Category Archives: Contemporary Life

A BLIGHT UNTO THE NATIONS

Posted on July 16, 2010 | 1 comment

Once again, Jewish identity is on the front-burner, and Jewish patriotism is under siege, with the news of two intermarriages involving public figures. Last weekend, Brooklyn Congressman (D, of course) Anthony Wiener married a non-Jew (a Muslim woman), with Bill Clinton himself presiding over the festivities. Wiener, a Charles Schumer acolyte with the same brashness and love for the camera as his mentor, has always been a “pro-Israel” congressman and aspires to be New York City’s next Mayor. Should his intermarriage play any role in determining his political future ?

A cogent argument can be made that it should play no role, especially in a country that pursuant to the Constitution has no religious litmus test for electoral office. An official should be judged, the argument goes, based on his conduct in office, or his positions, integrity, values, intelligence, etc. Nevertheless, I disagree, because people vote for a public official because they identify with him/her, and feel that person can best represent their values and goals. Can a Jew who betrays his people by marrying out of the faith be trusted to look after the interests of the Jewish people ? I don’t see how. Notwithstanding that they could do it, I am not sure I would trust them to do it. And even though people vote for candidates who ostensibly will be the best representative of the polity and not of their particular ethnic group, the reality is people are inclined to vote for those who are considered role models, or at least reflective of the norms and ideals of their lives and the interests of their more parochial class. That is life among the diverse constituencies in New York City, where ethnic politics is a reality.

More troubling is the recognition that a Brooklyn Congressman – Brooklyn, of all places, and a person who is unabashedly Jewish in his affect and speech patterns – would think that intermarriage today is so accepted and conventional that it should not be deemed controversial at all. That sad state of affairs should distress all of us, as it indicates the transformation of American Jewry in just 50 years – from rejection and abhorrence of intermarriage to the ho-hum, even unremarkable response of the Jewish (especially non-Orthodox) world today.

That humdrum, desultory reaction informs the secular Jewish coverage of the impending nuptials of celebrity intermarried couple number two, Chelsea Clinton to Marc Mezvinsky, the Jewish (described as “Conservative”) son of two former (D, of course) Congresspersons. It is not the first such marriage of Jews into high-powered, influential non-Jewish families: leaping to mind are the marriages of Al Gore’s daughter to a Jew named Schiff (since ended in divorce) and Caroline Kennedy’s marriage to Edward Schlossberg, still going strong.

Today’s Jerusalem Post carried an absolutely inane piece entitled “Jews Wring their Hands Over Chelsea Clinton’s Nuptials” (http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=181609), the hand-wringing over the question of “will Chelsea convert ?”

To which the response of normal Jews should be, “and if she does, so what ?” Does she have any intention of committing to the Jewish people, of living a Torah-centered life ? Will she observe the commandments in any substantive sense ? Does she feel any grief over the destruction of the two Temples that we will commemorate this coming Tuesday on the Ninth of Av ? Indeed, Chelsea may have more religious sensibilities than her beau, which begs the question: why doesn’t he convert ? If his Jewish identity is so tenuous and means so little to him, then why impose the charade on her ? Be a man, and charade yourself.

And in the charade that much of modern Jewish life (outside the world of Torah) has become, note these priceless questions from the above-referenced article, that apparently concern at least one Jew (the writer): “Will there at least be a rabbi co-officiating? A huppa? A glass?” Who in the real, live, thinking, breathing, Jewish world could possibly care about that ? Having a rabbi “co-officiate” at an intermarriage is like having Mahmoud Ahmadinejad swear in the next American President on Capitol Hill, January 20, 2013. It is a traitorous act that obviously demeans the (steadily meaningless) term “rabbi.” Does a “huppa,” the symbol of the Jewish home, have any relevance when the home will not be Jewish ? Does “breaking the glass,” a reminder of the churban (destruction of the Temples and Jerusalem), have any significance when the marriage itself is a churban – and when the mother of the bride is determined to weaken the Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem today and G-d-forbid precipitate another churban ? What a macabre joke.

But the approach itself is reflective of a growing attitude among non-Orthodox Jews – both publicly and privately – that intermarriage is a reality, and we must accept it, and participate, and attend in the hopes of “influencing them for the good,” so they remain “part of the Jewish people,” “giving money to Jewish causes” and perhaps having a Menorah next to their tree, fast half a day on Yom Kippur and eat matza at the Pesach seder – in other words, the all symbols and no substance that unfortunately characterizes too much of Jewish life, especially among the non-Orthodox. So, make the best of it !

Reality check: for the sake of decorum, we shy away from the statistical reality of Jewish life. Forget the 50% intermarriage rate, give or take a few percentage points either way. It means nothing and says less. The real rate is more devastating: among non-Orthodox Jews, the intermarriage rate hovers close to 70% ! No wonder their rabbis and leaders say we must accept it, and reach out, and embrace sham conversions, and the like. No wonder they blame the “openness of American society;” that is far more comforting than to look themselves in the mirror at the devastation they have wrought in the Jewish world. No wonder non-Orthodox Rabbis are often hired or fired based on their comfort level with performing intermarriages. And no wonder Anthony Wiener assumes – perhaps even correctly – that his intermarriage will play no significant role in his political future.

On a recent TV panel with two non-Orthodox rabbis, I realized that their perceptions of conversion itself are flawed almost beyond repair. They maintained that conversion requires immersion in a mikveh for men and women, and circumcision for men. My attempts to explain that those are the procedures of conversion, not the substance, fell flat. The substance of conversion is an acceptance of Mitzvot and a willingness to be part of the fate and destiny of the Jewish people. When that commitment is manifest and complete, then the procedures of conversion can be carried out. I might as well have been talking Swahili; there was certainly no realization on their part that their doctrines and teachings have inevitably and ineluctably led their flock to this national catastrophe.

The irony is that this is no criticism at all of Chelsea Clinton or the new Mrs. Wiener, neither of whom have done anything wrong. It is the Jewish spouse in each case who is committing the crime against the Jewish people, a crime that cannot be washed away by the sprinkling of holy water or the mumbling of a few incantations, or their Jewish equivalent. For sure, there are always people who point out that the children of the Jewish mother is Jewish, and therefore ripe for outreach, and even the children of the non-Jewish mother can be “raised Jewish.” But this is a pipedream, and waste of resources. One can jump out of a plane without a parachute and still survive, but it is not something that is anticipated and planned for.

Jews eschew intermarriage because marriage creates a home that will embody and transmit the unique values and ideals of the Jewish people as received from G-d. It is our role as G-d’s witnesses that have merited us His grace and protection since our national origins more than 3800 years ago, and that role cannot be embraced by one who does not share those premises, that commitment, and that sense of privilege or identity. Serious, committed converts are a blessing to the Jewish people, as well as a challenge to the genuineness of the born Jew. To the extent that Jews tolerate intermarriage is ultimately a reflection of their own commitments, and the seriousness with which they perceive the above-mentioned divinely-ordained role. When intermarriage becomes commonplace, and “Jewish” writers dismiss concerns as narrow-minded and mock the genuine grief that traditional Jews feel over the impending loss of any Jew, they have unfortunately revealed the shallowness of their own commitment, and the insecurities they feel about their own Jewish identity.

Just two more reasons to mourn this coming Tish’a B’Av, and two more reasons to redouble our efforts to promulgate the ideals of Torah far and wide so that intermarriage remains anathema and becomes increasingly rare, and all Jews embrace the beauty of a divine system that demands that we be a “light – not a blight, which is intermarriage – onto the nations.”

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Machshava/Jewish Thought, Philosophy

THE DAY OF UNRECKONING

Posted on July 5, 2010 | 1 comment

The heathen prophet Bilaam was prompted to bless the Jewish people, instead of exposing their weaknesses to his patron Balak, but one phrase stands out as curious. He described us first as a “nation that dwells alone” (Bamidbar 23:9) – a fact reinforced in modern times in that Israel is the only country in the world that cannot serve on the United Nations Security Council. Non-permanent members are selected based on the regional bloc to which they belong – and Israel is the only country that is denied membership in a regional bloc (it is not considered a formal part of Asia, Africa or Europe; it is literally, a continent to itself). So Israel has no natural allies, and is different than everyone else.

But Bilaam added something else that is often lost in our reflections on dwelling in solitude: “and they will not be reckoned among the nations.” But what does that really add to our understanding – to be alone is by definition not to be reckoned ? What does it mean “not to be reckoned” ?

The great commentator Rashi offers two explanations: first, it means that “we will not be destroyed like the idolatrous nations” on the day of judgment. Every other nation’s existence is finite; ours is eternal. We are not reckoned with them, in that we are not a nation like other nations. Rashi then added that ‘when we rejoice, no nation rejoices with us; and when the nations are in fine fettle, they celebrate with each other” – and we don’t make it to the guest list – we just don’t count. What a dark and foreboding view of Jewish life – and what kind of “blessing” is that ?

Most thinking Jews live with a persistent frustration that is often suppressed, and rarely articulated, but goes something like this: how come the world never sees things our way ? Our most vehement critics are often evil people, but sometimes they are decent – or at least people who evince decency in other areas of their lives. And yet, it always seems that nothing we do is appreciated, and no suffering that we endure is of any import. I have been hearing for most of my life that Israel’s international image suffers from poor hasbara, a nice word for PR. And each time something happens that to us is so obviously moral and the world condemns it as patently immoral, we wonder where did we go wrong ? Was it something we said, or did, that we could have said or done differently ?

Israel, time and again, has conducted its statecraft and military policy specifically in order to preclude criticism – and the criticism comes nonetheless. Israelis thought they would leave Gaza even at the cost of expelling thousands of Jews – so they wouldn’t be accused of the “occupation.” Having left, the “occupation” accusation still continues. They thought that if they removed the pretext of occupation and rockets continued to fall on Israeli towns, they would have free rein to attack the enemy. Wrong again – any military response is deemed a “disproportionate use of force.” (Usually, nations win wars because of the “disproportionate use of force;” evidently, not here.)

Before Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and to forestall the charge that Israel was attacking civilians, Israel dropped millions of leaflets and made 250,000 cell phone calls urging civilians to flee! In the process, they relinquished the element of surprise. Did they then avoid that indictment ? Of course not ! The Goldstone Report appeared, accusing Israel of wantonly killed civilians, a criticism leveled with vehemence by, among others, the Russians, who just 10 years ago killed 50,000 civilians in Chechnya. From Sudan to Afghanistan, mass murderers routinely accuse Israel of mass murder. The more Israel concedes and appeases, the worse its reputation becomes.

So, what are we missing ? The Western world is currently expelling Israeli diplomats (one per country) to protest the Mossad’s allegedly use of forged passports in allegedly carrying out the killing of Mabhouh, the Hamas official in Dubai, just 4 months ago. Note: the West and Dubai are outraged – not by the terrorist who walks freely among them plotting his mayhem against Jews but by an arcane breach of diplomatic protocol – something every intelligence agency in the world does.

The rules don’t seem to apply equally. Israel’s blockade of Gaza is legal, proper and wise – every nation at war does the same – Turkey, US, UK, Russia, etc. That is part of war – and the hand-wringing over the takeover in international waters, outside the 20-mile limit, is also a smokescreen. (If the enemy was within 20 miles, or three miles, would it have mattered at all ?)

The new satirical web site www.latma.co.il is based on the premise that regular diplomacy or policy briefings no longer matter much in terms of public opinion – that PR can better enlighten through parody. And, indeed, the most effective PR Israel has had in 30 years was the “We Con the World” about the flotilla raid, and even there the double standard was obvious. The video has been removed from YouTube on grounds of a “copyright claim” by Warner-Chappell music, despite the fact that satire is permitted under the Fair Use Doctrine (otherwise, satirists from Paul Shanklin to Shlock Rock would be out of work); indeed, the original “We are the World” is so treacly and cloying that there are about twenty parodies that are still on the internet – that doesn’t seem to bother Warner-Chappell, who obviously came under pressure from anti-Israel forces.

Every time we think something will happen that will make the world see things our way, it doesn’t – from the surrender of Sinai, to Oslo, from welcoming back Arafat to the lynching in Shechem, from the Arabs cheering the Arab terror of 9/11 to the suicide bombings, from the withdrawal from Lebanon to the rocket wars in the north and south, from the capture of the Iranian arms ship Karine-A to Gilad Shalit (four years in captivity), and on and on. What can we do to change this ? The answer is…

Absolutely nothing. That is what it means “and they will not be reckoned among the nations.” We are not esteemed, our viewpoints are not valued, and our arguments mean nothing. We torture ourselves by thinking – “if only we said this, if only we had louder demonstrations, if only we took our more ads, if only we wrote more letters to the editor, if only we had more articulate diplomats, if only, if only. It will not make a difference. This fantasy of “universal acceptance” – that something will happen that will magically transform the world into Israel-lovers who extol the justice of our cause – is the elusive brass ring, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the Holy Grail – it’s the lure that the greyhounds chase at the races. “And they will not be reckoned among the nations.”

Nothing will change it. The nations of the world are pre-programmed not to be sympathetic to Israel. That is why their opposition is often so illogical and patently hypocritical. Sure, we will pick off a few people here and there – isolated individuals – who write beautiful, substantive, pro-Israel pieces. In fact, we are so excited when it happens – one week it’s journalist Joe McCain (John’s brother), the next week it’s the ex-prime minister of Spain, next week it will be someone else – that we widely circulate these articles via e-mail and wish we could fete them, at Jewish organizational banquets. All are agents of the Almighty sent to us that we should not lose our sanity. And Israel has many non-Jewish supporters – good people all – but they are exceptions, and can never become the majority.

Rashi says that we are inherently different – not a nation like others, and not subject to the frailties and infirmities of nations. And something else: if “and they will not be reckoned among the nations” means anything, it means that they do not want to hear our story. They can’t hear it. They don’t grieve with us when our soldiers are captured or killed, they don’t mourn when our civilians are bombed or terrorized, and they do not rejoice in our military triumphs. On the contrary: we are constantly dehumanized (as the Netziv comments) so that from the perspective of our critics, we never suffer. And if it looks like we do, then we deserve it because we brought it on ourselves. (Indeed, we did, in part: Israel has foolishly asserted for 20 years already that it wishes to share the land of Israel, recognizing the “legitimate” claims of others; the other side claims the land is all theirs, and that the thief always wants to share his ill-gotten gains. Their claim is more plausible – but that too is a subterfuge. It wouldn’t matter – “and they will not be reckoned among the nations.”) Nonetheless, the more we demonstrate a lack of faith in the justice of our cause, the more we embolden our enemies and dishearten our friends.

Bilaam is the vehicle of this prophecy – which is important, like all of Israel’s PR – for us – not for them. That’s the blessing ! When we listen to their attacks, and wonder where we went wrong, we have our answer: “and they will not be reckoned among the nations.” We can yell and scream and demonstrate all we want – and we should, because it strengthens us and makes us feel better – but it will not change their opinion, which is not based on reasoned analysis but on the natural and unavoidable implications of “and they will not be reckoned among the nations.”. From the perspective of the outsider – and only an outsider can teach us this – Bilaam verifies that we will not be reckoned, but also that, deep down, these same nations admire us and respect us, and concede that “ G-d sees in us no iniquity or perversity.”

We may not always see it in ourselves – but they do – that is why they keep their distance, until the day comes when the remnant of Yaakov will perceived as a lion among the forest animals, when our hands will be raised over all our adversaries, and the Messiah brings to the world justice, brotherhood, peace and global acknowledgment of the reign of G-d.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Israel, Jewish History

The Wall and its Shadow

Posted on June 28, 2010 | 7 comments

The controversy in Emanuel has certainly generated acrimony but even more confusion. What exactly happened is itself disputed, as is the essence of the dispute. What is certain is that this event illuminates some of the most pressing issues in the Jewish world, is not easily resolved, and might be a watershed moment. Or not. What follows is a preliminary analysis, because the true story has not fully emerged, and might never.

The thumbnail sketch certainly sounded awful. As reported in the secular press, Ashkenazi parents in Emanuel, a largely Charedi settlement, refused to allow their children to study or socialize with Sefaradi girls in the same school. They even built a wall that divided the campus, and decreed there be separate lunch hours and recess time lest any mingling took place. After a lawsuit, Israel’s High Court ruled that the school must be integrated, and held in contempt (and jailed) parents who refused to comply with the Court order. Immense demonstrations ensued, by Charedim against the court, mainly in Yerushalayim and Bnai Brak, against the intervention of the secular court system in a Torah-education matter.

Obviously, the secular media, willfully or not, followed the template of the American South, and trotted out terms like “separate but equal,” “segregation,” Bull Connor,” “racism,” and the like – and so got the story wrong. It seems that the dispute was not at all Ashkenazi v. Sefaradi; three of the families whose parents went to prison were Sefaradim. The “offensive” school in question has roughly a 27% Sefaradi population, and the school “discriminated against” has roughly a 33% Ashkenazi population. So racism was patently not the issue, although the accusation is so trite and familiar that it alone is tantamount to a conviction and sentence, and provoked a stream of lamentations about racism in the religious world. Good penance for the self-flagellation, or anti-religious, set.

The real issue, apparently, is troubling for a different reason: the segregation was mandated because of religious differences between the parent bodies and hashkafot (world views) of the two schools. Parents who wanted their children to attend the “Charedi” school had to abide by a series of personal restrictions in their home life. The precise nature of those restrictions is unknown to me, but I can easily guess most of them – dress code, television, etc. The inability to create two completely separate schools led to the physical divisions on the school property, followed by the parental complaints about discrimination, the lawsuit and decision, and protests. Charedim do not take kindly to being ordered to compromise their religious practices, and especially by those – and Israel’s High Court is notorious in its disdain for the sanctity of Torah and the world-view of religious Jews (charedi, modern, or right-wing) – who do not share their core values.

All sides are to blame for this fiasco, and the black eye given to Torah. The High Court’s involvement was a typical mistake; its tolerance for Torah is so infinitesimal that its decisions in this realm could never be accepted, no matter what they decided. They simply have no credibility, justifiably so, and most religious Jews – Chareidim or not – challenged to follow the Torah’s mandates or the dictates of this Court – so relentlessly anti-religious for many years – will obviously choose to obey the Torah, and not really think twice about it.

But, what exactly was the great religious principle at stake here ? Certainly, parents have the right to create their own educational framework and insist on even very restrictive behavioral norms – but not when the school is publicly funded. Private schools have greater flexibility, and even if this particular Charedi school is somewhat autonomous, the government that provides the funding has the right to expand the student population, within reason.

And there is the crux of the problem as I see it: were the differences between the religious standards in the two “schools” sufficient enough to warrant two separate schools – and to build a wall between the schools – as if the less rigorous group is ritually impure ? Shouldn’t Jewish education encompass the notion of “love of all Jews” – not in theory but in practice, and especially all Jews who are committed to halacha ? Jewish law and practice are not so monolithic (to be sure, neither is it completely open-ended) that it cannot tolerate slightly different standards of practice, and even lower standards. Must we identify and isolate from religious schools children of parents who have a television or internet access in their homes, or whose the mothers don’t cover their hair or whose sleeves expose their forearms, or eat Rabbanut hashgacha, or serve in the army, or don’t serve in the army, or plan on learning full-time, or plan on working full-time ?

One of my great teachers once said that there are Jews who act as if there are only 12 or 13 Jews in the whole world – only their tiny group constitutes the “true believers” – and everyone else is either illegitimate or inferior. But that is not how we were created; G-d formed us as a nation with all types of people, who would interact, learn from and try to better each other. That is why we were divided into twelve tribes, and why those tribes included great Torah scholars, farmers and craftsmen – and pious people, learned people, impious people and ignorant people. But we remain a nation, and that is best fostered by integration, not segregation.

Saddest of all is that the protests, even if warranted, bring to the fore the great flaw of Charedi life and lifestyle – and interpretation of Torah. Advice in a nutshell: it is impolitic to bite the hand that feeds you. With an unemployment rate of close to 65% of males between the ages of 25-65 (astounding, and the highest in the industrial world), Charedim are financially sustained by a larger community that is growing more and more resentful of their antics, even as they are ignorant of their enormous contributions. Chesed is great, and Chevra Kadisha is wonderful, but those are not jobs that put money on the table. To vent against a society that works and fights for Charedim, when they largely absent themselves from these nation-building tasks, is imprudent, to say the least.

To say the most, it puts the Torah in a negative light, broadcasting to the world – Jewish and general – that the Torah is incompatible with life in a modern state. It says, in essence, that a modern state cannot defend itself or support itself according to the laws of the Torah, and the Torah’s ideals can never be the foundation or governing policy of a real nation. That is heresy, but it is difficult to refute the charge that the Charedim are primarily responsible for fostering that heresy in our world.

I understand their grievances, their antipathy to the High Court, and their fears of eroding the high standards they seek for themselves by interacting with society. But you can’t build a wall in a schoolyard and expect the insulted to pay for it and guard it. You can’t withdraw from the world because of fear. You can’t educate your children to be unproductive in society and expect others to foot the bill in perpetuity. Great acts of personal kindness cannot substitute for “you are praiseworthy when you eat the fruits of your own hands” (Psalms 128:2). Dedication to Torah study must accompany the obligation to love all Jews, especially when those differences are nuances and not fundamental principles of Judaism (and even in the latter case, the obligation remains to love those Jews as well). Otherwise we run the risk of disassociating ourselves from other Jews based on the minutiae of hat size or shape, following this Rebbi or that one, or other small things that become magnified amongst people that are so similar but do not at all define the individual’s spiritual state.

We should remind ourselves that there is a prohibition to be poresh min hatzibur (separate oneself from the community), and that tzibur includes – as the acronym would have it – tzadikim, beinonim v’resha’im – the righteous, the intermediates and (even) the wicked. There are no “wicked” in this tale, and that should make it easier for all involved to co-exist, to build together, and to live and learn together, all for the glory of Hashem, His Torah and His people.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel, Machshava/Jewish Thought

Remembering Nothing

Posted on June 17, 2010 | 4 comments

The Obama administration long ago deleted all references to “Islam,” “radical Islam,” or even the word “terror” in its discussions of America’s ongoing war against…radical Islamic terror. This, undoubtedly part of its world view, adheres to the troubling pattern that has afflicted Westerners for almost a decade now.

The National Education Association, the largest teacher’s union in the United States, routinely urges its educators to commemorate the anniversary of the Islamic-Arab terrorism on September 11, 2001, by omitting any reference to the perpetrators, Islamic-Arab terrorists. They feared that such an explicit rendering of the facts would harm efforts at diversity and arouse prejudice and intolerance.

Sbarro’s Pizza Restaurant in Yerushalayim, destroyed amid terrible human carnage in August 2001, dedicated its memorial one year later. The plaque, which hung on the wall until the restaurant closed, read: “In eternal memory of the darkness that fell upon us” (translation mine) – as if Sbarro’s and its patrons had been afflicted by an electrical blackout, and not an Arab suicide bomber, on that fateful summer afternoon.

The moving memorial (in front of the Teaneck Municipal Building) to Teaneck’s Sara Duker, hy”d, murdered in 1996 by Arab terrorists in the Gaza Strip, mourns her life which was tragically cut short by “violence” – place, purpose and perpetrators apparently unknown, or, at least, unmentionable.

Imagine reading an account of the Holocaust that consciously and studiously deleted any reference to Germans or Nazis (or Jews, for that matter). Or, imagine if the Torah blandly commanded us to “remember what happened to you when you left Egypt”, period – instead of underscoring that we were attacked, in a dastardly and unprovoked way, by a nation which forever epitomizes evil – Amalek – and that we are adjured never to forget what Amalek did, even to wage eternal war against them. Imagine these two alternative, revisionist histories, and the examples brought above, and a clear pattern emerges: there is an ongoing, willful attempt to obscure, gloss over, or minimize the identity of the perpetrators of almost all of the terrorism in the world today, and for the last three decades. Why is that ?

In the best-case scenario, many good-hearted people perceive man as naturally good, and evil as a gross aberration. Evil, therefore, exists as an entity, a concept, or as a failure of the human being – but it never inheres in the person. It is therefore unconstructive to associate the evildoers with the evil they have done. There are no evil people; there are only good people who do evil acts.

This notion persists, despite its unequivocal rejection by the Torah. After the flood, Hashem advises Noach (Breisheet 8:21) that “the inclination of man’s heart is evil from his youth”, meaning from birth (Rashi). Judaism maintains that the unfettered, unrefined, untrained – i.e., morally unguided or natural – human being is a primitive, savage beast capable of committing the worst atrocities without a trace of guilt. As Jews, and after enduring two millennia of persecution, we should not need to be reminded of this.

There are other possibilities why the identity of murderers is being systematically concealed. Perhaps, their identity is so obvious that it is unnecessary to state it. Or, it is unpleasant or unsettling to think about them. Or, there is a tangible fear that those who point it out will themselves become targets of attack (presumably from members of the same unnamed group). Or, perhaps there is concern that identifying the perpetrators as, disassociate themselves from the heinous crimes being committed and planned in their names.

Of course, those standards were never applied (and are still not applied) when we classified past persecutors of Jews as Germans, or Poles, or Ukrainians, etc. Surely not every German, Pole, Ukrainian, etc. was a Jew-hater or Jew-killer. Yet, those groups were regularly categorized without qualification, i.e., stereotyped, because the stereotype was largely true. Those who disassociated themselves from the group – overtly or covertly – were so miniscule in number as not to be reflective of the group in general.

The Arabs have escaped these natural consequences, largely because of the innate American reluctance to tolerate group stereotyping (cf. the abhorrence of racial profiling, which has made a mockery of attempts to upgrade airport security), but also because of a massive multi-billion dollar public relations campaign now underway in America, paid for by the Saudis, and designed to preclude and pre-empt such conclusions. But we ignore reality at our peril. It is undeniable that most Arabs are not terrorists, but equally undeniable that in today’s world most terrorists are Arabs (or Muslims). And if even 10% of America’s Muslims support terror, then there are well over 100,000 people in the United States willing to murder innocent people to achieve political goals. And if only 10% of the world’s Muslims support terror, that leaves 100,000,000 people out to commit mayhem. This alone should give us pause for thought, and for honest remembrance.

One further example of the obfuscation of today’s evil is the media’s (and government’s) tendency to compartmentalize the “bad guys.” It’s Al Qaeda, it’s the Taliban, it’s Osama bin Laden, it was Saddam Hussein – in other words, an insignificant number of evildoers rather than a wealthy, sophisticated mass movement that numbers millions of adherents and tens of millions of tacit supporters.

We are unfortunately well aware that since the Nazis, the primary murderers of Jews in the world have been Arab Muslims. We should be more aware that since the end of the Vietnam War, the primary murderers and tormentors of Americans in the world have also been Muslims, and primarily Arabs. The 1979 seizure of the United States embassy in Teheran, the American hostages there and in Beirut, the bombings of the embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 that killed 258 Americans, the destruction of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, the homicides of Rabbi Meir Kahane and young Ari Halberstam, hy”d, in New York, the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the destruction of the Egypt Air flight that killed 217 people off the coast of New York City, the 1998 attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 224, and the September 11, 2001 massacres which extinguished more than 3,000 innocent lives were all Arab/Muslim productions, and only a sampling at that.

Certainly, one would hope, not every Arab or Muslim across the globe is a sponsor of terrorism, and a relative handful (mainly in America, but elsewhere as well) have denounced terrorism as a grave distortion of Islam. Many of those Muslim repudiators of terror have themselves become subject to death threats and hate mail, and have been silenced. And, of course, mere membership in a group is no indication of guilt, and no inherent reason to ascribe guilt. But, tellingly, many across the Middle East (the Saudis are a prime example) have condemned the attacks on America, while continuing to underwrite and exhort terrorism against Jews in Israel and elsewhere. It is not the murder or the mayhem that is inherently offensive, they seem to be saying, it is the lack of prudence in selecting an American target and not an exclusively Jewish one. In the Arab Muslim world, we have yet to hear of a substantial outpouring of soul-searching or even a massive wave of revulsion at the terrorism that blackens their names and defines their movements in the popular mind.

Evil is not amorphous or abstract. It has a name, a face, an address, and an ideology. It is easier to forget, look away, and mask the hideousness of what Arab terrorists did and are still trying to do – mask it behind euphemisms, conceal it behind political correctness, submerge it in a torrent of pale palaver and innocuous nattering, and drown it in a raging river of wishful thinking. But we must be vigilant, as Jews and Americans, to combat evil, hate it passionately, weaken its perpetrators, hasten its demise, and avidly support the defenders of freedom and morality.

Those who persist in believing in the intrinsic goodness of man have to account for the 150,000,000 human beings murdered in the 20^th century alone. To distort the truth while purporting to remember the past is to remember nothing, to dishonor the victims, and to facilitate the murders of the future. Sadly, the Obama administration follows this naïve path, contorting to disassociate Islam from the Fort Worth killer, the underwear bomber, et al, and every murder whose root is directly traceable to radical Islamists.

The Torah teaches us the nature of evil, how to recognize it, how to combat it, and how to defeat it. And it also teaches us that the destruction of evil – Amalek incarnate – is the precursor to the Messianic age, when man’s goodness, freed of the shackles of ego, strife, evil, greed, and jealousy, will flourish and triumph. Let us hasten that day by remembering Amalek (by name), by unflinchingly supporting the war against evil, and by being lovers of justice and truth.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel