Another great Rabbi is in town

Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Hillel is in Torat Hayim on Wednesday Nov. 1 at 8:00 pm, sponsored by Yachad Outreach Center.

I personally feel great about this Jewish unity. Jews from all walks of life and different backgrounds attending lectures by Sephardic and Ashkenazi rabbis, women of valor and wisdom ... We are truly fortunate.

If you Were Born a Jew

This is another excellent article from Sara Yocheved Rigler on the significance of being a Jew. The great news is that she will be lecture touring in the U.S. November 1-20. She will be in LA on Sunday, Nov. 19 at Young Israel of Hancock Park, 225 S. LaBrea Ave. For full schedule click here.

Image courtesy of aish.com

Jewish Matters No. 2

As promised earlier, here is the second of a 6-part series from "Jewish Matters" by Doron Kornbluth.

World Perfect
Ken Spiro

KEN SPIRO is a senior researcher and lecturer at Aish HaTorah’s popular Discovery seminars in Jerusalem and around the world. His master’s degree and strong interest in Jewish and world history form the basis for the information in this essay, and he is the author of a soon-to-be published book on the Jewish impact on civilization.

What would it take to make a perfect world?

If you ask almost anyone today, chances are that the answers will fall into the following six categories:

1. respect for life
2. peace and harmony between nations
3. justice and equality under the law
4. accessible education for all
5. family stability
6. social responsibility

People tend to link these values with democracy. But did they actually evolve from a democratic source?
A brief glance at the Greeks, who invented democracy, and the Romans and virtually all other ancient societies, shows us that we did not get our values from them.

Ancient Hypocrisy

1. Respect for Life
The basic right to life seems fundamental. We all want to live without fear of being arbitrarily deprived of life or dignity. As obvious and important as this seems to us today, however, it was not obvious or important in the ancient world.
The ancient Greeks and Romans, as well as every ancient culture we know of, practiced infanticide — the killing of newborn children as a means of population control, sex selection (boys were desired, girls not), and ridding society of burdensome or deformed members.
Babies that appeared weak or sickly at birth, or had even a minor birth defect or imperfection such as a cleft palate or harelip, were killed. This was not done by some Nazi-like baby removal squad, but by an immediate member of the family, usually the mother or father, often using methods that betray a cruelty beyond our modern imagination.
Wrote the great humanitarian Seneca: “Children . . . weak and deformed we drown, not through anger, but through wisdom, preferring the sound to the useless.”
These societies also practiced human sacrifice and — when it came to the Romans — killing for entertainment. The Coliseum, and other circuses of its type, saw a level of cruelty and inhumanity beyond belief. Emperor Trajan, in the year 107 B.C.E., held games where ten thousand gladiators and three thousand wild animals fought to the death — which means thousands of human beings died — watched by spectators who ate, drank wine, and cheered the grisly spectacle.

2. Peace and Harmony
Today we understand that peace is vital to the future survival and development of humanity. Yet the Greeks and Romans built great empires by conquest. With no stigma attached even to killing for sport, killing in war wasn’t worth raising an eyebrow. Indeed, the fellow who killed the most was the hero, the celebrity of his day.

3. Justice and Equality
We, who have grown up in liberal, democratic societies, realize that justice and equality are fundamental principles, that all people have the right to be treated equally under the law, regardless of who they are. But the Greek inventors of democracy didn’t believe in equality. Citizens voted, but only land-owning adult males qualified as citizens. Slaves and women had no rights and could be subjugated by the power elite.

4. Education
We view free education as one of the basic responsibilities of any government toward its citizens. But in the ancient world this one ranked in the you-gotta-be-kidding category. Historians estimate that that more than 99 percent of all humanity has been illiterate. There were good reasons why education was reserved for the elite: ignorant masses are easier to control.

5. Family Stability
We appreciate today that having a stable family structure is one of the basic building blocks for a stable, healthy society. But Greek and Roman society were characterized by a disdain for women and a freewheeling obsession with sexuality. Men married women only to produce male heirs. Wrote the Greek poet Palladas: “Marriage brings a man only two happy days. The day he takes his bride to bed and the day he lays her in her grave.”
The epitome of love in these ancient societies was pedastry — a sexual relationship between an older man and a young boy; today it is a very serious felony. To the Greeks this was something positive and beautiful. All the Greek greats — Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Plato, for instance — had young boy lovers. And many waxed ecstatic about it, such as the Greek poet Propertius: “May my enemies fall in love with women and my friends with boys.”
Sexual promiscuity eventually had such a detrimental effect on these societies that both the Greeks and Romans eventually passed laws requiring men to marry. Yet these laws ultimately failed. When Rome collapsed in the fifth century B.C.E. it could not field an army and had to rely on mercenaries. The birth rate had plummeted, and they had no people left to fight for them. The greatest empires fell from the inside: internal rot, largely due to uncontrolled sexual behavior, helped bring about their fall.

6. Social Responsibility
Societies that did not value life, equality, or justice were not going to put much effort into social welfare programs to help those in need. No welfare checks, no soup kitchens, no food stamps. Two thousand years ago Rome, the great metropolis of 1.5 million people, the largest city on earth at the time, did not have one public hospital, asylum, or shelter.
So that is the ugly underside of Greek and Roman civilizations. This doesn’t mean that all individuals were bad. Joe Average was just trying to make it through the day. But he lived in a society that had a different way of looking at the world than we do today: little regard for human life, conquest mentality, no pity for the have-nots. While they were brilliant in engineering, astronomy, literature, art, science, mathematics, and politics, these ancient societies did not produce the morality and values we cherish today.
The vision of peace, justice, and equality is not the product of ancient civilizations. There was only one small group in the ancient world that held these values: the Jews.

Jewish Values
Let’s review the six fundamental values we started with:

1. Respect for Life
Abraham, the first Jew, introduced the idea of one loving God as the Creator of all. We are all God’s children created in the “divine image” (Genesis 1:27). Deformed babies, slaves, women, and men — all have this divine image within them, and all have the right, therefore, to life. “Thou shalt not murder,” the sixth commandment, is only one of many direct references to the infinite value of life found in the Bible.

2. Peace and Harmony
When the prophets of the Bible spoke of beating “swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3), they emphasized the age-old Jewish concept of universal peace and brotherhood. This vision is central to the world today, which is why these verses are inscribed on the outside of the United Nations building in New York.

3. Justice and Equality
The Bible repeats over and over that people are to be treated equally before the law: “Justice, justice you will pursue” (Deuteronomy 16:20). Setting up a fair justice system is a Biblical injunction (see Deuteronomy 16:18); accepting bribes or showing favor to the rich or powerful is clearly forbidden.

4. Education
The Jewish drive for education is almost a national obsession, and the People of the Book were enjoined in the Shema prayer itself to teach their children (ibid. 6:7). In contrast to the rest of the world, Jews have always seen education as an essential tool for improving the world and have enjoyed a unique status as history’s most literate nation.

5. Family Stability
The Jewish innovation that sexuality should be confined and sanctified within the confines of marriage contributed greatly to both the stability of the family and the status of women. The Jewish people have always been known for their strong, close families. The Bible itself directs a husband to “cling unto his wife” (Genesis 2:24) and children to “respect” and “honor” their parents (fifth commandment).

6. Social Responsibility
The Jewish perspective has always been that “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:19) is the basis for human interactions. The idea that we all have the moral and legal responsibility to care for others is one of Judaism’s greatest innovations. The concept of active responsibility is the reason why the Jewish people had welfare institutions thousands of years before the rest of the world.

These were the values of the ideal society envisioned by the Bible. The greatest Jewish innovation of all is the notion of One God from Whom one standard of morality is derived — ethical monotheism. This is the revolutionary idea from which all the other great Jewish ethical innovations have come — a loving Creator Who gives His creation one standard of absolute values.
The absoluteness of the God-given standard set the Jews apart. And, indeed, for thousands of years no one much wanted to join their club. But eventually their vision and values spread worldwide. British historian Paul Johnson notes (A History of the Jews [Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987], Epilogue):

Certainly the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place. . . . To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person; of individual conscience and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind. Without the Jews the world would have been a much emptier place. . . . It is almost beyond our capacity to imagine how the world would have fared if they had never emerged.

For two thousand years, from Abraham to the birth of Christianity, the Jewish people alone championed the notion of a just and moral world based on humanity's relationship with a loving God. Then came Christianity and Islam, both spiritual offshoots of Judaism, which converted millions of people to the belief in One God. In modern history, the greatest spreader of Jewish values outside religion has been the growth of Democracy. During the last three centuries the founding fathers of both British and especially American democracy were overwhelmingly impacted by Biblical ethics. The Bible played a central role in the curriculum of the newly founded institutions of higher learning, with both Hebrew and Bible studies being required courses. At Yale, some commencement orations were delivered in Hebrew. The Biblical education of the Founding Fathers colored their attitude toward religion and ethics — and especially politics. America was to be the new place where the old Biblical vision would take root.

Married to a Biblical standard of values, grass-roots democracy took root in America and in the last two hundred years became the fastest-spreading political system in the world. In 1800 there were three liberal democracies in the world: the United States, France, and Switzerland. In 1900 there were thirteen; in 1999, close to seventy.

So that’s the story. The values held dear in modern democratic nations are largely a product of Judaism.

The mission of the Jewish people over the last 3,300 years has been to make this concept of ethical monotheism the universal vision of all humanity. This is the Jewish role in history and the essence of the concept of the Chosen People — a people chosen for the responsibility of teaching the world about one God and absolute morality.

But there is much left to do before the vision the Jewish people saw at Mount Sinai becomes a world reality. The Jews have always believed that they have a key role to play in bringing this vision to fruition. We are to create a society based on a God-given standard of morality that will serve as the model for the rest of humanity to emulate — to be “a light unto the nations.”
When we look back on the vast sweep of the last four thousand years we see how significantly the Jewish people have directly and indirectly affected humanity.

The Jewish vision has become the universal vision of the world today. It is now up to the Jewish people to turn this universal vision into a reality.

Ken Spiro

Another Great Rabbi is visiting the US

Great news! Rabbi lazer Brody, otherwise know as Rabbi Rambo who carried several missions in revolutionary Iran, is coming to the US.

He will be in Great Neck, New York on Sunday night, November 5, 2006. He will be along with his Jewish Iranian publisher Yaakov "Eddie" Kalati. Do not miss the chance to see them. You can get all the details here

photo: coutsesy of http://lazerbrody.typepad.com

The Rabbis are coming!

Well they have arrived already, sorry for the delay.

There is still a chance to catch Rabbi Amar this Thursday and also on the upcoming Shabbat.

Jewish Matters No. 1

As promised earlier, here is the first of a 6-part series from "Jewish Matters" by Doron Kornbluth.





Our People
The Chosen People
Natan Lopes Cardozo

NATAN LOPES CARDOZO heads the Cardozo School for Jewish Studies and Human Dignity, a school without walls that educates young rabbis, teachers, academicians, and laypeople how to become effective ambassadors for Judaism. He is a world-renowned lecturer, known for his most original and unique insights into Judaism, through which he helps many people, Jews and non-Jews, realize the relevance of Judaism for our complicated times. He received his rabbinical degree from Gateshead Talmudic College and his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia Pacific University. He is the author of The Torah as God’s Mind (Bepron Publications), Between Silence and Speech (Jason Aronson Publications), The Infinite Chain (Targum Press), and The Written and Oral Torah (Jason Aronson).

The Chosen Claim
One of the most disturbing claims ever made by any group of people is the one Jews make when, quoting the Bible, they insist on being the “Chosen People.” For nearly four thousand years, Jews have upheld the belief that they are God’s elect, the “apple of His eye,” His most beloved and favored nation. Superficially, this claim sounds like prejudice of the highest order, making the vast majority of mankind into second-class citizens.
Aside from Biblical references, the Jewish tradition itself has emphasized Jewish particularity and the need to build thicker walls between Jews and non-Jews. Jews are not to marry non-Jews. Judaism does not missionize or go out to win converts; rather it discourages all but the most sincere. Kosher-food laws themselves limit social interaction. Even when living amidst their non-Jewish neighbors, Jews have also always striven to live on their own, dressing differently, speaking their own language, and abiding by their own unique customs, prayers, and culture.
The famous English author George Bernard Shaw accused the Jews of arrogance and said that as long as they insisted upon their chosenness they had no right to object to the monstrous way the Germans had killed six million of their people — they had brought it on themselves. H. G. Wells called the Jewish claim “a hindrance to world unity.” Protestant theologians spoke about the “haughtiness of Jewish belief.”

The Universalist Claim
With all this said, it may strike us as paradoxical that traditional Judaism has gone out of its way to stress the dignity of the entire human race. When reading the Creation chapter (long before the Jews were created), we are told that all men were created in the image of God (Genesis, ch. 1). The prophet’s words are clear: “Have we not all one Father; has not one God created us?” (Malachi 2:10). In Talmudic times, Rabbi Meir stated that Adam was created from dust that had been collected from all corners of the earth so that no one nation could claim the distinction of being better or having created mankind.
While not encouraging conversion, Judaism does insist that all people can become Jews. Some of the greatest Jews in history were converts or descendants of converts: The great king David comes from the line of Ruth, perhaps our most famous convert (see the Book of Ruth). Rabbi Akiva, Shemayah, and Avtalyon, some of the greatest Sages in our tradition, all traced themselves to converted forefathers. The famous commentator and Sage Onkelos was the Roman Emperor’s nephew when he converted.

The Paradox
We are thus confronted with a most amazing situation. On the one hand, we have observed how much Judaism wants to secure the Jewish people’s uniqueness and chosenness. On the other hand, we are told that the equality of all men, the dignity of all human beings, is the cornerstone upon which all traditional Judaism stands.

Reality
Before trying to address this paradox, we must ask an important question: Does historical reality confirm the unique status of the Jewish people, and even its chosenness?
Our answer must be stated clearly: Yes. The cold historical facts prove that the Jewish people stand out in three matters:
1. They experienced a most miraculous survival.
2. They have made incredible contributions to civilization, totally out of proportion with their numbers.
3. They made a totally unprecedented return to their homeland after nearly two thousand years of exile.

1. Their Survival
In Biblical times, the Jews were surrounded by enemies who were committed to destroy them. They had to wage war after war to survive. Afterward they were sent into their longest exile. Beaten, killed, tortured, they were expelled from one country to another, only to find another disaster awaiting them. They became the scapegoat for national and social problems. Still, they survived. Discriminated against, consistently outlawed, the oldest nation on the planet, the Jews were constantly dying . . . yet never died. Outlasting all their enemies, they violated all the sophisticated rules of history, and for this reason became either the most annoying or the most celebrated people of the world.

2. Their Contributions
The Jewish people brought monotheism to the world, the most powerful idea man has ever heard. Since that day the universe has never been the same. The gift of the Bible turned all deeds into moral actions, teaching ethics and justice. Neither Christianity nor Islam would exist without the Jews. Based on “the Book,” no international or American law would be what it is today without them. In later centuries Jews contributed to science, literature, music, finance, medicine, and art — all beyond anyone’s expectations of a small, tortured people. They were involved in many social revolutions, often becoming the leaders and thinkers. They have produced great rabbis and sages, and even those who were on the road to assimilation revolutionized the world: Spinoza, Freud, Einstein, Marx.

3. The Return
Not only did the Jews manage to survive in the face of all their sufferings and make great contributions to the world, but they even managed to free themselves of their nearly two-thousand-year exile to return to the land of their forefathers. Just moments after they had experienced their worst destruction, the Holocaust, Jews picked up their bags and “went home.” At a time when the whole world declared that there was no longer a future for the Jew, the State of Israel appeared — as if from nowhere. The Jewish return to their homeland was a totally unprecedented event; no nation after such a long, painful exile has successfully returned to its homeland and built a completely modern state. It is a phenomenon totally unheard of, violating all principles of conformity.

The First Jew
Having observed all this, we may confidently state that the Jews are indeed “a nation apart.” Their uniqueness is beyond question, but we must ask, Does this have anything to do with the Biblical claim of chosenness? To answer this, we must turn to the Bible itself, in Genesis, chapter 11.
The generation of the Tower of Babel represented a low point in human history. They sought to build a tower high enough to reach the heavens and challenge God. For the first time, a whole generation stood up and rebelled against God as a matter of principle. While earlier generations had done much evil, they understood their actions were evil. The Tower’s generation, however, brought a new ideology into the world, one of extreme secularism in which God was deliberately ignored. This new belief system saw nothing wrong with immorality — it elevated it to the new world order.
Abraham understood the inherent dangers of an ideology in which God was exiled and where immorality, corruption, and sexual depravity became the norm. He became known in the world as “Avraham the Ivri” (the Hebrew). Ivri conveys the idea of crossing a road, standing on the other side. The Jewish tradition explains: “The whole world stands on one side, and Abraham on the other.” Abraham taught the world exactly what it did not want to hear: the most important thing in life is not what one has but what one is. He asked people to do that “which is just and right” (Genesis 18:19), to move toward their spiritual potential. This became the great mission of his life, of the life of his partner, Sarah, and of all his descendants.
All moral revolutions are based on this first one.
The nation that was in the process of being built was to become the guilty conscience of the world. As Jacques Maritain remarked, “The Jews gave the world no peace, they bar slumber, they teach the world to be discontented and restless as long as the world has no God.” The famous medieval commentator Seforno noted (on Exodus 19) that Abraham called for a “kingdom of priests” charged with the task of instructing and teaching the whole of mankind of the centrality of God and the importance of kindness and giving.
We can now understand more clearly our original question concerning the paradox between chosenness and universalism. The chosenness of the Jews is not a superiority-based selection at all, like that of the Nazis, who believed they were to be served by the rest of mankind. The Jews understand themselves to be the servants of mankind: a chosen messenger with a universalist message.
The particularistic aspects of the Jewish people help ensure that there will be strong messengers generation after generation. Without strong messengers there can be no strong message. Yet the goal is universal. Jews are moral protesters who understand their task as bringing the great ethical teachings of pure ethical monotheism to the entire world.

See no evil, hear no evil

Recent Jerusalem Post article about Jews in Iran. Click here.
Image courtesy of Jerusalem Post.