Ruth, The Completed Jew

On the holiday of Shavuot which celebrates the giving of the Torah, we read the story of Ruth. It is, at first glance, a particularly strange choice. Why would Judaism, which has a prohibition against marrying a Moabite (Deuteronomy 23:3) use the story of a marriage to a Moabite, on any holiday, let alone one of the three festivals of pilgrimage, and the one devoted to the giving of the laws?

Peoplehood, Land and Religion

The three festivals represent three parts of the collective Jewish nationhood as told in the five books of Moses:

  • Passover tells the story of Jews becoming a nation, a single people. While they entered Egypt as a single family of 70 souls, they left Egyptian bondage as a people numbering 600,000 men. Their vast numbers yet common experience of slavery and freedom bound them together as a singular nation.
  • The holiday of Sukkot, Tabernacles, represents both the travels and protection of the Jews as well as their final destination in the land of Israel.
  • And the third of the festivals, Shavuot, is about religion. God gave the Jewish people the 10 Commandments on this day, just seven weeks after leaving Egypt.

These three elements are critical to understanding the nature of of the the Jewish people. At the most fundamental level, any Jew is part of the Jewish people, whether or not they observe the commandments in the Bible or live in Israel. A religious Jew who lives in the diaspora or a secular Jew living in Israel appreciate two of the three aspects outlined in the Bible. And a Jew who lives in Israel and observes the Torah’s commandments covers all three elements.

Which brings us to why the Book of Ruth is read on Shavuot. Other than Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism who came to the holy land hundreds of years earlier, she is the only person in the Bible who takes upon all three elements upon herself.

Ruth told her mother-in-law Naomi (1:16-17):

וַתֹּ֤אמֶר רוּת֙ אַל־תִּפְגְּעִי־בִ֔י לְעָזְבֵ֖ךְ לָשׁ֣וּב מֵאַחֲרָ֑יִךְ כִּ֠י אֶל־אֲשֶׁ֨ר תֵּלְכִ֜י אֵלֵ֗ךְ וּבַאֲשֶׁ֤ר תָּלִ֙ינִי֙ אָלִ֔ין עַמֵּ֣ךְ עַמִּ֔י וֵאלֹהַ֖יִךְ אֱלֹהָֽי׃

But Ruth replied, “Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God

בַּאֲשֶׁ֤ר תָּמ֙וּתִי֙ אָמ֔וּת וְשָׁ֖ם אֶקָּבֵ֑ר כֹּה֩ יַעֲשֶׂ֨ה יְהוָ֥ה לִי֙ וְכֹ֣ה יֹסִ֔יף כִּ֣י הַמָּ֔וֶת יַפְרִ֖יד בֵּינִ֥י וּבֵינֵֽךְ׃

Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the LORD do to me if anything but death parts me from you.”

Ruth accepts becoming part of the Jewish people, travels with Naomi back to Bethlehem in the Jewish holy land, and accepts the Jewish God. Ruth, more than any person in the Bible, represents the essence the three pillars of the Jewish Nation. It is for that reason that she was given the honor of being the great grandmother of King David, who united the Jewish people in a single kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital.


Related First.One.Through articles:

Abraham’s Hospitality: Lessons for Jews and Arabs

Taking the Active Steps Towards Salvation

A Seder in Jerusalem with Liberal Friends

Here in United Jerusalem’s Jubilee Year

The Jewish Holy Land

Today’s Inverted Chanukah: The Holiday of Rights in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria

The Nation of Israel Prevails

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Considering Nazis and Radical Islam on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day

D-Day. Liberation by the Collective

Today marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, when well over 150,000 men hit the beaches of Normandy to turn back the barbaric Nazi regime. Roughly 19,000 men lost their lives in that invasion, meant to stop the German killing machine.

The Allied forces came from many countries. They had watched the white supremacists slaughtering other white people all over Europe, taking over more and more territory as they attempted to build their Empire. There were stories of the Germans liquidating Jews wherever they found them which many found hard to believe. But the videos they saw of the people of London cowering in bomb shelters and the underground to avoid the aerial bombardment felt real and relatable. The Allies moved into action.

At great sacrifice, thousands upon thousands of young people lost their lives to redeem the western world they had known. A world of liberty and freedom.

It took a full robust attack on Germany – not just against the soldiers, but the entire war machine – to end the nightmare. The British and Americans dropped so many bombs on the city of Dresden in February 1945 that a firestorm blazed for three days which engulfed the city and killed an estimated 25,000 people. There may not be a 75th anniversary memorial in Dresden in eight months, but the decimation of a city was also part of turning back the evil tide.

In all, the Nazi menace was thwarted. The citizens of London came out from their shelters to sunshine. The partisans of France returned from the forests. The people of the Netherlands took back their country.

But the Jews, the Jews were decimated. Ezekiel’s valleys of dry bones were covered in massive graves, sprinkled with the ashes of Jews incinerated in crematoria.

ISIS. The Nightmare of the Caliphate

Mankind’s pathology for hatred runs deep.

Not 100 years later, a similar sickness would take over Muslims in the Middle East. Known by a variety of names in including ISIS, ISIL and Daesh, the Islamic State sought to restore a Muslim Caliphate throughout the region. They mostly slaughtered other Muslims who did not adhere to their strict version of the religion and destroyed people of other faiths including the Yazidis mercilessly.

The radical Islamic killing machine was proud of its accomplishments. It filmed the decapitation of people and setting fire to prisoners in cages. The Islamists would then post the videos online to share with the world in the hopes of instilling fear in their enemies and winning recruits from their supporters.

A new coalition came together to turn back this evil in 2014. The United States once again led the charge, assembling countries which fought in Europe during World War II, but also local Muslim countries from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. 

The Islamic State’s emerging Caliphate was defeated as they lost city after city to the coalition. The Muslim fighters have mostly scattered and gone underground. Perhaps they will face justice if the world fashions a force like the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Or perhaps they will simply emerge as terrorists in other countries.

The buildings in Iraq and Syria are pockmarked with the scars of wars, both against ISIS, as well as recent wars in Iraq with Iran, Kuwait and the United States, and in Syria’s own civil war. The Christian, Yazidi, Kurdish and Jewish populations which lived throughout the region have been decimated. Many of those communities will never return.


The Allied Forces remained in Germany, as they did in Japan after the war. They would impose many restrictions on the countries as they also tried to rehabilitate the infrastructure and economy based on democracy and freedom. And they would impose restrictions on the spread of hateful ideology in an effort to stem a rise of Nazi Party 2.0.

While ISIS has been defeated, the same radical ideology lives on. The Taliban of Afghanistan is still a killing machine. Iran has infiltrated Iraq, Syria and Yemen and has its affiliates in Hezbollah in Lebanon dominating much of the country. A Shia Caliphate in the making. ISIS 2.0.

The Nazis took power of Germany in 1933 and formed its alliance with Austria in 1938 and began invading countries and slaughtering Jews en masse the following year. It took another five years for the world to react and defeat the German army. It would take many more years to squash the Aryan ideology.

Radical Islamists slaughtered thousands of people in the United States on September 11, 2001 and proudly decapitated a Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in February 2002. ISIS emerged in the defeated plains of Iraq and Syria and the upheaval of the “Arab Spring” which began in 2010. The world reacted, but very slowly and locally.

The world is debating and dithering regarding an ongoing confrontation with radical Islam. It considers whether forces should remain in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan. It has allowed Iran to maintain its entire nuclear infrastructure and provided a pathway to legally build nuclear weapons within a decade. It spends more time discussing “Islamophobia” than defeating the hateful radical Islamist ideology.

And the alt-left voices urging to end the fight against radical Islam have grown louder.

Niche or National?

No one ever claimed that all white people were Nazis in the 1940’s and no one claims that all Muslims are radical Islamists today. Or do they?

Today’s left-wing fringe has pushed forward the notion that all white people have “white privilege” and have special inherent advantages in western society. They argue that the “patriarchy” has dominated the legal structure of society and have instituted laws enabling “white supremacy” to become the norm. They have argued that all white people suffer from racism. Only white people. And yes, all of them.

Curiously, these intersectional radicals who label white people indiscriminately, are pushing the notion that “Islamophobia” has taken over white society. They repeat the phrase to hammer their thesis that white people are racists. But their blanket claims of all consuming white nationalist hate are untrue.

All white people are not racists and all Muslims are not radicals. Hatred exists in society, but typically at the fringes, in niche groups with deplorable attitudes.

However the hateful ideologies have been mainstreamed.

European countries, alarmed by the mass influx of Muslim refugees, are enacting laws to make it harder for them to enter and live in the country. They are electing governments committed to stop the “invasion.”

The leading candidates vying to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the presidency trip over themselves to either portray themselves as non-White (Elizabeth Warren) or apologize for being white as they genuflect to an alt-left base which is anti-white or apologetically-white.

People in the streets of Europe have no qualms yelling once again that “Hitler was right” when they protest Israel’s defensive battles, or in the streets of the United States that “Jews will not replace us,” when they’re concerned that Jewish agencies are facilitating the entry of Muslim refugees. Muslim leaders in the United States take the podium to address thousands of people and state that Jews are “termites” and that “there’s nothing creepier than Zionism.” The streets of London and New York and college campuses have people calling to destroy the Jewish State, while the leaders in Iran state that they will destroy the “Zionist entity.”

Anti-white, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish voices are loud, public and echoed in parliaments and universities. Each is waiting for the other to back down or run recklessly into or from battle.


The world came together 75 years ago to turn back hate that had metastasized into consuming a country and a powerful army bent on taking over a continent. While it took far too long to get there, the forces of good eventually won.

The forces of good have similarly defeated ISIS just now, but remain caught up in debates about confronting the radical Islamist ideology. How can there be any debate about enabling a country like Iran obtaining nuclear weapons? How do we allow people who call for violent jihad in the streets to roam the hallways of universities instead of the confines of a prison cell?

American forces helped the people of London emerge from their bomb shelters 75 years ago, but the people of Israel still live with bomb shelters in every home and hotel, because neither they nor the world will forcefully defeat the ideology and power of radical Islam in the same manner it was willing to confront the Nazis.


Bomb shelter in a luxury hotel in Tel Aviv
(photo: First.One.Through)

The world effectively routed Nazi Germany. Will it do the same against radical Islam? If it lets the radical left sideline a mission only half-way complete with charges of “Islamophobia” and “white supremacy,” much of the western world will eventually resemble an Israeli society living with bomb shelters within reach.


Related First.One.Through articles:

The Banners of Jihad

Pick Your Jihad; Choose Your Infidel

Extreme and Mainstream. Germany 1933; West Bank & Gaza Today

“Mainstream” and Abbas’ Jihad

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Mayor De Blasio is Blind to Black Anti-Semitism

New York City has seen a large spike in anti-Semitic attacks according to recent reports. According to the New York Police Department, the vast majority of hate crimes in the first quarter of 2019 were against Jews.

Anti-Jewish 59%
Anti-White 10%
Anti-Black 8%
Anti LGBT 8%
Anti-Muslim 3%
Anti-Asian 3%

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio condemned the attacks, but repeatedly falsely attributed the incidents as stemming only from “white supremacy.” In May 2019, de Blasio saidThe forces of white supremacy have been unleashed and … those are profoundly anti-Semitic forces,” and yesterday he doubled down on the sentiment statingI think the ideological movement that is anti-Semitic is the right-wing movement,… I want to be very, very clear, the violent threat, the threat that is ideological is very much from the right.


NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio
(photo: Gregory P. Mango)

De Blasio is correct in stating that white supremacy is a force of antisemitism, but he routinely refuses to acknowledge that black antisemitism is just as large a factor in hate crimes in New York City. In a city with a population which is roughly 43% white and 24% black, white people commit 58% of the anti-Semitic crimes while black people commit 36%. The ratios between white-black populations and white-black anti-Semitic attacks are virtually identical. It is the Hispanic and Asian communities which live in New York City who do not commit many hate crimes against Jews.

But De Blasio is a liberal mayor married to a black woman, and is running for president as a Democrat. As such, he believes that his pathway to higher office is to minimize black antisemitism and inflate charges against the right. It is a motivation of personal gain rather than fighting against a surge of attacks against Jews.

An average NYC Jew is now 13 times more likely to suffer a hate crime than an average NYC black person, but the mayor is protecting blacks against the charges of antisemitism in a reversal of protecting the accuser over the accused.

De Blasio is putting personal gain and politics over protecting the innocent. What kind of president do you think he would be?


Related First.One.Through articles:

NY Times Discolors Hate Crimes

Covering Racism

Farrakhan’s Democrats

Murdered Jews as Political Fodder at Election Season in America and Always in Israel

NY Times, NY Times, What Do You See? It Sees Rich White Males

Inclusion versus Attention, and The Failure of American Leadership

Between Right-Wing and Left-Wing Antisemitism

Ramifications of Ignoring American Antisemitism

What Kind of Hate Kills?

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Time to Define Banning Jews From Living Somewhere as Antisemitic

The German government voted in May 2019 to officially label the boycott, divestment and sanctions (B.D.S.) of Israel movement as antisemitic.

The resolution entitled “Resisting the BDS movement decisively –fighting antisemitism,” calls on the German government to “cease providing premises and facilities under the administration of the Bundestag to organizations that use anti-Semitic terms or question Israel’s right to exist.” This marks the first time a major European parliament has defined the BDS movement as antisemitic.

It is highly appropriate for the European country which led the charge to annihilate the Jews in the 1930’s and 1940’s to lead the way for curtailing the mainstreaming of Jew-hatred today. The noxious B.D.S. antisemitism is being championed by the far-left, Islamic radicals and the alt-right, so Germany’s voice in protesting the activity as it recalls its own actions during the Holocaust is a clarion call for the the world to eradicate pernicious evil at its roots.

Nazis labeling Jewish stores for boycott in 1933. An den Fenstern j¸discher Geschte werden von Nationalsozialisten Plakate mit der Aufforderung “Deutsche, wehrt euch, kauft nicht bei Juden” angebracht.

It is similarly time for the United Nations to call out the Jew-hatred in its ranks and acknowledge and label that the banning of Jews from living anywhere is antisemitic.

The UN devolved into its current antisemitic state over the decades from the 1950’s to 1970’s, as many Muslim countries hostile to the Jewish State were admitted as members, and the former Nazi Kurt Waldheim served as the leader of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981. Over Waldheim’s watch, the organization passed many anti-Israel and anti-Semitic resolutions. They included:

  • UN Resolution 3236 (1974) declaring that Palestinians have – uniquely among all people in the world – an inalienable right to sovereignty and to return to a house where an ancestor lived (even if they were just renters and lived there for a short time).
  • UN Resolution 3379 (1975) declaring “that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.

The United States helped repeal UN Res. 3379 in 1991, but the absurdity of UN Res. 3236 lives on, perpetuating a simmering battle between Arabs and Jews.

The absurd resolution is matched by explicitly antisemitic resolutions, such as UN Security Council 2334 (2016). By liberally switching between the concept of “settlements” and “settlers” as well as “Israel” and “Jews,” the UN pushed forward the notion that Jews should be forbidden to live in huge swathes of their homeland, including their holiest city of Jerusalem. An Israeli Arab moving to the West Bank is considered a non-issue, while a Jew buying an apartment in the Old City of Jerusalem is considered “a flagrant violation under international law.” It’s outrageous, it’s antisemitic, and it’s considered perfectly acceptable by the UN today.

In a similar vein, the UN has refused to comment of the Palestinian Authority law which calls for the death sentence for any Arab selling land to Jews in eastern Jerusalem and all lands east of the Green Line (EGL), as the UN would rather state that the PA is a credible partner for peace. Imagine the uproar at the UN if Israel had a law which forbade Arabs from living in the country.

Perhaps, just as Germany took the lead in labeling the B.D.S. movement as antisemitic, Russia should take a leadership role in noting that the banning of Jews from owning property and living in certain areas is antisemitic, to acknowledge its role in limiting Jews to just the Pale of Settlement. Maybe the United Kingdom will admit that evicting all Jews from the city of Hebron in 1929, and from all of England in 1290 was wrong. Better still, the UK should state clearly that it fiercely objects and opposes the currently outstanding terms of the Treaty of Utecht which bans Jews from living in Gibraltar, and together with Spain which drafted the language, officially remove it.

How can we expect the world to recognize the antisemitism of BDS, when it hasn’t clearly condemned the laws which ban Jews from living in certain locations?


Related First.One.Through articles:

The Long History of Dictating Where Jews Can Live Continues

The EU’s Choice of Labels: “Made in West Bank” and “Anti-Semite”

Anti-“Settlements” is Anti-Semitism

When Hate Returns

The Legal Israeli Settlements

Marking November 29 as The International Day of Solidarity with Jews Living East of the Green Line

Tolerance at the Temple Mount

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The Dark Side of Jerusalem Day: Magnifying the Kotel and Minimizing the Temple Mount

The Six Day War of June 1967 was remarkable in many ways, but it also led to shameful disappointments.

  • The Victory of War. Vastly outnumbered in people and armory, the Israeli army nevertheless triumphed over the surrounding Arab Muslim countries which sought to destroy the Jewish State.
  • Victory of Right. While Israel fought a preemptive battle against Egypt and Syria, making its argument of self-defense slightly tenuous, the battle against Jordan was 100% defensive, and therefore the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” is wholly irrelevant to Israel’s retaking of eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria which were an integral part of the Palestine Mandate and rightfully “reconstituting their national home in that country.
  • Victory of Rights. The Arab Muslims of Jordan ethnically cleansed the Jews from eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank and forbade Jews from visiting or praying in Jerusalem from 1949-1967, while the broader Muslim world under the Ottomans had banned Jews from entering or praying at the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs in Hebron for centuries. That ended in June 1967, as Jews were once again able to access their holiest and second holiest locations.

The victories were incredible and continue to be celebrated around the world in Jerusalem Day celebrations, highlighting the reunification of the city and Jewish control of their holiest city.

However, the Jewish generals and leaders of 1967 took two actions immediately after the victory which have led to a falsification of history and belief.

  • Giving Control of the Temple Mount to the Waqf. In an effort to end the war and keep the broader Muslim world from descending upon Israel, the Israeli government decided to hand control of the Temple Mount, the holiest location for Jews, to the Jordanian Waqf, who have maintained a policy of banning Jews from praying at the site to this day.
  • Clearing the Kotel Plaza. Arab homes had filled the area in front of the Kotel for centuries and the Israeli government quickly ordered the low-rise homes to be demolished to enable thousands of Jewish pilgrims to approach and pray en masse at the site.

Mughrabi Quarter before 1946

Clearing the Kotel Plaza, 1967
The combined efforts of giving away the Temple Mount and enlarging access to the Kotel has left the Jewish people and consequently the world with the false idea that the Kotel is the holiest place for Judaism. It is not, nor has it ever been. The Kotel, is just a large exposed segment of the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount built by King Herod 2,000 years earlier in an effort to give Jews greater access and movement on THE TEMPLE MOUNT, not so they’d worship a sliver of the wall which kept the mount from collapsing.

Now, some people even believe that the Kotel was actually the western wall of the Temple itself, also completely untrue.

Jerusalem Day is a moment to celebrate the incredible victory of Jews reestablishing their presence and rights in their holiest city. However, it is also a time to note how actions immediately after that victory reoriented our focus and prayers to a wall built by a mad king 2,000 years ago, rather than the “place which He will choose” (Deuteronomy 16:16), the Jewish Temple itself.


Related First One.Through articles:

It’s the Temple Mount, Not the Western Wall

Dignity for Israel: Jewish Prayer on the Temple Mount

Visitor Rights on the Temple Mount

The Waqf and the Temple Mount

Tolerance at the Temple Mount

Losing the Temples, Knowledge and Caring

It is Time to Insert “Jewish” into the Names of the Holy Sites

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