A few social media posts of mine, reflecting on life, tradition, and great scholarship (I’m a big fan of theTorah.com):
A simple, easily verifiable, fact:
הנוצריים עובדי עבודה זרה הן, ויום ראשון יום אידם הוא.
“The Christians are idol worshipers [their JC is an idol], and Sunday is their festival.” – Avodah Zarah 9:4
Yet, with Islam:
“These Muslims are not idolaters (עובדי עבודה זרה / ovdei avodah zarah) at all.” – Teshuvot ha’Rambam #448 …
Very unfortunately(!):
Both Christianity (the idolaters) and Islam (the devotees) are “true” religions. Meaning, that they are “absolutist” in beliefs, in direct *heresy* to 3,500 years of Jewish ethno-religious tradition (we Jews don’t have a single theology!)! Nor, any interest in proselytizing the world of Gentiles.
Yet, habitually and wrongfully:
The idolaters’ religion, Gentile Christianity, claims to be the replacement of “the Jews” and our ethno-religion! And, the Gentile devotees of our שמע / Shema, Islam, claims to be the messenger for the Jews, by conquesting sword and law!
Since the 1930’s genocidal Christian attempt to remove “the Jew problem” from this planet, the European Shoah and Middle East Farhūd (the worldwide Holocausts targeting Jews) have both colonizing conquest religions battling over who oppresses the Jews first!
All because:
Jews, with our ethno-religion Judaism, categorically and absolutely reject the *absolutist* proselytizing claims of both colonizing religions on this planet – Christianity *and* Islam!
As this week’s parasha reminds us, Jews do not worship demigods (the giants of the land) but, rather, we do battle with them and conquer them! Those that would idolize themselves, and seek to harm us – because of their idolatry.
https://www.thetorah.com/article/kiryat-arba-the-father-of-giants-and-the-city-of-four
Kiryat-Arba: The Father of Giants and the City of Four
How the conflation of Kiryat-arba and Hebron created a new mythic character, Arba, father of the giants.
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Moses married two wives, an Arabian princess and an Ethiopian princess. The Jewish TaNaKh praises the goodness of Cushites, and their relationships with Semetic kings of Israel and Judah.
ירמיה יג:כג הֲיַהֲפֹךְ כּוּשִׁי עוֹרוֹ וְנָמֵר חֲבַרְבֻּרֹתָיו גַּם אַתֶּם תּוּכְלוּ לְהֵיטִיב לִמֻּדֵי הָרֵעַ.
“Can the Kushite change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Just as much can you do good, who are practiced in doing evil!” – Jer 13:23
The Jewish Bible clearly receognizes the differences between skin colors of people from different geographical locations. But, this is not the message of Mirriam’s sudden leprosy!
Mirriam was not stricken in punishment for racism, but for questioning Moses authority to decide for all the Jewish people. Note, Mirriam was one of the three ethno-religious leaders of the Jewish people, until the eluded to patriarchal power grab within this passage (Num 12:1)!
מיכה ו:ד כִּ֤י הֶעֱלִתִ֙יךָ֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔יִם וּמִבֵּ֥ית עֲבָדִ֖ים פְּדִיתִ֑יךָ וָאֶשְׁלַ֣ח לְפָנֶ֔יךָ אֶת־מֹשֶׁ֖ה אַהֲרֹ֥ן וּמִרְיָֽם
Mic 6:4 “For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.”
https://www.thetorah.com/article/moses-black-skinned-wife-what-does-the-torah-think-of-her
Moses’ Black-Skinned Wife: What Does the Torah Think of Her?
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“בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים…”
Two ways to *correctly* translate this phrase into English:
“When Elohim (the high God) began to create” – Torah’s intended meaning
“With the beginning Elohim was created” – Nahmanides observed meaning
Now let’s put this in proper context:
“When God began to create the skies and the land, the land *was* (denotes “existing” already) astonishingly empty and darkness was on the face of the deep…”
“בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ:
וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָֽיְתָ֥ה תֹ֨הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְח֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם:
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֱלֹהִ֖ים יְהִי־א֑וֹר וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר:”
The first act of any kind of *creating* of anything, according to this three verse singular passage, is *”light”*, folks! Not the heavens and earth! Light with no source to its existence infused within the darkness itself. Elohim’s first terraforming act was to separate opposites from each other: light from darkness, land from water, day from night.
Nowhere does Torah say that “God” created the universe! It says that earth pre-existed *our* perceptual understanding of reality – existing for as long as Elohim exists.
With the beginning of Elohim’s creating, Elohim too was created. So says Torah in the Hebrew itself!
If this defies what you have been taught “the Bible” says, via translation, then your translation is wrong – a biased “interpretation,” rather a direct translation.
It’s ancient poetry, folks, in myth. The Creator creates the created, and by creating the Creator is created. The Creator has no recognizable form, but has a manifestable body, from which the world we experience and are, equally, a result of is derived from. The skies and land and all life upon/within it, surrounded entirely by the waters separated above and below to make a bubble space within for the human stage.
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A much need read for all Jews, especially “woke” (liberal) Jews – the thoughts of Rabbi Avram Mlotek, co-founder of Base Hillel:
“Woke culture [in the West] is in desperate need of humility, admitting that truth does not dwell in Twitter nor the messiah in a meme.
If the “woke community” really sought to awaken, it would realize that Jew hatred is the oldest of hatreds. [Slavery, ghettos, and genocides targeting Jews by Gentile Christians in Europe and the Middle East, preceded their colonizing enslavement of Africans by 1,200 years!]
It seems that portions of our people have forgotten why Israel was established in the first place: to serve as a safe haven for Jews in our own ancestral homeland. Israeli Jews are roughly divided between Ashkenazi Jews with roots in Europe and Sephardi or Mizrahi Jews with roots around the Mediterranean and the Middle East, who in turn were descendants of Jews from the Holy Land, going back hundreds and thousands of years.
How profoundly unfortunate it is that the Palestinian leadership continues to undermine its own people’s wellbeing, repeatedly rejecting peace accords with Israel, and most recently, refusing its own people democratic elections. Let’s remember that the Palestinian prime minister [Abbas] is still serving a four year term that started in 2006 [following the example of his predecessor, PLO terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, before him].
Claiming that Jews are white, European “colonizers of Israel” — as woke activists frequently do — is about as historically honest as saying Native Americans don’t have a right to live in the United States. [After 3,000 years of Jewish presence in Gaza, since 2005, Gaza became Jew-free – which is the intention of both Hamas and the PA for all of historic “Palestine.”] Unfortunately, segments of the Jewish population are some of the most vocal supporters of this fraudulent ideology, trading our people for acceptance, forgetting our own history for the expediency of being politically correct [in the Diaspora].”
https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/how-a-wokestorm-is-misleading-a-generation-about-israel/
How a ‘Wokestorm’ Is Misleading a Generation About Israel
Defense of Palestinian rights has too often become a one-sided, distorted, often violent assault against Jews.
[ ] – my clarifications
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“The essence of Zionism is not a Jewish state in the land of Israel; it is a Jewish home in the land of Israel, a thriving Jewish society that both offers Jews refuge and enriches the entire Jewish world. It’s time to explore other ways to achieve that goal — from confederation to a democratic binational state — that don’t require subjugating another people. It’s time to envision a Jewish home that is a Palestinian home, too.”
Now, this! I fully agree! The West’s insanity over a Two-State solution is never going to be achieved! To even try such, both Hamas and the PA/PLO terrorist orgs will have to be fully rooted out from the Palestinian people. But, as both Jews and Arabs have suggested within the region, a Confederation of two peaceful allied nations occupying the same land *is* a possibility!
But, for this to happen requires the constant demonizing of the other to end. It requires Arabs to admit that Jews have always lived in this land, and only Israel has been a national sovereignty upon this land. Everyone else has been – literally, historically – occupiers. An Israel-Palestine Confederation would be the first time in human history that Israel-Judea (Syria Palaestina) – aka, historic Palestine – would be a land area of two sovereign nations – one Jewish and one Arab!
The historical reality is that Moslem/Muslim Arabs colonized Palestine, after the colonizing Byzantine Christians lost occupying control of Israel-Judea/Palestine. Then, came the British, the “white” Christian colonizers! But, though Jews, the indigenous of the land, fought for self-sovereignty (the fourth iteration of such) on our land, we still can share it safely and peacefully with the historic occupiers – before the Nakba occured (the Jewish war for Independence on our parent land)!
If only Christianity and Islam stepped back, trying not to give in to their inherent “Jew” hate as religions, there is a chance for Jews and Arabs to live together in peace in Israel-Palestine. There is a *real* chance, but the hate tropes and constant lies about the “other” must end completely!
It won’t be easy, for all Jews are tired of the supremacist Nazis violence upon us and, then, to have these antisemitic occupiers turn around and say that we are these very same supremacists Nazis of this world, all to delegitimize our self-sovereignty – while knifing at us, hanging captive of us outside of windows, and shooting rockets at us within our self-made walled-city of a little insignificant nation upon this planet, that is just trying to somewhere on this planet to live in safety and peace.
We don’t want to rule the world, we want to live free of Holocausts inflicted upon us as a people. We don’t want to proselytize the world, we are not that kind of non-ethno-religion. We don’t want to be at war with anyone, and don’t know how not to be the target of Gentiles *obssessed* with our people’s existence upon this planet and with our land.
Palestinian Refugees Deserve to Return Home. Jews Should Understand.
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That’s all for now, folks. Just some light reading and reflecting.
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