Posted on 11/27/2013 5:33:56 AM PST by SJackson
Years ago, on a perfect Hanukkah day, my brother and I were getting off the Coney Island bumper cars on the way to kosher country, when we heard "Dirty Jews!"
Before having a chance to react in anger or fear, two boys were running full speed away from us.
Knowing they were not running from a 7-year-old in a plaid shirt or his slow moving 11-year-old brother, I imagined that the hand of God had descended from the cyclone. But, spotting a speeding Judah Maccabee chasing down those thugs, to my amazement and some chagrin, the Maccabee was none other than my usually passive intellectual of a dad. He held the boys hard by the collars against the screaming protestations of their own bigger and way meaner looking dad, who was screaming "Let my boys go or else!"
My dad did not budge, finally releasing the two to cops who happened to be walking by.
I learned perseverance and Jewish pride at that moment, but confidence was the day’s greatest lesson. Not the confidence of physical strength, which my dad took no pride in, not confidence in the 1970s NYPD, which did not exist. It was the simple, undeniable yet taken for granted confidence of a proud Jew. We are your equals, we are here, we have a state of our own, so, in NYC parlance, F*** you.
Rewind to a Coney Island before the establishment of the State of Israel, and I’m sure a very different story would have been told: our own collars held by a timid father forcing an apology from his own sons. “We are so sorry for wearing our kippot on the bumper cars thank you for calling us dirty Jews please, feel free to do it again at the Ferris wheel”
Which brings us to the double knockout weekend.
Knockout #1 took place last Friday in Crown Heights, when a religious photo intern got knocked down. “A 100 lb little Jew” as Israel Blizovsky described himself, punched for the fun of it... Ha ha. City Government’s nonchalant response was pretty close to What’s the big deal, you Jews worry too much.
Knockout # 2 took place on the other side of the globe, in the Genteel city of Geneva, where diplomats, not thugs, knocked down Israel a peg or two while dismissing the Jewish State’s existential threat with the same What’s the big deal, you Jews worry too much.
Over thanksgiving and Christmas, let us hope that the nations of the world will continue to support the idea of an independent and secure Jewish nation, a nation that will sometimes be battered, sometimes bruised but with its own pride and the means to always get back up.
As we put our faith in these nations, especially our greatest friend the United States of America, we must remember the central lesson of Hanukkah; never rely on others or on miracles, but when our very existence is in the balance, we must be prepared to fight a lonely battle to victory.
When you use the terms "Jews" and "they" in that statement, you are painting with much too broad of a brush. Turns out that a sizable and growing percentage of American Jews (though maybe not yet a majority) would not fit the leftist stereotype you ascribe to them. Yes, you'll find prominent Jews on the left but you'll also find a bunch of prominent Jewish American intellectuals and political pundits who are most definitely conservatives. I can run down a partial list of them if you wish.
From my Jewish perspective, I've considered for many years that the the relationship between many Jews and the 'Rat Party resembles that between an addict and his favorite drug.
Jews are moving away from the 'Rats, though, slowly but surely. And polls, almost all conducted by lefties, tend to somewhat overstate the percentage of Jewish votes that go to 'Rats, because (1)they have a very expansive notion of who is Jewish and (2) they tend to undersample Orthodox Jews and Jews who have origins in the Soviet Union and other Iron Curtain countries. The latter two subgroups, plus American Jews in Israel, vote overwhelmingly Republican, especially in national elections.
We also beget more children, who grow up and vote, too.
Likewise, my stupid, fellow Roman Catholics continue to vote for abortionist-loving Marxists like Nancy Piglosi, Joe BiteMe, Patrick Leahy and slews of others holding high office and my Church continues to permit them to receive Holy Communion.
Israelis, especially the esteemed Benjamin Netanyahu, understand what must be done and may, just may, run roughshod over this puke we call president on their way to settle a problem with Muslims once and for all.
God bless and keep Prime Minister Netanyahu. I honestly try to remember to pray for him everyday.
Blacks, too, really ought to ask themselves what 40 years of affirmative action has gotten them? Has it made white professionals respect their fellow African-American professionals more or less? Has the black community prospered more in the past 40 years, or less? Dots must be connected.
Every group that reflexively votes Democratic has little or nothing to show for it, except gays. Oh, and women can have nicer careers if they never marry and just keep their noses to the grindstones.
“American jews wield great power
Really? What might those “powers” be?”
I meant to say mormons
I have on occasion made liberal Jews hair stand on end when I suggest it’s a war holiday. While I agree the Miracle is at the core of the holiday, imo it’s important to recognize we arrived at that point at the end of a civil war against Hellinization in which the Maccabees prevailed. Without outside assistance. It’s a part of the holiday, and I believe the Rabbi is correct that we can’t rely on others, or miracles before the fact.
“Everyone knew what you meant. You are relatively new here and are not flying well under the radar. I smell ozone.”
other than the fact that I’ve noticed there are a few groups that its ok to besmirch here, and a couple that are off limits, I would have to say I share most beliefs.
No thanks to the Jewish Mess, which continues to promote secular enlightenment egalitarianism as "the" Jewish ideology and never saw a Democrat politician low enough it couldn't endorse.
The newspaper that once served as the mouthpiece in the US of Rabbi Me'ir Kahana' (zt"l; Hy"d) back in the days when everyone regarded homosexuality with horror and loathing has committed itself to the contemporary Democrat party and leftist minority "identity" politics. Someone needs to start a paper to go up against them.
This will only happen when the secular majority of American Jews has totally assimilated and left only the right wing Orthodox to identify as Jews. And even Charedim can be addicted to the Democrat party for the same reasons that Blacks, Catholics, and (at one time) white Southerners have been and are.
You know something? As a Noachide and former chrstian I am very anti-chrstian in a theological sense, and yet I agree with you 100%.
I take a lot of heat for slamming chrstianity on this forum, but at least I slam it from a Torah perspective. Many Jews--both Orthodox and non-Orthodox, secular and religious--have a visceral hatred of chrstianity that goes far beyond theological differences or even historical events to such an extent that it shocks even me.
The best way I can explain it is that Jews regard chrstianity the way chrstians regard G-dless Communism--the Ultimate Enemy against which they define themselves.
American jews wield great power
Really? What might those "powers" be?
If you would allow me, I'd like to defend, to an extent, this observation.
Now it's true that many people who talk about Jewish "power" or influence mean that "Chewish bankers rule ze vorld!" But it does not necessarily have to mean that.
In mystical Jewish teaching (and I am no expert here) the Jewish soul is different from the non-Jewish soul, descending from a different "place" in the G-dhead. This could be interpreted as giving Jews more "weight" in a metaphysical sense, so that Jewish opinion has an disproportionate effect on world opinion that transcends the vaunted "Jewish control" of major media.
In the ancient world, with no modern media of communication and (and certainly no "international finance" as we know it today) one could say it was Jewish observance and 'emunah that caused the spread of an adulterated but ultimately Torah-derived morality throughout the civilized world. Perhaps the great mass apostasy since the eighteenth century European "enlightenment" has had a similar spiritual effect on that world's rejection of its traditional moral beliefs?
In other words, it may very well be that G-d created the universe in such a way that "as go the Jews, so goes the human race"--quite literally.
Rabbi Kahana'(zt"l; Hy"d)'s former second-in-command of the original Jewish Defense League, Chaim Ben Pesach, has pointed out that Chanukkah is a celebration of Jews killing Jews--meaning "narrow-minded fundamentalists" killing "enlightened" liberal Hellenizers.
No Jewish holiday has been so twisted to mean the exact of opposite of what it actually represents as has Chanukkah (even the liberation theology read into Pesach comes in as at best second). The Maccabean revolt began when a liberal Jew decided his to take advantage of his "religious freedom" by sacrificing a pig, at which point Mattityahu (the John Hagee of his day) killed him. Immediately. Without a second thought. This is where this allegedly modern, liberal war on behalf of the First Amendment began.
The "official" American Jewish leadership promotes Chanukkah as a holiday of American Jeffersonian liberalism, conveniently forgetting that all the events celebrated took place in a pre-modern, Theocratic context to which most of today's Jews react like a vampire to garlic. There is no "religious freedom" other than the freedom to obey G-d's Commandments unhindered. "Freedom of religion" as we know it today only came into existence some two to three hundred years ago. It was originally a radical Protestant reaction to the theological and ecclesiological chaos unleashed by the Reformation, but it very quickly became corrupted and became the position of religious subjectivism: "we can't have a state religion because no one knows what the true religion actually is."
Chanukkah is a celebration of the triumph of fundamentalists against liberals, yet the "alphabet agencies" celebrate it as a presage of Voltaire/Jefferson/Paine. Plus it comes conveniently around chrstmas so that it can be turned into the allegedly skeptical, iconoclastic Jewish response to alleged chrstian simplicity and pietism.
I hate what the American Jewish establishment has done to Chanukkah. Let's see them do the same with Purim!
I just defended you a little earlier. Don't make me sorry I did.
I noticed you have taken the “I” out of Christian in your spelling....little overdone, doncha think??
I am trying to avoid writing out in full the name of a false "gxd." It's a religious thing, not done out of spite.
That's my sarcastic way of referring to the absolutely maddening Jewish Press of Brooklyn, NY, the "worldest's largest Anglo-Jewish paper." It's a disgrace.
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