THE DAYS OF AWE
The New Year Blessings to my Jewish readers
from Israel Shamir
In Jerusalem, faith is
always the most important preoccupation, even more so in these
days, when the Jews observe the New Year, or Rosh Hashana, and
the native Christians, members of the Orthodox Church, celebrate
the Invention of the Holy Cross. Churches and synagogues are full,
holy sites well attended, and chants flow in the slightly touched
by early autumn mountain air of the Holy City. The chants are
profoundly similar, and you cant distinguish the Jewish
hymns from the Gregorian chant retelling the miraculous discovery
of the Holy Cross by Queen Helen. For what merit the uncircumcised
may sing every day the chant that the holy people of Israel intone
only once a year? wonders a Hassid character in S.
Y. Agnons story In The Heart of The Seas. The answer can
be found in a common fountainhead of our faith, for in words of
Mircea Eliade, the Orthodoxy of Christianity is the theology of
the Old Testament. The Orthodox Church even celebrates its New
Year at practically the same time as Jews, in September. The faces
of worshippers in my church of St James are quite the same faces
you will see in the synagogue next door; even men sit separately
from their womenfolk in both houses of worship. There is so much
similarity, and still so much of difference.
I write to you with much
love, my brothers and sisters in the Palestine-loving web community.
I know your noble hearts and steadfast support of the difficult
but sublime cause. You are the best; you are as good as your non-Jewish
brothers and sisters. You rejected the temptation of exclusivity,
you have embraced your Palestinian friends, and through them you
have been united with mankind. And now some of you have a problem.
The Days of Awe (as these
ten days from New Year to the Day of Atonement are called in the
Jewish calendar) are the days of great spiritual awakening in
the Jewish community. Your Jewish friends will stand for many
hours in the synagogues and sing beautiful psalms and the touching
liturgy of the souls quest for redemption. For this is the
inner meaning of these days: repentance and hope for salvation.
Unity of worshippers is the reason why people pray together instead
of doing it alone. But you will find it difficult to obtain the
great unity, for the synagogue will be plastered with posters
calling to support Israel. Now if ever, while the
worshippers will compete who gives more money to the very cause
you fight against. On a deeper level, you will be asked to pray
for Divine vengeance and to send curses on the heads of your very
brothers. Indeed the political difference is but a direct consequence
of theological difference.
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Many of you will skip
the synagogue altogether, others will find their way to some non-Zionist
Rabbis. And some are anyway atheists, and do not believe that
there is a spiritual reality beyond the material one. The choice
is hard.
An archetype of a non-Zionist
Rabbi was the late Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, a champion of liberal
Reform Judaism and "the most active and renowned rabbi in
the United States" in the nineteenth early twentieth
century. He was acclaimed recently by our friend Miriam Reik of
New York in a pro-Palestinian email group Univesalist. She wrote:
Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise,
one of its most important and progressive leaders who was passionately
anti-Zionist and thought that Herzl's ideas were so dangerous
that "it becomes the duty of every true Jew to take an active
part in efforts to destroy it."
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This is surely very nice.
But Rabbi Wise and his brand of rationalistic Judaism are tremendously
uninspiring for the Days of Awe. His words were engraved on a
tablet in the Memorial Hall of the Emanu-El, Reform synagogue
in New York: "American Judaism. A religion without mystics
or miracles. Rational and self-evident, eminently human, universal,
liberal and progressive. In perfect harmony with modern science,
criticism, and philosophy and in full sympathy with universal
liberty, justice and charity ." But a rational religion without
mystics or miracles is a Pharisee creed of self-righteousness,
for we greatly need the miracle of Divine charity in view of our
faults we confess in the Days of Awe. Moreover, the present-day
reform Jews are rabid Zionists anyway, for Zionism is the only
substitute of spirituality available in the Synagogue.
In such a spirit I replied
to Miriam and she wrote back:
- You mean you prefer a mystical attachment to the Holy Land that
allows Jews to drive out the Palestinians? You will not settle
for a rational respect for other human beings as a God-given obligation?
But surely there is another
possibility, that of a mystical attachment that allows Jews to
embrace Palestinians? This thought did not occur to Dr Reik for
a good reason. She and all of us understand full
well that the Jewish mystic religious alternative to rational
anti-Zionist Rabbi Wise is Rabbi Ginzburg the goy hater. There
is no alternative mystic Jewish religiosity of universal non-discriminatory
love, for this good mystic side of Judaism is not Jewish anymore.
By becoming universal it turns into Christianity, its sister.
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That is why there are
good rational non-mystic religious Jews like Wise, good rational
atheist Jews like Dr Reik or Lenni Brenner, and there are bad
rational Jews like Leo Strauss or Allan Bloom of The Closing of
the American Mind, the neo-cons Bible, and his disciple
Paul Wolfowitz of Iraqi War, and there are bad spiritual Jews
like the settler rabbis clamouring for Goyims land, but
for a strange reason there are no good spiritual mystic Jews.
A good spiritual mystic Jew is not a Jew at all.
Do not confuse religion
and its deeper innings, esoteric and exoteric levels. There are
many good religious and pious Jews. Rabbi Milgrom went into besieged
Bethlehem, Rabbi Arik Asherman of Rabbis for Human Rights picked
olives in the teeth of the armed settlers, Rabbi Hirsch of Neturei
Karta stayed in Ramallah with Arafat. With all vast difference
between reformist Asherman and ultra-orthodox Hirsch they both
follow the rational line of Vilna Gaon and Maimonides. Late Professor
Yeshayahu Leibowitch, this Urim and Tummim of the Israeli progressive
camp, admired Maimonides this side of idol worship. While calling
for the end of occupation he eagerly supported the
Jewish state, was a convinced Zionist and a hater of Christ. He
described intermarriage of Jews and non-Jews as betrayal,
just like Golda Meier he disliked so much.
I had recently a long
and friendly conversation with an extreme Orthodox Jew, a member
of Eda Haredit, an organisation (church) close to
the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta. He believed in divinity of Jews
as much as a settler rabbi, though he thought that a Jewish state
is not needed.
As we enter deeper into
more mystic levels of Judaism, we experience more of the negative
tendency. Rabbi Kook, Lubawitscher Rebbe, settler rabbis are certainly
mystics, as is Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg, and their teaching is full
of hate, vengefulness and exclusivity. The Jewish mystics deny
equal humanity of Jew and non-Jew, even common origin from Adam
and Eve. That is one of the reasons why so many Jews are rationalists:
they are rightly revolted by the abyss, but are unable to find
and embrace positive spirituality.
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There are no wonderful
and inspiring mystic Rabbis as there are Christian saints and
priests or Muslim Sufis. Sieve through centuries and you will
not find a Jewish Francis of Assizi. The great sage Rabbi Shimon
bar Yohai credited with founding of Cabbala, the Jewish mysticism,
was so full of hate that his very looks set trees on fire, the
Talmud says. Martin Buber tried to find some inspiring Jewish
saints in the Hassidic lore, but failed profoundly. He tells a
story of Besht, an 18th century Jewish Hassidic Rabbi, a story
that apparently contradicts this grim assessment, but actually
confirms it.
Saintly Besht used to
go out of his home almost every night, and his Hassid followers
were at loss for the purpose of his disappearances. Probably
he flies to heaven and converses with God and angels, -
they reckoned; and decided to sneak and watch their Rabbis
doings. In the deep night, Rabbi took an axe and went out, while
his disciples followed him unnoticed. They saw him chopping wood
and delivering it to the door of a lonely Gentile widow. He knocked
and called out: this is Vassili (a Gentile name) brought you some
wood; and walked away. This is an even greater miracle than
flying to heaven, - said the disciples.
It was also a transgression,
according to the Jewish ideas, for a Jew is allowed to help a
Gentile if his good deed will promote well-being of the Jews.
Not only the widow was a person of no importance, Besht even failed,
nay, refused to provide the Jews with a benefit of his good deed,
as he assumed a Gentile name. He came dangerously close to Him
who taught: Do not do charity before men, when you give
to the needy do not announce it with trumpets, but do not let
your left hand know what your right hand is doing (Matthew
6)
The good deed of giving
fruits of ones labour to a needy stranger would not amaze
a Christian or a Muslim. They would consider it a proper and natural
behaviour, certainly a very good one but unexceptional. St Martin
gave his cloak to a needy pauper in a winter night, and remained
in a shirt, while St Bernard gave all his vast property to the
needy. They did not enquire whether the poor belong to the church.
Indeed, the Christian charities of the Holy Land, schools and
hospitals famously support needy Muslims and Jews as well as local
Christians. But for Jews Beshts most natural behaviour was
a supreme miracle and an antinomic deed.
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Recognition of this fault
keeps many good Jews out of spiritual search altogether. They
see the only choice, between We won. Lets eat
of rationalists and the dark mystics of Jewish chauvinism
and stay away. It is tragic, for though people go into substitutes
of politics, sex, power struggle, but the real thing one needs
is spirituality. It gives you more kick than heroin. It would
be even more tragic if you, the best and the most spiritual people,
will stay in the desert of rationality. The desert is dangerous
place, for Mammon loves places of dead spirit. That is why God
is needed, but the way to God is not with Rabbis, it is not with
their obedient servants who call themselves Evangelical
Christians but they are not.
It is perfectly possible
to have the best of both worlds: to support the brotherhood of
men, to reject the evil brood of neo-cons and neo-liberals, and
to be with God. That is exactly what the Pope preaches, that is
what my local Orthodox priest Fr Attalla Hanna preaches, and what
so many Muslim clerics preach. There are no such Rabbis, but you
do not have to get stuck with them. The Synagogue became a rich
mens club, a great supporter of AIPAC and ADL. St Johns
Synagogue of Satan became the Synagogue of Sharon. But the gates
of the Church are open for you. Instead of trying to create some
dubious but exclusively Jewish sects, you can follow the footsteps
of the first apostles and join with your neighbours in one community
of believers for Christ is what the Jews call Israel.
Even the fundamentalist
Jewish settlers are not inherently bad. They are not Mammon worshippers.
Mistakenly they seek for mystic meaning of life with phylacteries
and machineguns, but they can come to light if they follow just
two commandments of Torah: Love God with all your heart
, that is love God instead of Jewish self-adoration
and Love thy neighbour where the neighbour
is everyone, even Samaritan or Palestinian. They can consider
the return of the Palestinian refugees, these certain descendants
of ancient Israel, into their ancestral homes to be as necessary
precondition to messianic awakening, as the return of the dispersed
tribes. For it is said, aliens will join them and unite
with the House of Jacob . It will turn their dark pessimistic
mysticism into one of hope and salvation, for a Jew may descend
into the dark depth of Jewish mysticism, to find the fountainhead
of all grace and cross the lines into the luminous all-embracing
spirituality of Christ. This outcome was glimpsed at by Rabbi
Akiba, Besht and Rabbi Nahman It was achieved by St Paul and Rabbi
Zolli of Rome.
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The late disciple of
Sigmund Freud, Dr Theodore Reik, (incidentally, father of Dr Miriam
Reik) wrote that the Jews are always making the same mistakes
by following the archetypal model of the Bible, and always find
themselves in the same trouble. It is an all-too-human feature,
for criminals are likely to return to jail and a raped woman is
likely to be raped again. By constantly blaming others and mitigating
themselves, the Jews make this repetitious routine likely to come
back. It should worry the US Jews for their leadership follows
the perilous path of Joseph who helped the Pharaoh to enslave
the Egyptians like modern neo-cons and neo-liberals are actively
enslaving America and the world. It should worry the Jews in Israel,
for they treat their neighbours harshly and trample upon their
poor. It should worry the Jews elsewhere as their support for
Israel and the US will cause their neighbours to think, if
the war breaks out, they will join our enemy (Exodus 1:10).
The Jews have their mode of behaviour, and it can not be changed
by a simple expedient of changing countries.
What is worse, we see
this contemptible mode of behaviour with our own eyes, and we
can not blame it on somebody else. That is why we find no place
in the synagogue, as it is preserved for Derschowitz and his kin,
the people who can exonerate the guilty and blame the innocent.
Stand not at the doorstep of a synagogue for you are holy and
just. Leave the Sharon-loving throngs of the Wailing Wall, and
come over to the great Church of Resurrection. Today, like two
thousand years ago, it is the right time for you, the remnant
of Israel, to find your way to Christ.
When
Victims Rule, www.jewishtribalreview.org
Deut 6:5, Luke 10:27
Lev 19:18, Luke 10:27
Isa 14:1
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