Purim 5769: The Meaning of Purim, and the “New Jew”

The Jew separates and distinguishes himself from the rest of the nations through the Mitzvah of Bris Milah, even though many of our contemporary Jewish brothers would distance themselves from, or stand in denial of their Yiddishkeit. In short, many among our Jewish brethren would deny Hashem’s control of the world and seek to tailor Torah and their Jewishness to fit the ways of the nations rather than accepting Hashem’s reishut (command) over the world.

One must, of course hasten, to distinguish these “new Jews” from the phenomenon which arose with Rav Meir Kahane, the JDL, Kach and the like whose members were both observant and secular Jews but who identified as Jews and who fought to protect and defend their fellow religious Jews against gentile attacks as they travelled to and from Shul, as well as to protect Jews and Jewish property against attack in large urban areas with mixed populations.

The “new Jew” reviles the dress and the ways of both his Eastern European predecessors and his brethren who maintain aspects of the Eastern European derech today in Eretz Yisrael. Yet these very “new Jews” themselves act despicably, based on their sinat chinom for the religious, and anything religious. In his mindless hate of the religious, the “new Jew”, the liberalized Jew who is kind to the cruel (for it’s not the fault of the Arabs that they are poor, that they live in the refugee camps of Gaza, Judea and Samaria) discredits his own right to live in Eretz Yisrael in the eyes and perceptions of the very enemy he is kind to by the Chillul Hashem he performs before the altar of foreign powers. The “new Jew” psychologically projects his own deficiencies onto the religious who he reviles, as the gentile world derisively laughs at Jewish hypocrisy.

This generation’s secular Israeli, descended from the earlier generation “new Jew” who at least fought back when bullied, has, through lack of rooting and footing in Torah and belief in Hashem, no idea why there is an Israel and no idea why he is here. And so, there is the mindset, philosophy or “morality” of the “enlightened ‘new Jew’”, “the proud Hebrew” who would void his Jewishness, his heritage, his land.

And so we watch the ongoing spectacles, desecrations to Hashem’s name including; expulsions of Jews from Jewish land, winable conflicts with misplaced goals fought against Arab Islamic terrorist foes; i.e. temporary ceasefires, UN peacekeeping troops and more amounting to glorification of complete surrender rather than the true Jewish goal of war; unconditional, total victory.

And we watch other desecrations to Hashem’s name, such as proposals in the secular Israeli cabinet and government to hand over to the murderous Islamic enemy hundreds, thousands of terrorists with Jewish blood-stained hands to kill and maim yet more Jews, in exchange for a single Jewish soldier kidnapped by Islamics in an organized attack upon Jewish soldiers on Jewish land.

This generation’s secular Israeli governance self-inflicted degradation its own credibility emboldens its murderous Islamic enemy to perceive Israel’s demise as at hand, to smuggle, right under our noses, to further build up its arsenal of weapons and to strike with rockets and more, starting with South Israel’s urban centers.

For those Jews, it’s an imperative to revisit the Mitzri memory (or lack thereof) of Yosef and to contrast the dialogue between Haman and Achashveirosh — Haman’s top 10 reasons for seeking the annihilation of the Jews as found in Daf (page)13, amud(side)Bet [page 4] in the Artscroll Schottenstein Edition gemora with the contemporary Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany and then to view the Haman/Achashveirosh dialogue next to their own hateful psychological projection of deficiencies onto the religious. One must doubt, even amongst the so-called “religious” political parties, whether there is a true recognition and internalization of what Purim is and means amidst their varied agendas and cheshbonot.

Shem Mishuel cites a Midrash on Bris Milah in the context of the posuk “Avraham took Yismael his son and all of the males born in his household”. (Breish’t 47:7)

May our Ketores — the good, the bad, etc. of our generation, our sanctity, our learning, chessed, midos, etc., with all of the imperfections, be acceptable to Hashem. May we, the B’nai Yisrael be zocha that our brethren — the refugee families from Gush Katif be permanently settled and be made totally whole, that our dear brother Jonathan Pollard, captive Gilad Shalit and the other MIAs be liberated alive returned to us in ways befitting Al Kiddush Hashem and that we fulfill Hashem’s blueprint of B’nai Yisrael as a Unique people — an Am Segula, not to be reckoned with as with “the nations” and may we be zocha to see the Moshiach, the Ge’ula Shlaima, as Dov Shurin sings; “Yom Hashem V’Kol HaGoyim”, the Ultimate Redemption, bim hay v’yameinu — speedily, in our time”, — Achshav, Chik Chuk, Miyad, Etmol!!!