1. religion and spirituality
2. judaism

‫בייה‬
MONTREAL
JEWISH MAGAZINE
December
2014
YOU CAN FIND US ONLINE AT
OBSHINA.CA
CHANUKAH
EXODUS MAGAZINE - MONTREAL
KISLEV
5775
Dear Friends,
On Behalf of Chabad
Russian Youth Center,
We Wish You a Happy,
CHANUKKAH !
Children and adults you are invited to celebrate
a spectacular Chanukkah evening.
What:
Entertaining Show , Traditional Chanukkah Treats :
Donuts and Potato Latkes, Gifts for ALL Children,
Music, Chanukkah Menorah Lighting.
When:
SUNDAY December 21-st, 2014 at 16:00
At Our Synagogue Where: 7370 COTE-S.-LUC Road,
On the SECOND Floor, Suite # 111
For Additional Information Please Contact
Rabbi Moshe Reikhtman at : (514) 777-9161
Wishing You a Happy Holiday !
Tu r n i n g
Po i n t
The world wants Israel to stop building homes for
Jews in Jerusalem. The Jewish population grows. To
sustain it and making living affordable for its citizens,
more homes must be built to meet the demand. To
say Israel should stop building homes for Jews is
tantamount to saying that Jews do not have the right
live there and prosper naturally.
The world wants Israel to accept all Palestinian refugees
as citizens. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs were
displaced by the War of Independence in 1948, and
were subsequently labeled as Palestinian refugees,
even though the vast majority of them were actually
Jordanians and Egyptians. An entire refugee regime
was set up just for them (the UNRWA). The refugee
population was not allowed to settle anywhere else,
and it multiplied as children inherited the status from
their parents — a situation unprecedented in human
history — in order to be used as a UN-funded weapon
against Israel. And all these refugees are expected
to somehow be settled in Israel — even though
absolutely no Jews can live in any theoretical Arab
state they might form. At the same time, hundreds
of thousands of Jews, including my mother’s family,
were forced to leave Arab nations, where they had
lived in peace and prospered for centuries. Most of
them moved to Israel and became citizens of Israel.
Today, there is not a single Jew who is considered a
refugee from an Arab land.
The world wants Israel to stand down from taking
unilateral action against Iran’s nuclear weapons.
Everyone knows Iran is trying to build nuclear
weapons. Everyone knows they have stated
repeatedly that they want to see Israel destroyed,
and have actively supported and armed Hamas and
The world wants Israel to forbid Jews to worship on the
Temple Mount. This is a strange story within a strange
story. As soon as Israel reunified Jerusalem in 1967,
capturing the Old City, the Kotel (Western Wall) and
the Temple Mount, it immediately conceded control
of the Temple Mount to the Jordanian Islamic Waqf.
What an insane concept. Israel wins the war, captures
territory, and immediately concedes sovereignty. Not
only that, but since then only Muslims have been
allowed to pray there, at Judaism’s holiest site. Only
Muslims. Not only did we let them continue praying
there, but we banned ourselves from doing so. And
when Jews demand the equal right to also pray at
their holiest site in their own country, it is considered
offensive, even an act of war.
So, tell me now: What does the world really want
from Israel? The real tragedy is that there are those
within Israel, within the government itself, who wish
to impose these very same destructive and suicidal
demands on Israel.
Why does the world relate to Israel with such hostility?
Nietzsche had a theory that the world hates the Jews
and punishes them because they are the world’s
conscience, the moral compass that guides all of
humanity. And so the world resents being held to
such high standards, of being held back by the
inconvenience of a Divine morality that cannot be
bribed or otherwise influenced by human interests.
Perhaps on a more fundamental, religious level, the
world knows that at the end of the day, despite all
our niceties and political correctness, only one reality
can prevail. The Jewish version of history, if allowed
to prevail, negates almost every dogma on earth —
Muslim, Christian, capitalist. If G‑d ultimate chooses
Israel, then it means he did not really choose Ishmael,
Muhammad, Jesus, or George Washington. And so,
in a desperate act of self-preservation, the world
lashes out against the Jews. And the closer the Jewish
vision gets to being realized, the more desperate and
absurd the attempts to discredit it become.
So the good news is that, judging by how outlandish
the libels are getting today, we must be almost there.
CHABAD RUSSIAN YOUTH CENTER
The world wants Israel to give up Judea and Samaria
(the West Bank) and part of Jerusalem for the formation
of a Palestinian state. Militarily, Israel is not defensible
without these territories. It is barely defensible now,
surrounded by hostile nations, and with a hostile
population within. That’s why Israel captured these
lands in 1967, and made tremendous efforts to secure
them. Giving them up means giving up on Israel’s
security, and risking Israel’s very existence.
Hezbollah to that end. So why would anyone deny
Israel’s right to preemptively eliminate the threat of
Iran’s nuclear weapons?
MONTREAL JEWISH MAGAZINE
The world wants Israel to die. This might seem like a
radical statement, but let’s look at the demands being
placed upon Israel and follow them to their logical
conclusion.
MONTREAL JEWISH MAGAZINE
December 2014 Kislev 5775
think!
again.
contents
| JEWISH SOUL
| JEWISH THOUGHT
Chanukah and Jewish Pride
Chanukah Today
What will happen in the future — no one can say. But we are
apeople who depend on miracles, and indeed, our whole
existence as a small nation in a hostile world is also nothing
short of a miracle.
Spare a thought for Chanukah, the festival of rededication and light. It
is the simplest of all Jewish festivals. All it requires, other than certain
prayers, is the lighting of a candelabrum, the Menorah.
— by Jonathan Sacks
— From a letter of the Rebbe
| MADE YOU THINK
The Battle for Jerusalem
How can your heart not tear asunder seeing the horrific scenes of
Jews in Talit and Tefillin covered in blood? We haven't seen such
chilling images since the Holocaust.
| PERSPECTIVES
RESPONDING TO THE SLAUGHTER
— by Simon Jacobsonn
What we are seeing in Jerusalem today is not simply Palestinian terrorism.
Itis Islamic jihad. No one likes to admit it. The television reporters insist
that this is the worst possible scenario because there is no way to placate
it.
| LIFE ON EARTH
— by Caroline Glick
Is the World Really Getting Better?
The world is on a clock. From the time it first came into being, ithas
been steadily moving towards its destiny. The motion is not steady—it
rises and falls like the crests of waves.
— by Tzvi Freeman
OBSHINA.CA
jewish soul
Chanukah
and Jewish
Pride
From a letter of the Rebbe
W
hat will happen in the future — no
one can say. But we are a people who
depend on miracles, and indeed, our
whole existence as a small nation in a hostile
world is also nothing short of a miracle. And
so when the offer of territorial concessions
was made immediately after and since the
Six day War, there was the miracle that the
other party, the Arabs, rejected that offer. And
during the Yom Kippur war there was even
a greater miracle when the Egyptians, after
crossing the Suez Canal with a huge army,
known to be at least 100,000 strong and most
likely much stronger, yet for no reason stopped
in their tracks only a number of kilometers
east of the Canal, facing no military resistance,
and with the road ahead of them wide open.
Unfortunately, extraordinary opportunities on
both fronts which the miracles had provided
were missed, and, again, I do not wish to dwell
on matters which do not reflect favorably on
our fellow Jews.
As for the practical thing which Jews
everywhere can do to help the present
situation — something which is most
regrettably ignored, in line with playing down
the obvious Divine intervention in the most
critical days of the war -Is that every Jew must
strengthen his bonds with the Torah from
Sinai, when G‑d made us the "chosen people."
This is also something of which we need
not be ashamed, for contrary to those who
misunderstand or misrepresent this in terms
of privilege which smacks of chauvinism, this
chosenness is primarily a matter of duty and
obligation to be a model people for the whole
world to emulate, a people where form takes
precedence over matter, the spiritual over the
material, and the soul over the body, a people
which was destined to be "a light unto the
nations"(Isaiah 42:6, etc.). It is this kind of life
and conduct which the Torah describes that
also stimulates right thinking and the proper
outlook on life. It is this kind of life that also
strengthens the self-confidence of every Jew
wherever he may be, and enables him to shed
any inferiority complex and the readiness
to be impressed by a non-Jew, or by an idea
which comes from a non-Jew, or actually
non-Jewish ideology. It Is sad indeed when,
instead of being a model and a living example
for non-Jews to emulate, some Jews fall over
themselves to emulate non-Jews, rejecting the
"spring of living waters," the Jewish Torah
and Jewish tradition, etc…
This is an area where every Jew, man or
woman, young or old, both in the Holy Land
and in the Diaspora, can and is duty bound
to do something. And if one should think,
what can a single person, or even a single act,
accomplish — we live in a day and age where
it is repeatedly demonstrated that even a small
thing or a small act can have tremendous
effects, and in this case tremendous effects for
the benefit of all our Jewish people everywhere,
including the Holy Land, which is the subject
of your letter.
To conclude, finally, on the note of
Chanukah. The events recalled by Chanukah
seem rather strange. For there were in those
days wars and battles, apparently fought in the
natural way with actual weapons and military
strategy, etc. yet, the victory was on the side
of the physically weak and few, led first by
a Kohen Godol (High Priest), Mattisyahu,
and then by his son, who defeated the mighty
and many. One would have expected that our
Jewish people, whom the Torah describes as
a "wise and understanding nation," would
celebrate Chanukah in an appropriate way.
Actually the miracles of Chanukah are
symbolically celebrated by the lighting of
a small candle, requiring it to be displayed
outside, so that it should illuminate not only
the Jewish home, but also the outside, and
to do this in a steadily growing manner by
adding another candle, and yet another candle
each night of Chanukah. This is to symbolize
and underscore that Jewish strength lies in the
light of the Torah and Mitzvoth, with which
they not only illuminate their own life, but
also illuminate the darkness of the world and
it is this has become such a great and cherished
Mitzvah for Jews. To quote the Rambam, the
great healer of both body and soul, and the
Guide of the perplexed (which is the name of
one of his famous works), of his generation
and of all posterity: The Mitzvah of Chanukah
light is a very beloved Mitzvah, and every Jew
should observe it meticulously, in order to
make known the miracle and give additional
praise to G‑d and express gratitude for the
miracles which He has wrought for us" (Hil.
Chanukah, Ch. 4:12).
Needless to say, although we kindle the
Chanukah lights only eight days in the year,
their lesson and message is a continuous one
throughout the year, and reflects the special
mission which every Jew has been given by
G‑d, the One G‑d, in His one and only Torah.
Hence it is also certain that G‑d provides
every Jew with the ability to carry it out in
the actual daily life, in deed, words, and even
thought. EM
made you think
The Battle
for Jerusalem
Simon Jacobson
H
ow can your heart not tear asunder
seeing the horrific scenes of Jews in
Talit and Tefillin covered in blood?
We haven't seen such chilling images since the
Holocaust. Jews praying in shul slaughtered
like sheep — while candies are being handed
out in celebration in Gaza... What should be
our response? What do we do with our outrage
and anger? How do we move one without going
into denial?
Make no mistake about it: The current attacks
against Jews is nothing less than a battle for
Jerusalem and the Temple Mount (as we are
clearly witnessing today) — a battle which has
been raging for centuries if not millennia.
Ever since Esau wielded his sword and Ishmael
his knife, it has been a tragic part of our history.
But this does not console us. How much more
innocent blood has to be shed? Will the battle
for Jerusalem ever end?
And above all, what can and should we be
doing about this?
Maimonides writes that when a calamity
strikes a community we must cry out, examine
our lives and correct our ways. To say that the
calamity is just the way of the world and a
coincidence is cruel and insensitive.
So what exactly can we do in face of our
recent collective tragedy?
The answer lies in the very same stressful
pregnancy: "when one rises, the other will fall,
I shall become full from the destroyed city. Tyre
became powerful only from the destruction of
Jerusalem."
For us to regain power we must rebuild
Jerusalem. We must build what our enemy seeks
to destroy.
This horrific attack on Jews was in a
synagogue, a shul in Jerusalem. A shul is called
a "mikdash me'at" — the Holy Temple in
microcosm.
"When one rises the other will fall:" When we
build and fortify Jerusalem — both physically
and spiritually — the "other side" naturally
falls.
For every attack on a Jew, especially in
Jerusalem, we need to build an even greater
edifice. Both physically — as in homes,
synagogues, schools. As well as build spiritual
Jerusalem, which means intensifying our
"complete awe" of the divine — the etymology
of Jerusalem is comprised of two words: Yirah
sholom, complete awe.
How do we rebuild the spiritual and physical
Jerusalem and its Holy Temple? The Talmud
tells us [3] that a generation that does not rebuild
the Temple is considered as if it destroyed it.
Because the Temple was destroyed due to
baseless hatred, and as long as we do not correct
that we remain responsible for the continued
state of destruction.
Thus the clearest path to building Jerusalem
and its Holy Temple is to create a groundswell
of baseless love — to counter baseless hate —
thereby eliminating the cause and thus the effect
of Jerusalem's destruction.
“Build me a sanctuary and I will rest among
you,” G‑d tells the people. The Temple is a
channel and vehicle for the Divine presence
among us in the material world.
We must rebuild the Temple in our times. We
must transform our lives, communities, societies
into a Divine Sanctuary. And thereby prepare
the ground for the rebuilding of the physical
Temple in Jerusalem. Indeed, we are taught that
the Temple above is spiritually ready; all it needs
is to descend below. And this is precipitated
through our actions – through our study, prayer
and charity.
As we see Jews desecrated in their holiest
moment — standing in prayer, wrapped in a
talit and tefillin in a sacred sanctuary — there is
only one true and lasting response: Commit to
build more sanctuaries; to attend services more
often; to wrap yourself in a talit and tefillin and
pray like never before.
Every mitzvah is an act of light dispelling
darkness. But there are certain mitzvot that have
unique properties of divine protection against
enemies. These include: the mitzvah of affixing
a mezuzah to the door, which offers protection;
giving tzedakah generously, which "saves from
death"; and donning tefillin, about which it says
"all the nations of the world will see that the
name of G‑d is called upon you, and they will
fear you”
In the merit of the holy martyrs who were
slaughtered while the unity of G‑d was
proclaimed in the tefillin bound to their arms
and foreheads, may every single one of us
commit to donning the tefillin every day, and
if we already do, commit to encouraging and
inspiring a friend, a co-worker, a family member,
anybody and everybody to don the tefillin.
May we adorn out doorposts with holy
mezuzot, thereby proclaiming that this edifice
is dedicated as a sanctuary for G‑d and is
protected by him. The mezuzah simply and
sweetly says: G‑d resides here. "G‑d shall guard
thy going out and thy coming in from now and
forevermore".
And tzedakah – which is not only giving
charity, but also includes acts of righteousness
and kindness. Tzedakah proclaims loud and
clear: we Jews are here to change the world, to
bring righteousness into the equation, to dispel
the selfish darkness with our selfless light.
In times of crisis Jews always gathered the
children together and had them recite verses, say
prayers and give charity.
As King David writes in the Book of Psalms:
“Out of the mouth of babes and infants You
have established Your might – to answer those
who deny You, to silence the enemy and the
vengeful.”
Let us gather our children both at home as
well as in assemblies and rallies, where we recite
Torah verses together, pray together, and give
tzedakah together.
Besides all the other benefits in doing this,
your children will forever remember that we
Jews do not retreat in times of challenge. We
stand up with pride and embrace our faith and
our traditions.
We Jews have survived all the great empires:
The Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians,
the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, etc. Not
just survived, but thrived. We will survive and
thrive through these latest challenges. And we
will rebuild Jerusalem and its Holy Temple to its
full and greatest glory, even greater than it ever
was, and for eternity. If history is a testimony to
anything; if you could be assured of anything,
you can be assured of that. EM
life on earth
Is the World Really Getting Better?
Tzvi Freeman
Y
ou may have heard of figure-ground
reversal. That’s when you switch the
foreground for the background and vice
versa. For instance, looking past the vase to see
the faces that form its background.
The world is on a clock. From the time it first
came into being, it has been steadily moving
towards its destiny. The motion is not steady—
it rises and falls like the crests of waves. Like
the formation of the fetus, there are stages at
which new developments occur—developments
that would be impossible to predict if you had
never watched this before. Especially that last
and final step—how on earth that baby is going
to get out of the very tight spot it’s gotten itself
into. But it will happen—very soon.
Think of an orchestra tuning up in a crescendo
of noise and cacophony—until the conductor
lifts his baton and the symphony begins. Or a
movie set, with the stage crew running about
madly setting everything in place, tearing down
and propping up; the camera and lighting crew
laying wires everywhere and shining lights in
all the wrong places; the actors rehearsing lines
out of order, acting out who they are going to
be in the most ridiculous ways. But when the
director shouts, “Action!” suddenly everything
fits together and makes sense in the most
magnificent way.
If you know what to look for, and you have a
wide enough lens, you’ll see those shifts rapidly
occurring in recent times—in human attitudes,
in technology, in science, and in trends in world
events. The world is preparing itself for a shift
into a new modality, so that when the music
begins, the instruments will be in tune, and we
will be attuned to appreciate the concert.
Let’s get some clarity as to our destiny and
how this world is really meant to be.
We talk about the messianic times as a world
of peace and a world filled with wisdom. But
most important, it is a world unlocked.
Like the movie set, or the orchestra, this
world starts off with its true meaning locked
inside. The greatest of the kabbalists, Rabbi
Yitzchak Luria, “The Ari,” described our
mission as human beings: to release the hidden
meaning of each thing. As the bits and pieces
of the universe that we touch start to sing their
true song out loud, more pieces demand tuning
up, and then yet more, until the noise drowns
out the symphony.
Theoretically, this could go on forever. The
belief in Moshiach is that at a certain point,
a conductor will arrive, the noise will be
dispelled, and the concert will begin. The world
will have arrived.
That’s what the prophet is envisioning when
he hears G‑d saying, “I will pour my spirit upon
everybody, and your sons and daughters will
prophesy.” Hearing the symphony will be the
natural state of living organisms.
That’s never happened before—other than
a brief few hours at Mount Sinai. Even at the
time when the Israel was filled with many
thousands of prophets, prophecy remained a
special experience. You had to remove yourself
from thoughts of this world, meditate daily
for many hours, go with little food and speak
only that which was necessary, and, eventually,
you may have been privileged to tap into the
supernal consciousness of the Creator.
Prophecy, basically, was out of this world.
Because you got it from out of this world. You
saw the world differently as a prophet, because
you were no longer its citizen. You were above
and beyond it, seeing a light that shone from
above into this world.
But that’s not how the world is meant to
be. “All that G‑d created,” the sages taught,
“He only created for His glory.” It’s a piece
of art—but it’s still in the making. It’s a very
messy process, this making. But once done, the
Master Artist lifts the veil, and voila!—there’s
the masterpiece for all to behold. Even little
boys and girls, and wolves and lambs, and
every other creature of this world.
The messianic era is not about some great
revelation from beyond. It’s about the world
singing its own song—and being able to hear
itself.
Now let’s look at how we’re getting there. Or
better—as I said—how the world is preparing
itself for that time.
Civilizations have risen and fallen in many
parts of the world, many times before. But ours,
somewhere in the mid-18th century, hit a point
that has no precedent in anyone’s history. We
call it the Industrial Revolution.
Before this time, all but the fortunate few
lived at bare subsistence levels, most children
didn’t make it to six years of age, the average
life span was around 30 years, only a minority
knew how to read and write, and almost nobody
ever moved out of their class in society. Then,
the human world changed more drastically in
a hundred years than it had changed in all the
years preceding. A caveman would have been
more at home in an 18th century European
village than the villager would have been in a
city of industry and technology a century later.
The Zohar (authored around 2,000 years
ago) predicted the whole thing. On the verse,
“In the six-hundredth year of the life of Noah .
. . all wellsprings of the great deep burst open,
and the windows of heaven were opened,” the
Zohar predicts:
In the six-hundredth year of the sixth
millennium the gates of supernal wisdom
will be opened, as will the springs of earthly
wisdom, preparing the world to be elevated in
the seventh millennium.
The sixth millennium began in the secular
calendar in 1240 CE. The sixth century of the
sixth millennium then calculates to the period
of 1740–1840. Yes, that’s the century we were
just speaking about, when all these changes
took off.
But that’s not my point here. My point
is the words of the Zohar, that all this was
“preparing the world to be elevated in the
sixth millennium.” This is when Friday starts
preparing for Shabbat. This is when all the
props needed for the show are finally being set
in place.
What are those props? Well, try to imagine
a world of peace and wisdom emerging out
of the ignorance and hunger of the masses
before industrialization and communications
technology. It could only have been by some
apocalypse and supernatural magic. Today, we
have all the tools to provide for every human
being on the planet a life of comfort, along with
access to the entire corpus of human knowledge
in hi-res video and graphics.
More than that, technology has provided us
the tools to discover the underlying oneness of
G‑d’s creation. Beforehand, we could only see
the world from the outside, and so we beheld
only more and yet more fragments. With the
aid of modern optics and measurement devices,
luminaries such as Maxwell and Einstein were
able to decipher the unity of all these forces,
even of matter and energy themselves, so that
today we speak of the universe acting as a
single whole that transcends locality and time.
That’s not a revelation from out of this world—
that’s the world itself singing the song of its
One Creator.
Technology makes that all very real. Our
own vast planet has become one global shtetl.
Not long ago, a massacre of some village
somewhere meant nothing to anyone outside of
a fifty mile radius—if they ever heard about it.
life on earth
Today, it shakes the entire planet.
And that’s where the second misconception
I mentioned comes in: The world is not
becoming a more violent, nasty place. Quite the
contrary: Welcome to the most peaceful era of
history. There are less violent deaths per capita,
worldwide, than ever before. It’s we who have
become more aware and less tolerant of that
violence and nastiness.
For one thing, because it’s in our faces. In
the First World War, there were photographs.
In the Second World War, there was film—
with the real grim news arriving far too late.
In Vietnam, there were embedded reporters
getting out the video-record the next day.
Today, we are all not just recipients of news,
but reporters ourselves.
So the horror is much more real—which is
another way that the world is preparing itself
for an era of peace. For thousands of years, the
world glorified war. Writing from the warfront
in 1914, one of the “Poets of the Great War,”
Captain Julian Grenfell captured the spirit of
the times when he wrote:
"I adore war. It’s like a big picnic without the
objectlessness of a picnic. I have never been so
well or so happy . . . Here we are in the burning
centre of it all, and I would not be anywhere
else for a million pounds and the Queen of
Sheba".
By the time WWI was over, it was hard to find
anyone who felt that way. Grenfell fell in battle,
and his fellow poet, Wilfred Owen composed
the words engraved on his tombstone: “My
subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry
is in the pity.”
When people glorified war, an era of peace
had no window through which to enter.
Today’s world, revolted by the ugliness of war,
is a world preparing itself to embrace peace.
And when we look at the actual statistics, the
casualties of military conflict have decreased in
the last seventy years more than in all the years
of history preceding. During World War II,
death by war was running at 5.5 million a year.
During the Cold War (1950–1989) that shrunk
to 180,000 a year. In the 1990s, they were down
to 100,000 a year. In the current century, we’re
down to 55,000 a year—one one-hundredth of
WWII. Just from the Cold War until now, that’s
a shrinkage of over a third. And that’s without
taking into account the quadrupling of world
population in the last century.
Yes, there are these wildcard barbarians
plaguing the Middle East with a penchant
for beheadings, and a brutal, prolonged civil
war in Syria. History, as I wrote, has it’s ups
and downs—but it’s something like walking
uphill while playing with a yo-yo. Four years
in Syria has produced less than a quarter of
the casualties of the four years of the Korean
War, when three major world powers were
embroiled in conflict. And neither compares to
the cataclysms of the First and Second World
Wars or the Stalinist and Maoist purges of
innocent civilians.
Alongside all this, the World Health
Organization reports that over a 20-year period,
extreme poverty worldwide decreased by a
whopping 50%. Health care worldwide is also
increasing: As late as 1970, only around 5 percent
of infants were vaccinated against measles,
tetanus, whooping cough, diphtheria, and polio.
By 2000, it was 85 percent, saving about 3 million
lives annually—more, each year, than world peace
would have saved in the 20th century.
Try to imagine an age of wisdom arriving in
1500, when, in the most advanced countries,
a mere 5% of the adult population could read
and write. Today, 80% of the entire world
adult population is literate.
Here’s just one instance that, for me at least,
brings it all alive: When I was young, India was
a write-off—mass starvation, multiple natural
disasters, disease and the state of its ecology
brought predictions of imminent total collapse.
A lot of those problems have yet to give way,
but now a third of that country’s 1.2 billion
people are holding smartphones in their hands.
That’s no small deal. A smartphone means a
family that has moved into the middle class,
with the whole wide world suddenly opened to
them wherever they go.
There’s no doubt that, with all its concomitant
problems, technology and global commerce has
made the world a far more peaceful, prosperous
and healthy place than any educated person
could have imagined even 100 years ago. Even
30 years ago. EM
Tzvi Freeman is the author of a number
of highly original renditions of Kabbalah and
Chassidic teachings, including the universally
acclaimed Bringing Heaven Down to
Earth. Tzvi’s books are available online at
Chabad.org.
Wishing
:
h
a
k
u
n
a
h
C
e
t
a
r
b
e
l
e
C
You a
o
t
6
1
4
r
1
e
0
b
2
m
e
,
c
4
2
De
r
e
b
m
e
Happy
Dec
Chanukah
Holiday Guide
For a kosher Chanukah
menorah, any candles
will do, as long as they
are arranged in a straight
row.
Each night of Chanukah,
just after dark. The
menorah should remain
lit for at least half an hour
after the first stars appear.
For the most authentic
experience, use olive oil
and wicks, the way it was
done back in the day.
On Friday, we light the
Chanukah candles before
lighting the Shabbat
candles on Friday night.
WHO
SHOULD
LIGHT
IT?
WHERE
DO
WE
LIGHT
IT?
HOW
DO
WE
LIGHT
IT?
All family members
should be present at
the time of the nightly
menorah lighting.
On a chair or low table,
next to a doorway of the
main room in the house,
opposite the mezuzah.
Children should be
encouraged to light their
own menorahs.
Some have the custom of
lighting it near a window,
facing the street.
On the first night, we
place the oil and wick (or
candle) on the extreme
right of the menorah.
Each night, we add one
light to the left and light
the new candle first. The
lights are kindled using
a “shamash” candle (the
candle used to light the
other candles, which is
not counted as one of the
candles).
On Saturday night, we
light the candles after
Shabbat is over, after
reciting Havdallah.
For the order of
blessings, see below.
Chanukah Blessings
To Do List
1. RECITED EACH NIGHT:
Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with
his commandments and commanded us to kindle the Chanukah light.
BA-RUCH A-TAH ADO-NAI, E-LO-HEINU ME-LECH HA-OLAM, A-SHER KIDESHA-NU BE-MITZ-VO-TAV, VETZI-VA-NU LE-HAD-LIK NER CHA-NUKAH.
A. There should be at least one menorah lit every night of
Chanukah in every house. Each male adult, and preferably
every child as well, should light their own menorah.
2. RECITED EACH NIGHT:
Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the universe, who performed miracles
for our forefathers in those days, at this time.
BA-RUCH A-TAH ADO-NAI, E-LO-HEINU ME-LECH HA-OLAM, SHE-A-SA
NISIM LA-AVO-TEINU, BA-YA-MIM HAHEM BI-Z’MAN HA-ZEH.
3. RECITED ON THE FIRST NIGHT ONLY:
Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the universe, who has granted us life,
sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.
BA-RUCH A-TAH ADO-NAI, E-LO-HEINU ME-LECH HA-OLAM, SHE-HECHEYA-NU VE-KI-YI-MA-NU VE-HI-GIYA-NU LIZ-MAN HA-ZEH.
B. Gather together, especially with children, to recall the
story of Chanukah and light the Chanukah candles. Get
everyone into the spirit of Chanukah.
C. Give Chanukah gelt (money) to your children, both
young and old. Get children to give to their friends, as
well, and a portion of what they receive to charity.
D. Add in Torah learning during Chanukah, especially
regarding Chanukah itself.
E. Be happy and join the festivities!
HOW TO CHANUKAH?
WHAT
IS
IT?
WHEN
DO
WE
LIGHT
IT?
Chanukah Today
Jonathan Sacks
S
pare a thought for Chanukah, the
festival of rededication and light. It is
the simplest of all Jewish festivals. All
it requires, other than certain prayers, is the
lighting of a candelabrum, the Menorah, in
memory of the one that once stood in the
Temple in Jerusalem.
We do so for eight days, each day lighting
one light more than the day before. We say a
blessing, sing a song and eat doughnuts (what
would a Jewish festival be without food?).
Hardly newsworthy. What could Chanukah
possibly have to say to us, here, now?
The answer is that the event it recalls —
the Jewish fight for religious freedom under
the Greeks 22 centuries ago — was one
of the most significant of all “clashes of
civilizations”. It was a confrontation between
the two great cultures that between them gave
birth to Western civilization: ancient Greece
in the form of the Alexandrian empire, and
ancient Israel.
It may be hard to believe that they were
fundamentally opposed. Indeed, Christianity
was born in their synthesis, the first Christians
were Jews, and the first Christian texts were
written in Greek. That synthesis existed
in Judaism as well, though it was never
mainstream. Its most famous representative
was Philo of Alexandria.
But they were opposed. They represented
two very different ways of understanding the
universe, constructing a society and living
a life. Much has been written about one
contemporary clash, between “the West and
the rest”. Far too little has been said about
another clash, this time within the West itself.
Essentially it is the same clash as the one
Chanukah recalls more than two millennia
ago.
In his Culture and Anarchy (1869) Matthew
Arnold differentiated between the world of
the Greeks, which he called Hellenism, and
that of the Jews, which he called Hebraism.
Hellenism was about art and the imagination.
Its great ideal was beauty. Hebraism was
about ethics and obligation. Its ideal was
righteousness.
Arnold’s complaint was that in high Victorian
England, there was too much Hebraism and
too little Hellenism. Today the situation has
been almost entirely reversed. Our secular
culture, with its abortion and ever louder
demands for euthanasia, its cult of the body,
its deification of science and scepticism about
religion, even its quasi-religious worship of
sport, is deeply Hellenistic. Hebraic values
such as the sanctity of life, the consecration
of marriage, fidelity, modesty, inner worth
as opposed to outward displays of wealth
and power: all these are in eclipse. Not
surprisingly, most philosophers of our time
have found inspiration in the sages of Athens
rather than the prophets of Israel. Ours is
the most Hellenistic age since the conversion
of Constantine to Christianity in the 4th
century.
Ancient Greece gave the world the concept
of tragedy. Ancient Israel taught it hope. In
the loose sense in which we use these words
today, they are no more than two different
aspects of life. But they are in fact deeply
incompatible. The French playwright Jean
Anouilh put it best: “Tragedy is clean, it is
restful, it is flawless . . . and the reason is that
hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part
in it.”
The fate of the Alexandrian empire should
give us pause. It seemed all-conquering but
within a few centuries it had been eclipsed.
Bertrand Russell explained why: moral
restraints disappeared; individualism ruled,
and the result was “a rare florescence of
genius”, but because of the “decay of morals”
the Greeks fell “under the domination of
nations less civilised than themselves but not
so destitute of social cohesion”. That is surely
a warning for our times.
Tragic cultures eventually disintegrate and
die. Lacking any sense of ultimate meaning,
they lose the moral beliefs and restraints on
which continuity depends. They sacrifice
happiness for pleasure. They sell the future for
the present. The West’s less-than-replacement
birth rates and its ecological irresponsibility
are just two examples of how it too is going
the same way.
Ancient Greece and its culture of tragedy
died. Judaism and its culture of hope
survived. The Chanukah lights are the
symbol of that survival, of Judaism’s refusal
to jettison its values for the glamour and
prestige of Hellenism or what today we call
secularization. A candle of hope may seem a
small thing, but on it the very survival of a
civilization may depend. EM
future tense
MOSHIACH MUSINGS
Eight is a special number. Eight signifies
something which is higher than "nature."
The world was created in seven days.
Shabbat, the holiest days of the week, is
the seventh day. However, the number
eight points to a force higher than nature,
which is in the realm of seven.
During the eight days of Chanukah there
is always a Shabbat or two, if the first
day Chanukah is Shabbat and a Rosh
Chodesh. Is there any significance in this?
Yes. Of the many decrees which were
put on Jews at that time there was
a prohibition to observe Shabbat as a
day of rest and a ban to observe Rosh
Chodesh. Thus, the miracle came out in
such a way that, within the eight days of
Chanukah, there is always a Shabbat and
Rosh Chodesh.
There was also a decree which forbade
the practice of circumcision, which is
performed on the eighth day. Celebrating
Chanukah for a period of eight days also
attests to this miracle as well.
On the Dreidel there are four Hebrew
letters: Nun, Gimel, Hay, Shin, which
is an acronym for, "A great miracle
happened there." What other message do
these four letters have?
Every Hebrew letter also has a numerical
value. The letter "Nun" represents: 50;
"Gimel" is 3; "Hay" is 5; "Shin"is 300 —
together they add up to 358.
The numerical value of the four letters
which spell, "Moshiach" (40+300+10+8)
also add up to 358. Thus, Chanukah is
also a message of hope for the coming of
Moshiach, when we will have the Holy
Temple and again light the Menorah in it.
perspectives
Responding to the Slaughter
Caroline Glick
W
hat we are seeing in Jerusalem
today is not simply Palestinian
terrorism. It is Islamic jihad. No
one likes to admit it. The television reporters
insist that this is the worst possible scenario
because there is no way to placate it. There
is no way to reason with it. So what else is
new?
The horrible truth is that all of the
anti-Jewish slaughters perpetrated by our
Arab neighbors have been motivated to
greater or lesser degrees by Islamic Jewhatred. The only difference between the
past hundred years and now is that today
our appeasement-oriented elite is finding it
harder to pretend away the obvious fact that
we cannot placate our enemies.
No “provocation” by Jews drove two
Jerusalem Arabs to pick up meat cleavers
and a rifle and slaughter rabbis in worship
like sheep and then mutilate their bodies.
No “frustration” with a “lack of progress”
in the “peace process,” can motivate people
to run over Jewish babies or attempt to
assassinate a Jewish civil rights activist.
The reason that these terrorists have
decided to kill Jews is that they take offense
at the fact that in Israel, Jews are free. They
take offense because all their lives they have
been taught that Jews should live at their
mercy, or die by their sword.
They do so because they believe, as
former Jordanian MP Ya’qub Qarash
said on Palestinian television last week,
that Christians and Muslims should work
together to forbid the presence of Jews in
“Palestine” and guarantee that “not a single
Jew will remain in Jerusalem.”
Our neighbors are taught that Muhammad,
the founder of Islam, signed the treaty of
Hudaybiyah in 628 as a ploy to buy time
during which he would change the balance
of power between his army and the Jews of
Kuraish. And 10 years later, once his army
gained the upper hand, he annihilated the
Jews.
Throughout the 130-year history
of modern Zionism, Islamic Jew-hatred
has been restrained by two forces: the
desire of many Arabs to live at peace with
their Jewish neighbors; and the ability of
Israeli authorities and before them, British
authorities, to deter the local Arab Muslims
from attacking.
The monopoly on Arab Muslim leadership
has always belonged to the intolerant bigots.
Support for coexistence has always been the
choice of individuals.
Haj Amin el-Husseini’s first act as the
founder of the Palestinian Arab identity was
to translate The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion, and serialize them in the local press.
During the Arab jihad of 1936-1939,
Husseini’s gangs of murderers killed more
Arabs than the British did. He targeted
those who sought peaceful coexistence with
the Jews.
His successor Yasser Arafat followed his
example.
During the 1988-1991 Palestinian uprising,
the PLO killed more Palestinians than the
IDF did. Like Husseini, Arafat targeted
Palestinians who worked with Israel.
Since Israel imprudently embraced Arafat
and the PLO in 1993 and permitted them
to govern the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria
and Gaza, and exert direct influence and
coercive power over the Arabs of Jerusalem,
the Palestinian Authority’s governing
institutions have used all the tools at their
disposal to silence those who support
peaceful coexistence with Israel, and
indoctrinate the general public in Islamic
and racial Jew-hatred.
Much has been made of the recent spike
in incitement of violence by Palestinian
leaders led by Arafat’s successor Mahmoud
Abbas. But the flames Abbas and his
comrades are throwing would not cause
such conflagrations if they hadn’t already
indoctrinated their audience to desire the
destruction of the Jews.
You cannot solicit murder among those
who haven’t been taught that committing
murder is an act of heroism.
Today Israel must take swift, effective
action to stop the slaughter. The damage that
has been done to the psyches of the Arabs
of Jerusalem and their brethren in Judea,
Samaria and Gaza, cannot be repaired in a
timeline relevant to the task of preventing
the next massacre.
This means that for the time being,
on the tactical level, Israel’s only play is
strengthening its deterrence.
Israel faces two major constraints in
meeting this challenge.
First, the European Union and the foreign
policy elite, are obsessively committed to
a policy of empowering the Palestinians
against Israel.
The Spanish parliament’s decision to go
ahead with its planned vote to recognize
the “State of Palestine,” just hours after
the massacre at the Bnei Torah Kehillat
Yaakov synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har
Nof neighborhood shows that the EU’s
dedication to strengthening the Palestinians
against Israel is entirely unrelated to events
on the ground.
They don’t care who the Palestinians are
or what they do. For their own reasons
they have made supporting the Palestinians
at Israel’s expense their top foreign policy
priority.
Similarly, world leaders couldn’t contain
perspectives
their compulsion to pressure Israel even in
their statements condemning the massacre.
Even there, they called on Israelis and
Palestinians equally to restrain themselves.
The unabated hostility toward Israel was
brought to bear on Tuesday afternoon when
the State Department restated its rejection
of Jewish property rights in Jerusalem and
its desire to see the homes of terrorist
murderers left intact for the welfare of their
terror-supporting families.
On Tuesday, Israel’s social media outlets
were filled with angry rebukes of Western
media outlets from CNN to MSNBC to
CBS, to the BBC. All these networks, and
many others, did everything in their power
to explain away the synagogue slaughter
as just another instance of a cycle of
violence. That is, they all sought to frame
the discussion in a way that would lead their
viewers to the conclusion that the slaughter
of praying rabbis was justified.
While appalling, the coverage was not the
least surprising. The Western elite media’s
devotion to their false narrative of Israeli
culpability for all the problems in the region
is absolute. Networks would rather wreck
their professional reputations than tell the
truth.
Together
with
the
international
community, the media place Israel’s leaders
in a bind. Every step they take to defend the
country and protect the rights of Jews meets
with automatic and libelous condemnation.
The other impediment Israel faces in
deterring anti-Jewish violence against its
citizenry is its own weakness. Since the
inception of the phony peace process, Israel
has continuously rewarded the Palestinians
for their murderous violence against its
citizenry.
From Israel’s transfer of control over all
the Palestinian population centers in Judea
and Samaria, to its forcible expulsion of
its own people from Gaza, to its repeated
releases of terrorists from prison, to its
continued transfer of hundreds of millions
of shekels in tax revenues to the PA, Israel
has showed the Palestinians at every turn
that far from being punished for murdering
Jews, they will be rewarded for doing so.
Given the US and European support for
the Palestinians, Israeli declarations that
there will be no future releases of terrorists
have no credibility. If terrorists aren’t killed
on the spot, they can assume that they will
eventually be released; if not in exchange for
an Israeli hostage, Israel will release them in
an attempt to placate the White House.
But even with these constraints on its
actions, Israel can take steps to deter its
hate-filled enemies from attacking.
Since the current campaign of murder is
being carried out by terrorists largely acting
on their own accord, the measures Israel
adopts to stop the attacks should be directed
primarily against individual terrorists. As
for action against the PA, it needs to be
credible, consistent and directed to where it
will hurt Palestinian leaders the most: their
wallets.
With regard to the individual terrorists, the
government has made much of its intention
to destroy the homes of terrorists. While it
sounds good, there is limited evidence of the
effectiveness of this punitive measure, which
is a relic of the British Mandate.
Rather than destroy their homes, Israel
should adopt the US anti-narcotics policy of
asset seizure.
All assets directly or indirectly tied to
terrorists, including their homes and any
other structure where they planned their
crimes, and all remittances to them, should
be seized and transferred to their victims, to
do with what they will.
If Israel hands over the homes of the
synagogue butchers to the 24 orphans of
Rabbi Moshe Twersky, Rabbi Kalman
Levine, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky and Rabbi
Avraham Goldberg, not only will justice
be served. The children’s inheritance of the
homes of their fathers’ killers will send a
clear and demoralizing message to other
would-be killers.
Not only will their atrocities fail to
remove the Jews from Israel. Every terrorist
will contribute to the Zionist project by
donating his home to the Jewish settlement
enterprise.
Just as Israel has repeatedly buckled under
US pressure to release terrorists from jail, so
it has bowed to US pressure to continue to
fund the PA by transferring the tax revenues
it collects on goods imported to the PA.
Assuming that the government is too weak
to stand up to the Americans, at a minimum
it can see that the money is properly used.
To that end, the Knesset should pass a law
permitting Israeli terror victims to sue the
PA for actual and punitive damages in Israel
courts. The sums awarded to the victims
should be taken from the tax revenues Israel
collects for the PA. The law should apply
retroactively to all victims of Palestinian
terror carried out since the establishment of
the PA in May 1994.
Not only should the law permit Israeli
terror victims to sue the PA. It should
dictate actions the Justice Ministry must
take to assist them in bringing suit.
Israel should also revoke citizenship and
residency rights not only from terrorists
themselves, but from those who enjoy
citizenship and residency rights by dint of
their relationship with the terrorists.
Wives who received Israeli residency
or citizenship rights though marriage to
terrorists should have their rights revoked,
as should the children of the terrorists.
Since Tuesday’s massacre, aside from
Abbas’s phony condemnation, the Palestinian
leadership and public from Fatah to Hamas
have been unanimous in their praise for the
atrocity.
Today Israel is powerless to influence the
hearts of our Arab neighbors. But we can
influence their minds. We can deter them
from attacking us.
The actions set forth above: asset seizure,
revenue seizure and citizenship/residency
abrogation for terrorists and their dependents
are steps that Israel can take today, despite
the hostile international climate.
If the government and Knesset adopt
these measures, they will rectify some of
the damage Israel has inflicted on itself
by showing the Palestinians over two
decades that they will be rewarded for their
aggression.
If our leaders fail to take these or similar
actions, and suffice with complaining about
incitement, their condemnations of the
murder of Jews will ring as hollow as those
sounded by the BBC, world leaders, and
Abbas. EM
perspectives
A Quiet Clash at the Swedish Foreign Ministry
Daniel Pipes
S
weden is arguably the most "European"
of European countries by virtue of its
historically cohesive nationhood ("one
big family"), militaristic and socialist legacies,
untrammeled immigration, unmatched political
correctness, and a supercilious claim to the
status of a "moral superpower." These features
also make it perhaps the most alien of European
countries to an American conservative.
In this context, I offer a summary and
paraphrase of my discussion with two senior
members of the permanent bureaucracy in the
Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA)
held during a recent visit to Stockholm. Our
affable but pointed discussion focused on the
Middle East, on which we agreed on almost
nothing; I might as well have been in Sudan's
or Syria's MFA.
The following contains the seemingly sober
officials' more colorful statements, then my
responses. First, we discussed the Iranian
nuclear program:
1. The IAEA inspection regime in Iran is the
most intense ever mounted anywhere; it
includes cameras that watch the Iranian
installations around the clock, so we
definitely know what's going on there.
My response: How does the Swedish
MFA know that those cameras cover
every last nuclear installation? In fact,
neither Stockholm nor any other capital
has any idea what's going on. The
Iranians' program could be far more
advanced than is known; indeed, Tehran
could have even purchased nuclear
weapons from North Korea or Pakistan.
2. The Islamic Republic of Iran abandoned its
program to build nuclear bombs in 2003.
My response: The Iranian government,
as its president, Hassan Rouhani himself
has indicated, never for a moment
stopped its nuclear program.
3. If an outside power attacked the
Iranian nuclear sites, this would
counterproductively cause Tehran to get
really angry and decide to build The Bomb.
My response: The notion that striking the
installations would inspire the Iranians
to proceed is precisely backward. Also,
recall that both the Iraqi and Syrian
nuclear programs collapsed after being
struck by Israeli jets.
We also discussed the Arab-Israeli conflict
in the context of the Swedish government's
very recent decision to recognize a state of
"Palestine":
1. This move is aimed, I was told, not to
punish Israel but to give heart to those
Palestinians despairing of the two-state
solution, consisting of an Israel next to
a Palestine. As such, it is not hostile to
Israel (where government and population
back the two-state solution) but hostile
to Hamas (which rejects this outcome).
My response: The Israeli government
and population reacted very negatively
to the Swedish decision and will, no
doubt, be annoyed to learn that it was
patronizingly intended for their own
good. Conversely, Hamas has hailed this
move and called on other governments
to follow Stockholm, in order to isolate
Israel.
2. Israeli "settlements" on the West
Bank (which I prefer to call "towns")
render impossible the two-state
solution, making it urgently imperative
to prevent their further expansion.
My response: I flip this around and see
Israeli building as constructive pressure
on the Palestinians to get serious
about ending the conflict. The longer
Palestinians procrastinate, the less land
remains.
3. The many statements and posters in
which Fatah endorses "car jihad" are
unimportant because Fatah is not the
official Palestinian "government." So,
the Swedish MFA does not concern
itself with this homicidal incitement.
My response: Fatah, the PLO, and
the Palestinian Authority are three
names for the same entity. Making a
legalistic distinction among them permits
Mahmoud Abbas, the head of all three,
to get away with murder.
4. The demand that Palestinians recognize
Israel as a Jewish state is a trap for
Abbas, who cannot do so because of
the many Arabs living within Israel.
My response: Not to accept Israel as the
Jewish state means rejecting the entire
Zionist enterprise. Nor is this demand
a trap; rather, it responds to changes on
the Israeli Arab side in 2006. Why else
would Ehud Olmert, then Israel's prime
minister – who displayed a Swedish-like
fervor for an accord with Abbas – have
initiated this demand?
This complete disagreement on facts,
interpretations, and predictions points to an
enormous and ever-widening gap between
countries and governments founded on like
values. At a time when the ranks of enemies
are proliferating, that those who should be
realistic and friendly prefer instead fumes of
fantasy leaves me discouraged about the future
of Europe. What disaster will it take to awaken
the Swedes -- starting with their estimable
foreign policy functionaries? EM
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the
Middle East Forum.