Category Archives: News

Trumping Terrorism

When the Obama White House and Dick Cheney agree on something, it’s worthy of note.

What united the two – along with a conga line of Democratic and Republican presidential candidates, members of Congress and world leaders – was Donald Trump’s latest gambit to garner attention.  That would be the candidate’s announced desire to effect a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States until elected leaders can “figure out what… is going on.”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Mr. Trump’s position “disqualifies him from serving as president.”  Mr. Cheney said it “goes against everything we stand for and believe in.”  The others all echoed those sentiments.

Leaving aside, though, what America stands for, there is also what Israeli journalist Chemi Shalev noted, namely, that “ISIS dreams of an Islam-hating America that isolates its own Muslims; Trump is busy making their dreams come true.”

President Obama made that same point in his December 6 address to the nation.

He demanded that Muslim leaders “decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like ISIL and Al Qaeda promote,” but also warned that “We cannot [let] this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam. That… is what groups like ISIL want.”

What’s more, there are more than a billion Muslims worldwide, and the vast majority of radical Islamists’ victims are Muslims. The average Muslim may not support Israel, but neither is he a murderer.

Had Mr. Trump just urged special scrutiny of visa applications from certain countries, it would not have raised very many eyebrows very high.  But, of course, it’s eyebrows and outrage he’s after.

A more dignified and wise approach toward Muslims came from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, in an address to a gathering at a Virginia mosque.

After speaking out against “the discrimination, vilification and isolation that American Muslims face in these challenging times,” he reminded his listeners that “terrorist organizations overseas have targeted your communities. They seek to pull your youth into the pit of violent extremism.”  And he challenged the Muslim community to “Help us to help you stop this.”

Depressingly, though, instead of publicly exhorting their followers to seek out and uproot the germs of evil seeking to infect their communities, some American Muslim spokespeople chose instead to just kvetch.

“We would never ask any other faith community to stand up and condemn acts of violence committed by people within their groups,” complained one, activist Linda Sarsour.

Ms. Sarsour might consider that, were Presbyterians or Mormons regularly killing innocents in the name of their faiths and celebrating the carnage, they would surely draw similar attention to their co-religionists.  There, too, condemning an entire religion for the acts of some of its evil actors would be wrong.  But equally wrong would be reluctance on the part of the religions’ leaders to shout their condemnation of the evil from the rooftops and to call on their followers to be help root it out.

Instead, here, we have de rigueur, lackluster statements of disassociation from terrorist acts.

And, more depressing still, we have “moderate” sentiments like those of the male San Bernardino mass murderer’s father, who revealed that his son had expressed support for ISIS and “was obsessed with Israel.”  The father explained how he counseled his son to “Stay calm, be patient, in two years Israel will no longer exist… Russia, China, America too, nobody wants the Jews there.”

How prevalent such “moderation” is in the Muslim world can’t be known.  But it, too, is part of the rot that infects immature minds and can fester into violence.

Sympathy is in order for innocent Muslims who are portrayed by dint of their faith alone as potential terrorists.  It may be fear that prevents them from speaking out more loudly, engaging in concrete and effective acts to undermine Islamist ideologies and partnering with law enforcement to prevent terrorism.  But all that is their moral mandate; the proverbial push has come to shove.

Following the recent knife attack at a London subway station, where the attacker reportedly said “This is for Syria!” before proceeding to stab commuters, a video recorded the voice of an onlooker with an Arabic accent shouting “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv!” several times.  The phrase, happily, has been widely seized upon as an expression of how most Muslims feel.  And it likely is.

But still, it’s puzzling, and perhaps telling, that the shouter, despite the fame and adulation his words have garnered, has yet to come forward to present himself to the public.

Maybe he’s just modest.

Or, less laudable, he’s afraid.

© 2015 Hamodia

Of Labels and Fables

In European Union countries, the words “Product of the West Bank (Israeli settlement)” will now replace “Product of Israel” on labels of foodstuffs, cosmetics and other consumer goods produced by Jewish-owned enterprises in Yehudah and Shomron. Similar labels will grace Jewish products that originate in the Golan Heights and parts of Yerushalayim liberated in the 1967 Six Day War.

In announcing the new policy, E.U. authorities said it was their duty to let consumers know the geographic origin of products so that buyers can make “informed decisions.”  The new rule is itself “informed,” and by something more than consumer concern.  By anti-Israel sentiment.

The European Union is, of course, entitled to not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the territories captured in 1967.  Our own country, in fact, has also regarded those areas to be under Israeli occupation since that year; Israel herself, for that matter, has never annexed them.  Israeli leaders, moreover, including her current Prime Minister, have pledged their willingness to offer Palestinians parts of the captured territory in exchange for an enforceable peace – although, until a nonbelligerent Palestinian leadership emerges, the vision remains hypothetical.

But the labeling law is no mere expression of disapproval of the territories’ unresolved status.  It is an act of transparent hypocrisy.

There are territorial disputes in scores of countries.  But no products from disputed areas of China, Morocco, Turkey or India, to take only several such nations, are subject to special labeling to “inform” consumers of the conflicts. The reason Israel is being treated differently lies… well, where anyone rational readily recognizes it lies.

The fact alone that the new EU rule came about only after incessant lobbying by Palestinian representatives and a gaggle of “sympathetic” NGOs should suffice to reveal the true agenda at work here.  And it isn’t consumer protection.  The EU’s contention that its rule is a simple technical correction is a cynical fable.

And the Obama administration’s acceptance of that fabrication is shameful.

A State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said the EU move is only a “technical guideline,” and not a boycott, which, the spokesman explained, the administration would oppose.

But, he added, “We understand the objective is to provide EU consumers correct information on the origin of products, as required by EU law.”  He’s very understanding.

But should he wish to understand the essence of the new rule, he might consider the reaction of PLO secretary-general Saeb Erekat to its enactment.  Triumphantly, he lauded it as “a significant move toward a total boycott of Israeli settlements.”

Readers of this column know that I don’t share the common feeling that President Obama is less than fully dedicated to Israel’s security. His actions over the years, I have contended, and still contend, simply don’t support that conclusion.  But the same commitment to veracity that impels me to give credit where it is due obliges me no less to criticize the indefensible.  And the administration’s declining to condemn the EU rule cannot be defended.

I understand – from Mr. Obama’s perspective as a proponent and would-be architect of a “two-state solution” – the president’s frustrations with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The recent “bury the hatchet” meeting at the White House was likely more photogenic than factual. And one might reasonably suspect that the administration’s laissez faire reaction to the EU rule was a sort of silencer-muzzled parting shot at what the American leader sees as the Israeli one’s insufficient determination to promote a resolution to the “occupation.”

But differences of opinion about promoting a two-state solution (leave aside who, much more than Mr. Netanyahu, is holding it back) is not the issue here. It’s not Israel’s current Prime Minister who is being marginalized by the Europeans.  It is Israel.  Mr. Obama should realize that, and he should have called the EU crooked spade a crooked spade, and denounced it as the duplicity it is.

It’s unlikely that administration officials are given to seeing symbolism and irony in world events.  But if they were, they might note the fact that, shortly after the EU ruling, the world was rudely awoken to the immediacy of terrorist evil.  Parisians and the Western World suddenly got a taste of what Israelis have been enduring regularly – terrorism emboldened by “world opinion.”

And the ground zero, so to speak, of the Paris massacres, the gritty, jihadi-breeding Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, which spawned the late, unlamented terrorist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is a mere 15-minute drive from Le Berlaymont, the building housing the headquarters of the European Union.

© 2015 Hamodia

Denominational Déjà Vu

This article appeared in the New York Jewish Week

Back in February, 2001, an article I wrote for Moment Magazine caused quite a stir.  Its thesis – that, since the Conservative movement’s claim to halachic integrity was not supported by fact, Conservative Jews who respect Jewish religious law should consider joining Orthodox communities – was understandably disturbing to some. Much of the uproar, however, was likely caused by the incendiary title that publication insisted on slapping on the piece.  I had titled it “Time to Come Home”; Moment ran it under a large, bold headline reading “The Conservative Lie.”

The article ended up causing some healthy discussion (and, I immodestly add, won an American Jewish Press Association award).  It also inspired several Conservative movement officials to call me nasty names.  None, though, offered any cogent rebuttal to what I had demonstrated, namely that the process of determining Conservative “halacha” differed in an essential way from the halachic process of the millennia.

Halacha has always been decided through the objective examination of Biblical verses, mediated through the Talmud and legal codes, with a single goal: to discern the Torah’s intention. By contrast, I observed, the Conservative process generally involved first identifying a desired result, and then massaging the sources to “yield” that outcome.

An example I noted was the issue of same-sex intimate relationships.  Although halachic literature, based on verses in the Torah, considers such relations unarguably wrong, contemporary Western society, even at the time, had come to embrace the idea of “alternate lifestyles.”

I predicted that, in the realm of sexual expression, the Conservative movement would soon enough “halachically” approve what halacha forbids in no uncertain terms.  In 2006, I was vindicated when the Conservative movement’s “Committee on Jewish Law and Standards” endorsed a position permitting “commitment ceremonies” between people of the same sex and the ordination as Conservative rabbis of people living openly homosexual lives. Since then, of course, as homosexual activity has come to be celebrated in the larger world, the Conservative legal system has trotted close behind.

It didn’t take any powers of prophecy to discern what I did, only those of observation and perception.  And I perceive precisely the same Conservative approach to halacha in what bills itself today as “Open Orthodoxy.”

That neologism encompasses three institutions: Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Yeshivat Maharat – educational entities that ordain men and women, respectively – and the International Rabbinic Fellowship, a rabbinic group.

If the “open” in “Open Orthodoxy” means to imply that what has long been called Orthodox Judaism is somehow “closed” to other Jews, that proposition would greatly surprise any non-Orthodox Jew who has ever walked into an Orthodox shul.  What it more likely means to suggest is that, theologically, what has until now been called Orthodoxy is somehow “close-minded.”

That stance, though, reveals that the other word in the phrase, “Orthodox,” is deeply misleading. Which is why the Council of Torah Sages, an elite group of widely-respected yeshiva-dean elders, has declared that the new movement has no claim on the title “Orthodox.”

Whether the halachic topic being addressed is same-sex relationships, interfaith interactions, kashrut, marriage, divorce or conversion, the desideratum of “Open Orthodoxy” is unmistakably to bring Jewish religious praxis “into line” with contemporary mores.  That may not be not explicit in the wording of “Open Orthodox” statements or responsa – any more than it was fourteen years ago in those of the Conservative movement.  But in both cases it is manifest.

In halacha as it has developed over millennia, there are decisions that render permissions and others that yield forbiddances.  Tellingly, the Conservative movement’s “halachic” positions are almost exclusively permissive.  Ditto for those of “Open Orthodoxy.”  In fact, the two movements are, their different chosen names notwithstanding, simply indistinguishable.

Let me stress that I am speaking of a concept here, not people; of theological systems, not the intentions of students who have been attracted to “Open Orthodox” institutions, some of whom are clearly idealists who wish to serve the Jewish people.  The problem isn’t those students or their idealism, but rather the proposition they are taught, that halacha is ripe for “updating.”  Halacha does indeed take societal developments into account; sometimes they make a difference, sometimes they do not.  But the Zeitgeist does not determine the halacha.  The accepted elders, the most experienced Torah scholars, of each generation, do.  That is itself a premise of the halachic system.

The new movement’s name is a misnomer, a dangerously misleading one.  Just as “kosher-style” food isn’t kosher, neither is “Open Orthodoxy” Orthodox.  It is neo-Conservatism.  Which is why the greatest, most widely recognized, Torah scholars today – and not only those of the haredi world – have rejected its Jewish authenticity.

I take no pleasure in revealing the truth about “Open Orthodoxy.”  But truth-in-labeling is not only a civil mandate but a halachic one.

Fourteen years ago, I implored halacha-respecting non-Orthodox Jews to come home to the Judaism of the ages.  Today, I experience – apologies to the late Yogi Berra – “déjà vu all over again.” My plea persists.

Misguided Mounters

“As if the situation here was not sensitive enough,” groused an incredulous MK Yoel Hasson (Hamachaneh HaTzioni).

He was referring to Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely’s comment that her “dream is to see the Israeli flag flying over the Temple Mount” and her conviction that Jews should able to pray on Har HaBayis.

Mr. Hasson had harsher words, too, for the minister, ascribing to her “the stubbornness of a donkey” and calling for her dismissal.

Nor was Prime Minister Netanyahu pleased by Ms. Hotovely’s sentiment.  He had her cancel a press conference and impressed upon her the need to clarify that she had not been speaking for the government.  He also “requested” that Ms. Hotovely inform his office before any public appearance, so that her messages can be “coordinated” with Mr. Netanyahu’s policies.

The Prime Minister’s move was as wise as Ms. Hotolevy’s was foolhardy.  Past weeks have shown that bluster about Har HaBayis provides violent Palestinians with a handy pretext to violently vent the hatred they feel for Jews.

In the wake of Yerushalayim’s liberation from Jordan in 1967, Israel instituted a policy giving the Islamic trust known as the Waqf religious control over Har HaBayis, with Israel responsible for the area’s security.  That modus vivendi has generally kept the peace at the site.

That policy dovetailed with the halachic psak din at the time of rabbanim from across the spectrum, including Rav Avrohom Yitzchak Kook, zt”l, that ascending the Mount is forbidden.

Former chief rabbis Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi Doron, and current Israeli chief rabbis Rabbi David Lau and Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, as well as senior “national religious” leaders like Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, have also forbidden Jews from ascending Har HaBayis.

In 2009 Rav Elyashiv, zt”l, called on Israel’s president to actively prevent Jews from visiting the site, both because of the halachic concerns and because doing so can lead to bloodshed.  Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch recently declared that those who ascend the Har “will be held accountable” for resultant Muslim attacks on Jews.

In defiance of that wide consensus, in recent years, increasing numbers of nationalist Jews have made a point of ascending the Mount, and have, as a result, raised the ire of Muslims. According to the Associated Press, approximately 10,000 Jews visited the site last year, compared to 200 or 300 annually a decade ago.  And a nationalist group is currently offering to pay $516 to any Jew arrested for praying there.

While any excuse suffices for some Palestinians to try to kill Jews, the “reason” professed by recent murderers and would-be murderers has been their perception that Israel is poised to abrogate the 1967 policy regarding the Har HaBayis.  It is a perception unarguably fueled by the actions and words of the “Temple Mount activists.”

Those nationalistic Jews, however, value the rush born of physically asserting that the Har HaBayis is Judaism’s holiest site, over whatever hatred or bloodshed it may evoke from violence-prone Arabs.  That respected Torah leaders reject that calculus as corrupt is of no concern to them.  They are the “young guard,” and know better.

And they bring to mind the Gemara in Nedarim (40a) about the decision made by the melech Rechavam to shun the advice of the elders of his father Shlomo’s court and heed instead the advice of younger advisors (Melachim Alef, 12): “[What might seem] constructive on the part of the young [can in fact be] destructive; and [what might seem] destructive on the part of elders [can in fact be] constructive.”  Rechavam’s wrong choice brought terrible schism to Klal Yisrael, fanning the flames of rebellion.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of the “activists”, only their wisdom – and their bitachon.  Yes, as Ms. Hotovely remarked, Har HaBayis is “the holiest place for the Jewish people.”  Thus, agitating for a Jewish presence there now might seem a high-minded thing.  In truth, though, it betrays a discomfort with our mesorah, which assures us that the Third Beis HaMikdash will appear only when Hashem sees fit.

Jews who are truly secure in their faith feel no compulsion to engage in political acts (much less actions that endanger other Jews) in order to proclaim that Eretz Yisrael is the Jewish land, and  Har HaBayis its spiritual center.  Those are indisputable facts.

And they are facts impervious to whatever borders temporal states may choose to draw, and whatever structures mortal men may build.  Yishmael is just a custodian, stewarding the Har HaBayis for the day – may it come soon – when the Beis HaMikdash will return to it.

That will happen, though, through merits, not machinations.

© 2015 Hamodia

Barack is Leaving the Building

Although Barack Obama’s last day in office won’t come until January 20, 2017, the spectacle of the various presidential debates reminds us all that we won’t have him to kick around too much longer.

It’s no secret that the current Commander-in-Chief is unpopular in some circles, including, I suspect, a good part of of Hamodia’s readership.  His support for a “two state solution” in Israel seems, to many, outdated and unrealistic; his long-time discord with the current prime minister of Israel (amply fueled by both men) is legend; and, most recently, his Iran deal left many upset.

Some read those entrails as indicating an animus for Israel.  I don’t.  Either way, though, we’re not absolved from the elemental Jewish ideal of hakaras hatov, “recognition of the good” – which, Chazal inform us, is due even to inanimate things, and presumably, too, to people we may not like.  Whatever one’s views on Mr. Obama, some things he has said and – more importantly – done over his terms in office merit our recognition.

What things?  Here are some:

In his 2009 Cairo speech to the Arab world, he stated that America’s “strong bond” with Israel is “unbreakable,” and that the Jewish “aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.” He firmly denounced anti-Semitic stereotyping and Holocaust denial, staples of the Arab square, and condemned anyone who would threaten Israel’s destruction.

That same year, he rejected the critical-of-Israel’s Gaza operation “Goldstone report.”

The next year he refused U.S. participation in joint military exercises with Turkey unless Israel was included.  And he told the U.N. General Assembly that year that “Israel is a sovereign state and the historic homeland of the Jewish people” (something denied, of course, by the Arab world).  Then, in 2011, he withdrew the U.S. from the Israel-bashing Durban II Conference.  That year, he also threatened Egypt with severe consequences if it didn’t protect Israeli embassy guards besieged by a mob, which it did, and Israel evacuated the hostages.

In 2014, he sought funding from Congress (to the tune of $225 million) for Israel’s “Iron Dome” system, and signed the law providing the funds.

He relentlessly pursued Islamic terrorists, like Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden (and was vilified by some on the left for his decisive actions).  And the Obama administration has provided more security assistance to Israel than any American administration;

And then there are words Mr. Obama wrote or spoke that may not have received the attention they deserved.  Like:

“I’ve seen what security means to those who live near the Blue Line, to children in Sderot who just want to grow up without fear, to families who’ve lost their homes and everything they have to Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s rockets. And as a father myself, I cannot imagine the pain endured by the parents of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, who were tragically kidnapped and murdered…”

[Holocaust denial] is “baseless, ignorant, and hateful, [as is] the “threatening [of] Israel with destruction” [and the] “repeating [of] vile stereotypes about Jews.”

“Palestinians must abandon violence.  [It is] a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus.”

“More than 3,000 years ago, the Jewish people lived here [in Israel], tended the land here, prayed to G-d here.  [That Jews live in Israel today] is a rebirth, a redemption unlike any in history.”

“Those who long to see an independent Palestine rise must stop trying to tear Israel down. . . . After 60 years in the community of nations, Israel’s existence must not be a subject for debate… It should be clear to all that efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of the U.S.”

His Secretary of State lectured Al-Jazeera that “when the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon they got Hezbollah and 40,000 rockets and when they pulled out of Gaza they got Hamas and 20,000 rockets”; and his State Department condemned the Palestinian Authority’s denial of the Western Wall’s connection to the Jewish people.

I don’t think that Mr. Obama’s appointment of Jews to important posts (Jack Lew and Janet Yellin are the best known, but it’s a long list) or his yearly “Pesach Seders” are of great significance, but they do say something about Mr. Obama’s attitude toward Jews and Judaism.

And so, even those who see bad in Mr. Obama must, if they wish to be true to a Jewish ideal, recognize good too.

© 2015 Hamodia

Buried Treasure in Tokyo

At a news conference last week, Satoshi Omura, a Japanese researcher and one of three scientists who had just won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, made a comment that was not only modest but, properly considered, profound.

I’ll get to the comment in time.  First, though, some background:

The scientists used modern laboratory techniques to discover anti-parasitic drugs that, in the Nobel Committee’s words, “have revolutionized the treatment of some of the most devastating parasitic diseases” in the world.

Dr. Omura’s work was on the development of a medicine that has nearly eradicated the dreaded disease “river blindness” and radically reduced the incidence of the disfiguring disease known as elephantiasis. Dr. Omura’s work has already helped hundreds of millions of sufferers of these diseases, and has the potential of eradicating the ailments entirely.

Parasitic diseases are a threat to an estimated one-third of the world’s population, particularly among the poor in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America.

The work of Dr. Omura and the other scientists consisted of identifying and isolating a compound, which they called Avermectin, that occurs in nature – in this case soil collected by Dr. Omura from a golf course near Tokyo.

Anti-parasitic agents are not the only blessings concealed in plants and soil.  Many anti-bacterial and anti-viral compounds have also been found hidden in plain (if microscopic) sight, and successfully treat dangerous infections common in the Western world.

The most famous one is penicillin, which was discovered in 1928 when an airborne mold infected a petri dish in the lab of Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming.  But there are scores of substances in nature that have become effective treatments for myriad maladies.

The bacterium that causes clostridium difficile colitis, or “C-diff,” for instance, a serious intestinal ailment, is prevalent in hospitals and, in 2011 resulted in about half a million infections and 29,000 deaths in the United States alone.

One of the most effective treatments for C-diff is a drug called Vancomycin (which also is the treatment of choice for complicated skin and bloodstream infections and some forms of meningitis).  The drug was first isolated in 1953 from a soil sample collected from the interior jungles of Borneo.

Many scientists, upon isolating such compounds and identifying their properties and uses, proudly accept credit for their accomplishments.  How many, though, I wonder, stop to think about just what it is they did and didn’t do?

To be sure, much credit is due for the painstaking work of cultivating biological agents, experimenting with them, compiling data, and then collating and interpreting them.  But such cures for diseases, in the end, are merely discovered by the men of science, not created by them.

Do the researchers give thought to the Creator of the cures, Who secured them in unexplored places, until the arrival of the right time for their discoveries?  Have they considered how odd it is that there even are cures for dreaded diseases in soil and plants?

So much of what is heralded as astounding scientific achievement is simply accessing the miracle of nature, of Hashem’s gifts.  When a sheep was first successfully cloned a number of years ago, what was essentially accomplished was the coaxing of genetic material to do precisely what it does naturally all the time: code for traits, replicate and direct protein synthesis. Those things, not the clonings, were, and are, the miracles.

And when they were first performed, heart transplants were amazing. But, at least to thoughtful people, never remotely as amazing as hearts.

Dr. Omura seems to have the requisite sensitivity to recognize, despite the great impact of his accomplishment, the limitation of the role he played.

We don’t understand why diseases are necessary (although they point, like nothing else could, to the fragility of our bodies, and the many miracles we are beneficiaries of when we are healthy).  But it should astound us that Hashem has planted cures for ailments in the world He created for us.

Dr. Omura’s comment?  After expressing his surprise at having won the Nobel Prize (“I never imagined I would win.  If I had, I’d have worn a nicer necktie.”), he offered an assessment of what he had done.

“I merely borrowed,” he said, “the power of microbes.”

He didn’t cite the Creator of microbes (and everything else), and I have no idea of his religious beliefs.  But his words, all the same, should serve to remind every maamin of the manifold miracles we routinely, if obliviously, experience, and of the fathomless debt we owe Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

© 2015 Hamodia

 

Where “Objective” is Defective

I’m not among those who grow apoplectic at the New York Times’ reportage from Israel.  There are, to be sure, occasions when, in misguided attempts to achieve what passes these days for “evenhandedness,” the Old Gray Lady misses the mark.  But I have found most (I wrote “most”! – please hold off with the angry letters!) of the dispatches from Eretz Yisrael to be informative and objective.

What isn’t either of those things, though, is how the paper has repeatedly chosen to characterize the Har HaBayis. In fact, “misleading” and “deceptive” are the most descriptive words to come to mind.

After a recent clash between Israeli police and Palestinians at the site, for instance, a September 16 New York Times report referred to the holy place as the site where the Jewish temples were “believed to have once stood.”  Another story, three days earlier, described it as a site “revered by Jews” but “one of the three holiest sites in Islam.”  Why not “revered by Jews and Muslims,” or “Islam’s third holiest site and Judaism’s holiest one”?  Something is rotten in the state of New York.

Similarly, two years ago, a Times video referred to the Har HaBayis as the place “that Jews call the Temple Mount…” and that “Jews widely believe was the site of the Temples.”

Call the Temple Mount?  That’s what it is.  Believe?  Yes, like we believe the sun is hot.

No historian, at least in a state of sobriety, entertains the slightest doubt that the Bayis Sheini stood on the mount for centuries, having been built there nearly 1500 years before Islam’s founder’s grandmother was born.  Both Jewish and, l’havdil, Roman sources recount that korbanos were offered on the mizbei’ach there.  (The historicity of the Bayis Rishon is part of our mesorah, but the lack of contemporary non-Jewish writings from the time deprives historians the documentary “proof” they demand.)

That the Har HaBayis was conquered by Christian, and then Muslim, forces, and that churches and mosques were built upon the site, is undeniable.  Equally undeniable, though, are the site’s true Jewish origins – brightly reflected in the life and prayers of Jews over the course of known history.

Every observant Jew recalls the Beis Hamikdash every single day of the year, in each of his or her tefillos – recited, of course, facing in the direction of what we “widely believe was the site of the Temples.”

Then there are our holidays, like the one just past, where our Mussaf tefillos include a lengthy bemoaning of those Temples’ destructions.

The words “Yerushalayim” and its synonym “Tzion,” the city whose holiness derives from the holiness of the Makom Hamikdash, pass our lips at least ten times every morning.  Before breakfast.

There is “shabchi Yerushalayim” in Pesukei d’Zimrah, “ohr chodosh al Tzion to’ir” in birkas Krias Shma, Boneh Yerushalayim in Shemoneh Esrei, another reference in Tachanun, and others throughout Shacharis.  And let’s not forget Korbanos.

And then, after breakfast, well, if one had a bowl of cereal, his Al Hamichyah would mention Yerushalayim two more times.  And if bread was consumed, one of the brachos of Birkas Hamazon, of course, expresses our hope that Hashem will be “boneh b’rachamov Yerushalayim.”

What distorts the vision of the “paper of record” is, of course, a deep commitment to fairness and objectivity.  There is, after all, a “Muslim narrative,” too, a claim to the Makom Hamikdash by another religion, indeed one that, at least in numbers of adherents, dwarfs the Jewish one.

But fairness, of course, doesn’t mean considering every claim to be the equal of every other one.  When the New York Times refers to the events of September 11, 2001, it describes them as a concerted attack by Al Qaeda on the United States, not as “a series of plane crashes believed by Americans to have been Islamist attacks but considered by many in the Arab world to have been the work of the American government or a Jewish plot.”  At least it hasn’t done so yet.

It’s an unfortunate reminder of our galus that the Bais Hamikdash isn’t standing where it once did.  But we must accept that sad fact.  It is wrong to seek (other than through our tefillos) to change that current reality, halachically wrong to walk onto the Har HaBayis, and doubly wrong to endanger Jews by offending those who occupy the site.

But what’s also wrong (attention: New York Times) is to pretend that its history isn’t established and clear.

© 2015 Hamodia

Say It Ain’t So, Mike

In 1990, attorney Mike Godwin introduced what became known as “Godwin’s Law,” the contention that if an electronic discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on for long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone to Hitler, ym”s.

Philosopher Leo Strauss referenced something similar back in 1951, coining the means of argument that compares an opponent’s view to that of Hitler as “reductio ad Hitlerum.”

Over recent weeks some critics of the U.S. administration have characterized its approach to curbing Iran’s nuclear weapons as dangerous appeasement, and President Obama as a reincarnation of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who famously crowed that the 1938 Munich Agreement with Germany heralded “peace for our time.”  Less than a year later, of course, Germany would invade Poland and Europe would be plunged into World War II.

Needless to say, even for those among us who consider the Iran deal ill-advised, there is a considerable gulf between proudly waving a piece of paper as proof of an evil man’s good will and an arduously crafted and enforceable agreement requiring an evil regime’s submission to intrusive inspections and monitoring.

But, inflated though it was, the Obama-Chamberlain comparison was one thing.

Another thing entirely was Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s contention last week that President Obama was marching Israelis “to the door of the oven.”  The candidate – no other way to read it – was calling the president a Nazi.

I have personally always found Mr. Huckabee’s voice to be a refreshing one in the political arena.  On moral and educational issues, the former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist minister generally reflects ideals valued by most religious Jews.  He has visited Israel numerous times. And he has a sense of humor (very important in my book), as evident in his naming the musical band he formed, “Capitol Offense.”

But his Iran deal comment was grotesque.

To be sure, the designs of Iran’s leaders today can certainly be compared to those of Germany’s 77 years ago.  That doesn’t, however, make anyone who wants to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapon dreams without declaring war a Hitler.

Criticism of Mr. Huckabee’s words drew fire not only from Democratic politicians but from nonpartisan groups like the ADL, and from Israeli officials.  Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, called the comment inappropriate and Israeli Transport Minister Yisrael Katz, while stressing that Mr. Huckabee was “genuinely concerned” with Israel’s future,  said: “Dear Mr. Huckabee, no one is marching Jews to the ovens anymore.”

Mr. Katz’s chiding, however, came from a brash Zionist place, evident from his further words: “That is why we established the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces; and if necessary, we will know how to defend ourselves by ourselves.”

To those of us familiar with the phrase kochi v’otzem yadi, such braggadocio is saddening. In this case, though, it’s also entirely beside the point.  What was offensive about Mr. Huckabee’s words wasn’t their insinuation that Israel is helpless; it was the vulgarity of the comment itself.

To wax meta, the comment is itself a comment – on the state of political discourse in the United States today.  Yes, there has always been a measure of rudeness in political partisanship, a small serving of snark in the way politicians and their fans refer to other politicians and theirs.

But there once was some degree of dignity that reined in excess when it came to political speech.  No more, though.  Decorum has left the building.

Part of the blame, of course, is the media.  Not just talk radio and other electronic forms of verbal blood sport.  But print media too, which seem to endorse not only “If it bleeds, it leads,” but “If it’s hating, it’s a high rating.”

And so, politicians eager for attention vie to outdo each other (and in Mr. Trump’s case, to outdo himself) in outrageousness, hoping to seize the news cycle for a day, or even a few hours. That all the shameful showboating seems to garner increased support says something about at least part of the contemporary electorate, and it’s not pretty.

What’s even more disturbing, though, is that even Jews are drawn into the jeering crowd around the boxing ring.

“The response from Jewish people,” Mr. Huckabee said as the criticism of his “oven” remark swirled around him, “has been overwhelming positive.”  How overwhelmingly sad.

There’s hope, though.  Later, the candidate admitted that, “Maybe the metaphor [of the oven] is not a good one.”

If he continues on that more thoughtful track, he may yet win back his dignity.  And who knows?  Maybe it will even prove contagious.

© 2015 Hamodia