7 X 7 Days from Passover to Pentecost (Pesach to Shavuot), the Feast
the Omer - a sheaf of new barley (Exodus 23:16, Numbers 28:26) -
until the anniversary of the Revelation of the Torah at Sinai.
Painting by Vincent Van Gogh
Drove Me to Torah.
History drove me to Torah. I
thought I didn't have a religious bone in my body. But I grew
up reading compulsively and I liked learning about history.
One encounters the Jews - just about 1/4 of 1% of the world's
current population and always clearly one of "the fewest
of all peoples" (Deuteronomy 7:7) - at almost every turn
in history. After awhile, one begins to see principles and patterns
Here are three of them. They are, in no particular order:
First, quoting John Adams, America's second
president, one of the founding fathers:
"The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any
other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal
fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews
to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations." (1809).
Second: the Jews are a nation only by virtue
of the Torah (the "Teaching" or Guidance of Sinai)
Three (although this isn't an invariable rule
in the life of every nation or human being but only a tendency,
yet a remarkably clear and constant tendency): those who
bless the Jews are themselves blessed; those who curse the Jews
are themselves cursed (or, anyway, curse themselves).
Quoting from a book we llike, The Rainbow Covenant,
pages 296 and 310:
This is a test for you. God can distinguish between
those who love Him and those who hate Him by their attitude
to Israel. (From the Bible, see, for example, Genesis
12:3, 27:29, Leviticus 20:26, Isaiah 42:6, 43:10, 54:17.)
One who hates the Jews will hate humanity.
To respect the Jews, despite their flaws, is to respect humanity.
To respect humanity, despite its flaws, is to show respect and
love to God.(See, for example, Genesis 1:27, Leviticus
19:18, 19:34; Talmud, Shabbat 31a.)
Don't let the mere humanity of the Jews sour
you on Israel or Torah.
"The Jews are the intensive form of any nationality whose
language and customs they adopt."
"The Jews are just like other people, only more so."
[For more on this, on anti--Semitism, Torah and the Universal
Law, and for the sources of the quotations above, go to The
If, after looking at the history, one turns to the Torah with
even a modicum of respect, one quickly sees the truth in the following:
*Deuteronomy 4:6 : For this is your wisdom and understanding
in the sight of the nations, who shall hear all these statutes
and say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding
* Deuteronomy 4:8: And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments
as righteous as this entire Torah, that I set before you today.
For me, finally, discovering the Universal Torah
was the clincher. Once I recognized that the Torah provided clear,
beautiful, perfectly logical guidance - or rather, Guidance with
a capital g, to signify something more than merely human - not just
for the Jews but for everybody, that was that.
In the next newsletter we plan
to have an article answering the question, What happens when
you die? What is the essence of a human being? It's in progress
now but not quite ready for print. Until then, we want to leave
you with at least a brief direct look at those who curse Israel
- just a few tidbits of unfolding history:
Below are recent excerpts from the IRIS Blog. For
the full stories and links to other articles as well please visit:
* Letters from a U.S. Jihadist
Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar wrote six letters to
the Daily Tarheel, student newspaper of the University
of North Carolina, where he tried to kill students for Allah by
running them over in an SUV.
"Due to my religious motivation for the attack,
I feel no remorse and am proud to have carried it out in service
of and in obedience of Allah."
"Considering that I injured several people
both physically and psychologically, who were also American taxpayers,
I feel that I succeeded in obeying Allah's commandment to fight
against the enemies of His followers."
From the archives of Memri, Middle East Media Research
Palestinian Arab Author and Syrian University
Professor Praise Arab Mothers for Sacrificing their Sons.
Arab intellectuals Adnan Kanafani and Ibrahim Za'rour
speaking regarding martyrdom, a discussion which aired on Syrian
TV on May 6, 2005. Adnan Kanafani is a member of the Arab Writers
Association and of the Association of the Palestinian Writers and
Journalists' "Syria Branch," and is also a Story Society reporter. According to Arabic News, Ibrahim Za'rour is
a Baa'thist and a university teacher.
TO VIEW THIS CLIP: Click
Cleric cooly calling for martyrydom and cursing
the Jews ("Jews = hypocrites").
TO VIEW THIS CLIP: Click
Columbus, Ohio. Islamic Research Institute academic staff-member
and Muslim leader says that the attacks of 9/11 were planned
by Americans, who based it on the Denzil Washington movie The
Siege. He also praises a leader of Al-Qaida as great and
Please treat this newsletter as a call
to action. We call on God, as the prayer that Israel says
every morning just before reciting the Hebrew statement of faith
known as the shema asks (please understand that this is
much richer in Hebrew than in English:)
Noah and 9/11
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN (NYT)
Published: September 11, 2002
Over the past year several friends have remarked
to me how much they still feel a pit in their stomachs from 9/11.
One even said she felt as if this was the beginning of the end of
the world. And no wonder. Those suicide hijackings were such an
evil act that they shattered your faith in human beings and in the
wall of civilization that was supposed to constrain the worst in
human behavior. There is now a big jagged hole in that wall.
What to do? For guidance, I turned to one of my
mentors, Rabbi Tzvi Marx, who teaches in the Netherlands. He offered
me a biblical analogy. ''To some extent,'' said Tzvi, ''we feel
after 9/11 like we have experienced the flood of Noah -- as if a
flood has inundated our civilization and we are the survivors. What
do we do the morning after?''
The story of Noah has a lot to offer. ''What was
the first thing Noah did when the flood waters receded and he got
off the ark?'' asked Tzvi. ''He planted a vine, made wine and got
drunk.'' Noah's first response to the flood's devastation of humanity,
and the challenge he now faced, was to numb himself to the world.
''But what was God's reaction to the flood?'' asked
Tzvi. ''Just the opposite. God's reaction was to offer Noah a more
detailed set of rules for mankind to live by -- rules which we now
call the Noahite laws. His first rule was that life is precious,
so man should not murder man.'' (These Noahite laws were later expanded
to include prohibitions against idolatry, adultery, blasphemy and
It's interesting -- you would have thought that
after wiping out humanity with a devastating flood, God's first
post-flood act wouldn't have been to teach that all life is precious.
But it was. Said Tzvi: ''It is as though God said, 'Now I understand
what I'm up against with these humans. I need to set for them some
very clear boundaries of behavior, with some very clear values and
norms, that they can internalize.' ''
And that is where the analogy with today begins.
After the deluge of 9/11 we have two choices: We can numb ourselves
to the world, and plug our ears, or we can try to repair that jagged
hole in the wall of civilization by insisting, more firmly and loudly
than ever, on rules and norms -- both for ourselves and for others.
''God, after the flood, refused to let Noah and his offspring indulge
themselves in escapism,'' said Tzvi, ''but he also refused to give
them license to live without moral boundaries, just because humankind
up to that point had failed.''
The same applies to us. Yes, we must kill the murderers
of 9/11, but without becoming murderers and without simply indulging
ourselves. We must defend ourselves -- without throwing out civil
liberties at home, without barring every Muslim student from this
country, without forgetting what a huge shadow a powerful America
casts over the world and how it can leave people feeling powerless,
and without telling the world we're going to do whatever we want
because there has been a flood and now all bets are off.
Because imposing norms and rules on ourselves gives
us the credibility to demand them from others.
It gives us the credibility to demand the rule
of law, religious tolerance, consensual government, self-criticism,
pluralism, women's rights and respect for the notion that my grievance,
however deep, does not entitle me to do anything to anyone anywhere.
It gives us the credibility to say to the Muslim
world: Where have you been since 9/11? Where are your voices of
reason?You humbly open all your prayers in the name of a God of
mercy and compassion.
But when members of your faith, acting in the name
of Islam, murdered Americans or committed suicide against ''infidels,''
your press extolled them as martyrs and your spiritual leaders were
largely silent. Other than a few ritual condemnations, they offered
no outcry in their mosques; they drew no new moral red lines in
their schools. That's a problem, because if there isn't a struggle
within Islam -- over norms and values -- there is going to be a
struggle between Islam and us.
In short, numbing ourselves to the post-9/11 realities
will not work. Military operations, while necessary, are not sufficient.
Building higher walls may feel comforting, but in today's interconnected
world they're an illusion. Our only hope is that people will be
restrained by internal walls -- norms and values. Visibly imposing
them on ourselves, and loudly demanding them from others, is the
only viable survival strategy for our shrinking planet.
Otherwise, start building an ark.
By Michael Dallen
God gave the Torah to the Jewish People so that all nations might benefit from it. – Midrash Tanchuma (ancient rabbinic commentary), Devarim 3