Much hair is being pulled out of heads because of one of the proposals that the Netanyahu government has embraced; reform of Israel’s highest court. But the furor over what some feel is an attack on democracy is largely based on misunderstanding the nature of that court.
To read what I mean, click here.
A piece I wrote about the uniqueness of the Holocaust was published at Religion News Service and can be read here.
If you are old enough to have lived through the ’70s, you may not remember the end of the world, because, well, it didn’t happen. But it was scheduled to, as you can read here.
Major mirth greeted Stanford University’s Information Technology department’s list of words to be shunned by the university’s publications and website. Words like “webmaster” and “blacklist.”
And yet, there is some food for thought in the list too.
My take on the matter is here.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has added to his sins — to date, they include calling his childrens’ mother “mother” and declining to dine privately alone with any woman other than his spouse — a deeply offensive (at least to some) menorah.
Read all about it here.
Democratic Congressmen Hakeem Jeffries and Ritchie Torres are two people worth looking at closely. They give the lie to the contention that the blue sky is falling.
To read what I mean, click here.
There’s no “cure” for either idiocy or anti-Semitism (or the common combination of the two). But there are ways of dealing with it, like calling in the comedians.
To read what I mean, see my most recent Ami Magazine column, here.
“As surely as I have established My covenant with day and night – the laws of heaven and earth – so will I never reject the offspring of Yaakov…” (Yirmiyahu 33:25-26)
There are laws of nature, and of human nature. And one of the latter is, according to Rabi Shimon bar Yochai, in a beraisa brought by Rashi (Beraishis 33:4), the “halacha” that “Esav hates Yaakov.”
When the sar shel Esav wrestles with Yaakov, our forefather asks him “Tell me your name” and Seforno comments that the question’s intent was, “What sin of mine allowed you to attack me?”
No answer to the question is recorded or, presumably, offered.
Something poignant inheres in that. When hatred of Jews is manifest, we often try to understand what begat it, what “reason” there is for it. But, even though the haters might claim there are reasons, when looked at closely, their “reasons” are illogical. There’s simply no “there” there.
Because the hatred isn’t “caused” by anything. It just is, as an expression of animus inherent in Esav’s and his spiritual descendants’ essence.
It is, in other words, a law of human nature. And rather than criticize ourselves for doing this or that wrong, or not doing this or that right, we do best to just smile at the demonstration of that “law,” and, even as we fight, as we must, to counter the unwarranted anger and slanders, try to accept that, at least among some people, it will absurdly persist until Mashiach arrives.
And at the same time, we must recognize, too, that, despite Esav’s evil intentions, another “law,” another reality, is that Hashem “will never reject the offspring of Yaakov,” will never allow Esav and his spiritual progeny to win.
© 2022 Rabbi Avi Shafran
A piece I wrote for Religion News Service about a misunderstood element of Israeli politics can be read here.
