Can the World be Defused?

 

Once a while ago there were three leaders who defused the terrors and monsters of their day. There work took a while longer and they may never get the credit they deserve. They were the magic combination which comes around only when things seem darkest. In a much earlier time the combination of leaders need not all be present on the world’s fields of battle at the same time, but the world moves at a different pace these days. The old team which between them staved off Europe falling, thus eventually led to our modern age as we have known it, consisted of one hero in the west of Europe, The Battle of Tours pitting Charles the Hammer Martel defeating the Umayyad Caliphate led by ‘Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, which halted the Islamic threat from advancing further eastward and eventually led to the forced retreat of Islam from the Iberian Peninsula under the reign of terror known as the Spanish Inquisition established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, a retrograde purge for which Spain would never quite recover as that evil, or is as some might claim the purification, left Spain without a curious mind in all the realm as the Inquisition allowed not such stray thoughts other than those found in the ‘Good Book’. A few hundred years later the Ottoman Turks were prevented from further adventures in Europe being turned back at the Battle of Vienna by a somewhat unusual hero, King John III Sobieski of Poland who struck a deal whereby his lands would be left untouched by the greedy hands of the other barons and monarchs while he and his entire army would cross to the southern end of Europe and free Vienna breaking the Ottoman siege. This would stall and lead to the end of Ottoman expansion into Europe.

 

Between these two battles was a smaller battle that gained a larger than life share of attention from historians but was still none-the-less of great importance by what it avoided. The battle of which so much is made was the almost war that King Philip II of Spain decided to bring to a conclusive end and forever rid England of its Church, which followed not the Pope in Rome, restoring the rightful ruler of Christendom, Pope Clement VIII. The Armada was assembled and sailed on its historic mission which failed as it was made up of large and cumbersome ships of the old technology which favored the retrograde habits left over from the Inquisition and the purification of thought within the rule of Rome where science would become as close to defined as sin and as a threat to the sanctified rule of a Pope. The defeat of the Spanish Armada allowed the Church of England to prevail and their more open attitudes and the advantage of a strong political royalty which ruled alongside the Church of England but separate when decision of State were decided and the rule of law endured while the Church of England was to content itself with matters of faith. This partial separation between Church and the State had its periods of difficulty but it also permitted great strides in science which eventually spread through Europe beyond where the Pope had extended the Church’s strangling long reach from Rome. Eventually Rome too saw the light of the reformation and the separation between religion and government became the supreme and crowning achievement which was a long time coming with the many fits, starts and backtracks that make history fascinating. The ancient Israelites (or Hebrews) had achieved a form of separation between religious influences and the rule of a king as the limitations of each were delineated in Torah leaving certain powers to the King, others to the Clergy and the freedom to override either, though solely through admonition and persuasion, went the Prophets during their era. The one unfortunate result of the separation of Church from the matters of the ruling elites was that Europe no longer had a single overseeing power structure that the Pope provided when all prayed in the manner instructed out of Rome. This would eventually lead to many wars between the many states in Europe culminating in World War II. With these conflicts came technology which placed Europe as the crowning achievement of its time.

 

The modern realms had a tripartite power structure which managed to work towards their shared goals in what resulted in a mutually supportive series of actions despite there being no treaty or visible connection where these three strong leaders actually were collaborating, instead each added to the strength and power of the others with minimal appearance of collaboration. The three leaders were the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, who presided in that office from May 4, 1979 through November 28, 1990, while Queen Elizabeth II was the supportive monarch; Pope Saint John Paul II whose Papacy began on October 16, 1978 and ended April 2, 2005 and was a strong advocate for the rule of the people and their rights to a government deserving of the people and not the reverse and strongly held to the traditional beliefs working tirelessly largely behind the scenes while making appearances often with intent to back freedom and human rights for all people; and lastly United States President Ronald Reagan whose Presidency began on January 20, 1981 lasting until January 20, 1989 and the challenging force behind the scuttling of, as he coined it, the Evil Empire which was the Soviet Union which he did as much as anyone in facilitating the sudden downfall of the Soviet system and its iron curtain fell in under one week from the inception of the collapse of Communism in Europe. These three people had as much influence in their short decade where all three stood at the pinnacle of the power that swept in a new life and vitality born of freedom and challenging the greatest tyranny which stood in opposition to all these three defenders of the people, their individual rights and their right to choose their own governance and take control of their national ship and steer it through the ballot box and supportive of human dignity and the sanctity of life.

 

The world is once again spiraling into the void that lies beyond the cusp where freedoms are forever lost and tyranny and darkness extinguish the light of hope and the dignity of the spirit. Once again a retrograde influence is oozing from every corner advancing across the plains devouring everything in its path. The seriousness of this threat can be measured in the resisting flames in the eyes of those readying to fight a battle they know they cannot win but fight it they will in the hopes that somewhere a leader will have the courage to step forth and hold the line from crossing beyond the cusp and darkness once again gripping the heart of Europe. This threat comes from every front and ignores all borders and had many masters of which not a one honors freedom, individuality and the rights of the people to choose their own destinies and those who will lead them into the light and not towards the darkness. Currently the forces of freedom sleep as their ruling head of state has little stomach for such as the struggles barking from the far frontiers. This man who leads by following knows only that the previous leadership suffered from flaws that came from striving and this leader swears not to make such mistakes and instead retreats before taking stands and charging forth as doing so may reveal his flaws as it did his predecessors, but he realizes not that timidity and failure of vision are his flaws though his slow shrinking before every challenge is his plan to avoid mistakes. This comes when Europe also means to do well by refraining from the competition and instead seeks to facilitate and placate their way to oblivion that also lie beyond the cusp where greatness fails the timid and the freedoms hard won become easily surrendered and lost as they tip beyond the cusp and fall into the night of oblivion. There are the few who have clear sight and identify the threats but can the world rely on the strength of those who previously held roles of a supportive nature and have not been leaders of the free world as is now asked of them. The leaders in some instance are up to the challenge while in other leaders we see the rage of mediocrity hoping only to hold the line as best as possible waiting for one of the historic leaders to step forward and take the helm once more. What must the few who can lead do when the majority in the world are too tired, fat and lazy to put their shoulders to the wheel and strive to remain free, to stop the mad plunge and assure that their people are not forced beyond the cusp as from there the return will take generations and may never recover as some points, once crossed, may well mean there will be no return for this will be the final fight, the final battle between freedom and all that does empower the greatness in the human effort and spreads the light of freedom giving every last soul the power of flight so as to soar to new heights and new greatness ever pressing forward the boundaries of the mind through new equations which describe the actual functions of the universe and to eventually voyage into the far unknown and visit those points of light seen in the night’s sake for as sure as there is light there is hope for the future or the death of the individual spirit and the complete surrender to darkness forever extinguishing those final glowing embers of hope and heart as we fall beyond the cusp.

 

I have been asked by some close friends why I spend anywhere from three hours to all too often more than the eight hours demanded by a regular employ to continue to write to my slowly growing field of readers. Truthfully, I write in the hopes that somewhere an individual will find something that elevates them such that it awakens within them that spark of imaginations, the boldness to fight mediocrity, the hope that the future will continue to be filled with light and just one person at a time engage more to fight against the ever increasing flow dragging mankind towards a darkness that knows it has little time before the ingenious minds make that singular breakthrough which cements the condition of mankind at the cusp of a great adventure as we spread our wings and fly out into the cosmos and forever have insured that never shall all humankind be swallowed by the darkness beyond the cusp, beyond the whirlpool that swallows all imagination, enslaves every mind, demands total and permanent surrender, insisting on complete compliance never once to again dare. The war to remain in a place where there are a plethora of alternative paths and nobody is forced into the restriction of thought or held to a permanence of class must not be lost but there is this trepidation that the youth are not made aware of the coming threats nor are they largely taught to think independently and are made to believe that there are molds into which every person must choose their mold never to expand or reach beyond the restrictions of their mind. I write to express the truth that no two people are completely alike and thus there are no molds, only self-imposed prisons of the mind and the extinguishing of every flaming spirits as the mold makers impose a correctness of thought and attempt to ridicule and intimidate any who refuse to fold before their stifling approved dictionary for acceptable terms and their definitions. Look up the word ‘discriminate’ and unless you have an unapproved and ‘outdated’ dictionary you will not find it defined as a positive trait through which one sets standards for excellence in all things and thus chooses to expand and investigate things beyond their strict education. Trust that the elite are given the lesson that discriminate is not solely an evil where people are categorized by physical, racial, religious or national traits and all else is ignored. Discriminate also means to choose wisely, something the programmers of the public school system in too many nations is not a part of their indoctrination. Resist the limitations and open your eyes and if you suspect that the teacher is not teaching you how to think but instead what to think, start your own rebellion, a rebellion of one at first as you will need to first arm yourself and then set out to change the world. Presuming you are an adequately proficient reader this list should not take more than a few summer’s free time. With these and a few other items of personal interest, yours, not mine, you may be ready to set out but remember one other item, failure is what redirects efforts towards accomplishments and may even tach us some lessons along the way. There often is more to learn when we fail than when we finally persevere and reach the necessary and inevitable conclusion after exhausting every conceivable failure along the way, or so it may seem.

 

Rebel by reading books, yes they still exist, and writings not on the approved list. Read books such as Atlas Shrugged or other Ayn Rand writings, Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell who was a socialist programmed by his education but who became disenchanted as he experienced life and later in his life wrote of the evils of socialism as he had witnessed it applied in his day, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Unintended Consequences by John Ross. Read books about history especially by those who lived in the times they wrote about starting with The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain with special attention to his travels in what is today Israel and his commentaries on Jerusalem and Bethlehem as well as his travels through the deserted lands and remember that his writings came from a period immediately before Zionists began arriving in greater numbers. Read the Bible, both New and Old Testaments, the Quran, and the life of Confucius and Buddha for some insights into the differing religions and investigate ancient Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome, Babylon, the Phoenicians, Hittites, Mongols, and acquaint yourself with Oriental religious and societal structures and their philosophies. Read some books on war and strategy as they are useful in life and interactions in the world even in peace times such as the writings of Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz and The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. Learn to play both checkers and chess. Learn logic both as taught in math and electronics as well as philosophy, this will arm you in debates. Arm oneself with knowledge and one will be prepared for anything life sends your way.

 

I also write for my own catharsis as it soothes the mind when one is forced to organize their thoughts so as to put them down as coherent writings, and if my writings have appeared to not be as clear as hoped and lacking in total coherence, then imagine the jumbled mess in my head and what that must be like, and then imagine living with such a racket of fighting ideas but not ideals as without ideals we wander undefined through a dark forest of frightening thoughts forever to remain lost. The world seems that way at this moment and it will take a few miracles to set things back to right, but fortunately the world is full of miracles if one only knows not only where to look but how to look and discern the hidden miracles behind so much that happened every day. Smell the roses and drink some strong coffee and find some simple pursuits in life and make then your anchor by which to have a place or item you define as normalcy. Mine is real, good and strong coffee brewed from just ground whole beans blended often with little care and allowing the mixture to give me a little bit of surprise in life. A little sweet chocolate seems to make it so much tastier and gives it a round robustness that is next to addictive. But everybody deserves one addictive vice they refuse to surrender before the demands for normalcy. Ah, normalcy, how boring a thing can be.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

When Our Traditions All Fall and Fail Us

 

Shared traditions and agreement on common goals are the glue which holds societies together. Without these familiar items as the glue there is no need to fear threats from without as the society eventually will tear itself apart from the inside. You want a current example of such a society all one need do is look to the Middle East and pick a nation which is crumbling and intertwined in a destructive civil conflict and you have your example. Syria is all too obvious as Bashir al-Assad had a view of his Alawite minority should be defended by the Druze militias acting as his personal army and all the aid he needed from Iran in arms and even soldiers as things began to go wrong. Bashir al-Assad’s father held the nation together with the glue of fear of his wrath while the son is nowhere near the fearsome leader imbuing strength and competence like his father and before one knew it he was challenged and failed. When an iron fist and the fear of it visiting your little corner of the world is all your nation has holding it together, then you better be ready to use it and use it without mercy or else you are doomed. Such nations are destined to fail from the outset as sooner or later one falls victim to the el-Duce syndrome where the people revolt against your leadership as soon as your power comes into question even if it was your alliance with one megalomaniac that collapses and the next thing you know you are strung up in the town square for a week or so. When the Soviet Union began its surprisingly rapid crumbling from the inside, a friend asked if this was real and if it was, what would be the sign to look for that would signal it was irreversible. As for if it was real, let us say I was as in shock as the next person. As for the sign signaling this truly was the end, that was the easy part so that is what I tackled using that to hedge my answer on belief. I simply told him that I would believe this was the end when Nicolae Ceaușescu fell in Rumania, and sure enough he was the last of the leaders to fall and he fell almost as hard as the European Axis leaders at the end of World War II. The other modern day examples of such failures are Saddam Hussein’s Iraq where the three main societies within have each gone their own way whether by choice, the Kurds in the north, by default, the Shia who hold the power of the governance now, and those who lost outright, the Sunni who are now caught between two enslavers, the Shia government of Iraq and the murderous hordes that are ISIS and they have nowhere to turn as neither the Kurds nor the Shia have any love left for them as they were seen as the cruel oppressors who benefitted from Saddam Hussein’s rule and are now collecting the payment for his sins. Libya is the final example where without a strong leader or the perception of such the entire society reverted back to tribal divisions and will remain each tribe to themselves against the other tribes forming and breaking alliances as it fits them without any possibility of reinstituting a central government which has reach more than twelve blocks in any direction from central Tripoli. There are even those who blame the collapse of the Roman Empire on their failure to incorporate Roman culture, rules and societal structures on those they had conquered at the fringes of their empire which eventually led to the downfall which is a concept with a share of its validity.

 

If such failure of the Roman Empire came from the fraying at its edges of the application of a singular set of societal norms, then we are today witnessing the death throes of the United States as their common heritage and societal norms are currently under assault in the courts where laws are being fortified in defiance of the traditional culture ripping things apart in such a manner as to make the separate, even disparate, parts of the society unglued from each other which may lead to the collapse of that society. The latest and possibly second most destructive tear just was handed down by the Supreme Court with their universal acceptance of same-sex marriage as the law of the land. The real culprit which will eventually topple the United States and potentially all of Western society is multiculturalism which stands that one must honor all others and their customs and no universal set of shared standards can be allowed to stand unassailable by the many and varied lesser cultures within the society. There was a time not that long ago where gun ownership was near universal in the United States and now in most of the major cities gun ownership is not only shunned but illegal which has led to rampant crime as now the criminals do not need a firearm to make them equal to any victim they choose as all they need is two other fellow miscreants to forcibly take anybody’s money by force of numbers, though there are those who prefer not sharing who simply use a weapon, not even necessarily a gun. Then there are those cultures which are forced into remission and made to hide their identity or to regress into enclaves where their numbers provide protection. The day is coming and coming rapidly to the United States shores and is awash over Europe which is pushing the Jews out of society despite the Jews having mostly adopted what was sold to them as the societal norms. The Jews have been consistently seen to be on the leading edge of every trend which came along and was considered enlightened. They were among those marching for civil rights for blacks in the fifties and sixties and have remained supporters of equality of the races through to the current times. They have been at the forefront of the march for gay acceptance and even same-sex marriage. Now that the Jews are the ones being shunned from the college campuses, and trust that which enthralls the masses in the colleges today will be the mainstays of the society ten to twenty years hence; there are already signs that there is sufficient an undercurrent in American subcultures which already hold anti-Semitic feelings which are now slowly emerging from what many would claim were the same centers from which Jew hatreds grew in Europe in the rise of the Nazis. One of the things people seem to forget was the rise of the Nazis had two epicenters and the college campuses were just as important if not more so than the reemergence amongst the rest of the areas blamed for this resurgence of Jew hatred as the ideological leaders more often came from the ivory halls of academia which was also one of the first places that the Jews were banned, from either attending or teaching in the universities. How much longer before such purges strike Western nations’ colleges and universities. It already happens on many campuses for a period every year during the heights of Israel Apartheid Week or during pro-Palestinian celebrations which have started to resemble the pogroms of Russia and the Inquisitions and other cleansings in Europe where the Jews were singled out for exclusion from the society often simply by their being expelled with only the possessions they had packed in a suitcase or two readied ahead of the pitchforks and angry mobs wielding them and other times by simply removing them permanently often burning them at the stake and other methods the crown would demand during their frenzied assault on the other, the Jew.

 

When that befalls western culture once again it will have started in the exact same place but with a slightly different target, the unfitness of the unborn. The undertaking has traditionally been referred to as Eugenics Movement. The idea of eugenics reaches back at least as far as Plato who called for the formation of a guardian race of selective breeding of those who were of superior mind and body, the mating of the cream of humanity to produce a master race. Sound familiar? Francis Galton, the half-cousin Charles Darwin, had taken his relative’s work on evolution and the survival of the fittest and applied it to be used within the human populations to breed the perfect human being and for the removal of those who were inferior. He coined the word Eugenics and eventually it became a course of study in the universities leading to a movement started around a core of its most ardent and adamant proponents and the rest is history. What is less well known is that the forefront of the Eugenics movement formed in the United States and its acceptance was so universal that it was from the United States that the most strident proponents of eugenics emerged. Such names at the front in founding the eugenics movement in their day and up to today are the poet Carl Sandburg, the aviator Charles Lindbergh, the mother of Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger, the Perfect Human Society and an interesting proponent in current times, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel who was instrumental in the drafting of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), or Obamacare. People might be shocked to be informed that Planned Parenthood has not always been the equal provider of alternatives for those who either desire preventive methods to avoid pregnancies or alternatives to carrying, their terms to birth of the child, a fetal mass to its conclusive child bearing as it would cause the mother undue mental stresses and interfere directly with their pursuits in life, it originally was used to sterilize those seen as unfit to have children thus forcing a eugenics program which was, as it is today, centered in minority neighborhoods. Providing you desire to seek the reality that is Planned Parenthood all one need to do is to research Margaret Sanger and her relationship with what we would today refer to as black genocide, it is not a pretty picture. There comes now another eugenics styled movement and this time the target will be traditions, the very traditions which were the glue of Western culture and society for the last two millennia.

 

The scissors that cut the pages into confetti will be forged by multiculturalism where no culture is to be preferred because we are blinding ourselves to such observations and the axe which will sever the binding making the job of the scissors even easier will be the axe taken to the Judeo-Christian culture and in particular to cut the binding of that book which professes that there are such things as good and evil, there is such a concept as right and wrong, that a life lived with proper restraints is life to be pursued, the book that once graced nearly every house and every hotel room across the United States and now a book scorned as old, out of fashion and obsolete, but the Bible is that book which we could learn where our new follies will lead, they will lead to the same place they have always led, ruination and the destruction of all that made the Western World strong. Choosing to lose ourselves in a culture of any culture of the moment is the culture we desire to raise up, but we cannot raise up debauchery and the damnation of human life as equal to the pursuit of a good life spent rejoicing in the gift that life provides and not seeking some manner of faith which demands of us surrender or die, such is a choice without a choice. We need return to our former ideals which permit those whose cultures differ to continue such practice in their private times and spaces such as their homes and houses of worship, but also we demanded they accept our cultural rules when in public. The Western culture allowed for certain irregularities such as special religious clothing being worn in public and even providing areas for prayer permitting such did not interfere with the performance of one’s job and was committed off the clock and on the individual’s own time as the whole cannot be forced to pay them for their private time spent praying and not producing things of mutual gain as that is what working at a job is, producing things for mutual gains, a cooperative effort and a central pillar of our traditional society.

 

Schools were a place where we learned about our mutual culture and were able to master those basic tenets which supported the society, and where we learned how to think and not so much exactly what to think though guidelines were imposed and what was out of bounds was ingrained. We even learned to cooperate through sports where we also learned the easy joys of winning and even more importantly how to cope with losing and thus with failure. The best amongst us learned that failure was not the end but rather a stop where we reassessed our priorities and assumptions making changes where we found things in error or lacking altogether and then proceeded on towards our ultimate goal. Further we learned, were we that fortunate, lucky even, that failures come in the thousands and that success comes only to those willing to fail and fail repeatedly and learning from each failure where we diverted from our goals and how to get back on track. Are there ideas whose failure is guaranteed and where one can never fully achieve the goal? Yes. We can never make a machine which is 100% efficient as in all things there is that degree of wasted effort, effort which does not contribute to the completion and realization of the goal. In a machine that goal is the product such as a generator making electricity; we use water, steam, explosive fuels all to drive the generator to make electricity but there are losses to friction and pushing the generator against the resistive magnetic forces induced in the coils which does not directly produce the electricity but which must be overcome. The same is true in life. Sleep is something our bodies must submit to or we will eventually collapse and possibly die. Still, it is sometimes in our dreams that the spark bursts forth solving some vexing problem which assists the project to completion. Such is an exception and even that spark was not the only dream we enjoyed or endured, and there were the periods of sleep which were used as a dedicated means of repairing and preparing the body for the next day. Another item which obviously diverts us from achieving goals but may be necessary in order to reach our goals are the failures along the way. Lessor peoples will allow failures to prevent them from trying and just surrender to their failures. That is not an intricate part of our society until recently when we found ways of rewarding those who become mired in failure.

 

Another casualty in our modern society is the loosening of the moral structure. In the lives of the vast majority of the population, and to a limited extent to all of the population not restricted to an asylum (do we even have asylums any longer to care for the elderly and the comatose?) as we all wear clothing though some wear far less than others; we all eat and sleep as nature insists on these; and we all live and let live because if large segments of the society, and it need not be more than ten to twenty percent of a society, take to being belligerent and resorting to murdering those who they fear or refuse to submit; then the society will fracture and it will soon become a free-for-all with every faction against the rest; see Libya, Syria or Iraq for current examples. What many do not realize is this is rapidly becoming the definition of Western culture. The society of the Western World has become unmoored and without an anchor with which to tie off and provide immovability, permanence and the Western World has rapidly been cranking the centerboard retrieving it from below the boat allowing the winds to blow us as they may while our ability to steer the boat has failed without the centerboard. That centerboard was western Judeo-Christian ethics and the anchor was the ideal of hard work will produce and provide for one and one’s family and charity would take care of the few who for reasons often beyond their control are unable to find a place within our society. We did not used to change our society such that everybody’s quirks or the beliefs of those coming to our shores being used as a cudgel with which to beat and force us to alter our religious and social structures which we have held dear fashioning our societal norms around and have worked just fine for us and is tried and true. Therein lies the current problem, we in the West have doubted our own culture while allowing another culture whose adherents have little doubt that it is superior to all the Western World has ever known and that the Western World must be cowed and beaten into submission, and that is termed our surrendering to Allah. Do not mistake Allah for the same as G0d in our Judeo-Christian society as Hashem does not demand surrender but instead reason, trust and faith. The easiest manner to present a difference is to look at the lineage of belief. In Judeo-Christian ethics the line of faith flows through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob while Islam and Allah follow the lineage of belief through Abraham, Ishmael and Mohammad. Perhaps this is as good a place to stop before I get into deeper troubles and this is way more sufficient amount to chew of for one day. With any luck I’ll get into this stranger side of my reasoning after a decent period of rest. Thank you all for reading this far and may your life be blessed only with those failings which aid you in your journeys and make you a stronger and better you, even if others spend some time confused at what you are trying to say, and boy have I spent time on that bus.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Anti-Semitism Rising Yet It Can’t Happen Here

 

Any sane person, one might think, would not doubt that anti-Semitism is rising in the four corners of the globe. While that is true, each admission of that carries an additional modifier. That modifier is the exact same modifier used by Jews everywhere from the beginning of Judaism as a major religion, “It can’t happen here.” Now, that modifier always has some accompanying rationalizations such as the following: We Jews are an intricate part of the society; we are accepted in society; we are seen as judges, lawyers, businesspeople, and are even elected to positions in government; we Jews are accepted and assimilated; and my favorite, this isn’t Nazi Germany, this is America. There is one item from the previous which has always puzzled me, how it is such an intelligent people, as Jews presumably are, can misunderstand that their being assimilated does not infer automatically that the population has assimilated them into the whole. There are other qualifiers and whatever one you can dream up is probably used by some Jews somewhere. What is really ridiculous is when there are leaders of Jewish society, the central pillar around which the community seeks wisdom and guidance, the Rabbis who when asked, “Should not the Jews leave here and seek someplace less threatening to live?” They answer, “No, of course not. Why would you suggest that? This has been our home and the homes of our families for generations. We have a lot invested in this community.” And my favorite and usually their final rationalization, “The authorities have promised to help us and keep the peace and guard against any further anti-Semitism.” Do not get me wrong, they honestly feel that these rationalizations are completely valid and hold water. They refuse to see that the actual realities have struck holes in their every argument.

 

Things in Europe are at the worse and mostly beyond the cusp range of realities; so I will stick with the queries and responses we received when we began telling the other members of the congregation with whom we had a familiar friendship. First allow me to point out that those with whom we still converse online and the Rabbi all supported our making Aliyah and gave it their blessings if not their desire that it be they who were going to live in Eretz Yisroel. But the others gave responses such as, “Why would you want to go there? You are leaving the United States? But things are so much more civil here. Aren’t you worried about the terrorism? And our favorite, you will be returning here within a year once you see what it is like in Israel. I’ve been there and I know. Those naysayers were wrong. We’ve been here well over a year and are loving it. I, myself, have never felt more comfortable and accepted as I have here and can only imagine how much more so once we have mastered Hebrew, at least master enough to, through spits and starts, get through an entire thought.

 

That little anecdotal trip down memory lane was to point out we have seen this attitude play itself out in our own experience. Of course, as mentioned, our friends all expressed their longing to make Aliyah and come to Israel and many expected to do so in the near future, but time will tell on that. Getting to make Aliyah as a Jew is no longer you show up and announce that you are Jewish, kiss the ground, and be granted immediate citizenship. The paperwork we filled out made a pile almost rivaling the stuff we brought with us. OK, that was a bit of an exaggeration. Still, the process for us was a little complicated and took over two years to complete and during that time it had its many ups, downs and why would they need to know this questions. Eventually we completed the process and many of the items we were puzzled why they were necessary proved not to be required but was stuff they gathered for statistical reasons. OK, so you were collecting mega-data, why didn’t you just say so, we’ve heard about Edward Snowden, we would have understood, honest.

 

Our making Aliyah had to do with a young nine year old boy promising himself, the worst promise you can make because it requires you to either complete the promise or let yourself down, that when the time came and all things in America were fulfilled he would retire in Israel, something the wiffie really might have preferred knowing about before we got married, but she already knew I was a bit strange, right, quite strange, well, if you insist, beyond the cusp strange! There, I’ve admitted it, happy? Still, it may have been the most advantageous thing we ever did as it changed our lives for the better and really opened up our lives much as a rose stretches out its petal to greet the morning sun and drink up the warmth and the blessed energy G0d has seen in His wisdom to provide for that rose bud so tightly shuttered to awaken stretching out revealing its beauty and spreading its fragrance for all to inhale and exclaim that this is a beautiful day. That is how we awaken here most mornings.

 

Back to the subject which is as horrific and threatening as our returning home to Eretz Yisroel was rewarding and enriching. The news we read about places in Europe such as Malmo, London, Toulouse, and numerous other places are horrific and makes us feel for those Jews residing amongst such hatreds it amazes us that they don’t simply pick up their lives and come to Israel. Surprisingly, even including all the terrorism within the Green Line in Israel, you are still safer in Israel than you are from crime in the United States or Europe, surprising but true. Yet not only do these people continue to live in places where their lives are under threat both day and night, but their Rabbis all tell them it is the Jewish thing to do to remain in defiance to the threats. Where in all that is holy is that written? Looking back over the past year or so in the United States, pulling solely from news stories, I am able to remember we have had some horrific acts of anti-Semitism. There was the Rabbi visiting family in Florida walking to synagogue in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood who was approached by two youths, at least younger adults if not teens, a brief exchange of words, the sound of gunfire and the two youths walked away calmly leaving the Rabbi sprawled out dead on the pavement. The Florida local police listed this as a robbery gone bad, as if the youths had no realization that religious Jews, which the attire of the Rabbi was obvious, do not carry money or items of wealth on the Sabbath. There have been near countless desecration of Jewish cemeteries or the Jewish section of a cemetery yard throughout the United States and ten times worse in Europe. There have been desecration committed against Holocaust memorials often accompanied by writings on such structures of “Jews to the gas,” “Hitler was right,” “Jews get out,” “Holocaust was a myth,” “We are the new Holocaust” amongst numerous other defamations of this ilk. Then there was a stretch of time where a “game” which became known as the “knockout the Jew” game where a member of a group of youths as they passed somebody sporting Jewish identifying clothing would attempt to one-punch the targeted Jew at a minimum knocking them off their feet or knocking them unconscious, scoring howls and celebratory knuckle tapping in recognition of this person’s singular accomplishment. Eventually this happening caught sufficient attention from the authorities, especially after one elderly man died from his wounds from striking his head on a curb after being struck as part of this fun game. There have been defiling of synagogues with such an event just this past week in Gaithersburg, Maryland. which is located in Montgomery County. which is heavily Jewish with a percentage of eighteen and two-tenths. That is actually a very impressive percentage when one figures in the percentage of people in the world who are Jews, a whopping two-one hundredths of one percent, for those who might be having difficulty with realizing how small a percentage that is, allow me to reference it in other ways, 0.02% which mathematically comes out to 0.0002 Jews per unit of population, one would require counting out a section of any random grouping of people from around the world a staggering five-thousand people in order to have relative assurance that there would be a single Jew in the group. Perhaps placing a bit of writing that Mark Twain once wrote about the Jewish people will be far more impressive than anything I could ever imagine up, so the rest is from Mark Twain’s essay “All Things are Mortal but the Jew”* also referred to as “The Eternal Jew.”

 

If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.
His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him.
He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it.The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.
The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind.
All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

 

Beyond the Cusp

 
* “Concerning The Jews,” Harper’s Magazine, 1899
The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, Doubleday [1963] pg. 249