Purim 5772: Jewish Unity in Our Times — Are We Capable of It?

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, take care to distinguish those “new Jews” from the phenomenon which arose with Rav Meir Kahane z”l: the JDL, Kach and the like. Those who followed Rav Kahane were both observant and secular Jews, but they identified as Jews and thus 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” evolved from being a fighter for Jewish settlement on Jewish land, to one who 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 emancipated He-Man Jew evolved into 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) and discredits his own right to live in Eretz Yisrael. By the Chillul Hashem he performs before the altar of foreign powers, he emboldens the eyes and perceptions of the very enemy he is kind to. The “new Jew” psychologically projects his own deficiencies onto the religious who he reviles, as the gentile world derisively laughs at Jewish hypocrisy.

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

So we watch the ongoing spectacles, desecrations to Hashem’s name including; expulsions of Jews from Jewish land, fighting winable conflicts under the handicap and shackles which go along with application of Western “morality“; i.e. temporary ceasefires, UN peacekeeping troops and more, amounting to creation of misplaced goals in conflict with Arab Islamic terrorist foes bent on letting Jewish blood,our destruction and eradication and the glorification of complete surrender rather than the true Jewish goal of war; Peace resulting from unconditional, complete, total victory.

And we watch other desecrations to Hashem’s name, such as actual or defacto building freezes against Jewish construction on Jewish lands, renewal of government trial balloons and proposals for further unilateral hand-overs of broader, 10-plus-fold magnitude (over the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif) of Jewish land to the Islamic enemy. We see the anti-Torah regime foist its police on Jewish residents of “outposts” in the dead of night cruelly evicting residents, including mothers and infants and bulldozing their homes. We watched the spectacle of the secular Israeli cabinet and government handing over hundreds of terrorists with Jewish blood-stained hands to the murderous Islamic enemy in exchange for a single Jewish soldier kidnapped by Islamics in an organized attack upon Jewish soldiers on Jewish land. These terrrorists who, once freed, will inevitably perpetrate more such attacks killing and maiming yet more Jews. There have already been reports of such cases.

The self-inflicted degradation its own credibility by this generation’s secular Israeli governance emboldens the Abbas’, the Achmadinejads, the PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah and more — Israel’s murderous Islamic enemies to perceive Israel’s demise as at hand, to smuggle, right under our noses, to further build up its arsenal of weapons with rockets and more aimed not just at South Israel’s urban centers, but aimed at Beersheva, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Yerushalayim, and yes Ramat Beit Shemesh. Apologies to the complacent — to the comfortable and to those in denial, but the truth MUST be told and retold, the facts repeated until internalized, let the chips fall where they may!

For those Jews in denial, for the complacent; historical parallels necessitate 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.

But there also seems a correlation between appeasement and Jewish/Israeli self-hatred and disdain for the Torah ways of Hashem. Are we, of our generations, so polarized that when the chips are down and we find ourselves collectively in ultimate, dire peril, that the lessons of the past will be lost upon us?

Our brethren in the generation of Mordechai HaYehudi and Esther HaMalka came together, prayed and fasted in unity against an enemy bent on bringing the end of Am Yehudi — the Jewish people. By their unity, they merited Hashem’s annulment of Haman’s evil earthly decree.

Are we still capable of standing united against our murderous enemies, as the generation of Mordechai HaYehudi and Esther HaMalka were and as our previous generations in modern-day Israel did? Are we in our times capable of kindness, in all ways, beyond Mishlo’ach Manot on Purim day? Can we feel for each other as one — as one body — V’Ahavta L’rei’echa Komocha? Or is our generation the ultimate end manifestation of the “new Jew” — Israelis vs Chareidim, Ashkenzim vs S’fardim, Dati Leumim vs Chareidim vs Datim and Chilonim, etc., etc.?? Do we still merit Divine intervention and protection? Can we detect the Yad Hashem (the Hand of Hashem) and the coming of the Ge’ula Shlaima in the “natural” disasters in recent years, such as the huge earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the annual flooding due to heavy rains in America’s mid-west, or the twister — or the viscious storms and twisters which have hit in the state of Alabama — do we simply rack them up to “natural” causes, as natural catastrophies? Or is Hashem telling us something?

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 — restituted for all that was stolen from them at leftist-agendized, supreme court legalized gunpoint, that our dear brother Jonathan Pollard and the other MIAs be liberated alive returned to us in ways befitting Al Kiddush Hashem. May we have the backbone, moral courage and fortitude to prevent both the eviction of Jews from their homes in all of Eretz Yisrael and the handing of Jewish land over to enemies sworn to Israel’s and Judaism’s destruction and eradication. May 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 — the Ultimate Redemption bim hay v’yameinu — speedily, in our time”, as Dov Shurin sings; “Ki Karov Yom Hashem V’Kol HaGoyim” — Achshav, Chik Chuk, Miyad, Etmol!!!