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Nissan 29, 5768, 5/4/2008
The Greatest Exile of All
The very first time I visited Israel, I was overwhelmed, thank G-d, with the crystal clear recognition that if I seriously wanted to live a Jewish life and get close to G-d, Israel was the place to be. This awareness was so powerful and obvious, there was no room for speculation or doubt. The people were all Jewish, Hebrew was the language, the highway signs were in Hebrew, advertisements were in Hebrew, the radio news was in Hebrew, it was the land of the Bible, with Jerusalem, the Old City, Shilo, Hevron, the Dead Sea, Tiberias, Safed, the gravesites of our holy Forefathers, Prophets, and Sages, a Jewish government, a Jewish army, Kosher food everywhere, and more yeshivot and synagogues than anywhere else in the world combined. The list goes on and on. In addition, everything was holy. The people, the buses, the hillsides, the buildings, the air, everything was saturated with an aura of holiness with the feeling that G-d is watching every minute. In contrast, when I returned to New York, I crashed. There was no holiness there at all. Everything was gentile. The people, the language, the architecture, the culture, the television programs and politics were all gentile. For the first time in America, after having stepped foot in the Jewish homeland, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. Even the air was missing. There was no holiness in it at all. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. And the feeling that I had experienced in Israel, that G-d was every present, simply did not exist. As days passed, the feeling of emptiness and strangeness grew stronger, as if I were extra terrestrial E.T. stranded down on earth. Desperate to feel something Jewish, I went to a Woody Allen movie. I listened to Carlebach tapes. I walked through Little Italy and Chinatown to the Lower East Side to get a kosher meal at Shmulka Bernstein’s Deli. Finally, I decided to take a subway ride to Crown Heights in Brooklyn, figuring that for sure I’d find holiness there. But when I walked up the stairs of the underground station to the street, I found myself in a Black neighborhood like any other. Here too, there was absolutely no holiness in the air. Even as I walked into the nearby Lubavitch neighborhood, my Geiger counter picked up no crackling of holiness, as if the battery were dead. Suddenly, there were a lot of religious Jews on the street, but there was no holiness in air. Compared to the towering holiness of the Holy Land, the Chabad shtetl was like the empty back lot of a Hollywood set. Only when I saw the Rebbe, did a feeling of holiness return. A holiness exuded from him like a laser, sanctifying everything it touched. But the neighborhood itself, with all of its Hasidim and Jewish life, couldn’t compare with The Land of Israel at all. The point is, if a Jew really wants to get closer to G-d and to live a full Jewish life, Israel is the one and only place. Anywhere else, even in the most Ultra Orthodox ghetto in New York, it’s a make-believe world, a pantomime going through the motions, a Purim masquerade. For two thousand years, before we had the State of Israel, there was nothing we could do, so we had to make the best out of the exile, and the Jews who clung to Judaism were true heroes and champions of faith. But now that we have our own thriving Jewish country, for any Jew who can make aliyah to Israel, it is like adultery not to come. When we prefer gentile lands to the Land of Israel, when we prefer a world of make believe to the real thing, that is the greatest, most tragic exile of all.
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Nissan 27, 5768, 5/2/2008
Be Holy!
This week’s Torah portion is “Kedoshim.” Rashi, who was not known as a Kabbalist, explains the simple meaning of the first verse:
“Hashem spoke to Moshe saying, Speak to the entire assembly of the Children of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, Hashem your G-d, am holy.”
Rashi states: “You shall be holy by being removed from sexual transgression and from sin, for wherever you find a restriction from sexual immorality, you find holiness.”
Commentaries on Rashi explain that his use of the word sin (avarah) is also referring to sexual sin, as Rashi points out in Yoma 29A regarding “hirorei avarah,” meaning sexual fantasies, and in Sotah 3a, regarding “adam ovar avarah,” which refer to sins of a sexual nature.
Every Jew is holy by nature of his or her holy Jewish soul. However, sins, especially sexual transgression, pollute a Jew’s intrinsic holiness in the same manner that garbage pollutes a stream. Through t’shuva (repentance) a person can remove the garbage from the stream, but without t’shuva, the pure Jewish soul remains stained.
The Ramban takes Rashi’s explanation one step further by adding that a Jew does not only have to stay away from major sexual transgressions. Rather, when the Torah commands us to “be holy,” it is telling us that we have to sanctify our behavior even in permitted matters, like the conjugal relations between a man and his wife (Ramban on the Torah, “Kedoshim,” 19:1).
For instance, while a man is allowed to have relations with his wife during the permitted periods, our Sages warn us not to be like roosters with our mates. Furthermore, marital relations are to be conducted in the dark, in the modest manner prescribed by Jewish law. Being holy also means that a Jew is not supposed to gaze lustfully at women, whether in the street, at the movies, on TV, or on the Internet.
Anyone who has not yet clicked on our website, jewishsexuality.com is invited to do so. It is filled with an encyclopedia of knowledge about this vital subject, which is the very foundation of Jewish life. Jewishness is not just a religion, or national identity. Jewishness is a call to live holy lives as individuals and as a holy nation in the Holy Land. The commandments of the Torah are our ladder of sanctification, and, as Rashi and the Ramban explain, the first rung is holiness in our sexual lives.
Shabbat shalom.
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Nissan 26, 5768, 5/1/2008
Start Planning Your Aliyah Now
Nothing better expresses the inner unity of the Jews of Israel than the two long, heart wrenching minutes, when sirens blare all of the country and people stop what they are doing, cars, buses, pedestrians, bicycles riders, office workers, to stand in frozen tribute to the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Why don’t the Jews of America all stand in silence at the very same moment? Not only because of the Shoah. Because of the Holocaust that is happening in America today. The Nazis killed 6 million. Since the end of World War Two, assimilation in America has wiped out even more. Not to mention the same devastating Holocaust in England, France, Australia, and wherever Jews live outside of Israel. Face it. What’s the difference between the blue eyes of the Nazi exterminator and the blue eyes of the forbidden shiksa? Only the means of slaughter. The outcome is the same whether via the gas chamber of a Nazi death camp or the crematorium of a shiksa’s embrace – Jews and Jewish children are slaughtered. The Holocaust of Love - Sacrificing Jewish Seed to Molech
Sure, Cindy had a Conservative conversion, and Samantha lights the Sabbath candles, and little Moshie and Sarala go to Hebrew school, but it’s all a charade. Cindy and Samantha are not Jews. Little Moshie and Sarala are not Jews either. Look at them all. The famous and the unfamous. Arthur Miller, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Simon and Garfunkel, Kirk Douglas, Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, Henry Kissinger, Steven Spielberg, the list goes on and on, like the stars in the sky, who can name them all? Wake up Jews of America! Wake up Jews all over the world! Today, the gentiles are too embarrassed by gas chambers. Today they are killing you with bullets of pseudo acceptance and love. Don’t be fooled by her blond hair, her flashing smile, her blue Eichmann eyes, leading you and your children to the slaughter. Like the Torah warns, “Don’t bow down to their gods and sacrifice your seed to Molech,” meaning to the forbidden shiksa, who annihilates your Jewish seed in the crematorium of her love. Don’t bow down to their customs, their languages, their pornographic cultures, their narcissistic values and ways, just to be welcomed in their treacherous lying embrace. What’s equally tragic is that, by and large, the religious Jews in the Diaspora don’t care that another Holocaust is unfolding before their eyes. They have their shuls, and their yeshivas, their Holocaust Museums and Wiesenthal Centers, and even a religious university in New York– who cares what’s happening to their non-religious brothers? Their own kids are marrying within the faith – who cares about the others? Yes, my dear friends, Israel is the only refuge. In one fashion or another, Jewish life in the Diaspora is doomed. Maybe you yourself will get by before the Tzunami comes, wiping out the remnant of the exile. But if you really care about your children, and their children after them, start planning your aliyah now.
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Hollywood to the Holy Land
by Tzvi Fishman
Tzvi Fishman was awarded the Israel Ministry of Education Prize for Jewish Creativity and Culture
Before making Aliyah to Israel in 1984, Tzvi Fishman was a successful Hollywood screenwriter. He has co-authored 4 books with Rabbi David Samson, based on the teachings of Rabbis A. Y. Kook and T. Y. Kook.
His other books include: The Kuzari For Young Readers and Tuvia in the Promised Land. His most recent book, Secret of the Brit, can be found at JewishSexuality.com, along with an abbreviated online version. |
