Making History Judenrein

Algebra and social science aren't required learning according to the Torah. G-d doesn't require us to be experts in chemistry or in English literature. The only high school subject that the Torah commands us to learn is history. "Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will declare unto you, your elders, and they will tell you." (Deut. 32:7) Every single Jew must be aware of his history, from where he came, so that he should know where he is going. A Jew must have a proficiency in the legacies of the past, of the course of Jewish history. Only a Jew who is well versed in the history of his people can feel the true weight of his destiny, of his heritage, and to be able to carry on the Jewish mission.

The enemies of Israel know too well that without a sense of history, the Jewish people have nothing. Therefore, they work tirelessly to erase the past and to destroy evidence of Jewish history. They seek to make history judenrein, free of Jews. The incredible story of Jewish survival throughout the ages bears testimony to our triumph and vindicates our claims before the world. It is not surprising that those who want most to undermine the homecoming of the Jewish people deny the past.

The policy of the "Palestinians" (an invented entity in-and-of itself), both Hamas and the "moderate" Fatah, has been to deny that a Jewish Temple ever existed in Jerusalem. Yasser Arafat, may his name be accursed, repeated this lie before a shocked President Clinton and his aides. Children in the Arab world are consistently taught that the Jewish people are interlopers who have no history in the Land of Israel, or "Palestine". On September 23, Fatah-run "Palestinian" television featured a video clip which called for Muslims to protect al-Aksa mosque. It repeated the claim that the Temple never stood in Jerusalem. As translated by PMW, the video clip that appeared on PA TV on September 23, 2008, includes the lyrics, "Oh [Sons of] Zion, no matter how much you dig and no matter how much you destroy, your imaginary Temple will not come into being, Al-Aqsa is ours. Al-Aqsa is ours, Oh Muslims, Al-Aqsa is ours." It goes on to call for another Saladin, the Muslim conqueror of Jerusalem in 1187, according to PMW. This clip has been broadcasted by Fatah and Hamas repeatedly during the last 18 months.



The Islamic wakf which is in charge of the Temple Mount has been feverishly working to destroy all archaeological evidence of the Temple. Archaeologists have found them dumping priceless historical artifacts in the Kidron Valley. They have been Islamizing the Temple Mount while removing every last vestige of Jewish past from it. Despite the fact that for thousands of years, the Temple was the center of Jewish spiritual life, and Jews pray three times a day facing the Temple Mount, the wakf doesn't allow Jews access to their holiest site. They know full well that without historical justification, Israel has little basis as a Jewish state. With this in mind, they try to cut Jews off from their past. Jews are forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount, Muslim mobs destroyed Joseph's Tomb in Shechem and the Arabs are besieging the beleaguered Jewish community in Hebron, centered on the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

A study released this week by the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish and Community affairs, found that American elementary and high school textbooks contains gross distortions about Israel and Judaism. One textbook claims that Jesus "was a young Palestinian", and charges the Jews with deicide. Many others deny the connection between the Jewish people and Israel. They claim that the Arabs never attacked Israel and that Israel has refused to make peace with them. They teach that Israel put the "Palestinians" in refugee camps but ignore the half a million Jews forced out of their homes in Arabs lands. (The history of Jews in Arab lands is another subject of historical revisionism as revisionist "scholars" deny the indignities and brutally that they suffered at the hands of Islam.) After a vote by the Islamic Council of Education, it was decided to avoid using the name "Israel" to refer to the Davidic dynasty lest anybody make a connection between this ancient kingdom and the modern State of Israel.

The President of Iran, who is now in NY speaking before the UN and having dinner with religious leaders, denies the Holocaust before the entire world. He has said that: "They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets. The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets, (it) deals very severely with those who deny this myth but does not do anything to those who deny God, religion, and the prophet. If you have burned the Jews, why don't you give a piece of Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to Israel? Our question is, if you have committed this huge crime, why should the innocent nation of Palestine pay for this crime?" Ahmadinejad asked the West rhetorically why, if they truly committed the Holocaust, do they not the Jewish people a piece of land in Germany. He ignores the historical and ancestral claims that the Jewish people have to the Land of Israel and rewrites history by painting the Arabs as the natives of Palestine who were displaced by Zionist invaders. He combines Holocaust denial, anti-semitism and a commitment to destroy Israel into a frightening combination. He is just one of the growing number of voices that seeks to "revise" the Holocaust and to claim that it was exaggerated.

The Jews were once compared to a messenger who forgot his message. The G-d of history chose the Jewish nation to be His, to be a light unto the nations and to spread holiness and G-dliness all over the world. Unfortunately, many Jews have forgotten their lofty calling and contented themselves to living like gentiles, focusing on materialism and ignoring the Jewish destiny. Leo Tolstoy wrote of the Jews in 1908: “What is the Jew?...What kind of unique creature is this whom all the rulers of all the nations of the world have disgraced and crushed and expelled and destroyed; persecuted, burned and drowned, and who, despite their anger and their fury, continues to live and to flourish. What is this Jew whom they have never succeeded in enticing with all the enticements in the world, whose oppressors and persecutors only suggested that he deny (and disown) his religion and cast aside the faithfulness of his ancestors?! The Jew - is the symbol of eternity. ... He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity." The Jewish people has survived all of its oppressors and begun to return to its land. Israel is the beginning of the Redemption, what Jews have prayed for three times a day for two thousand years, since the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans and the beginning of the current exile. They longingly beseeched G-d to return them to His land.

This week's Torah portion sets out G-d's guarantee of our return. "And it shall come to pass, when all these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you shall return to your heart [while in exile] among all the nations, where the Lord your God has driven you. And you shall return unto the Lord your God, and shall obey his voice according to all that I command you this day, you and your children, with all your heart, and with all your soul. Then the Lord your God will [re]turn your captivity, and have compassion upon you, and will return and gather you from all the nations, where the Lord your God has scattered you...And the Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and he will do you good, and multiply you above your fathers. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your seed, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, that you may live. ... And you shall return and obey the voice of the Lord, and do all his commandments which I command you this day. And the Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in every work of your hand, in the fruit of your body, and in the fruit of your cattle, and in the fruit of your land, for good; for the Lord will again rejoice over you for good, as he rejoiced over your fathers. If you shall listen to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the Torah, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul." (Deut. 30:1-10) To be able to return, we must be aware of our original state and be able to know that our present reality is an aberration and not the ultimate goal. The G-d of history will have mercy on His people. Amen.

Cross-posted to Goat's Barnyard and Stop Raping Israel

Addicted to Victimhood

Dear Jews,

Wake up! Its time to leave the shtetl. Take a look around you. The ghetto walls are gone. Its time to abandon this ghetto mentality and to start standing up for ourselves. The year is 2008, not 1808. The days when we had to look beseechingly to the goyyim are gone. As a nation, we seem to be stuck in this Pale of Settlement mindset. We need to wake up to the incredible reality of a sovereign Jewish state, a Jewish army and the beginning of the Redemption.

Jews, many of us are uncomfortable with the idea of Jewish self-defense or of a Jew fighting back. During our long 2000-year exile, our beliefs have grown corrupt and perverted with galutishe attitudes and ideas. We have become so accustomed to seeing Jews downtrodden, beaten up and degraded, that we see this as normal. We squirm at the prospect of using legitimate violence to protect ourselves. We would rather see ourselves in the role of the mourning family, the perpetual victim, than as the aggressor, the strong man.

Tevieh the milkman standing in the midst of his ransacked village. The Jew locked behind the ghetto walls as the goyyim taunt him. Raging Cossacks burning down our homes and synagogues. Jews beaten up in the streets. We have gotten used to it. That's the way its meant to be. Second class status for Jews. Israel demonized, delegitimized and held to a double standard. Same old, same old. No, my friend. It is time to stand up. There is nothing Jewish about being weak, about being persecuted and oppressed. We have become the proverbial battered wife who cannot fight back, who accepts her torment silently. Suffering is just part of the bargain of being the Chosen People. How Galut has corrupted our ideals!

The recent incident in the settlement of Yitzhar demonstrates the same ghetto mentality that still grips our leaders, as well as the true Jewish response. Early Shabbat morning, an Arab terrorist snuck into a Jewish house and set it on fire. A 9 year-old boy who went to investigate was stabbed in the chest by the terrorist and flung 4 meters high over a fence. The terrorist promptly fled in the direction Asira el-Jabaliya, a hostile Arab village which gave shelter to the terrorist. The IDF sat on their hands and did nothing. A Jew stabbed? We can live with that. Business as usual. Seeing that they would get no help from the corrupt authorities, the attacked and beleaguered citizens of Yitzhar descended on the village which harbored the terrorist, fired shots and threw stones at some homes. The proud Jews of Yitzhar let the Arabs know in no uncertain terms that they are not afraid of them and will stand up to Arab attacks. The stabbing of a little boy cannot be taken lightly. The Jewish people are not the be trifled with.

What was the reaction from the authorities? Olmert condemned the Jewish response, using words such as "taking the law into their own hands," "brutality," and "pogrom." He further accused the Jews of having "used live weapons and wounded Palestinian residents," and said that there had been "no basis to assume... that [the targeted Arab] residents were at all connected, whether directly or indirectly, to the terrorist attack in Yitzhar." It mattered little to him that the Arabs of the village had set fire to Yitzhar homes seven times in the past three months, or that they had protected the man who stabbed a child. What mattered to him was that Jews had the audacity to defend themselves instead of passively resigning themselves to their fates. Such a thing could be a dangerous precedent for Olmert who might have to rethink his brilliant strategy of surrender and capitulate.


Being weak is not a moral virtue. We were sent into exile as a punishment and we must do all that we can to leave it behind. As the Sages teach: "the lowliness of Israel is the greatest Desecration of G-d's Name". While we may forgive personal affronts, we have no right to dispense with G-d's honour. Jews, we must shake off our reservations about standing up for ourselves. Rabbi Kahane taught that "a Jewish fist has to be attached to a Jewish head". We have one of the strongest militaries in the world yet we continue to allow ourselves to be murdered and maimed all out of fear of "what the goyyim will say". When Jewish blood is spilled, and could have been easily prevented, we comfort ourselves by reminding ourselves of our "Jewish values", how much more moral we are, how we are better, how we "are not like them". My friends, the Torah does not command us to go like sheep to the slaughter. That is not my Judaism. My Judaism is that of King David who fought the enemies of Israel, and who prayed that "the righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked". My Judaism is that of Samson the Brave who asked G-d that he be able to destroy the foes of his people before he died, and "to punish them for what they have to done to one of my eyes". My Judaism is that of Yehudah HaMaccabee who led a fierce revolt against the Greek occupiers and Hellenistic assimilationists. My Judaism is that of Bar Kochba who almost succeeded in expelling the Roman forces from the Holy Land and reestablishing Jewish sovereignty. That is my Judaism. That is my Torah. And it it beautiful.

Cross-posted to Jewish Vengeance and Stop Raping Israel

Jerusalem: Closest to G-d

Jerusalem is the heart of Am Yisrael. If I forget thee Jerusalem...

Our Two-Pronged War

Its open season on Jews in Paris. Saturday, as they were walking home from Mincha prayers, three counselors of the Bnei Akivah youth group were brutally attacked by a gang of Muslims. The counselors were walking when they had chestnuts thrown at them. When they protested, anti-semitic slurs were hurled. 10-12 gang members then joined in and beat them with brass knuckles.

This was the second attack near the Bnei Akivah branch in two months. In June, another 17 year-old Jew wearing a kippah was beaten up by a Muslim gang. And a few months ago, a neighbourhood store was caught selling shirts that read, in German and Polish, "Jews forbidden in the parks". Anti-semitic attacks are very common in France. The radical Muslim population is growing exponentially, veiled women from head-to-toe are a very common sight, and mosques are popping up all over the place. The same pattern is repeating itself in the UK, in Germany and all over Europe. This Islamic fundamentalist Jew-hatred combined with "the new-anti-semitism" of the anti-Zionist Left is lethal to Europe's remaining Jews. Many Jews no longer feel comfortable enough to wear kippot in public or to identify themselves as Jews. Entire communities are under siege as going to synagogue literally becomes an ordeal amidst intense security, guards and routine checks. Synagogues, monuments and Holocaust memorials are routinely vandalized. A few weeks ago, a video was placed on YouTube (and subsequently banned) showing a group of Greek students in Rhodes urinating on a Holocaust memorial with violent rock and anti-semitic lyrics in the background. The Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin was defaced for the tenth or so time.

Europe's tragic history is repeating itself. It feels eerily like 1938 for Europe as attacks on Jews reach a fever pitch. Not only are Jews violently attacked by Muslim anti-semites but the Jewish State is regularly demonized, delegitimized and condemned. The writing is on the walls for the Jews of Europe as Muslim sonei yisrael as well as Leftist anti-semites work tirelessly to make Jewish lives miserable. The Jews of Europe face an existential threat as the radical Muslim influence is growing. In mosques all over Europe (and the world), Jews are dehumanized, compared to insects and diseases and threatened with extermination. Millions of young Muslims are indoctrinated with Jew-hatred and the terrible fruits of this preaching are being reaped in Europe, as well as against Israel. Esau soneh et Yaakov. Once again, the Jewish nation finds itself in dire straights as the world sits silently by and allows anti-semitism to take hold and grow.


We Jews are in between a rock and a hard place. As Yishmael plans to destroy our bodies, Esau deceives us into giving up our souls. The World Evangelical Alliance, "Israel's best friends", have restated their goal to convert the Jewish nation to Christianity. Coming from the city in which the Final Solution of 6 million Jews was orchestrated, the Berlin Declaration calls for the evangelization of the Jews of Europe. "Everyone needs to hear this message including the Jewish people. Proclamation to Israel was Jesus’ priority. It also reflects the apostles’ practice of going to the Jew first. Nothing has occurred since Jesus came that changes the need for Israel and the nations. "

It is astonishing that hundreds of years after the public disputation at the order of the Church in which Jews were threatened with expulsion, death or forced conversion, Jews are again called upon to defend the validity and integrity of their faith. The Jews of Europe, when not being beaten up by anti-semitic mobs, will be swamped with pamphlets and missionaries urging them to convert. The Berlin Declaration in essence says that Judaism has no value and offers no salvation. The Jew who follows authentic Judaism is worthless and is condemned to the fires of hell unless he becomes a Christian. Jews are forced to explain themselves to Christians and to stand up for their faith. Evangelicals claim to be motivate by love for the Jewish people but in reality, they only reject anti-semitism as a means to further their hold on the Jewish soul. Hardly no strings attached! A real love for the Jewish people would be accompanied by a respect for Judaism's validity and choseneness, and the recognition of the legitimacy of Jewish tradition and belief. To issue this declaration of apostasy from the Nazi capital in which Hitler's henchmen orchestrated and planned the annihilation of the Jewish people is the height of insensitivity and callousness. By teaching that Judaism is incomplete and misguided, Evangelicals offer a surefire recipe of hatred and mistrust for the Jewish people.

With barely 15 million Jews in the world today, growing anti-semitism in Europe and North America, an existential threat against the State of Israel, rampant assimilation in the United States and an obsessive drive by Evangelicals to convert Jews, the Jewish future is difficult. We are caught between those who wish to kill us physically, to rob us of life, and those who wish to destroy our unique spiritual heritage by baptizing us. Whether by gas chambers and pogroms or by missionizing and assimilation, the ultimate goal is the same: the eradication of the Jewish people from the face of the Earth. We must take heart G-d's promise in the Torah that the seed of Abraham shall never cease to be a nation. The end chapter has been written. All that remains for us to decide is how many of us will make it to the finish line. The Jewish nation will outlive all of its tormenters and oppressors, the assimilationists and peddlers of foreign faiths. G-d will surely vindicate His people.

Cross-posted to The Truth about Moshiach

Mearat HaMachpela Desecrated

In traditional Islamic thought, the pre-Islamic era in world history is known as jahiliyyah, an age of barbarism and ignorance. Essentially, all that precedes Islam is worthless. In this spirit of chauvinism and imperialism, Muslims have carelessly destroyed the holy places of the faiths which they have conquered. Around the world, from the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan to Hindu temples in Kashmir and India and churches in the Middle-East, the hole places of non-Muslims have been desecrated, humiliated and often stolen and islamicized.

The Islamic holy month of Ramadan recently began and as usual was accompanied by an upsurge of violent attacks, unrest, terrorism and intolerance. The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Israel, is "shared" by Muslims and Jews with each group having 10 holy days in which they have unrestricted access to the site (at least in theory). The Tomb of the Patriarchs is the burial place of the Forefathers of the Jewish people, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as well as the Matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah. It is considered the second holiest site in Judaism after the Temple Mount. Hebron has an unbroken chain of Jewish habitation since the First Temple period until 1929 when Arab pogroms forced the Jews out of their homes, ending the community. Hebron served as the original capital of King David's kingdom before he moved it to Jerusalem. The Tomb of the Patriarchs, which the Torah records as having been purchased by Abraham for a tomb for his wife for the exorbitant price of 400 silver shekels, has often been forbidden to Jews. Under Ottoman rule, Jews were prohibited from entering the site and were restricted to the 7th step of the Tomb.

Friday, as Muslims converged on the Tomb for Ramadan prayers, they urinated on a Torah scroll and left behind Hamas flags. In the past, mezuzot have been ripped off the doors and holy books vandalized. For all those who claim that Islam is one of three Abrahamitic religions, this dispels such a myth. Islam does not consider itself one of three Abrahamitic religions but rather the sole Abrahamitic religion, as proven by the desecrating of a Torah scroll. Noam Arnon, spokesman for the Jewish community in Hevron, said there is always some sort of damage discovered upon their return every time Jews are prohibited from entering the holy site. It boggles the mind to think that in the sovereign state of Israel, Jewish holy places are being vandalized and destroyed by Muslims and the authorities are doing nothing. In fact, there are plans on the table to expel the Jews of Hebron, along with those in the rest of Judea and Samaria, and give them control over Jewish holy places. Condoleeza Rice and the Bush administration are pressuring Israel to give the Arabs control over half of Jerusalem. How can anyone trust these barbarians to safekeep the synagogues, yeshivot and Tombs of Tzaddikim that exist in Jerusalem? It is a well-known fact that the Islamic wakf in charge of the Temple Mount is guilty of destroying Jewish archaeological records and dumping them in the Kidron valley.

This path has been taken before. In October 2000, as Shechem (Nablus) was transfered to PA control, a mob of Arabs desecrated the tomb of the Biblical figure Joseph. They burnt Torah scrolls, destroyed the yeshiva and razed the structure. There are currently plans to rebuild the tomb, which is now being used by the Arabs as a garbage dump.

Ephraim Bluth, a leading figure in the region, wrote the following after his night visit to the destroyed tomb of Joseph:
I recently had an opportunity to visit the Tomb of the biblical Joseph - Yosef Hatzadik - in Shechem. Given the location, in a viper's den of terrorism, such visits need be organized with the active cooperation of the IDF, which provides worshippers with several layers of security.

A disparate group of adults and teenagers, bonded by a mutual desire to pray at the tomb gathered at an army base situated near the Hawara Junction, just south of Shechem. Shortly after 1 a.m., we traveled to one of the entrances controlled by the IDF and entered Shechem from the east. A few minutes later, we disembarked the bus and streamed into the remains of what had been (until October 2000) the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva, encompassing Joseph's tomb.

The visit was a difficult venture, from an emotional point of view. On the one hand, I felt a sense of privilege to be present at the burial site of one of our foremost religious and historical figures.

On the other hand, I felt a sense of sadness and betrayal that my own government has been, and continues to be, unable and unwilling to prevent the defiling of a site that is so precious and so holy to Jews.

From the torched and scarred ruins of Joseph's tomb, amidst the rubble left behind by a local Arab mob, I was able to gaze up at the growing Jewish community of Elon Moreh and at the expanding yeshiva there which is at its core.

I drew a lesson from this experience: these visits to Joseph's tomb must continue.

More than anything else, they demonstrate to our enemies that our connection to the Land of Israel, both past and present, will never be severed. Though our own national government has failed to establish and maintain the deterrence needed to insure that Jews can travel freely anywhere in Israel, we must continue to show through determined action, that we remain true to our past leadership and the legacy they left in our hands.

Cross-posted to Jewish Vengeance and Goat's Barnyard

From the Farthest Reaches

"Yet will I leave a remnant, that ye may have some that shall escape the sword among the nations, when ye shall be scattered through the countries." (Ezek. 6:8)

"If your outcasts are at the ends of the earth, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back." (Deut. 30:4)

"I will say to the north, 'Give them up!' And to the south, 'Do not hold them back.' Bring My sons from afar And My daughters from the ends of the earth" (Isa. 43:6)

In our times we are literally witnessing the reversal of Jewish exile and the fulfillment of the promises of ingathering. In the past century, especially in the last 60 years, Jewish communities from Russia and Poland, Morocco and Iran and even as far flung as Ethiopia, have been gathered in the Land of Israel. Communities that were scattered over 2000 years ago with the destruction of the Holy Temple have made their homes once more in Israel. Close to half of the world's Jews live in Israel.

In the ancient city of Kaifeng in China, once home to a thriving Jewish community, close to 1000 Jews have begun to reconnect with their heritage, learn about their traditions and reclaim their Jewish roots. Several have made aliyah and more are considering going so. Their history (which can be found here) is a long one of exile and dispersion from Israel to finding a new home and thriving in China, until assimilation finally took its dreadful toll. HaShem has awakened the hearts of this historic and once-proud community to return to their origins and make their way home.

Since the summer of 2005, over 700 Jews from Brazil have made aliyah, many choosing to reside in Beer Shevah. But how did they come to be in the Amazonas? And what's Morocco have to do with it? Well, as the story goes, about 150 year ago, when the world's rubber industry was starting to develop, several Moroccan Jews – rubber tradesmen – arrived in South America.

They made their way up the Amazonas River, from Brazil to Peru, where they were able to cultivate rubber trees – or as they are called - Hevea Brasiliensis – the Pará rubber tree.

In those days, foreigners found it difficult to travel safely though the jungles and the native Indians were their guides. The Jewish merchants had no wives, and ended up marrying the local Indian women. Only recently have many undergone halachic conversions in an attempt to return to the Jewish people. There is a growing movement among bnei anousim (known derisively as 'marranos'), Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition but kept Judaism in secret, to learn about their roots. Hundreds have attended conventions for bnei anousim and even made aliyah. A tour of 16 bnei anousim from Spain, Portugal and Italy recently finished touring Israel. Around the world, descendants of those who were forced to abandon their faith are reclaiming and embracing their Jewish heritage.

In a landmark decision, PM Olmert has given permission for all 7 232 Bnei Menashe Jews living in Northern India to make aliyah. The Bnei Menashe are descendants of the Tribe of Menashe who made their way to India following the exile of the Ten Tribes by the Assyrians. They preserved many Jewish customs and traditions. In the past two centuries, they were converted to Christianity by missionaries because they recognized elements of their ancestral religion in the new faith. However, in the past few decades, they have embraced their Judaism. Several hundreds will make aliyah every month.

HaShem is gathering His beloved children from the farthest reaches of the Earth. In anticipation of the coming of the Moshiach, Jews are returning to the Land of Israel from every corner of the world. Those who had their heritage ripped from them by missionaries and assimilation or persecution and torture have taken back what was stolen from them. They have triumphed over their oppressors and adversaries and proudly declare that they are Jews.

Blow the great shofar for our freedom and raise a banner to gather our exiled. Gather us together from the four corners of the Earth. Blessed are You, HaShem, who gathers the dispersed of His people Israel." Amen! May we be in-gathered from our exile speedily in our days.

Cross-posted to Jewish Vengeance