel, a place where we will not be a minority but sovereign, and that the nations of the world are going to call us thieves?

Come on…

Father: I know it sounds too fantastic to believe, but son, we must continue to pray to Hashem, 3 times a day in the direction of Jerusalem, and the day will come when Hashem will finally answer our prayers, and return the Jewish People to the Land of Israel.

You’re just going to have to trust me on this one…

Son: OK, Abba… Can I go outside and play now?

Father: Sure, but do me a favor and play inside today. You know, after what happened last night, it might be safer, until things calm down.

Son: Oh… alright.

Look how far the Jewish People have come. With all of the challenges that the Jewish people face today, we must put htings in their proper perspective. It is only in the last century that we have merited to truly appreciate these prophetic words of Rashi, and just as these words of Rashi have come true, so too will all of the other prophecies of the Torah will come true…

May it be speedily, in our days!

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Mobius of Jewschool reports that there will be a Counter-convention in Toronto during the time 156 Jewish federations and 400 independent Jewish communities will meet for their Annual General Assembly. From the program it looks like it will be a “I-love-Galut-Mind” festival focusing more on simplifying the politics of the Jewish State than on the state of Jewishness. I’m all for alternative voices–but an alternative convention? Come on. Join the conversation - come down from your perch and join the party.

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