Sukkot 5785 – 10/19/2024
Beginning with Bereishit 5781 (17 October 2020) we embarked on a new format. We will be considering Rambam’s (Maimonides’) great philosophical work Moreh Nevukim (Guide for the Perplexed) in the light of the knowledge of Vedic Science as expounded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The individual essays will therefore not necessarily have anything to do with the weekly Torah portion, although certainly there will be plenty of references to the Torah, the rest of the Bible, and to the Rabbinic literature. For Bereishit we described the project. The next four parshiyyot, Noach through Chayei Sarah, laid out a foundational understanding of Vedic Science, to the degree I am capable of doing so. Beginning with Toledot we started examining Moreh Nevukim.
Chag Sukkot Same’ach
This Sukkot, at the end of the week, we will commemorate the first anniversary of Hamas’ brutal massacre. I’d like to offer some thoughts about Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, antisemitism and our role in the maelstrom in which we find ourselves.
We must first remember that the Jews are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel, and there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the Land since the time of Joshua, about 3500 years ago. That presence has sometimes been small, but it has always been there. The only people who had independent sovereignty in the Land have been the Jews. Other peoples have ruled the land, but that was as part of a larger empire. The Arabs, on the other hand, are indigenous to Arabia, and burst out of the Arabian Peninsula to create a vast Islamic empire that included the Land of Israel. This was about 1300 years ago. Muslim rule of the Land was mostly characterized by neglect – you can look up Mark Twain’s eyewitness account to get an idea of what was going on.
From the latter part of the 19th century political conditions in Europe and the Middle East turned favorable for larger numbers of Jews to move to the Land, where they bought land (often paying both absentee landlords as well as the local tenants) and established communal settlements, farmed and built businesses and industries. Along with the increased economic opportunities the Jews brought, Arabs from the neighboring regions (all these regions were part of the Ottoman Empire) began to move to the Land. Unfortunately, they also brought violence against the Jews with them.
After WW I the territory that is now Israel, including Gaza, Judea and Samaria, as well as the current state of Jordan, was given to the British to administer, with the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland in the Land. This was ratified by the San Remo convention in 1920. During WW II, despite some very questionable British policies in the Middle East, the Jews fought with the British and the Arabs sided with the Nazis – the head of the Arab community of the Land spent the bulk of the war in Berlin as Hitler’s guest. Note that nowhere during these years was there ever any concept of the “Palestinian people” floated. The Arabs were citizens of greater Syria or some other Ottoman province.
After WW II the British admitted an inability to govern their Mandate and threw it into the lap of the UN, which recommended partitioning the Land (on the west side of the Jordan River – the British had already lopped off 70% of their mandate by fiat and gave it to the Hashemites, whom the Saudis had kicked out of what is now Saudi Arabia) into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted, the Arabs rejected and attacked. Israel won its independence at the cost of 1% of its total population. Violence has been the response on every single occasion the Jews of Israel have reached out to them in peace. The invented “Palestinian people” are simply another means to destroy the Jews. Incidentally, no so-called “pro-Palestinian protest” is anything of the sort. None of these people cares a fig for the poor Palestinians, or they would have been out on the streets when Assad was barrel-bombing the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, and they’d certainly be protesting the brutal Islamist totalitarian regimes the PA and Hamas have inflicted on their people.
You can find the rest of the sorry history of Arab-Jewish relations in the Land of Israel, which of course have taken a sharp turn for the worse since Iran got involved after their 1979 theocratic revolution. Israel now has on its borders two genocidal groups whose avowed purpose is to kill Jews and destroy the state of Israel. You can read the Hamas charter in English if you don’t believe me. These groups have successfully promoted the narrative that the Jews are settler-colonizers who have stolen the land from the peaceful Arab population. Of course, this is pure projection, but the anti-Semitic west and its media have gobbled it up and drummed it into people’s heads. Thus, almost immediately when the news of the attacks on October 7 th broke, a coalition of 30 student groups at Harvard came out with a statement holding Israel 100% responsible for the violence perpetrated on its citizens. Anti-Semitic attacks on Jews throughout the US and Europe have surged, as has aliyah to Israel. The UN and ICC of course have weighed in with charges of war crimes and genocide, all of which is pure projection from our adversaries and their fellow-travelers.
This surging of Jew-hatred is virtually unprecedented and seems almost supernatural. In my opinion, it is supernatural. Surges in anti-Semitism occur when the Jewish community becomes too comfortable and assimilated in the foreign (and often hostile) environments in which we find ourselves. Examples abound throughout history: Babylonia, Persia, the Rhineland, Spain, Germany. When we start to forget that we are Jewish, we are different, and we are meant to be different, the outer society reminds us. As R. Sacks once put it, “People respect Jews who respect Judaism.” Whenever we (or really anyone else) try to be something we are not, we lose all authenticity and people sense this and despise it. So I think the first message we have to take away are (1) We need to recognize that we are in exile from our Land, in a place that is, often, antithetical to Jews and to Judaism. No matter how materially comfortable we are, it is not our spiritual home, where we can express our unique consciousness; and (2) We need to discover and proudly hold high our authentic Jewish character. That means taking the time and energy to discover authentic Judaism, becoming familiar with our history and literature, and attuning our thinking to Jewish ways of thinking.
For our community, we have an extra responsibility to the world and to the Jewish people, and that is to create the maximum coherence we can using the technologies of consciousness we have at our disposal. If you remember the period prior to October 7 th, Israel was riven by arguments over reforming the judicial system. This is an important issue and needs to be addressed, but the way it was addressed had the whole country spinning out of control. This provided a fertile ground for Hamas’ attack. The warnings were there, but everyone was so wrapped up in factionalism that nobody had time to heed them and take appropriate action. Our guard went down and disaster followed. Creating real peace in the Middle East and the whole world is up to us. Nobody else has the practical knowledge to do it. Our unique Jewish community really has a responsibility to lead the way. It’s in the best interests of the world, and for us, our very survival may depend on it.