It’s rare that an op-ed so firmly and perfectly aligns with my own personal views such that much additional commentary is rendered unnecessary. I’ll say this: there is not a shred of doubt in my mind that Torah and our study (adherence to it or not) and familiarity of it is inextricably linked to our right to Israel, and our identity as Jews. Put another way – If one of the two – Torah or Jews, ceases to be G-d forbid, the other ceases to be* and as the ultimate historical absurdity Israel would be Israel only in name (a name which the gentile nations of this world seek to deny us – even that).

The extent to which we are knowledgeable in Torah is the extent to which we can claim our Jewish identity. We’ve proved for 2000 years that Israel need not, and today we are proving that it does not provide enough of an intellectually satisfying basis for such identity. It’s Torah. It’s all we have, and it’s all we are.

* Lest we also be Jews only in name, the same way today’s ‘Palestinians’, as the other major historical absurdity, are believed to have any connection whatever with the original Philistines. Or, controversial as this may be, the way those with only a Jewish father believe themselves to be Jewish.

Studying Judaism

By JPOST EDITORIAL
09/05/2010 22:31

Bible is central to Jews’ connection to Israel.

The first half of this saying, coined by Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaria, who lived in the first century CE, has been the subject of much media attention in recent months. A wave of caustic criticism has been heaped on the haredi population for stubbornly clinging to an educational system that enjoys extensive funding from the state, but that is producing an ever-growing number of Talmud scholars who lack the basic skills needed to earn a living.

But not much attention has been given to the second part of the ancient rabbi’s pithy statement: The sorrowfully inadequate level of Jewish studies provided to our nation’s secular schoolchildren.

Our founding fathers understood the centrality of the Bible to the Jewish people’s connection to the land. In 1937, for instance, David Ben-Gurion told the British Peel Commission, saddled with the job of ending conflict the between Jews and Arabs, that the Bible was “the Jewish people’s mandate” for the land of Israel.

Israel policy makers, educators and IDF commanders have come to appreciate the strong correlation between a solid Jewish education and patriotism. Religious convictions aside, without a strong Jewish identity, Israeli citizens cannot be expected to make the necessary sacrifices demanded of them in a Jewish state surrounded by enemies. Nor can they hope to create an original Jewish culture.

But despite the appreciation for Jewish learning and Jewish identity, the reality today is far from ideal. Just two hours a week of Bible studies are required by the Education Ministry. According to minutes from a Knesset Education Committee meeting in March, many secular state schools teach even less, sometimes as little as one semester during all of the last three years of high school.

Often this is the first subject to be abandoned when time constraints arise. Bible teachers lack proper training and the requisite passion needed to bring to life the ancient text. Meanwhile, other Jewish subjects, such as Mishna and Talmud or Jewish philosophy, are completely optional.

All this is despite the recommendations of the 1994 Shenhar Commission, which explicitly called for more state-funded Jewish studies in the state school system. We fear that a new commission appointed by Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar and headed by Prof. Binyamin Ish-Shalom will face a similar fate.

Meanwhile, privately funded initiatives such as TALI, a Hebrew acronym for Tigbur Limudei Yahadut (enhanced Jewish studies), and the Hartman Institute are filling the vacuum, proving once again that private initiative always beats state-funded projects.

TALI, with an annual budget of just under $2 million, funded principally by North American Jews, works in cooperation with 40,000 families and hundreds of teachers to introduce a pluralistic, liberal version of Judaism and prayer into the secular state school system on the preschool and elementary school level, while Hartman works with 50 junior high and high schools.

The only education minister who agreed to fund TALI was the late Zevulun Hammer (National Religious Party), who argued that a little liberal Yiddishkeit is better than no Yiddishkeit at all. Previous and subsequent ministers have distanced themselves from TALI, either because their secular sensibilities led them to oppose any form of Jewish particularism or because of their own or their coalition members’ Orthodox parochialism.

Dr. Eitan Chikli, executive director of TALI, says that the fund, with 90 elementary school and 70 preschool members, is stretched to its limit. Supply cannot catch up with demand.

True, some secular schools are ideologically opposed to the teaching of Judaism. But many secular Israelis who reject Orthodoxy are nevertheless open to liberal approaches to Judaism, as is clear from the rising interest in non-Orthodox educational frameworks for adults, such as Alma Hebrew College, Bina Center for Jewish Identity and Elul, all of which are privately funded.

An absurd situation has been created in which the State of Israel funds haredi schools that produce graduates who lack the occupational skills and the Zionist ethos to integrate into Israeli society, while it refrains from enriching secular schools with Jewish studies. This counterproductive policy must end.

I just get the feeling that whereas in eras past, we’re looking back and piecing together how the hell we came to this world war or that crisis, when it comes to Iran and/or the middle east, in this day and age, all the pieces are coming at us loud and clear – through mass, 24-hr media and social reporting. And we, standing right in front of them, refuse to even admit they exist.
Kasparov – one who you could say tends to think a few moves ahead, says in an article on Jerusalem Post: “In Russia we’re not fighting to win elections, we’re trying to have elections. Our fight is very different… because we do not live in a democratic country. This,” he said, “is something that people in the West and also in Israel don’t want to recognize.”

Well there’s a lot of things the Western democratic world doesn’t want to recognise, as Khaled Abu Toameh detailed painfully however wryly at a talk at Central last night. I knew pretty much everything he was going to say, and was half bemused, half saddened by the questions after. Part of them were asked as if to clarify that which was clearly said (e.g. “no, Hamas really doesn’t want peace with Israel. As I said, it wants peace alright – peace without Israel” [paraphrased]). Many on the left and the right side of politics and worldview simply seemed unable to shake themselves from their narrative to be able to absorb the truths Toameh was relaying.
Democracy in Russia is a joke (Kasparov)
No, Hamas doesn’t want peace. No Hamas doesn’t want peace. No – no matter how much you want them to want peace – Hamas doesn’t want peace. Sorry, would you like to ask again?
Yes, even though you never really hear about it in mainstream media – because it’s not as newsworthy as a Jew killing a Muslim – there is corruption in the Palestinian Authority; widespread, rampant corruption and waste of all your goodwill and good money.
Arafat was a thief, first and foremost, who stole from the world and his own people.
The Israelis generally view us Israeli Arabs as a 5th column, there is a culture of distrust and this has been admitted by the Israeli government.
Wouldn’t the Israeli-Arabs be the most OBVIOUS choice to act as a go-between to Hamas re: Gilad Schalit?
Yes, half of Israeli-Arab Knesset representatives are doing their job, and the other half are doing everything they can to break the bonds with our Jewish brothers.
The houses you see built by the Israeli Arabs are generally simple housing extensions rather than big apartment blocks or developments. Know why? Because the Israeli government won’t give building permits to Arabs because of discrimination, so the Israeli Arabs build illegally. We do not have it good – we’ve been suspected since 1948.
No, the global media isn’t interested in things that actually matter or would help to end the crisis, because not only are these not really news, but to cover these stories scares them – they are afraid of the Palestinians. I say to them – if you are afraid, go home to your safe democracies, and by the way – where does that leave ME? Shouldn’t I be afraid?
The Israeli Arabs do not have it good – take a walk down Arab Nazareth and compare to the Jewish/Israeli area. The former looks the spitting image of Gaza.
And no, I don’t have a solution. You people who think a two state solution is feasible – it’s not, really, we live on top of each other, it’s impossible and you are living in a dream. And you people who want a one state solution – both sides would like that, but that’s impossible also. This is complex. Stop mouthing nonsense about peace while the PA and Hamas are teaching the children war.
And by the way – they incite to make not only a scapegoat for their social ills, but to divert attention from the corruption. And then you wonder why neither Arafat nor Abbas CAN make peace – the population they themselves incited won’t support it! They can never deliver while the masses are incited, and they will remain incited until the corruption stops. Welcome to Israel. Wake the hell up.

All the pieces are in front of us. We, led literally by the nose by our pathologically misguided, idiot global media, refuse to put them together, and what’s worse – we refuse to admit they even exist.

Khaled, like a prophet on the steps of the Temple, tells us to admit that these are the problems, stop wasting times on this settlement or that “Did they JUST wake up and see the settlements? If they’re such an obstacle to peace – THE obstacle – why didn’t they demand a complete freeze in Oslo?”.

We wanted to hear something controversial or challenging. One friend of the family says “I just feel I guess that if Toameh can’t give me something new, maybe I should go to Lakemba to get answers”. Just like the prophets told us what deep down, we already knew, or should, Toameh showed us that you know what, sometimes 1 + 1 really does equal 2. Please do the math and don’t pretend there’s no exam, that maths is unimportant, that we’re beyond that now, and there are other reasons why there’s a math exam beyond maths, that it’s the fault of the history and english departments that we have maths in the first place, that maths isn’t the problem anymore, it’s the ants on that hill over there…

FYI – Judgment at Nuremberg‘s set shortly after WWII, after most of the worst Nazi’s that were found alive have been tried. Four German judges that were active during the rise of National Socialism (Nazism) and throughout the Third Reich’s tyrannical rule are placed on trial, to see whether those who signed various Nazi orders, either to take Jews and the other undesirables away or in general giving more and more executive power to the Hitler’s (y’s'w) government could be considered liable, responsible.

At a certain point in the court proceedings, the American prosecutor shows video clips of the sorts of grotesque, inhuman acts that were committed.

At this point in the movie, I put down my knife and fork from dinner. Afterwards, when my brother and I were silent in a sort of sighed sadness, I picked up my cutlery once more, and said “you still have to eat”.

The High Class German Woman

A scene shortly following the horror show in court involved a high-class German woman taking the lead American judge who oversaw the proceedings to a German bar in Nuremberg. She brought up the images of the concentration camps, mass graves and gas chambers. She said, effectively: “look around, at the other patrons singing’ – for singing they were, heartily, with smiles, ‘you have to forget in order to keep on living’.

At this point I said to my brother: “yes, you have to forget to keep on living. But the difference between us and them is that we hold it a religious obligation to set aside a particular time to remember.” Be it 9th of Av in the Jewish calendar, or Holocaust Remembrance day in the secular calendar. She was right, but the German woman herself forgot the most important point – you forget from day to day, perhaps, but at some point you have to make it your mission to remember.

Was I right? How could I eat after seeing what was probably a distant relative in those video clips? Is my distinction fair enough? Is it a religious thing? I open it for discussion, if anyone desires to weigh in. Perhaps it’s not something people like to think about!

The German Defense Attorney

The German defense, at the climax of the movie (spoiler, perhaps?) says that if you hold these judges accountable, then the whole of German society is accountable, and if they too are accountable – so are the collective populations of all the other nations in the world and their governments, who shut their eyes, covered their ears and closed their mouths to the destruction of Jews as it occurred.

At a time when virtually every country, government, media outlet and NGO on Earth are either doing exactly the same, or even – astoundingly, a mere 60 years after around 6 million Jews were exterminated – far from sitting silently, are actively siding against Israel and the Jewish people, hearing that German defense lawyer was disturbing to say the least.

Some further things to chew on follow. When I was in high school I had a stigma regarding what Hitler y’s'w’ actually said – I didn’t want to even hear him. But if you don’t hear what he said in his own words, you won’t understand what it means to be a Jew, as much as you won’t understand what true antisemitism is. Says Rabbi Ken Spiro, one of the greatest backhanded compliments given to us as a nation came from Hitler y’s'w’ himself. Conscience – the idea to care for a weaker human being or someone otherwise in need – is a Jewish concept. See below for more.

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Newly available evidence from Nazi collaborator Haj Amin Al Husseini y’s'w’:

‘In his memoirs [from 1943], the mufti admitted that Heinrich Himmler, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, told him secrets of the German empire. Besides “research for a nuclear bomb,” he told him on the persecution of Jews: “Up to now we have exterminated [abadna] around three million of them.” This admission discovered in his memoirs in 1999 ended decades of heated debate on what the mufti knew about the Holocaust.’ Read the full story – The Sheikh and the Shoah at Jpost.com

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“Providence has ordained that I should be the greatest liberator of humanity.  I am freeing man from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge, from the dirty and degrading self-mortification of a false vision called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and independence which only a very few can bear.”

- Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 222

- Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 220

The heaviest blow which ever struck humanity was Christianity; Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child.  Both are inventions of the Jew.”

- Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, trans., (Oxford, 1953), Hitler's Table-Talk, p. 7

- Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, trans., (Oxford, 1953), Hitler's Table-Talk, p. 51