The Jewish calendar runs at a different pace than the Gregorian or other calendars. Based on the cycles of the moon, it starts with the creation of the world which correlates to the year 3761 BCE. That means that the year 2022 CE is the year 5782 in the Jewish calendar.
In the Hebrew Bible, the first monotheist and forefather of the Jewish people is Abraham. Born as Abram in the year 1948 in the Jewish calendar, he lived his early years in present day southern Iraq in Ur-Kasdim and then Haran. At 75 years old, in the year 2023, he heard the voice of God tell him to move to Canaan, present day Israel. It was there that God told him that the land was an ever-lasting inheritance to his descendants Isaac, Jacob (later Israel) and all of the Children of Israel.
Judaism is not like other religions or even the other monotheistic faiths of Christianity and Islam. Judaism is a particular religion for a particular group of people. It does not have designs to spread to the corners of the Earth in an effort to make others convert. It was designed to be local – to the land of Israel – for the Jewish people. That is why the Bible commands the Jews to visit Jerusalem THREE TIMES EVERY YEAR – Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot – while Islam asks of its adherents to visit Mecca only once in a lifetime. Jews were supposed to stay in the land (certainly before planes and automobiles) while Islam knew that Muslims would live thousands of miles away from its holy city.
From 722BCE onward, many invaders and colonists forced Jews out of their land of inheritance. Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and others came into the Jewish holy land, killing or hauling Jews to foreign lands, and planting their own flag in Jewish soil.
Yet some Jews remained in the land, and a greater influx of world Jewry commenced during the 19th century. By the late 1860’s CE, Jerusalem was majority Jewish.
In 1948 CE (a curious coincident to the birth of Abraham in 1948 in the Jewish calendar) the modern State of Israel was established on the 5th day of the Hebrew month of Iyar. People often refer to the anniversary of the founding as “Israel Independence Day” but that is a misnomer, as Israel did not become independent from anyone. Jews waited for the British to leave the land and end their mandate before declaring itself a new state, the REESTABLISHED Jewish State in the Jewish homeland.
Next year, May 2023, will mark the 75th year of Israel’s Reestablishment Day, correlating to when the land of Israel was promised by God to the Children of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob/ Israel when Abraham was 75 years old in the year 2023 of the Jewish calendar. Let’s celebrate this entire year with particular revelry, as a plurality of Jews now live in the thriving Jewish State with a united Jerusalem once again as its capital.
Israeli flag at the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple Mount (photo: First One Through)
The New York Times never lets an opportunity pass to slam Israel, even when there’s no news.
As the country celebrated its three days of Holocaust Remembrance, Memorial Day for those killed protecting the country and victims of Arab terrorism, and Independence Day, the anti-Zionist paper opted to skip writing about those events and dusted off an article written three years prior.
The May 3, 2022 article called “Holy City or Theme Park? Israel Plans Zip Line for Ancient Jerusalem,” by Isabel Kershner was essentially the same article written by the paper’s architectural critic Michael Kimmelman on September 14, 2019 called “A Challenge to the Essence of Old Jerusalem, Coming by Cable Car.” Kimmelman’s article contended that Israel was trying to pretend that the city was only important to Jews and wanted tourists to imagine that the city had no Christians or Muslims in creating a cable car to facilitate the movement of visitors. He wrote that the plan “has provoked howls of protest from horrified Israeli preservationists, environmentalists, planners, architects and others who picture a global heritage site turned into a Jewish-themed Epcot.“
NY Times May 2022NY Times September 2019
I wonder if Kimmelman will sue Kershner for plagiarism.
Kershner opted to lead her piece that Israel is building a ride for Jews in the same location as Judas betrayed Jesus, seemingly in an attempt to roil the Christian world that the Jews are thumbing their noses at Christians. She essentially said that not only do Jews not truly believe in the sanctity of the Temple Mount and holy city (much like Jesus had said two thousand years ago), but they’re smug in their attempted takeover of the holy basin. The meaning is clear: Christians should not let the Jews assert any more claims on the city under the guise that it’s Judaism’s holist location.
NY Times article stating that Israel is planning tourist rides in the same spot as Judas betrayed Jesus
On the bright side, at least that insidious comment was new in Kershner’s article.
Kershner’s article was replete with comments and pictures of a so-called “Palestinian East Jerusalem,” as part of a concerted disinformation campaign by the liberal rag.
“East Jerusalem” exists no more than “East Berlin.” It existed for a blip in time from 1949 to 1967 because of the Arab invasion to destroy the Jewish State at its founding right after the Holocaust.
The United States does not recognize any country called “Palestine” so how can there be a city in such fantasy land?
The Palestinian Authority signed the Oslo Accord in 1995 that specifically recognized Israel as the authority in all of Jerusalem.
The full page article quoted a number of “anti-settlement” groups including Emek Shaveh, Ir Amim an Peace Now. According to NGO Monitor, these groups are mostly funded by foreign governments including the European Union, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, as well as Ireland and Oxfam. In a twist of logic only progressive radicals may understand, Keshner referred to Ir Amim as “an anti-settlement advocacy group that works for an equitable solution for Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem.” How can a group be simultaneously opposed to Jews living in parts of Jerusalem and also for equity?
Full page article slamming Israel’s activities in Jerusalem, published on Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism
This non-news article quoting biased foreign-backed NGOs was somehow viewed as appropriate on Israel’s Memorial Day.
The Times didn’t discuss Neta Sorek, a peace activist slaughtered while she went for a stroll in the garden of a monastery. It avoided writing about Rina Shnerb, a 17-year old girl killed while on a nature hike, a killing celebrated by over 80% of Gaza’s Arabs. It opted to not spill ink on the Fogel family, butchered in their sleep.
The former newspaper could not find a Holocaust survivor who watched five Arab armies invade the nascent Jewish State in an attempt at a second Holocaust, in an independence war that claimed almost 1% of the population. The Times could not spend the effort to interview Israelis who feared for their lives in 1967 as the surrounding Arab armies positioned themselves to wipe out the Jews again, or during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Instead, Kershner dusted off a colleague’s work and wrote an article that Jews don’t really believe in the holiness of Jerusalem; are actively insulting Christians and Muslims; and are taking over Palestinian land.
As Israelis spent a day remembering and mourning those killed solely for being Jews in the Jewish homeland, the New York Times informed its readers that the living Israelis are worthy of global scorn and condemnation.
While there may be problems of disinformation on social media, the mainstream media invites it, as they deliberately post biased editorials instead of news.
The United States has a peculiar tradition of dedicating certain months towards particular ethnic groups. The month of May has traditionally been Jewish Heritage Month, and President Biden made a declaration this year as such.
In his April 29, 2022 proclamation, Biden quoted President George Washington’s letter to the Jews of Newport, RI writing “Inspired by Jewish American communal leadership, our Nation’s first President pledged that our Government will ‘give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.‘” Biden went on to state that his administration would root out anti-Semitism, “ensuring that hate has no safe harbor.“
But Biden has not internalized Washington’s worldview.
Washington’s letter of August 1790 stated clearly that Jews were not simply a tolerated minority but on equal footing with all other American citizens. He prayed that they and all Americans would know peace after years of war:
May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.
President George Washington’s letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, RI August 18, 1790
The comment about sitting in safety was lifted from the Hebrew Bible, Micah chapter 4, a seemingly appropriate quotation for a letter to a synagogue. The first five sentences of that chapter are a prophecy for ultimately reaching a time of peace:
[4:1] In the days to come, The Mount of the LORD’s House shall stand Firm above the mountains; And it shall tower above the hills. The peoples shall gaze on it with joy,
[2] And the many nations shall go and shall say: “Come, Let us go up to the Mount of the LORD, To the House of the God of Jacob; That He may instruct us in His ways, And that we may walk in His paths.” For instruction shall come forth from Zion, The word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
[3] Thus He will judge among the many peoples, And arbitrate for the multitude of nations, However distant; And they shall beat their swords into plowsharesAnd their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up Sword against nation; They shall never again know war.
[5] Though all the peoples walk Each in the names of its gods, We will walk In the name of the LORD our God Forever and ever.
Washington’s desire was that America was going to be modeled after that Messianic ideal of the Micah the Prophet – of a society that had progressed beyond war with the ability to live in peace, every person enjoying their own homes and possessions.
The Biden Administration – and a growing swath of the United States – has seemingly lost this vision in three frightening ways: permitting anti-Semitism, taking personal possessions and denying Jews the freedom to worship.
Permitting anti-Semitism: While Biden claims that his administration is aggressively fighting anti-Semitism, he has refused to combat the horrific spike of Jew hatred on America’s campuses. Rather than engage with the anti-Israel members of the Democratic Party, Biden delayed taking action on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which would have afforded Jews protections that are afforded to other minorities. He has postposed such action until December, after the mid-term elections, preferring his political survival to the well-being of young Jews. A bi-partisan group of forty members of Congress were appalled by Biden’s lack of concern for Jewish college students and wrote a letter urging immediate action. It was ignored.
Seizing private property: Biden is scared of the far left wing members of his party that are gaining more seats and control. The Democratic Socialists of America are demanding a “massive redistribution of income from corporations and the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector.” Their vision of America does not afford individuals to live under their own “grapevine or fig tree,” but under a communal one.
Denying the rights of Jews on their Temple Mount: Micah’s vision is quite clear – that Jews can ascend to their holy place in Jerusalem, while people of other religions can practice their faiths in freedom as well. It is a desire of Jews today as it was thousands of years ago when Micah wrote his vision, but Biden and many others do not believe in basic human dignity for Jews. Biden is calling on Israel to limit Jewish visitation to Judaism’s holiest site and firmly banning Jewish prayer.
George Washington would be appalled, which is seemingly fine with the radical left which is toppling statues of him.
Today’s America is unmoored from its foundational principles of religious liberty and freedom. Such revised platform will prove toxic for American Jewry.
American Jewry does not need the saccharine marketing of a “Jewish Heritage Month.” It requires leadership that prioritizes people’s safety, property and basic human rights over selfish political aspirations.
The toxic environment of America’s educational system was brought into sharp focus in April 2022, as Hamas and Harvard made pronouncements they wanted the entire world to hear.
The leader of the Palestinian Arab political-terrorist group Hamas, Yahya Sinwar declared “Whoever takes the decision to repeat this scene (of a deployment inside the mosque) will be taking the decision to destroy thousands of synagogues across the world.” In the proclamation, Hamas refreshed its mantra that its battle against Israel is a religious one, specifically against Jews around the world, as made clear in its noxious foundational charter statements such as “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious,” and “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.”
Remarkably, not every country in the world has acknowledged that Hamas is a terrorist group. In November 2021, the United Kingdom and Australia finally designated all branches of the group as such and in May 2021, the Organization of American States (OAS), stated unequivocally that Hamas is a terrorist group that targets civilians which “makes the invocation of the principle oflegitimate defense by Israel essential.” Hopefully, more countries will finally join civil society and do likewise, after the latest direct threats against its Jewish citizens.
Regrettably, while the world may finally be waking up to the anti-Semitic genocidal worldview leading Palestinian Arabs, America’s liberal educational institutions are going in the opposite direction.
As anti-Semitic terrorist groups abutting Israel like Hamas and Hezbollah celebrated the murder of Israeli civilians, and liberal papers wrote about the slaughter from the terrorists point of view, Harvard University endorsed a prevailing anti-Zionist progressive stance of absolving Palestinian terrorism and supporting a boycott of Israel.
On April 29, 2022, The Harvard Crimson Editorial board wrote “In Support of Boycott, Divest, Sanction and a Free Palestine,” and opened with words of comfort for Palestinian Arabs, portraying them as non-violent victims of a brutal Israeli regime.
“We first and foremost wish to extend our sincere support to those who have been and continue to be subject to violence in occupied Palestine”
“unlawful killings that victimize Palestinians day in and day out”
“Israeli soldiers have killed nearly 50 Palestinians, including eight children, this year alone”
Not a word about Israelis slaughtered by Arab Muslims over the past few weeks.
Harvard proudly endorses a boycott of Israel, April 29, 2022
The Harvard piece never discussed Israel’s efforts to hand land to Palestinians.
In 1967, Israel decided not to annex the Gaza Strip or the “West Bank” in an effort to make peace but the Arab world responded with the infamous “Three No’s” of “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it” which has become the Three Denials: to deny the history of the Jews; deny the rights of the Jews; and deny the acceptance of the Jews in their holy land.
Israel would go on to hand the Palestinian Authority several cities between 1995 and 2000 and was scheduled to do much more, but the Palestinians launched the 2000 Two Percent War which killed over 1,000 Israeli civilians because Israel was only meeting 98 percent of the PA’s stated demands.
Israel gave the Palestinians Gaza in 2005, with the express direct support from the United States that “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949” and that “through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.” Instead of using their new self-determination for peaceful co-existence, the region has become a terrorist enclave run by Hamas, which has repeatedly launched wars against Israel.
These points were completely ignored. Instead, this institution of higher learning stated its “categorical imperative to side with and empower the vulnerable and oppressed” in a situation where the “overwhelming power imbalance” rests with Israel. Israel is accused of “ethnonationalist legislation” and responsible for “human rights and international law violations and of Palestine’s cry for freedom.”
The sole Jewish state with about 7 million Jews, which is surrounded by dozens of Muslim countries and 1.8 BILLION Muslims is somehow cast as the real power player. The mental gymnastics to accuse Israel of “ethnonationalist legislation,” while simultaneously supporting the creation of a Palestinian State which demands to be free of Jews (because the presence of Jews “difficults the prospect of a two-state solution“), is so outrageous that one must be part of the Harvard elite to comprehend.
Has Harvard simply become the latest progressive institution to view every situation in a narrow construct of the party viewed as powerful and the one cast as victim? Do the millions of dollars the institution receives from Muslim countries have any bearing on its twisted perception?
Harvard acknowledged it accepted $30 million from Saudi Arabia between 2013 and 2019, and another $6 million from Qatar, which openly supports Hamas. But the Department of Education noted that the school failed to report millions of additional donations beyond that and launched an investigation.
Hamas and Harvard probably sat next to each other in grade school and passed notes about “The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion… using all evil and contemptible ways… infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations… aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion” (Article 28 of the Hamas Charter) and “They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.” (Article 22)
Hamas and Harvard are attempting to educate the world that Jews and the Jewish State are powerful forces, seeking to undermine societies as they seek greater control and expansion of land and resources. If that sounds familiar, you took Holocaust Remembrance Day seriously.
Hamas and Harvard are attempting to educate the world that Jews and the Jewish State are powerful forces, seeking to undermine societies as they seek greater control and expansion of land and resources. If that sounds familiar, you took Holocaust Remembrance Day seriously.
In 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty that saw Israel relinquish roughly 380 square kilometers to Jordan and set a framework for the two countries to live peacefully together side-by-side.
The treaty had a section that dealt with religious tolerance. Article 9.2 is often misquoted by Jordanian King Abdullah that he is a “custodian” of Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, when it merely states that “Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem.” Abdullah never talks about clause 9.3:
The Parties will act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.
Jordanian – Israeli peace treaty, article 9.3
Despite the treaty to promote religious tolerance, peace and freedom of worship, Jordan praised Palestinian Arab rioters on the Jewish Temple Mount in April 2022. Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher Al-Khasawneh said “I salute every Palestinian, and all the employees of the Jordanian Islamic Waqf, who proudly stand like minarets, hurling their stones in a volley of clay at the Zionist sympathizers defiling the Al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of the Israeli occupation government.“
This is appalling on its own – a senior government official promoting violence against civilians – and flies in the face of the tenet of the peace treaty signed between the parties. Article 4.3B states that each country will “refrain from organizing, instigating, inciting, assisting or participating in acts or threats of belligerency, hostility, subversion or violence against the other Party,” which is exactly what the Jordanian Foreign Minister did.
It gets worse.
It was reported that Jordan is now asking the United States to pressure Israel to give complete control of the Jewish Temple Mount Compound to the Jordanian Waqf, and to forcibly ban Jewish prayer at Judaism’s holiest site.
Jordan seemingly doesn’t believe there is any price to pay for instigating violence against Israeli Jews, and should actually be rewarded with a greater role in the land Jordan illegally seized in 1949 and then formally withdrew from in 1988.
Israel might want to keep its part of the peace treaty with Jordan in acknowledging the “special role” Jordan plays narrowly at the al-Aqsa Mosque, much the way a guardian takes care of a ward with “special needs.” Make them feel important. But everyone understands that the guardian is in control and will make all substantive decisions.
An obscured view of the Jewish Temple Mount from the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. al-Aqsa Mosque is the dark-domed building at right (photo: First One Through)
The willful ignorance and denial of Jewish history is systemic in virtually all countries. It very much includes the United States, and the Black community in particular.
Pew Research did a study of Holocaust knowledge in February 2019. The study showed that Black Christian Americans were woefully ignorant about the Holocaust, getting fewer than half as many responses correct as White Americans. No other group was remotely as uninformed.
It was therefore no surprise when television personality Whoopi Goldberg thought that the Holocaust of European Jewry was simply a matter of White-on-White violence, as so many Blacks know so little about the subject, and consider Jews as simply “White”.
The State of California made an attempt to improve its education for grades K-12 by instituting an ethnic studies curriculum that highlight some minority groups: Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian American. Jews, who experience the most hate crimes per capita in the Unites States every year, were described in the 2019 curriculum as “sometimes have experienced conditional whiteness and privilege.” A letter of protest from the California Jewish Caucus pushed the state to make some significant changes to the 2021 draft, but it is readily apparent as to how the liberal state prioritizes and thinks about Jews and anti-Semitism.
So as Israel commemorates Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, perhaps a more controversial approach should be considered. Use the day to deny and belittle Black slavery. Pretend it never happened, or only impacted a few Black people. Maybe describe how just as many Asians were slaves at that time, or that life wasn’t really so bad for the African workers.
It should get the attention of people most ignorant about the genocide of European Jewry, much more than the far-left crafters of today’s K-12 curricula are willing and capable of doing.
Three teenagers contemplate the Holocaust after visiting Yad VaShem in Jerusalem, Israel (photo: First One Through)
As Passover, Easter and Ramadan all converged this year, tensions ran hot in Jerusalem. In that backdrop, Reuters seemingly wanted to fan some Arab fire against the Jews.
In an article called “Jordan’s king agreed with U.S. Biden on need to defuse Jerusalem tension – state media,” Reuters acted as the Jordanian mouthpiece without fact-checking anything in its coverage. It wrote that Jordan’s King “Abdullah, whose Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of Muslim and Christian sites in the Old City, has spearheaded a diplomatic offensive to put pressure on Israel, whom he blames for the escalation at the Aqsa compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.”
This is not true.
The 1994 Israeli-Jordanian Peace Treaty, Article 9.2 stated “In this regard, in accordance with the Washington Declaration, Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.”
Jordan is not a “custodian” but has a special role, and it only relates to Muslim sites.
The deeply flawed Reuters article also noted that “The confrontations since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that have coincided with Passover have raised religious passions amid international concerns about a slide back into a wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Why did the article point out ‘the Muslim holy month’ but declined to comment about the ‘Jewish holy week’ of Passover? Why did the article fail to state that Judaism calls for Jews to visit the Jewish holy city of Jerusalem three times a year – including Passover – but there is no such specific call for Muslims to visit Jerusalem EVER.
The article failed to note that 150,000 Palestinians visited the Jewish Temple Mount/ al Aqsa Mosque on Friday – a single day total – when the entire population of Jews that ascended to the Jewish Temple Mount was a mere 4,200 people OVER AN ENTIRE WEEK.
Instead, Reuters concluded the article with this unchallenged piece of biased inanity:
“Jordan and fellow Arab states accused Israel in a meeting on Thursday in Amman of restricting the right of worship of Muslims while allowing ultra-nationalist Jews under police protection to enter the mosque compound.“
Reuters did not describe the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who visited the site as Islamic radicals, but opted to paint a handful of Jews visiting their holist location during the holiday which specifically calls for them to visit, as “ultra-nationalist Jews.” A reader is directly led to the incorrect conclusion that a handful of Jews has spurred the problem, rather than Hamas and Hezbollah which have been urging violence in the holy city.
Jews fill the Western Wall Plaza (in lower center of photograph) during Passover as they are limited in their access to their holiest site on the Jewish Temple Mount
The article also failed to report that the Israeli government, succumbing to threats of more Islamic radical violence, banned Jews from visiting the Mount during the remaining days of Ramadan, even while Passover was still being celebrated.
Reuters hit piece on religious Jews and elevation of the stature of the small Jordanian king was a disgraceful piece of journalism. That its smears get picked up and reprinted by media outlets around the world makes it a global Jewish blood libel.
In 1478, the rulers of Spain sought to consolidate their power and establish a society free of undesirable elements. Under the flag of the Catholic Church, the Spanish kingdom sought out “heretics,” principally Jews, as well as Muslims and Protestants. They used inquisitors who questioned people’s beliefs, giving them a choice of converting to Catholicism, expulsion or death. Over 200,000 Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, tens of thousands were killed and thousands more converted from Judaism. Portugal followed a similar course in 1497, and both countries enforced the Inquisition in their colonies in the Americas well into the 19th century.
Universities are using a similar tactic against Jewish Zionists today in the Campus Inquisition.
Jews are being singled out by student groups and governments to understand their positions about Israel. At McGill University in Canada, people called for a Jewish student to resign if she traveled to Israel. A Jewish student applying to a Student Council Judicial Board at UCLA was rejected after being asked “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?” The Jewish student government president at USC was harassed with a campaign to “impeach [my] Zionist a**” after people found out she was a Zionist. San Francisco State excluded the Jewish group Hillel from a school information fair.
These same schools do not ask Chinese students if they support the Chinese persecution of Uyghurs. They do not ask Iranian students if they support hanging gays. They do not ask Saudi students if they support killing minors or bombing Yemenis. They don’t even think of asking Turkish students how they feel about Turkey jailing journalists, nor do they demand that Sudanese students be expelled from groups if they don’t condemn female genital mutilation prevalent in Sudan.
But they pursue Israel, the most liberal country in the entire Middle East and North Africa region.
Campus groups only demand that Jewish students state their position about Israel, not the tens of thousands of non-Jewish Zionist students. It is blatant anti-Semitism in targeting only Jews and only the Jewish State for inquiry.
The university system has adopted an outrageous false narrative as a tenet of the new woke religion, that Israel engages in “apartheid, genocide and war crimes” (City University of New York) in promoting “white supremacy Jewry” (University of Illinois-Urbana) based on colonialism, stating “Israel in its inception is not a Jewish idea but a European one” (University of Wisconsin). This extremist progressive-socialist-BlackLivesMatter-Muslim cancel Jewish culture on campus has inverted the Jewish victims of white supremacy, to be the evil architects of racism in a re-launch of the debunked “Zionism is racism” campaign of the 1970’s. They are demanding that Jews be purged from their safe havens on campuses and in their homeland in the Middle East.
Students for Justice in Palestine march
In the Campus Inquisition, heresy is defined as believing Jews are a people, indigenous to the land of Israel, who have a natural right to live free of persecution, with self-determination in their homeland. The new inquisitors demand that Jews either denounce such belief and become “good Jews” like those in the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace, or be banned from society.
Approximately 550 years after the Catholic church ethnically cleansed the Jewish community from the Iberian Peninsula, universities are unleashing a new Inquisition to root out Jewish Zionists. And just like the anti-Semitic tormentors of yesteryear, today’s inquisitors wrap themselves in the shroud of a perceived higher calling, ridding society of the small and most persecuted ancient people.
As Passover, Easter and Ramadan all fell at the same time this year, the religious tensions and harmony in Israel came into sharper focus.
Muslims have a history of keeping sites it considers holy intact, even if holy – let alone holier – to non-Islamic faiths. In contrast, they have shown complete disregard for non-Islamic sites that are sacred and important to other faiths.
On April 10, 2022, Palestinian Arabs vandalized the Tomb of Joseph, one of the principle ancestors of the Jews. They smashed the Jewish tomb and set fires to a few rooms in what Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said was a “frenzy of destruction” as Palestinian rioters “simply vandalised a holy place for us, the Jews.”
Joseph’s Tomb vandalized by Palestinian rioters, April 2022
Meanwhile, Palestinian leadership from Fatah and Hamas were claiming that Jews were invading the Jewish Temple Mount (which they refer to as the Al Aqsa Compound) which they view as sacred. Arabs attacked Jews walking to the site, stoned Israeli buses bringing Jews to the Old City of Jerusalem, and hurled stones at Israeli worshippers at the western retaining wall of the Mount.
But the Islamists kept the site intact as they considered the site sacred.
The government of Israel had given religious control of the Jewish Temple Mount to the Jordanian Waqf after it reunited Jerusalem in 1967. The Waqf has banned Jewish prayer at Judaism’s holiest site, it blatant disregard of Jews’ basic human rights.
But the Islamists kept the site intact as they considered the site sacred.
In Hebron, Muslims appropriated the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs which houses six of the seven forebears of the Jewish people. Muslims call the site the “Ibrahami Mosque,” as they venerate Abraham as the father of Ishmael, the forefather of Arabs. When Muslims controlled the site, they banned Jews from entering the building or even climbing above the seventh step to Judaism’s second holiest site. Israel took control of the site in 1967 after Jordan attacked Israel, and has since divided the holy site into times and sections for both Islamic and Jewish prayer, to the chagrin of Arabs.
But at least the Islamists kept the site intact while they controlled it, as they considered the site sacred.
Jewish history and sacred sites in their holy land has often been destroyed if the location held no religious value to the non-Jews. Last year, the Palestinian Authority demolished part of Joshua’s alter on Mount Ebal in Area B under Palestinian Authority control. On the Jewish Temple Mount, the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement conducted illegal renovations and disposed of over 9,000 tons of dirt mixed with invaluable archaeological artifacts which the Temple Mount Sifting Project has been painstakingly sorting even though the objects are no longer in situ.
The Kotel may only be in existence today because Islamists considered it the “al-Buraq Wall.”
The Jewish State has done its utmost to respect the history and sanctity of Jewish and non-Jewish locations throughout the holy land. However, Islamists destroyed and vandalized sites significant to other faiths that they do not value, while seeking exclusive control and rights of the religious sites that they appropriated from Jews.
The Islamist scars in the holy land have left Jewish sites destroyed where viewed as un-Islamic, or appropriated within their Islamic religion, and banned for Jewish prayer.
A young Abraham Lincoln wrote his first significant speech in January 1838, which has been called the Lyceum Address. In it, he bemoaned the mayhem that had taken over American society and offered thoughts on how it came to be that people had turned on each other in lynching mobs. The words ring out as true today:
“the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice.“
When Lincoln penned his speech, he considered the fact that the generation of the American Revolutionary War was dying out. Those patriots which had fought against the British to obtain the nation’s freedom had almost disappeared. That multi-year war touched every family with dead or injured fathers, sons and brothers, with each carrying their scars into that present moment. But as “the silent artillery of time” was cutting down the survivors, and whittling the “forest of mighty oaks” of history, people lost their connection to that particular shared past. The new generation took the blessings of freedom lightly and asserted the desires of self over the shared responsibilities and common wounds of collective society. Passions born of a common history had served the nation well but those days have come to an end. “Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy.”
A breakdown of societal order and bond between people ensued, leading to chaos.
Lincoln’s approach to the dire situation of the infighting between Americans was to abandon passion for “Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason…. and a reverence for the constitution and laws.” Without the immediate link to the past, society’s passions would run wild, and therefore required an adherence to laws under which everyone was bound to maintain the peace.
Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik admired the Lyceum Address but believed Lincoln reached the wrong conclusion. While abiding by laws is indeed required for social order, the historic connection to the past should never be abandoned, and passion, well-placed, is an important human trait and good.
The Passover Haggadah highlights the Jewish approach to maintaining the connection to the past, recognizing the birth of a nation finding freedom, and fostering a people’s passion into the future.
The Bible instructs Jews repeatedly to “tell their children and grandchildren” (Exodus 10:2, 12:26; 13:8; 13:14; Deuteronomy 11:19; Joshua 4:6; Joel 1:3) about the night of freedom, when God took the Children of Israel out of bondage on a path to the land of their inheritance.
Lord Jonathan Sachs expanded on this biblical directive and how it manifests itself in the Haggadah used at the Passover seder, that the method of recounting that story does not use the Bible as its immediate source sheet. Instead, the Haggadah is a text assembled over centuries, and includes “Hillel in the days of the Second Temple, the second-century sages at their seder in Benei Brak, the teachings of the Amora’im of the third and later centuries, poems by Yannai and Kalir from the post-Talmudic period, an addition from Ashkenaz provoked by the terrible sufferings of the First Crusade, and children’s songs from medieval Germany. Every word we say has a history.” Each generation reflected on the Passover story, giving a link through time to that midnight of disembarkation 3,300 years ago.
Time has muted the voices of a hundred generations past, but today we can imagine ourselves walking the desert sands while simultaneously instilling in our children that WE are critical links in and to that common history.
Laws of The Freedom Fighters
The story of the American Revolution is not the same as the Passover story. America’s story was forged with the vision and blood of American patriots who broke with the British monarchy to establish a democracy with new laws for its citizens to both protect it from the new government and establish a system to maintain a civil society. In contrast, on Passover, it was God who saved the Jews from the hands of the Egyptians and gave them new laws to live by.
Rabbi Shmuel Greenberg notes that the matzoh that we eat on Passover is the bread of slaves. Eating it together with bitter herbs is a reminder of being slaves to Egyptians, while eating it with the pascal lamb reminds us that the new lord is a benevolent one, the God who took people out of bondage and gave them commandments to live by.
A Modern Breakdown In Common History and Law
As in the days of Lincoln, we are living in a society that feels broken, with mobs angrily fighting each other, mass shootings, and people with whom we disagree run out of careers and society. Swaths of the country do not trust the government or the media, so bind themselves into small fiefdoms. Perhaps it is from years suffering from the human losses from COVID, the emotional tolls of lockdowns, and the evaporation of savings as inflation robs people of security.
But it may also be from the loss (abandonment?) of our common history. The ‘1619 Project’ and ‘Critical Race Theory’ advance a proposition that while “all men are created equal”, they do not share a common history. America was birthed with Black slavery with Africans dragged to the new world in chains. The makeup of society today includes immigrants and their descendants from around the world, not just the descendants from Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
To account for these facts, pubic school boards have started to require new curricula to teach about various ethnicities and countries around the world. Tragically, in some cases, the remarkable birth of America is being watered down, eliminated and/or vilified as poison at inception, a product of a racist White patriarchy advancing imperialism and capitalism. Not only do some schools advance that narrative of history, but argue that those systems continue to exist today and require new laws of “restorative justice” for certain groups. Not only does this approach break with celebrating a common past, but it argues we must have different laws for different groups today, including a seizure and redistribution of wealth from old White European colonizers to newer, darker colonizers.
The efforts deliberately pit members of society against each other.
America and Judaism on History and Law
To Lincoln nearly 200 years ago, the loss of the connection and appreciation of the nation’s founding may have been the beginning of the end. Unmoored from a common past, he believed society became vulnerable as a collection of competing strangers living in close proximity. His belief that history was a story of discrete generations left nothing but law to bind a nation.
The Passover Haggadah takes a different approach. History is taught as a continuous chain that must be strengthened at least once a year. The anchor of nationhood is the birth of freedom, and the seder is for remembering that fateful night AND how our parents, grandparents and ancestors also recounted that momentous day, and how that freedom came together with common laws.
Passover seder at the home of Rabbi Mayer Hirsch, San Francisco, circa 1920. (photo from Courtesy of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life)
Freedom, law and history are both tools and criteria to connect society in peace and harmony. The Passover Haggadah is such touchstone that encapsulates each of these principles separately and collectively, as millions of people sit at tables – apart but together – around the world.
Hopefully it will bring all of us a renewed sense of brotherhood and peace.
First One Through 