JUDAISM

YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE
by Jack Berger
Member of the Board of Directors
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
October 17, 2011

“You are standing today, all of you (all generations) before Hashem, your G-d, from the heads of your tribes, your elders… your children… from the (highest) in society… to the drawer of your water, for you to pass into the covenant Hashem, your G-d in order to establish you today as a people to Him and that He will be a G-d to you… I call on heaven and earth today to bear witness against you. I have placed life and death before you, a blessing and a curse, you shall choose life so that you will live… to dwell on the land that I swore to your forefathers (to your fathers and grandfathers) and to Abraham, Isaac and to Jacob.” (Deut. 29-30)

Looking at the world today I think back to the words of Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…” When I first read those words in high school, I believed that they were far removed from the rest of my life. America was in a simpler place. My only serious question was why wouldn’t Sandy Koufax pitch the first game of the World Series … after all was Yom Kippur really that big a deal and it wasn’t like he wore a kippah and kept kosher. It was a time when questions hadn’t been asked yet and didn’t need to be answered. Today has caught up with yesterday.

For me, years before my Bar Mitzvah, I remember the words on our Day of Atonement. Words when secular Jewish friends of mine only came to synagogue one day a year – would show up on Yom Kippur to hear– “who will live and who will die…” The profundity of that one line and its finite reality, its focus, its simple yet unambiguous statement… is a statement that few Jews can turn away from or forget. The gift we have been given is the gift of time – money comes, money goes, our days are moments as part of an eternity that we are only blessed to know for a very short time.

WE NEED HEROES TODAY
Let Us Be Like Maccabees
By Bernard J. Shapiro
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
December 13, 2009

The year is 70 C.E. and a young Roman legionnaire stands on a hill overlooking Jerusalem. While he watches it burn, he says to his comrades in Latin, "Judea Capta Est" (Judea is conquered).Yet like the legendary phoenix, rising from the ashes of its own destruction, Israel burst onto the world's stage 2000 years later, with the cry of a lusty infant yearning to breathe free. Five Arab armies tried to destroy that new life before it could take hold. With blood and fire, including the sacrifice of one per cent of its population (6000 of its best young people), besieged Israel secured its independence.

Just nine short years earlier, European Jewry faced its most devastating experience, the Holocaust. In the areas under Nazi occupation, the Jewish death rate was 90%. Despite revolts in dozens of camps, and heroic resistance with the partisans of free Europe, the Jews were unorganized, unarmed and ultimately became victims. During both the Holocaust and Israel's War of Independence, the world and its leaders were indifferent, if not hostile, to the fate of the Jews.

ASSIMILATION OF AMERICAN JEWS CAN BE CURBED
by Michael Anbar PhD
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
November 1, 2009

For centuries Jews have been subject to bigotry, i.e., misojudaic prejudice, often associated with violence that ranged from arson, molestation and pogroms to the Holocaust. Yet the Jewish nation survived in a grueling Diaspora. But later, once Jews were fully emancipated, many of them assimilated, and the Jewish nation lost many individuals. People born to Jewish parents have denied their heritage, joining subcultures that disregard ethnicity or religion but still hate Jews. This process is ongoing in American Jewry, especially among its younger, most productive members.

The older generation, including Holocaust survivors, who are the majority of synagogue attendees, is not likely to abandon Judaism. However, their sons and daughters seem to assimilate in droves. Unlike in 19th Century Germany, assimilation of American Jews is not by conversion to Christianity but by joining transnational “progressive” political movements that despise Jewish nationalism. Giving up the national rights of Jews is not better than giving up the Jewish religion. A substantial number of the Jews who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 are assimilated transnationalists.

WHEN THE PAST IS THE PRESENT
by Emanuel A. Winston,
Freeman Center Middle East Analyst & Commentator
October 29, 2009

Approximately 10 years ago I started writing what has become a series of articles entitled "THE GATHERING", 7 in all. These were intended as heads up alerts, forecasting that the Nations of the world were gathering to attack the Jewish State in deference to the Arab and Muslim oil States and the Church-taught hatred from its earliest beginnings.

As today’s World writhes with Pain of its own making, they lash out at the minuscule Jewish State of Israel to relieve that pain. The fact that neither the Jews nor the Jewish State caused these Global problems made no difference to Christians, Muslims or - even Left Liberal Jews - looking to perversely take on a burden of guilt by blaming all other Jews for the ramping up of Global Hatred.

I thought you might be interested in my forecast of August 4, 2001 (only 1 month before 9/22/01 brought America her Muslim Pearl Harbor).

As the future continued to become more clear, I wrote 6 additional pieces, building on the mounting evidence, culminating so far with the appearance of President Barack Obama and his hostile Cabinet appointees and some 35 or more Czars and Czarinas who serve the President’s orders without being vetted by the FBI or approved of by Congress.

1929-2009 Of the Jewish Orphanings from Family and Country
"Of the Jewish Orphanings from Family and Country"
by Evelyn Hayes
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
August 6, 2009

Today I met an orphan of the 1929 massacre of Jews in Jerusalem because of a blood libel. Shmuel Tsefania survived the massacre under his dead mother's body. He survived the Friday mutilations and massacre in the Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem called Nissan Bak, across from Meah Shearim, near the Damascus gate. When the Jews came to bury their dead on Friday, the bodies were un-identifiable. The burial was postponed until Saturday evening. The sound of a baby's cry came from below the dead. That baby is now 81. His tale is the tale of Jewish rights and reality that needs rectification for the dead and for the living. We heard his story and said kaddish in front of the mass grave at the Mount of Olives Cemetery.

From a loving established family, left was a Jewish orphan. Not only was he orphaned, but the neighborhood of Batei Nissan lost most of its Jews in 1929 and all of its Jews by the Jordanian invasion and occupation in 1948. The neighborhood was established by a printer from Tsefat. He also put up a shul, the tallest in the Old City which housed 58 shuls which the Jordanians destroyed. It was called Batei Eshel Avraham. The parking lot outside this neighborhood where we parked today was all Jewish houses that were homes to 200 families. Jews were killed. An orphan survived. The neighborhood was almost Judenrid because of the pogroms that killed about 133 Jews. The dead of Nissan Bak are buried in a mass grave in the Mount of Olives Cemetery. We visited the dead again 80 years later.

Are American Jews the Most Foolish Voters in the United States?
By Ron Lipsman
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
July 19, 2009

Despite its ludicrous tone, the question posed in the title is a legitimate one. With the exception of American blacks, Jews continue to comprise the most reliable voting block for liberal Democrats in the United States. They vote overwhelmingly in that direction in virtually all gubernatorial, congressional and presidential elections. Obama obtained more than 80% of the Jewish vote, not uncharacteristic of the percentage of Jews who have cast their ballots for Democratic presidential candidates since Franklin Roosevelt. Reagan was an exception, but he only obtained roughly 40% of the Jewish vote. No other Republican since has come close to that number

I maintain that the massive, ongoing, enthusiastic and predictable Jewish vote for liberal Democrats is an example of one of the most foolish voting records by any ethnic group in the history of the American republic. The black vote along the same lines is self-destructive and foolish, but there are some bona fide explanations—especially in the last election. On the other hand, as I will show in this article, the sustained allegiance by American Jews to the Left is not only self-destructive and foolish, it is also short-sighted, naïve, ineffective, harmful and ultimately inexcusable.

THE VATICAN AND ISRAEL
Diplomatic Relations, Recognition & Reparations
By Bernard J. Shapiro
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
May 1992

As most Jews are preparing to celebrate Israel's 44th year of independence, the Vatican is embroiled in a weighty discussion of whether to recognize the Jewish State. Most of us who have followed this issue over many years placed most of the blame for lack of relations on the Vatican's fear of offending the Arabs who have substantial Christian minorities in their countries.

During Israel's early years, the official Vatican excuse for not establishing relations was Israel's refusal to internationalize Jerusalem. That was a part of the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan the was rejected by the Arab states. The Jordanians who controlled the Christian Holy Places in Jerusalem during that time period also rejected internationalization. In modern times, the Vatican has recognized the impossibility of turning the clock back on Jerusalem, and now insists on a resolution of the Palestinian conflict before establishing relations.

Dr. Michael Kaniel, writing in the Jerusalem Post (April 25, 1992), analyzes the religious origins of the Vatican's anti-Israel policies. He shows how the real reason the Vatican has withheld formal recognition is because the Jewish State represents a vexing contradiction to Catholic theology. When Theodor Herzl met with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Merry del Val to request support of the Zionist movement on January 22, 1904, the cardinal said: "as long as the Jews deny the divinity of Christ...how can we agree to their regaining possession of the Holy Land?...They should first have to accept conversion." Three days later Pope Pius X told Herzl: "the Jews have not recognized our Lord; therefore we can not recognize the Jewish people."

COUNTLESS JEWS ARE APPALLED AND DUMBFOUNDED - A SOLUTION
An Untried Policy (1995 updated)
Prof . Paul Eidelberg
FREMAN CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES
November 23, 2008

Countless Jews are appalled or dumbfounded . They cannot understand how a Jewish government, backed the Israel Defense Forces, could give away Judea and Samaria , the sacred heartland of the Jewish people to terrorist thugs .

The Prophets and Sages of Israel predicted that, in the end of days, the Jews would have such a government . They foresaw that Israel would be ruled by “scorners” of the Torah . These scorners, said the Prophet Hosea (12:1-3), will fill Israel with lies and deception . They will strive after wind (“peace”) and make alliances with Israel ’s enemies .

The Prophet Isaiah (28:14-18) chastises these insolent Jews . He foretells that they will make a “covenant with death,” but that this pact will not protect them, indeed, that they will be swept away like refuse . Remarkably, the Targum translates this pact with death as a contract with “terrorists” (mechablim)!

American Jewish Leaders Silent on Israel’s Crisis
The thoughts and writings of Prof. Eugene Narrett
ISRAEL END TIMES - June 20, 2008

Since the Israeli government, pressed vigorously by the US State Department, expelled 9000 Jews from their homes, farms, schools and synagogues in Gush Katif and Northern Samaria in August 2005, jihadists have showered rockets and mortars on towns, cities and farmers within the 1949 borders of Israel. To this assault, the response by a corrupt and defeatist Israeli regime has been minimal.

During this same time, the 9000 deported Jews have been dumped throughout Israel in trailer parks. The jobs, permanent residences, and compensation they were promised have been lacking. That the “world community” does not mention or care about these brutally displaced Jews is not unusual; but there also has been a failure of mainstream American Jewish leaders to speak publicly against the ethnic cleansing and its bitter aftermath. The highly touted “two-state solution” means more destruction of Jewish homes and more expulsions of Jews from the land of Israel.

These dual failures of trust, to the expelled Jews (whose deportation, it is claimed, will bring “peace”) and to totally suppress the rocket war on Israel, dismays lovers of Israel. One such person is Bernard (“Buddy”) Macy of New Jersey who in the past three years has become an impassioned advocate of justice for the deportees and for accountability and meaningful action from American Jewish organizations on behalf of an intact Israel.

To Love Hashem or Endlessly Weep?
by Eugene Narrett, Ph.D.
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
March 10, 2008

Eight students of the wisdom of the Holy One, the Highest Wisdom, were gunned down the evening of Thursday March 06, 2008, two weeks before the Fast of Esther and the holiday of Purim when the Jews of Persia rose up “and did to their enemies what they had thought to do to the Jews.” But the spirit that animated the fighters of Purim, three and half centuries later, the Maccabees in the Land of Israel and so many other Jewish warriors for millennia seems lost to the Rabbis of the modern state, and in the galut, too. Crying and proclaiming one’s heartache at funerals seems to have replaced the spirit of Moshe, Joshua, David, and millions of others, famous or unknown. Dissolving in tears, like a woman, lets one avoid confronting an idolatrous, treacherous and remorseless anti-Jewish police state, the client of gentile kingdoms and their lynchpin, Rome.

Indeed, in the morbidly feminized exilic-Judaism of our day it is a women-led group that calls for a new settlement to be built in the heartland, one for each student murdered at Yeshiva Mercaz HaRav Kook. Elsewhere women lead polemics for trans-gendered law (as in Boston, March 07).

Let’s try to examine this situation systematically with assistance from the Rambam so that all Israel from the ignorant to “Torah geniuses” can understand the response. Be clear on a key point first: as Torah and history show, Amalek may seem to disappear for generations but does not go away. The command to blot out his seed is eternal as reviewed below. “Fearlessness” is essential to truth, wise judgment and peace.*

Wake Up Jews, Wake Up Israel
By Ariel Natan Pasko

Your G-D (the G-D of Israel) is calling out to you. Every Kassam that
screams through the sky from Gaza, every Katyusha from Lebanon, is a
reminder. There is more to this world than what your senses can see, feel, taste and measure. There is a G-D in this world, and He is in charge.

Wake up Jews, wake up Israel...

Do you think that your G-D (the G-D of Israel) has brought you back to
his "Promised Land," after your nearly 2,000 year exile to the four
corners of the earth, just for fun and games?

He's keeping His promises to your forefathers. The Hebrew Bible is full
of them. It's documented; no one in all honesty, who opens the bible up
and reads it, could understand it any other way. Your redemption is
happening as we speak.

Ahmadinejad...Liar, Hypocrite, and/or Arabs' Stooge?
by Gerald A. Honigman

Upon the death of Islam's Prophet, Muhammad, in the early 7th century C.E., the armies of his caliphal successors burst out of the Arabian Peninsula and spread out in all directions. Over the next centuries--and continuing to this very day--Arab colonialism and imperial conquests would either directly or indirectly forcibly Arabize millions of native non-Arab peoples.

AN OPEN LETTER TO to S.A. HALEVY Re: "Leaving Israel Because I'm Disengaged"
by Yedidya AtlasIsraelNationalNews.com - October 16, 2005

Dear S.A. Halevy,

Shalom. I don't know who you are, but your identity is not important. The issue is your article entitled "Leaving Israel Because I'm Disengaged".

Reading your article, I felt your deep anguish, your almost physical pain as you tried to express in mere words your disillusionment, frustration, and helpless anger after the events of the past month in Israel. As a journalist with nearly three decades of professional experience, I have to ! say that your article, while well-written, was the type of piece that one writes and puts in a drawer for a few days. Then, after calming down, one looks at it again and rewrites it without the anger, or simply leaves it in the drawer.