Avigdor Lieberman, the Deal Breaker

 

Introduction of Issues
As leader of the Yisrael Beitenu Party, Avigdor Lieberman has decided to use the leadership position to mount attacks upon the Haredi and religious Israelis. His complaint revolves around a set of complaints including that public transport be allowed to operate on the Sabbath; the recruitment law which requires every citizen, including all Haredi, serve in the IDF; and for all Yeshivot students and other Torah and religious oriented education students be required to attend regular general state education system which allows for their Torah and religious specific education on their own time. One can only but imagine what his next demand might be at some future critical points such as, well, cutting all public subsidizing of religious oriented schools which are not licensed as having certified general education systems and then Synagogues and on and on. Perhaps he would call for expanding on the court order demanding co-ed seating at a religious concert where the vast majority preferred separate seating and most others might feel some disappointment but worthwhile to hear the concert in Synagogues, the Western Wall and everywhere else where this practice of separation is currently enforced.

 

Avigdor Lieberman

 

 

Dear Avigdor Lieberman

 

Avigdor Lieberman, you have been moving inexorably leftward to such an extent that these claims of being conservative is starting to ring hollow. We understand that you support the IDF and this is commendable. But your rubbing elbows with the Blue White Party, a group which has stated their support for the Two State Solution paradigm with surrendering lands to provide the Palestinian Arabs their own state up to the, as Gantz stated very early in the campaign, Separation Barrier. You entered into vote sharing with the Blue White Party which completes cementing your leftward drift reaching a point well past center. Your claims, just as those of the four generals and Yair Lapid, that you support the right-wing and the Israelis living in the Shomron appear as valid as the claims of the average apparatchik spreading disinformation. Your demands of Netanyahu for your support in the April elections was not made with any degree of honesty. You knew that those demands would force the Haredi Parties out of the coalition leaving Bibi with about the same situation we are facing once more, the only government available would be a unity government with Blue White which would break-up the Likud Party with many of the religious and honest conservatives fleeing to the other right wing parties which stand stronger on these issues. Your antics will eventually lead to Jewish Home, National Union–Tkuma and New Right gaining in strength where they will be able to control the discussions and sooner or later take over some future, sooner rather than later, coalition. These are your positions and the items upon which you have decided to take your stand. One of your main complaints is that the secular population and non-Jews not be forced to lead a religious life by the state. Allow us to discuss this point even if it is but the smallest part of your crusade.

 

Your demands go far beyond freeing those who would rather not be put out by religious laws and be free to desecrate the Sabbath with the blessings of the law and the State. Instead, you would instead force by the law to reside in a secular state which would force their allowing vehicle traffic on their streets on Shabbat and that Torah education be pushed into the region of an elective such as after school clubs except with a heavy study load. You have left no room, by your own admission, and refused to allow for any compromise or middle ground. Maybe there can be some middle ground such as allowing each city, township, community and neighborhood be permitted to decide such laws concerning Shabbat and whether they preferred to observe the Sabbath. Also, perhaps a certain amount of secular education could be considered to be met by any Yeshivot and other Torah or religious oriented education, in order to receiver accreditation or certification which could make them more attractive to those who desire a balanced education. The schools which fail to meet the standards would not be shuttered and those which choose to remain with their current education system be permitted to do so. People could decide for themselves which educational opportunity they wish for their children. All that is needed is for more free choice and as broad a selection be allowed to be presented to the public. There has to be some happy medium by which both communities, religious and secular, be allowed to choose for themselves. As far as the draft issue, a real sticking-point for the past few governments, could be set allowing for a percentage of the Yeshivot and other Torah or religious oriented education systems be permitted deferments. The enlistment from the Haredi and religious communities has been rising over the past decade and is predicted to continue as their communities have been slowly moving towards what you would call normalization. Your stance that it is unfair that the secular public is forced to obey religious laws and your solution is for the religious community to live under secular laws, which often makes their lives impossible as they would prefer to live them. You are simply demanding that everything be done under your preference and who cares about those who have different views and desires.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Freedom of Speech and Religion

 

Bezalel Smotrich started a firestorm after he spoke with a receptive audience, “We all want the State of Israel to follow the law of the Torah,” Let’s be honest, if this had been the entirety of his statement, it still should not have elicited any rebuke nor should it have started what can only be decried as sheer panic while instigating what we can only describe as a vile and venomous hatred. His audience was largely, if not totally, in favor and accepting of what Bezalel Smotrich had stated before he added a little caveat, which, we are willing to bet, was seldom reported with anything near the hyperventilating hysteria as the introductory statement. The remainder of the critical section reads, “we just can’t because there are people who think differently and we need to get along with them.” Now that sounds like adding the honest assessment where the opposition to such a move is currently too strong and opposed to such a state. All Smotrich had consciously stated was his desire and the reason that such a desire need be checked before one enters the halls of power, the Knesset, simply because Israel, as she is currently populated with almost half the Jews not being particularly religious or not at all religious and along with the mainstream media make a loud cry of lament and agony merely at the mention of the Torah becoming the law of the land, are not to this point in their slowly evolving evolution moving inexorably towards a more religious nation. But Bezalel Smotrich did not claim that he was planning on introducing something which not only called for Torah observance but recognized that there exists far too much resistance to such an idea for such legislation to pass becoming law. But Smotrich could have stated something so benign such as, ‘the Torah has lessons from which we could all take benefit.’ There would have been those who would have yelled and screamed to an even higher level with the media making sure to use all their stored and ready hyperbole to drive the hysteria.

 

The insinuation that should Israel decide as an overwhelming majority that the time has arrived to prepare and work to establish the Messianic Age and hopefully make Israel prepared and deserving of the Messiach, that Israel would become a theocracy similar in its visions as Iran and is actually more preposterous than if one would claim that Israel, due to her relatively sizable population who favor socialism are taking Israel towards becoming an Atheist Communist nation similar to the USSR. What is amazing about most of the media in Israel is that were somebody to announce their desire to make Israel a socialist nation where the rich are burdened with exorbitant taxation in order to eliminate poverty, they would treat this news as an inspirational vision for the Israeli future and a step towards their desired goal. The media had a similar outbreak of hyperventilation when retired General Rafi Peretz made a favorable statement favoring religious Zionism when speaking to a Yeshiva. The leftist media is so vehemently against any and everything which has even the slightest taint of religiosity as if it is bringing on the End of Days. Their view of religion is that it no longer has any place in this modern world. What is beyond irony is that their Secular Humanist-Socialist world view is so solidly entrenched in their minds that religion is treated as an ancient set of rituals which have absolutely no place in their views of the modern world. What makes their anti-religious attitude is that even many physicists are approaching the view of whether or not there was (is) a creator is leading them to believe that there had to be an intelligence behind the evolution of the universe. Some physicists have found one means of proving that a creator is unnecessary by claiming that the reality is a Multiverse where every possible combination of properties possible all exist in at least one of the infinite universes which exist. This allows them to claim that we exist in this universe simply because the right formulae exist describing the forces and dimensions necessary to support our kind of life-form. They would need to accept that there exist infinite universes where life itself, as we know it, even including Tardigrades, is completely impossible. That implies a great waste of dimensions as in their models the vast majority of universes collapse in upon themselves or simply fly apart expanding faster than matter can be permitted to form still becoming a wisp of nothingness. Their model claims that our universe is special in that it has permitted not only life, but intelligent life, assuming that Homo Sapien is actually intelligent. All this theory is, is a means of eliminating the need for a creator and some intelligence behind the formation of our place in our universe. By the way, the media love these physicists as they give erudite backing to their idea that there is no Supreme Being or intelligence behind the formation of our universe. They, and the physicists who back them, will take any theory which removes Hashem from the equation. One could always postulate that Hashem created all of the universes of the Multiverse simply as a means to forming one which was special, our universe.

 

Is the Multiverse Real

 

This brings us to the crux of the situation in which we reside. Academia and the mainstream media along with most of the entertainment media and much of the society have decided that religion is something which was possibly necessary thousands of years ago, but in this modern and so sophisticated society, the most primary intelligence and the control of what is to come in our future comes from the efforts of man himself. They believe that humans are the supreme intelligence and are the means of all which is to come. They are adamantly entrenched in Secular Humanism and insist that socialist governance is the greatest means by which everybody receives that which they might need. When anybody suggests that capitalism or religion have a place in our future, the media and academia unite in denouncing the person who made the offending comments. The media will castigate anyone who deviates one iota from their ideas of a perfect world where mankind is the driving force and there is no higher entity and religion is simply a set of rituals from an era from which humanity has progressed beyond. These beliefs actually have a place out of history. The Hellenistic Greeks also believed that mankind was at the absolute pinnacle of evolution and there could be nothing more advanced or perfect than the human being. They worshiped the human form and believed that upon birth a person was deemed to be the coming of perfection. In ancient Greek society, were a child born with any defect physically, such a child was permitted the graces of death as they were not the perfect human form, the ultimate form in all of creation. This idea that humans are the ultimate form of creation and there is nothing beyond the human being is far from a new idea as the Greeks expounded such a belief and the Romans were close behind. Yes, sure they had their gods, as we are merely human and despite the almost unlimited abilities any human might have where they were considered almost equal to the gods, they still knew that a human was not omnipotent. The Jews at that time also believed that the human being was at the pinnacle of creation. The difference is that in Judaism there is a creator, Hashem, and we are but his chosen creation and everything around us is credited to Hashem. The Greeks and Romans had their gods for everything from fire to lightning to the sustenance they consumed but their gods were more human than noble. Judaism is different in that people, unless chosen as were the prophets, are nowhere near the level of Hashem, the creator of all that is. The Greeks, in particular, believed that many of the best amongst them were on such a level as to argue with their gods where in Judaism, with the possible exception of Moses during the Exodus, nobody was of sufficient power or ability to argue with Hashem. In Judaism, we look to Hashem to provide when we are unable and pray that we are worthy of his favor. Hashem reacted to the Jewish people in a manner directly connected to the ability and actual enactment of following Hashem’s commandments as expounded in Torah.

 

The Torah has been the foundation stone for the Jewish People for over three thousand years. But that is far from the end of the story of the Torah and that which it teaches. All of Judeo-Christianity is based entirely upon the commandments written in the Torah and upon many of the teachings of the prophets. Modern Western society had been based on the Judeo-Christian ethos for much of the last few thousand years. It remains the cornerstone of all that is the developed modern world. The problem which much of the developed world is currently facing is the lack of planning for the future. Those who have developed the concepts and defining ethos of the latest human belief system, Secular Humanism, is that the one, themselves, are the center and most important set of desires which need to be fulfilled. This egocentric set of values has had some serious consequences. The concept of the individual being the most important individual and that they should serve their own needs, desires and wants before they worry about other items. This view has the consequence in that there are no concerns, regards or obligations for the forming of the next generation. As a matter of fact, they see children as something unwanted and an undesirable imposition which would deny them of using all of their efforts and resources for their own pleasures and betterment. This has led to the situation where the people residing in these developed societies and whom are very often well-off not having any children. This is evidenced by the evidence of the swelling numbers of women having abortions. Between 1970 and 2015, the Center for Disease Control reports nearly 45.7 million legal induced abortions decreasing the numbers of births per woman to fall well below the required amount for replacement levels. This has led to the depopulating of Europe to such an extent that they are willing to import any and every potential immigrant as they require far more workers than they have produced through reproduction in order to support the otherwise aging population. This will be the epithet for Secular Humanity as a healthy option for a society proceeding into the future.

 

Offspring and a dedication to the following generations being a central pillar of Judeo-Christian society made for a far healthier society where the future was guaranteed. Some people have equated abortion with the idolatrous sacrifice of their children, often newborns, to Baal. That may be slightly overt but the reference is well understood. Certainly, late term abortions could easily be equated as such. One of the misconceptions when it comes to Judaism is that all abortions are forbidden. This is not true as Judaism does permit abortive procedures when the life of the mother is endangered. This makes sense when one remembers that half of the children birthed did not survive to age five, thus an adult woman was far more viable than any unborn fetus and thus the life of main concern. This is definitive threat to the life of the mother, not her mental health believing that a child would be an imposition to their life of seeking pleasure for themselves as is often the health condition used in the developed world. That is the main difference between modern atheist Secular Humanism and the traditional religions of Judeo-Christian religions where in Judeo-Christian beliefs are the desires, needs and requirements that children and future generations have the utmost importance while in Secular Humanism children are seen as an imposition interfering with the social lives of those who would otherwise be responsible for the establishing of the next generations. Secular Humanism is based on the now while Judeo-Christian belief is more focused on the future generations as well as a high standard of expectation on the individual to work to assist in the establishing of future generations.

 

In this little fact is the solution which is inevitable. Leftist Secular Humanism, and likely all forms of Secular Humanism regardless of their underpinnings, has one serious problem, they are dependent upon individuals who are disgruntled with religious life to repopulate their ranks as their reproductive rates across the Secular Humanist societies of less than one and a half children per woman, well below the necessary two to two and a quarter children per woman. On the other hand, the religious populations have reproductive rates well above necessary rates and thus they have growing populations. In time, the Secular Humanist population will dwindle while the religious population continues to increase. This sets the framing for the future in that religious populations and societies are at an advantage over those choosing the latest fads, namely Secular Humanism. In the interim, there will be a secular media and academia, but with time these too will be corrected and slowly become more religious and open to the religious dogma. For Europe this means that they will slowly fall under the influence of Islamic doctrine as the religious Muslims will reproduce while the indigenous European population which has largely adopted the Secular Humanist attitude and are not reproducing will be overrun by Islam as the Muslims reproduce at a far higher rate. The United States will fall to the Hispanic populations coming across the southern borders who are religious and have healthy reproductive rates while the former population which had fallen prey to Secular Humanism and lost their religious underpinnings and left the idea that having children is a healthy and necessary requirement of any society behind when they decided to follow the new age Secular Humanist philosophy and stopped having children. The religious, be they Christian, Jewish, Muslim or virtually any similar religion will become the fore of future societies while the new ideas which place the individual as the foremost individual whom one is to serve slowly become extinct. As Torah taught, the main responsibility for one to live a complete and proper life takes more than their obedience to Torah but also their responsibility to the society and its health is reproduction and the care of those youths born as they are your future and the continuation of the principles of the faith. Once again, this is a problem which will be self-repairing with religious thought continuing into the future as it has since years gone by while Secular Humanist self-centered viewpoint will lead to the end of their numbers over time. In the end, Bezalel Smotrich will be able to witness that Torah observant Israel providing he lives long enough for the future to unfold before him, as will the rest of us who are part of the religious Zionist movements.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The Big Question Most Heard

 

That question coming from Sabras (Native Israelis), Russians, Europeans and the other sundry Jews from the world over is, why don’t the American Jews move to Israel or make Aliyah. The answer often given is that they will come in good time. Unfortunately, that is probably the truth and the shame is that for the American Jews this will prove to be unfortunate. This may prove to be the most difficult article to write while not making many people very upset with what we write. Some may want to get upset and scream that this is not me; I want to live in Israel, but with my work and my home and everything, in time it will become easier. That is not really true as we waited until we were retired and it was still difficult choosing what to keep, what to sell and what, despite our attachment, to simply throw out. We were fortunate and sold our entire beer brewing system and bar equipment and limited our stuff needing a moving company to at most one container. Whatever the reason, this is a great time to make Aliyah as the building of apartments and residences have been being built at a fairly rapid pace which had lowered prices. That is as much of the advice we can offer.

 

Akko is the Oldest City in Israel Seen Overlooking Mediterranean Port Wall

 

How to answer why most American Jews are not making Aliyah and also answering the other main questions is difficult for one to be able to explain while remaining positive. This gets particularly difficult when the added question is to explain the reasoning behind the antics and demands of the Open Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and other branches in American Judaism for accepting new definitions for Halachic Law. Not every Jew is overly observant and even fewer attend all three services each day, but a large share of the population we have met are religious and attend services on some form of regular basis. They attend for yahrzeits, almost every holiday, and try to make Shabbat morning prayers every week. From what we remember, we probably have more people attending our Synagogue daily morning prayers than we often had on Shabbat morning prayers in the Synagogue we last attended in the United States. But very few question the definitions of Halachic Law. The Torah says exactly what it says and cannot be twisted to say otherwise. The Written traditions in Talmud and other commentaries are also quite definitive in their final decisions. On the necessity for adopting a new Oral Tradition to partly replace Talmud is accepted as something of a work in progress, but it is in progress by going through Talmudic principles and adding or questioning ideas and concepts within the structure which already exists. Very few desire throwing the entire system into the trashcan and defining all to fit every whim and societal idiosyncrasy existing today in European or American society. Judaism is supposed to offer alternatives from a tried and true history guided by Torah and our history, not a cult turning on every whim and being redefined to fit some leftist ideology. This has been the case of the demands by Rabbis from the ranks of Open Orthodoxy. We found an article which explains the problem likely better than we ever could in probably one of the most liberal media sources in Israel in Haaretz. Will some of the changes made in America eventually become accepted in Israeli Orthodox, probably. They are already accepted in many of the Conservative and Reform communities in Israel and these do exist but are a lesser offshoot than the more traditional Orthodox, which also have their flavors from Hassidic to Religious Zionist and everything inbetween, but all are governed by the Rabbinate.

 

The truth as most see it from many of the Americans already having made Aliyah is not as pretty as most might prefer. They see things differently than many in the United States see things, and perhaps that comes partly from the fact that being religious in Israel is far more readily attainable than it is in the United States. If one could only afford to reside over ten miles from the Synagogue in their city, they could not be expected to walk to Shabbat Services as at some distances one would need almost a full day to walk both directions. Such would not be resting on the Sabbath. But the problems go deeper than that. Many American Jews have replaced Halachic Law with the standards and positions of their leftist political positions. Such things then become “traditionally Jewish” as same sex marriage, inter-faith marriage, women rabbis, mixed seating for prayer (though this may change over time) and other modernisms. There is another problem in that many Americanized Jews no longer believe that the Torah is historically accurate and that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Queen Esther and the others from Biblical history and most of the Torah and Old Testament are fables to reveal a code of law whose people are imagined and never lived. Come and see the history for real here in Israel where discoveries, especially in the area known to have been the City of David and Cave of Machpelah and these people are very real and the history of Torah and Bible are also found to be accurate and as described. There is a reason why the Waqf has carried away truck loads of crushed rock from their “digging to replace old water pipes and to modernize the facilities” on the Temple Mount always digging in places which are described well in the Bible. Below is a montage of a few of the rubble piles and shown at the lower end are the efforts by the Israeli Antiquities Institute which took up with assisting the efforts when proof of their viability for actually producing artifacts, though dating them has posed a challenge as it is often difficult to discern at what depth and period some artifacts represent. Many Israelis offer their time to assist with this painstaking labors of love and dedication to preserving whatever historical remains can be found. These siftings have produced a small collection of the pomegranate-shaped bells that the Levites and Kohanim wore on their priestly robes (pictured below montage). Unfortunately, there have been far less large objects for after finding an intact column block the Waqf began their crushing of all larger stones to assure nothing of consequence might be found.

 

Temple Mount Destructive Arab Waqf
Excavation Dumping Site and Reclamation
Sifting Inspecting Seeking Remains of Artifacts
not Completely Destroyed as Intended

 

 

Collection of Pomegranate Shaped Bells from Biblical Priestly Robes

 

The story of why American Jews are not arriving in Israel with the urgency some European Jews have shown is simple, they are not being targeted as Jews as of yet. The American Jews are not going to be that far different from other populations. The Ethiopian Jews were brought here after they became persecuted and required saving. The Arab countries expelled their Jews who were refused entrance in most nations other than Israel, so theirs was a case of limited options. The first mass Aliyah of European Jews is well remembered as they had been brutally persecuted and slaughtered across Europe. The Russian Jews were escaping Communism and persecution. The Jews in America live lives which are mostly free of any anti-Semitism and only hear of such in the news and they realize how insulated and safe their lives are. They live an almost fairytale existence lacking want or acceptance. They are not the Jews of Babylon, of ancient Egypt building their cities, of ancient Greece where circumcision was punished by death and teaching Torah treated the same, of the Roman Empire where they were dispersed throughout the Empire and some past the Empires borders in order to make them as extinct as the Carthaginians became, or even of Persia where they loved in relative peace until they were targeted by Hamas and their salvation was the Queen, Esther, whose uncle Mordechai gave her the task of intervening with the king to save her people, or the Jews of any other period as none until the United States the Jews have felt persecution, and even the United States is not perfect as General Grant’s General Order No. 11 of 1862 which displaced the Jews in Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi before President Lincoln could countermand the order and return to General Grant with a turnaround of almost two months. But history is not a guarantee of the future as the Jews in Germany found out when they went from assimilated to hunted in a matter of under a decade. The other thing that history teaches is that no society is immune from drastic change when the wrong people take power.

 

The American Jews are largely in two communities, the very Orthodox and the varied but mostly assimilated. The main communities of the very Orthodox are found around New York City and a few other major cities and are largely closed communities who look out for one another and can be considered to be insular. The assimilated also seem to live largely in the suburbs or in high-end areas in some cities in communities such as Georgetown within Washington D.C. The assimilated have jobs in virtually every form of employment with the majority in professions which require advanced degrees. They also hold high positions within the government and political office. They are represented at far higher percentage then their percentage of the population in such professions as physicians, lawyers, engineering and college professors. This has made some fringe groups incited over this fact claiming that the Jews are attempting to control the society through these positions. Most of these people are largely ignored and make up an infinitesimal percentage of the population. The real challenge to the Jews in the United States comes from another direction, and they are largely blind to this coming threat.

 

This threat comes from the secular far left who see religion of any kind as threatening and rather than be agnostic or atheist they are secular humanist who believe that their natural and superior enlightenment means that they should dictate future politics and manage all legal and social regulations. Their real threat is that they have risen to numerous controlling positions in many, if not a majority, of the departments of the government. These are the people who control the machinations of the “Deep State” and thus influence regulations. These are the people who in the too near future will be producing legal systems which will make religious observance regulated to such a point that much of Torah and the Bible will have become legally prosecutable. Reading from numerous Bible passages would be considered to be a violation as hate speech. Some similar prosecutions have occurred in Canada as preaching the Bible has run up against legal regulations there. With the Constitutional guarantees, specifically the Bill of Rights, coming under attack from numerous NGOs and other organizations and political lobbying groups, who knows how long the religious protections in the First Amendment will survive. The Second Amendment is under extreme distress and the Tenth Amendment is all but dead as are much of the Eighth and Ninth Amendments. Once the Second Amendment falls, expect the First and then Fifth followed by the Fourth to follow within a decade.

 

What is coming in the near future in the United States will be considered shocking to the older generations but the youth have been indoctrinated to such an extent instead of instructed such that they no longer believe free speech cannot be abridged and any speech which is offensive to their peer groups should be illegal. They find that the entire Constitution and Bill of Rights to be too old to have meaning in our modern society and that the rules need to be changed to reflect their programming they received from their teachers and then their professors and believe that taxes must be raised and equaling income is a necessity. They also do not accept the concept of a Supreme Being and many believe that religion is a concept which is evil and the Bible is just some old book which is basically worthless. What is frightening is that many American Jews appear to believe the same things as the youth as they have joined the leftists and are members of the Secular Humanists. They have a completely new form of Judaism and demand that the Israelis adopt their interpretation of Torah. The difference between Israel with the acceptance of the Torah, Bible, Gomorra and Talmud as real and applicable as written and that the final two can be adapted, but only in reference to Torah and slowly and methodically while the American Jews (non-Traditional Orthodox) have adapted Torah to fit their beliefs completely throwing out the old commentaries as irrelevant to their modern society and in their stead placing the preachings of their new wave Rabbis whose ideas are more suitable to teaching a college philosophy class than to Torah commentary.

 

The immediate reply will most likely be that we have no idea about what we are speaking. Allow us to speak of the Rosh HaShana sermon given by our Rabbi of a Conservative Synagogue, a loveable and kind Rabbi who was a good person and likely his sermon was adapted in order to please the congregants, especially those who only come to the synagogue three or four times per year but also make very large and generous donations to make up for their lack of making it to Shabbat morning services. His sermon was about a same sex marriage he had recently officiated at our Synagogue and how beautiful the service and the loving couple were and the greatness that we, as a congregation, allowed such a celebration to be held and how our acceptance was indicative of our religious faith. This wedding was a great stride in healing the world from old prejudices and the making of a rich, new world filled of acceptances of all varieties of people and making inroads into wedding our faith with the other faiths proven by the inter-faith marriage he officiated at a church with the minister and the wonderful loving couple and how their children would be so rich having both religious beliefs. The sermon went on for close to thirty to forty-five minutes, maybe more; one of us kept nodding off for some wishful bliss. We have found out that our Synagogue was far from an exception of the new definition of Judaism and stretching of Torah to include the leftist ideologies where all forms of coupling are accepted and where sin has become a relative term with no absolutes beyond unacceptance of this new secular humanist theology. Yes, secular humanism is a religion complete with a dogma and its own sins, many of which are political in nature and any of the keeping of the old ways is one of the greatest of sins and now all religions must adopt the secular humanist diktats.

 

This difference has become a serious problem between Israeli Jews and American Jews. Now there are quite a few Israeli Jews who believe in the secular humanist philosophy and probably would not be too deterred should Israel become more akin to American Jewish thought, the non-Orthodox variety. But in Israel, they accept that the majority are religious and orthodox following Torah. The Rabbinate is a fact which in Israel the only change some wish to make is for there to be only one Chief Rabbi, not two. The big change coming in Israel, which will take far longer probably, not allowing us alive today to witness without assistance from Hashem, will be the unifying of the several sects into a single Judaism. There will inevitably come a merging of the Chabad, Hasidic, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Bnei Menashe, Sabras and numerous smaller sects and there will be a single Judaism finally in Israel, that is our most immediate task. Much of this will take place simply by the most natural means, intermarriage. Whenever we see a mixed couple of Jews, we get a smile and feel that day approaching just that little bit faster. As far as Israel adopting the Secular Humanist views, that is highly unlikely and there are other differences which live in the political arena.

 

The political difference is also fairly stark. The assimilated, secular humanist, non-Orthodox, American Jews are sold on the idea of the Two State Solution because it has that fairness and equality theme they believe the world naturally uses to resolve differences, in their world that is. Even many of the most liberal Jews have surrendered the idea of the Two State Solution as impossible and as having been destroyed by Mahmoud Abbas. The American Jews looked at the recent Gaza border riots as a peaceful demonstration against the Israeli occupation and embargo and there were a small few who hijacked parts of the demonstration using violence and that it is time for Israel to loosen their embargo and end the occupation of Gaza. Israelis know that Israel finished their disengagement from Gaza that was enacted back in August 2005. Israelis also realize that any loosening of the embargo which is established simply to prevent Hamas and Islamic Jihad importing heavy weaponry is not workable and that the vast majority of goods are allowed in, especially aid goods, mostly passed on for Hamas to distribute the same day or the next day. Israelis know that Hamas uses the vast majority of these goods to raise funds charging the Gazans for the aid while keeping any building materials for the construction of underground bunkers for Hamas and Islamic Jihad members to be secured within along with interconnecting tunnels or to build infiltration tunnels into Israel in order to carry out attacks or to attempt kidnapping of Israelis. Many American Jews believe that Israel has no option and that the original idea was to make both an Arab and a Jewish state west of the Jordan River.

 

Israelis know that was simply one idea suggested by the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 181 which was negated as soon as the Arab League voted to reject that idea as they refused to permit any Jewish State. The reality instead returned to the San Remo Conference and the related British Mandate agreements. These all made for an Arab State today known as Jordan and everything west of the Jordan River was reserved for the Jewish State. Israeli Jews realize that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority all agree that their goal is for no Jewish State to exist. They disagree on who gets to rule and Hamas also declares that they are to destroy Israel and then continue to kill Jews everywhere while they conquer the world for them to rule. Israeli Jews realize that the recent Gaza rioting had as its intent exactly what Sinwar, Hamas leader, stated, to break down the border fence, murder Jews tearing out their hearts and eating their livers as we have already reported repeatedly, and to replace Israel with a state ruled by Hamas. Had they succeeded, then it would have been not only the end of Israel, but the end of the Palestinian Authority as they would be the next target, as Hamas believes them to be apostates deserving of death. The world might have mourned the dead six and a half million Jews, but we would not expect many would honestly care and the few who did would mourn quietly after the initial solemn announcements which would end as quickly as possible as it would be a bother.

 

We could continue to list the ways Israeli Jews, in general, are different and separate from American Jews, in general. There is no reason to continue, as there are numerous articles written on the subject for those interested. Many are written from the American point of view but there are those from the Israeli view with many simply responses to those other articles. The two groups have taken very different paths and it will take something traumatic for them to forge a single people. As the two societies are, there can be no immediate merging of the American Jews with the Israeli Jews. We know this, as we were not an acceptable fit in our last congregation but once here in Israel found our fit was transformational, as finally we had found a Jewish group of communities where we fit in naturally. There were some in that last congregation with whom we fit and some requested we keep such our secret as they had hid their conservative beliefs and reached general acceptance and they did not desire their work to be undone. As we have told before, many in that Synagogue responded to our announcement of moving to Israel with almost the same words which were, “Why would you want to move to a place like that, they are so backwards.” Well, I guess we like backwards, though we believe that Torah and the Bible are eternal and the proper guide for life, and certain realities which measure the health of a society are proving this to be a valid statement.

 

Beyond the Cusp