Bringing out the best and the worst

We bring out the best and the worst

The Gemara says that one reason the Jews were sent into exile is to set a good example of right living to the gentiles and arguably the most decent gentile societies have been ones that looked to the Bible for guidance.

America used to do that. Currently, America is in a terrible death spiral caused in large part to its abandonment of biblical morality. There are people such as David Duke who blame the Jews for this. We of course are quick to dismiss him as a rabid anti-Semite who should only be attacked. That's what we always do when anybody criticizes us. But Duke makes points that contain some truth. He notes for example how the media has a long history of mocking religion in general and Xianity in particular.

He's quite right about that. One example that comes to my mind is in the movie Walk the Line, which tells the story of a country singer named Johnny Cash. Cash as a young man auditioned for the famed producer Sam Phillips. As the movie tells the story, Cash played for Phillips a gospel song with which Phillips was not impressed. When asked why Phillips said that Cash didn't sound believable and he added the following:

If you was hit by a truck and you was lying out there in that gutter dying, and you had time to sing *one* song. Huh? One song that people would remember before you're dirt. One song that would let God know how you felt about your time here on Earth. One song that would sum you up. You tellin' me that's the song you'd sing? That same Jimmy Davis tune we hear on the radio all day, about your peace within, and how it's real, and how you're gonna shout it? Or... would you sing somethin' different. Somethin' real. Somethin' *you* felt. Cause I'm telling you right now, that's the kind of song people want to hear. That's the kind of song that truly saves people. It ain't got nothin to do with believin' in God, Mr. Cash. It has to do with believin' in yourself.

Now he does at least reference God. But no movie about life in the American South in the 1950s could avoid that. But it turns the reference on its head and seems to mock religious idealism and transmogrify it into something narcissistic. Phillips isn't coming across as an atheist but that only lowers our guard which allows the redirection to seep into our brains.

Cash proceeds to sing a composition of his own about a man who murdered a stranger "just to watch him die" and now sits in prison burning in jealousy of people who are not in prison like "rich folks eatin' in a fancy dining car". This put a smile on Phillips' face. The message is, forget religious idealism, the important thing is to sing something that feels real, no matter what that feeling is. And we go from words about being saved and finding peace within to murder and jealousy. We'll note that the man doesn't lament the death of an innocent man or the violation of God's law but of the prison experience.

So what does this have to do with the Jews? Well, the film director is Jewish and at least one of the screenplay writers is Jewish. The actor who plays Cash is Jewish.

And what really happened when Cash auditioned for Phillips? Cash's biography tells the real story:

Once we were in the studio, I sang ‘I Was There When It Happened’ and ‘It Don’t Hurt Anymore’ for him. I sang … whatever else I’d taken into my repertoire from among the popular country songs of the day. Sam kept directing me back to my own repertoire: ‘What else have you written?’ Though I didn’t think it was any good, I told him about ‘Hey, Porter,’ and he had me sing it for him.

That did it. ‘Come back tomorrow … and we’ll put that song down,’ he told me.

No mockery of religious faith from Phillips. Cash didn't even play Folsom Prison Blues, the song played in the movie. He played Hey Porter, an unassuming song about a man riding a train, eager to get to his destination:

Hey porter! Hey porter!

Would you tell me the time?

How much longer will it be till we cross

that Mason Dixon Line?

At daylight would ya tell that engineer

to slow it down?

Or better still, just stop the train,

Cause I wanna look around.

The anti-religious scene never happened in real life. As they say, Jewish Hollywood invented it.

There are many examples like this throughout film, television, journalism, and literature of mockery of traditional values, of religion, of religious faith. And an alarming percentage of the perpetrators, particularly in cases where the violations are most egregious, are Jewish. Famous examples include Lenny Bruce, real name Leonard Alfred Schneider, who brought profanity into comedy in the late 1950s and early 60s and the 1967 film the Graduate, which tells an extremely alarming and graphic (for its time) story of marital infidelity. The Graduate was directed by Mike Nichols, real name Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky, a Jew, starred Dustin Hoffman, a Jew, and was produced by Lawrence Turman, a Jew. The screenplay, but not the novel it was based on, had two writers, one of them Buck Henry, whose real name is Henry Zuckerman. Even the obviously Jewish Marx Brothers, who seem tame now, were quite bawdy in their day. Compare to Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Hope and Crosby, Buster Keaton, and Abbot and Costello, gentiles, who generally were not.

Then we have the infamous leaders and intellectuals of the sixties movement, the ones who made mockery of traditional values seem like the world's biggest mitzvah. If I were to just list names of the most famous ones off the top of my head they would be these: Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Timothy Leary, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Paul Goodman, Alan Ginsburg, Herbert Marcuse, and Tom Hayden. Maybe it's just me focusing on the Jewish ones but all but two of those are descendants of Abraham Avinu.

They are non-religious Jews of course. Bruce was intermarried to a woman of ill-repute. Nichols was married four times, each one of them - as far as I can tell - to gentiles. Ginsberg was a homosexual. I won't go into the sordid details of each of their lives. We are talking about completely assimilated people. Duke doesn't understand or doesn't want to understand this. The growing gentile anti-Zionist underground misses this too as often in their desire to criticize the State of Israel they'll create graphics that depict Chassidic Jews stepping on Palestinians or hanging the US Capital building from strings like a marionette. As anybody who knows actual Chassidic Jews knows, most of them are more anti-Zionistic than the graphics creators themselves and have nothing to do with influencing the US government in Mideast policy.

This is arguably the area in which people like Duke are antisemitic. Not that he criticizes secular Jews for ruining the country but for not realizing that the problem is that they are secular. In fact, he blames the Talmud.

This is an old story, blaming the Talmud. We observant Jews take great umbrage of such criticism but we have to be fair that the Talmud is easily misread. It does make alarming statements about gentiles and their religions. It does say things like if one has relations with a 3 year old girl they are considered married.

But true students of the Talmud know how to read these statements in conjunction with the entire Talmudic corpus. The Talmud has such stringent rules about sexual morality that few in the gentile world could ever live up to them. The thing about marriage to a 3 year old is technical in nature. It's saying that having relations with a woman obligates a man to take care of her as a wife and this applies at almost all ages. It doesn't advocate such an act. My goodness, Jewish law prohibits a man from gazing on a woman's pinkie finger.

As the Talmud tells us to influence the gentiles for the good, it also tells us that without the Torah the world could not withstand the Jews (Beitzah 25). It says:

A Tanna taught in the name of R. Meir: Why was the Torah given to Israel? Because they are impetuous. The School of R. Ishmael taught: ‘At His right hand was a fiery law unto them’; the Holy One, blessed be He, said: These are worthy to be given the fiery law. Some say: The laws of these are like fire, for had not the Law been given to Israel no nation or tongue could withstand them. And this is what R. Simeon b. Lakish said: There are three distinguished in strength [fierce]: Israel among the nations, the dog among animals, [and] the cock among birds. Some say: Also the goat among small cattle. And some say: Also the caper-bush among shrubs.

So we have seen both dynamics play out in modern times. The religious Jews influenced the world for the good and the non-religious ones influenced the world for the bad, largely by being very bold. Modern history is to some extent a battle of the good Jews verses the bad Jews. Certainly, the areas of the world in which we live experience this.

Gentiles are easily manipulated. I have found that nearly every time I make any kind of post to a Jewish area of the internet, somebody criticizes me. In fact, mostly I get criticism. Yes, we have big mouths and complain too much. But also, we are not so easily manipulated.

Gentiles will pretty much go where they are lead. Look how careful people are these days to not appear anti-Semitic. When I was a kid, people weren't ashamed to pounce on Jews physically or verbally. Today, at least for the time being, gentiles go out of their way to appear to be fans of ours. They are insulted to be called anti-Semitic. We have trained them well. It likely won't last.

All of this is a long introduction to the topic I really want to talk about which is Israel and the Arabs. Nearly every Israeli I have met and nearly every person who calls himself a supporter of the State of Israel -- and by nearly I mean 98% -- views the Israel-Palestinian conflict as a battle of good versus evil. Israelis are good, Palestinians are evil. That the latter only understand violence is the common refrain. This justifies Israeli violence, you see.

Often, Israeli defenders reference the Arab riots of the 1920s and 30s. This shows that the occupation of the Shomrom is not the cause of Arab violence. Arabs are just violent.

Now, I'm not going to say that they are non-violent. Most goyim are capable of alarming violence. It sits just under the surface of all their politeness. The Talmud gives us rules about not provoking them. Even in the 1920s and 30s we provoked them with all kinds of rhetoric about taking over all of Palestine. Not many Israelis know this but the century old Hebron massacre, which we hear about over and over again as if it happened yesterday, was preceded by a huge rally of thousands in Jerusalem where a famous nationalist religious personality announced our intentions to take over the Kosel, and crafted some incredibly disturbing twist on the Shema by saying "Hear O'Israel ….the wall is one." This was followed by Nationalist paramilitary of apostate Jews riding through Hebron on motorcycles as they waved guns. The resulting massacre was not conducted by residents of Hebron but by a group of Arabs who came in from out of town.

We don't exonerate the Arabs for responding violently to provocation. But we can question the notion that all they understand is violence. If we didn't provoke them, they might not be violent. Thus, we cannot justify what we have become, which is endlessly violent.

Rav Shach was very critical of the Shomron settlements because he believed they constituted a provocation of the Arabs. We miss Rav Shach because who points this out anymore? The State of Israel is riding so high on its military prowess that it believes it can survive until the end of time on swagger and violence. Who reminds them anymore about the rules against provocation?

The problems with this are manifold. For one, we are committing atrocities and the world is increasingly getting wise to it. Even secular Jews in America have had it with Israel. For two, we are corrupting our youth, the ones we order to commit the violence. I am not criticizing the average soldier. I have noted this tendency of people to start ranting about their pride in their sons in the army any time somebody criticizes government policy. It's two different things. I doubt that the typical Israeli soldier wants to be raiding houses in Hebron or arresting children. They are ordered to do these things. It's the policy that's the problem. The country is being run by very disturbed people. Even former defense minister Moshe Yaalon has lamented the "phenomena of extremism, violence, and racism in Israeli society that threaten its fortitude" (NY Times, May 21, 2016). He said also that "With great sorrow, senior politicians in the country have chosen incitement and divisiveness of the Israeli society, instead of unifying and connecting."

Jews are supposed to be a light unto the nations. We are the model and they follow. We should be the focus, certainly in our own lives. The Nationalists made the gentiles the focus. First they tried to have a nation like gentile nations. Then they focus day and night on the Arabs, always showing how we are better than they. So we provoke the Arabs to violence with the longest military occupation in modern history, with home demolition, torture, assassination, dismantling of solar panels, demolition of water supplies, brutal economic blockades and rationalize our violence by harping on the violence we provoked.

Take Gaza for example. We withdrew and got in return only rockets and tunnels. That's the line we hear all the time. We left them greenhouses which they only destroyed because they are animals. We hear that too.

Let's unpack this. Israel withdrew and the Palestinians held an election. Hamas won with just over 40% of the vote. Not a huge mandate, but they won. Now why did Hamas win? Was it because Hamas exists only to kill us and all Arabs want to do is kill us?

Few Israelis know this but Hamas spends most of its budget on social services and when one lives in a society as economically depressed as that of Gaza social services are a matter of life and death. Hamas is known to be far less corrupt that Fatah. And this is the main reason for their election victory. Indeed, post election surveys showed that 80% of the Palestinians want to see peace with Israel and want Hamas to make peace.

What about the greenhouses? The Palestinians did not destroy the greenhouses. There was however some looting. Poor people will do this. They took the pieces and sold them in order to feed their families. They didn't destroy them just because they are animals. Most of the greenhouses were left in tact and were operational within a few months. However, many of the greenhouse businesses failed because of the resulting economic blockade.

Israel responded to the election with a blockade. Now they did ask Hamas to renounce violence which Hamas refused to do. Their view is that they have a right to fight an oppressor who took their land. If you really think about, you should be able to understand how they might come to this outlook. You might do the same. Begin did. Rabin did. Have you ever seen the list of terrorist acts committed by the Irgun and the Lechi? It's quite lengthy.

The Irgun has been viewed as a terrorist organization or organization which carried out terrorist acts.Specifically the organization "committed acts of terrorism and assassination against the British, whom it regarded as illegal occupiers, and it was also violently anti-Arab" according to the Encyclopædia Britannica. In particular the Irgun was described as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, British, and United States governments; in media such as The New York Times newspaper; as well as by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, the 1946 Zionist Congress and the Jewish Agency. Irgun's tactics appealed to many Jews who believed that any action taken in the cause of the creation of a Jewish state was justified, including terrorism. (Wikipedia)

However, the question is, is a blockade the answer? Talk about provocation. Again, most Israels don't know this but the blockade is very intense. It includes many types of canned food, chocolate, crayons, A4 paper, medical supplies. I have heard Israeli spokesmen say at least about the chocolate that the blockade consists only of gourmet chocolate that would go to Hamas. Who knows the truth?

The blockade also includes agricultural exports. Many Palestinian businesses have failed because of the ban on many exports. This includes agricultural exports. Talk about provocation.

And here's another important tidbit. Israel helped to create Hamas. According to former US Congressman Ron Paul, Israel encouraged Hamas as a counter to Fatah. Now, Israel rants day and night about Hamas and refuses to work with any coalition government of the Palestinians that includes Hamas, the political-terrorist organization they helped to create.

I'm not prescribing the political-military solution to all of this. I'm not giving the final tally on all the guilt for all the brutality. I am saying, it's not as simple as you might think. It certainly is less simple than Arabs are bad, the Israel government is good. And more importantly, I am saying the following. The world is falling part and a lot of that is actually the fault of the Jews, the secular Jews. No, the secular Jews don't commit every perversion or atrocity but they do tend to bring out the worst in the gentiles who happily follow the lead. It's true in America and in Palestine. Hashem set up the world so that the Jews would influence the gentiles. Unfortunately, for the most part these days, the influence is pernicious because most Jews are not Torah observant or their observance is heavily influenced by the gentiles as in the case of the Religious Zionist/Yeshiva University crowd.

It is not enough for Jews to say we are better than the worst goyim. That is hardly our purpose in life. We have to pursue the Torah model. Goyim are irrelevant. We don't get into heaven by saying we brought out the worst in the goyim but were superior to them.

Jews have an ability to make their every action seem holy. The haskalah was like that. Hollywood liberalism is like that. So too is nationalism and feminism and all kinds of other secular movements that are essentially secular rebellions against the Torah.

Religious Jews, stop buying into the propaganda of secular Jews. Don't look to either their feminism or their nationalism. Look to the Torah, the Talmud, the Sages who are above the contemporary madness. Influence the gentiles for the good.