Can We All Have One Tradition?

 

There is a wonderful side of Judaism which will tear it apart. The advantages of these wondrous diversifications, the ever greater variants of the traditions and prayers within Judaism, is that you can seek your own niche where you are most comfortable and everything tends to reflect your concepts and ideals you expect from Judaism. This means that almost any Jew seeking a comfortable place within their religion, Judaism, that somewhere, should you seek long enough or be fortunate and find your home quickly, there is a congregation which practices the Jewish faith exactly as you picture such in your own concepts, points of importance and traditions you remember from your childhood mixed with other items which simply serve to interest and soothe you. This is both an advantage to Judaism and a future anathema for Judaism. Let us explain. We just hope that we upset as few people as possible but we will still tell what we fear and believe.

 

Judaism is a unique religion in that it has remained largely in limbo where the main efforts for over two and a half to a little over three millennia has been to retain everything exactly as they were when the Temple was corrupted by the Greeks and then the Romans with one brief period after the Maccabean revolt when the Temple was rededicated and consecrated for Hashem. Judaism was frozen at a period soon after their return from the Babylonian exile, the second of the three exiles (Egypt was the first) when the Persians permitted them to return and rebuild the Temple and return to their dedication worshiping and serving Hashem. This era came to a crashing halt with the arrival of the Greeks who replaced the Persians and were on their path to conquering Egypt and the Judeans, the remaining Jews residing in Judea and Samaria largely were but a minor conquest. The Greeks did all in their power to pressure the Judeans (Jews) into Greeks by impressing Greek ethics on the Judeans. First was their introduction of the Greek sexual revolution where orgies, homosexuality and pedophilia were introduced and they brought bath houses plus the worship of the perfect, unaltered human form. This led to the Greeks making circumcision against the law and any circumcised males were executed which meant that any Judean following their religion was fearful of being inspected for having been circumcised as that meant certain death. The Greeks were all but immediately replaced by the equally distasteful Romans who were slightly more crafty than were the Greeks. The Romans corrupted the Sanhedrin placing Roman approved and compromised Jews in place and in the main cities the Rabbis were mostly Roman approved. Religious and traditional Judeans retreated to the countryside and the Judean Hills and caves eking out a living subsisting on whatever they could find growing wild or raised in small farming plots. Everything was done to minimize their coming to the Roman’s attention. This led to a strict, traditional and unchanging interpretation of Torah and the practice of their religion and the keeping of their simply life style.

 

The Roman occupation in many ways did not actually begin to come to a conclusion until the decade of the 1950’s and the return of the Jews to their ancient homelands of Eretz Yisroel. The scars and deprivations of the Roman occupation remained even after the fall of Rome as before Rome had even really started their serious decline, they reacted to a Judean uprising by dispersing the Judeans to the farthest corners and throughout their empire just as they had other enemies in order to bury them from the pages of history. Every group that the Romans had used this form of punishment, disappeared from the pages of history just as the Romans had intended. The Carthaginians who were the final political form of the Phoenicians were dispersed thusly with the Capital City of Carthage having the lands surrounding it salted such that it became barren for the next few centuries. The Phoenicians or the Carthaginians, whichever name one wishes to utilize, are gone and no longer consist as a peoples. The others who the Romans thusly treated are equally erased from any following history and to the point that we do not even recognize any names which we could use to display the effectiveness of this punishment. The Judeans proved to be the exception because they had one thing which was different, their definition as a people was transportable and could be applied anywhere and though it was deigned to work best in the Promised Land, in Israel geographically, they had the ruleset and defined history contained in Torah which was established and had an agreed and exact form and wording which was never to be altered making it an anchor.

 

Five beautiful, glorious and holy Torah Scrolls which carry near infinite wisdom and are the foundation of all Judaism and their culture and the Jewish civilization is built around the Torah and the teaching of Torah

 

The other half of their religion and life definition were contained in the Oral Law, their Oral Code which was designed to be flexible and change with time as they proceeded through life together in Israel, but now they were not in Israel or together, thus the Oral Code could be altered in different means for different areas. Thus the Rabbis over the next few centuries wrote and discussed the different ideas and ideals of the Oral Code and codified them into writing such that it would no longer be altered and everybody could remain on the same pages. This became the writings which today make up the Talmud. The most interesting of the concepts in Talmud is that only the final agreed definitions apply as the law, the discussions are included for future reference when new ideas or changes in societies take place. The greatest change has recently occurred, the return and start of the Ingathering of all Jewish Peoples back to their ancient homeland in Israel. But there was and still remains a division in Judaism which derives from whether they were from the Islamic world, including Spain when it was called Andalusia by its Islamic conquerors who were removed finally around 1492 which also included the voyage by Columbus to the New World and the Inquisition in which all non-Christians were brutally converted or killed in a purification of Spain by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella which targeted mostly Muslims and Jews. This forced the majority of the Jewish population to escape with their Muslim neighbors over to North Africa. These Jews mixed with the Jews already living throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Meanwhile there remained a sizeable number of Jews who were spread throughout Europe. There became some not necessarily insignificant differences between these two families of the Jewish Peoples.

 

There are also other groups of Jews with some dating back to the times of King Solomon and others to the full loss of ten Tribes which made up the nation of Israel (the northern kingdom which included the tribes of Dan, Ephraim, Reuben, Gad, Manasseh, Asher, Naphtali, Zebulun, Issachar and Simeon) who had separated from Jerusalem and Judea (the southern kingdom which included the tribe of Benjamin) and became known as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Some tribes of Jews in disparate regions have made claims as to being descendants from these lost tribes of which two of the most well-known are the Ethiopian Jews and the Menashe from India. The claims of these people are traced and certain realities which would survive in any actual tribes from the Israelites which are commanded in Torah. Should these tribes continue to hold these commandments and practice a Torah dictated lifestyle, then their claim is far more believable and they are invited to return home. The many different peoples is truly amazing and what is even more fascinating is that most of the people from these tribes tested had a particular gene which has been determined as being present in Jews showing the same ancestral maternal origin and also a gene which traces to the Middle Eastern peoples.

 

Eight Hundred Year Old Yemeni Torah Scroll
Rescued with the Congregation’s Rabbi and
Seventeen Desperate Jewish Refugees Accepted
and Taken in by Israel Granting Them Citizenship

 

Where this has led is that even amongst Jews with similar backgrounds, due to the fracturing of the different Jewish communities, there started to form cracks in their practices as each Rabbi came up with something slightly different. Now the struggle is reunifying a religion which though having the identical central basics has also picked up particular practices and traditions which differ each following from a particular Rabbi. This led to some occasions where one Jew would claim, “My Rabbi taught,” while the next Jew countered, “Well, my Rabbi teaches,” and the arguments have led to some less than admirable situations. Judaism and Torah are supposed to unite all Jews to a common heritage through shared history but the histories were fractured by Roman decree and the ravages of time and separation. The Oral history being codified minimized the differences but sometimes the smallest differences are the most difficult to rectify and harmonize. Recently we read an article by Rabbi Melamed who sees the need to rewrite a new oral code which can be utilized as the basis for law in the lands of Israel. These laws would serve as had the original Oral Law and would be adaptable to change, not written in stone. These codes would cover both the secular world and the religious world. They would be a careful blending of Torah teachings and wisdom with the needs of a modern society. This would be worked through using a conclave of leading Rabbis from every discipline in Judaism with all the disparate schools represented from Ashkenazim, Sephardi, Mizraim, Chasidim, Traditional, Orthodox, Zionist, and as many others as can be represented giving the widest view and closest to totality such that what is produced while not granting any one groups complete satisfaction would find the path acceptable to as many Jews as are willing to forge a new unity and new beginning.

 

The horrors of the past will be the flames for the forge with which Israel will become one and our laws will once again be one uniting every Jew and Israelite to the other. The beginning is in sight if we take the opportunity to enlist the many flowers from the far corners of the globe and enlist every Jewish soul, our pluralistic yet harmonious neshama, and once we have merged our futures and woven our pasts into an embroidered and gorgeous prayer shawl with Tzitzit being the only strings attached, we can allow this to cover us all as a single people in our own nation home at last.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Mahmoud Abbas Makes Peace Impossible

 

The world loves to claim that Mahmoud Abbas is Israel’s best prospect for peace. The shocker is that we agree with that statement and claim that this makes peace impossible. What people do not realize is that Mahmoud Abbas is Israel’s savior from its own mistakes. More than once Prime Minister Netanyahu has agreed to make sacrifices for peace which would have very possibly mortally wounded Israel. Had these offers been accepted the Arabs would have been able to fire rockets directly into Tel Aviv using line of sight aiming which would have crippled all economic life and life in general for the majority of Israelis. But Israel has a strange savior because Hashem works in strange and mysterious ways and often with a sense of irony thrown in just for amusement sake. That savior is the man who cannot afford to accept any peace because doing so would cost him everything. That man is Mahmoud Abbas and he knows the minute that he makes peace with Israel and the IDF and Israeli security personnel withdraw from Judea and Samaria that his life would not be insurable with Lloyd’s of London at any price, and they have an odds price on virtually anything. Once Abbas makes a peace with Israel he would be wise to leave before Hamas makes their move as the result will be identical to the fight over Gaza except this time those Hamas does not like will have nowhere to run. Abbas knows his name tops that list and that only the IDF and Israeli security forces stand between Hamas and his neck, thus he will never make peace. Still, he is Israel’s best chance for peace as there is no other and that is the sole reason, and the world knows this as well.

 

Then why does the world, especially the European Union and the United Nations insist that Israel make sacrifices to bring Mahmoud Abbas to the negotiating table? They do this for two reasons; first because they want to compromise Israel, and second because they know Abbas will never make peace thus they can make Israel destroy itself safely and without getting their hands dirty. Their plan is to shrink Israel piece by piece which is funny as that is also the Arab plan for the destruction of Israel, by stages peace by peace. Prime Minister Netanyahu also knows the truth about Abbas and his delicate predicament and that Abbas is happy with things just the way they are. You need to understand that Mahmoud Abbas has another interest in keeping everything just as they are because the European Union and the United Nations plus certain European nations along with the United States continue sending millions of dollars atop millions of dollars annually from which Abbas and select groups amongst the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership and PLO hierarchy, of which Mahmoud Abbas is the top person in each, are taking their generous share off the top making themselves unbelievably wealthy. Abbas is not about to kill the geese which continue laying golden eggs for him and with whose gold he uses to retain loyalty and stays alive. These are the realities and everybody involved is quite content with the status quo, well, except for Netanyahu and the majority of Israelis, and that brings us to other realities we all know are real and true.

 

This is where International Law enters the picture and the realities of treaties, conventions, mandates, charters and hard facts come in. What all of these do is paint a picture of another reality which Abbas knows as does everybody else who is playing the music that they are all dancing to. The truth is that all the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to Israel and will remain Israeli unless Israel signs treaties giving the land away. That is how they stole Gaza and Israel learned a hard lesson there. Israel also knows that should they ever again be forced to fight and gain territory, not to return it but to exercise the law of nations that allows that lands gained in a defensive war may be retained by the aggrieved nation. This lesson was the lesson of southern Lebanon where once Israel returned the lands taken in the war with Hezballah they returned in force and now that area has approximately one-hundred-fifty-thousand rockets and missiles aimed at every target imaginable throughout all of Israel all the way down to Eilat at the southernmost tip of the country. Israel has learned that every inch of land which she allows to be given to her enemies, be it Israeli lands or those gained in defensive struggles, are immediately taken by the terrorist enemies and become a launching pad for future wars and terrorist raids and continuous threat for more death and destruction. Yet this is exactly what the world demands that Israel concedes to, giving lands to those who will immediately utilize it as a staging ground for the eventual destruction of the Jewish State. But fortunately Mahmoud Abbas must refuse any offer no matter how generous as he proved when offered over ninety percent of Judea and Samaria, half of Jerusalem including the Old City and Temple Mount, and lands from within the Green Line equal to the lands retained from Judea and Samaria. This offer was refused twice, one when offered by Ehud Barak in 2000 and again in 2008 offered by Ehud Olmert. Perhaps Israel should be wary of any leader named Ehud in the future, especially Barak and Olmert.

 

Israel has a world seemingly hungry for her to sacrifice pieces of her ancient homelands and half her Capital City of Jerusalem and much of the historic lands of the Bible. Places that Christian and Jews hold sacred, Biblical Places, such as Bethlehem, Jericho, Hevron, Bethel and numerous others. They would demand that the Temple Mount be made Islamic only grounds where they would picnic and play soccer while Jews and Christians would be denied to come to their precious lands. These are the demands the world makes and then relies on Mahmoud Abbas to refuse any offerings so they can claim they are the ones standing for peace if only Israel would satisfy the Arab demands. We are back to the fact that everybody on all sides are familiar with the Arab demands and that they will only accept the Jews living under Arab rule begging for each day and praying that it not be their last. The Arabs cannot allow Israel to exist because their pride is challenged as the area once was theirs. They have the same problem with the lands of Andalusia, what we recognize today as Spain and Portugal. They also believe that the lands all the way to the gates of Vienna should be returned to them as the Ottomans twice extended their reach to the gates of that city. The Europeans also know that Israel is like the plug in the bottle and without Israel they stand even more vulnerable than they presently find themselves, and that brings us to the final story.

 

Biblical Israel a Historic and Accurate View

 

Europe and the remainder of the free world and developed world are facing the same threat as Israel, Islamic terrorism. The United States has taken a partial step in preventing further infiltration, though it is currently being debated in the courts, briefly, as the restraints on immigration will stand the test. Europe has been open to infiltration and has reaped their just rewards and the people have begun to stir in a number of nations. The terrorism threat has reared its ugliness throughout much of Europe but media and the current leaders are doing all they can to downplay these incidents. Many Europeans feel betrayed by their leadership which has these leaders worried as facing their public come next elections. Some are proposing an administration which would control the media acting as a Ministry of Truth. Their quoted intention was to prevent “fake news” and to act as fact checkers, but the facts they check could be to further their power or at least try to protect them until after the next elections. The left realizes that they have backed themselves into a corner and the troubles the people have realized is being placed at their doorstep. BREXIT and the election in the United States of Donald Trump as President and a Republican Congress have sent shivers through the entire left-wing political hierarchy which has completely controlled Europe for over a decade. Now they feel threatened and still have not realized why the people are displeased. The next set of elections in Europe might bring about a seismic shift in the political alignment of the continent. The real question is to how long the populations will remain engaged and retain a more measured and conservative leadership in power. The balance is precariously balanced and unless the people remain vigilant then one more round where the left gains control of the Western nations there may be no road back. Should that become the reality then the Tytler Cycle of Power will advance and history teaches us that the cycle will not return to freedom for generations. The next decade or two will be determinative in the future we hand our children and their children for too many generations to be contemplated.

 

Beyond the Cusp 

 

Europe to Face Cultural Islamic Revolution

 

The refugees flooding into Europe are going to balkanize just as too many of the former Islamic immigrants have done but with far worse consequences. These refugees carry with them a carcinogenic element injected intentionally into their body of people which will activate when the moment presents itself. Most of these refugees have little if any marketable skills by which to gain employment and thus will spend their days on the government dole with nothing to busy themselves with and eventually their idleness and futile outlook for any improved life being one of complete bankruptcy that they will turn to their Imams and community leaders and their old institutions such as the Muslim Brotherhood for guidance. The youth in particular will be swayed into beliefs that the Europeans are treating them as inferiors and that they are being denied their proper place in the society and it is simply another form of colonial racism and that the only answer is Islam and the conquest and taking what is rightfully theirs by Jihad. It may happen immediately, it may take a year, two years or a decade but it is coming and there will be little to prevent it unless steps are taken now to educate and train as many of the refugees as the Europeans are able and find some way of integrating them into the culture and daily life of an average European. The current economic problems in Europe are going to make such a Herculean task but the alternative will be civil wars across Europe and a very good chance that Europe will fall and become a conquest under colonial occupation of Islam.

 

Don’t think that is possible, then look at history. Before the Ottoman Empire there were a series of Caliphs each one building on the previous Caliph. The Arab Muslims came roaring out of the Arabian Peninsula after consolidating the area starting with Mecca and Medina around 632 A.D. (see map below). Their next conquest took place until 661 A.D. under the first four Caliphs. The Umayyad expansion continued through around 750 A.D. and entered Spain (Andalusia) as well as Central Asia. During these expansions the Arab Muslims conquered the Persians, the Assyrians, the North African and Middle East holding of the remnants of the Roman and Byzantine Empires. They conquered the Berbers and numerous other nations and tribes across the entirety of the MENA map (Middle East and North Africa). And this was just the start as the next expansion came from their longest ruling group from out of Turkey, the Ottomans. In the meantime the Arab Muslims enjoyed some of their most celebrated successes with their further military campaigns into France and Turkey and their eventual defeat of the fortress city of Constantinople which they renamed Istanbul and with the city came the famed cathedral of the Hagia Sophia which was transformed into a Mosque which entailed plastering over the many tile mosaics, some of which have been uncovered and the Hagia Sophia turned into a museum, for now. Examples of these mosaics are pictured below the map. The Islamic Empire began to crumble as it divided under separate Caliphs, Emirs, Ayatollahs, Mahdi, Mullah, Sheikhs and Sultans until around 1300 A.D.

 

 

Expansion of Islam Across MENA and threaten Europe before Ottoman Rule

 

 

Hagia Sophia Mosaics

 

Now starts the last phase of Islam as a major power and empire with the rise and then crumbling of the Ottomans and their empire. The Ottomans were a tribe from northeastern Turkey who rose to prominence around 1300 A.D., seizing power from a crumbling Islamic Empire replacing it with a rejuvenated Islamic Empire as they conquered much of what had been held by Islam to that date and expanded Islam into new territories in Europe, the Horn of Africa, the Balkans and the Caucuses surrounding the entirety of the Black Sea reaching their peak around 1683 A.D.

 

 

Ottoman Empire Ascending includes Golden Age of Islam

 

The Ottoman Empire enjoyed steady growth for almost four hundred years and then continued their rule until they finally started to stagnate and then decline with the main declines beginning around 1800 A.D. (see map below). As the Ottoman Empire continued to collapse, Russia began to prop the remnants of the Ottoman Empire as a wedge preventing the complete collapse and placing revolution and anarchy on its southern border. The Russian assistance halted with the onset of World War I when the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany and Austria-Hungarian Empire while Russia joined the allied powers which included Italy, France, Britain and Japan with the United States entering the war at a later date. The Muslims still believe that there was something horribly wrong with the world and still hold to hopes that they can return to their glorious days as one of the great powers on the planet and realize that with the end of European colonialism, a colonialism which is dwarfed compared to the conquests and colonial exploits of Islam whose conquests and rule outside of the Arabian Peninsula lasted over twelve-hundred years while European colonialism in the same areas lasted under fifty years and well under five-hundred years in total in almost every other area where the Europeans held colonies. The Islamic hold on the major parts of the MENA nations lasted longer than the Greek colonies, the Roman Empire and is only exceeded by the empire of Egypt which went through different eras of Pharaohs but remained Egypt and held areas from the borders of modern Turkey, then the Hittites, to somewhere bordering the empires of Persia, Babylonia, Israelite under David and Solomon, Carthage and first fell but continued to hold power and eventually became a separate empire under the Greeks from which the Egyptian rulers emerged as the Polemic Greeks and even continued to share rule under the Roman Empire and only lost their sovereignty and the end of that Egyptian line permanently when falling to Islam.

 

 

Ottoman Empire in Decline 1800 through 1914 and Start of World War I

 

What we have seen today is the Arab Spring produced an Arab Winter which is far from over for the Islamic nations as they have gone from dictatorial statists, some might say fascist, to rule by religious supremacists intent on spreading Islam to a new Caliphate under the rule of whichever person or group currently holds the reins of power. Currently there are probably more individuals or groups presuming to be the next glorious leaders of a resilient and ascendant Islam which will make them the Caliph who fulfilled the Quranic prerequisite that the world be united under Islam as it was to be the sole religion in all of the Earth if peace was ever to be attained. The dictates of Islam, according to numerous leaders throughout its history, make it a self-fulfilling prediction that peace can only be attained once they are the victors and rule the entirety of Earth. The main contestants currently vying to be that leader are President Erdogan of Turkey, Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran, the entire Saudi Royal Family in Saudi Arabia and leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and the Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Make your betting pools at your offices now as after Islam rules the world such betting pools, and much of the sporting events which are the staple for work place betting pools, will be a thing of the past.

 

This bring us to the present and the flooding of Europe, Canada and the United States. Hidden within these refugees are theoretical implanted terrorists, terror coordinator and other individuals with other required to plan, train, execute, equip and specialists at bomb making, weapons trainers, facilitators for smuggling and/or acquiring weapons, ammunition, explosives, people, chemicals and other miscellaneous requirements. The Europeans and North Americans have little to no idea who is entering their lands with many who have entered Europe apparently not bothering with the little formalities of registering with their intended new nation and just melting away into the background. Those choosing not to reveal their presence beyond being counted when they crossed the border but soon thereafter simple wandering off into oblivion surely to reappear in the most unfortunate of manners making themselves known for whatever acts of terror they will take part in executing. Many will never surface as their execution of their assigned duties in furthering the jihadi conquest of Europe through terrorist acts which they facilitate and whatever else may be required. For all the Western World nations know they are admitting groups of unknowns, Germany has already stated that they have lost track of six-hundred-thousand of their just over one-million refugees from the past month. Should this over fifty percent of refugees actually being infiltrators who desire no part of their new home as they are there for one reason and one reason only, the likely overthrow of the government and the establishing of an Islamic state with the wholesale slaughter of non-Muslims who refuse to convert and doing so with great enthusiasm. Much of what the all but completely unchecked, unverifiable, unintended and ill-advised opening of European borders has already sparked regrets and claims of desire to return tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of refugees as they have already overtaxed every governmental system put in place to presumably care for and monitor the incoming refugees as apparently everyone misjudged the totals of numbers of Islamic claimants to the refugee status would arrive when invited. Perhaps they now understand why Israel refuses to allow a similar influx by first offering to accept a stated number of “Palestinian refugees” knowing full well that a similar overrunning of Israel with refugees would be the result. Still, there is one thing that this experience will fail to accomplish, and that is to have a single European change their attitude or the extents to which they will try to impose their ideas for a fair solution upon Israel which knowingly will end the Jewish State with a second Holocaust as that would remove their guilt for allowing the first as they would claim that was simply the Jews fault in both instances as they brought it upon themselves in both instances. Some things in this world will never change and anti-Semitism in all its forms, anti-Israelism, anti-Zionism, anti-Judaism, replacement theology, supersessionism, and the idea that the Jews brought every problem, war, pestilence and tragedy into the world with their perversions of morality and too many other twisted accusations and hatreds to even name, those will never change.

 

Beyond the Cusp