Participating in a four-part series on the Talmudic sages, I listened with interest as our superb teacher, Rabbi Daniel Landes, Rosh Yeshiva from the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem, handed out a map and explained that under the Johanan Hyrcanus / Alexander Yannai years of the Hasmonean dynasty, Israel's territory was expanded to its largest size since King Solomon.
What struck me most were not the facts of the conquest, nor the intricacies of explosive and dynamic relationships between the ancient scholars and leaders, but the insightful and haunting observations of our instructor. What Rabbi Landes believes is that Yannai's expansion of the Jewish homeland was a response to the destruction of the First Temple and exile of the Jewish people hundreds of years earlier.
I sat transfixed. In essence, Rabbi Landes was saying the Hyrcanus / Yannai expansion was a declaration that the land of Israel - all of it - belongs to the Jewish people and they were going to recover it. It was a declaration of conviction and incredible chutzpah.
I struggled to keep from shouting out in class: "Where is our fight now? What has happened to our people that we can no longer stand firm and, with resolve, take back what is being stolen from us? Where is our chutzpah? What has happened that we not only refuse to keep the Land of our inheritance, but that we would give it to those who have vowed to destroy us?"
Of course, none of these cries left my lips. If I had shouted it out, I would have been greeted with a barrage of angry arguments about the desperate need for peace, for the need to take our place in today's global society. How did I have the audacity to suggest that the leaders of Israel and of the United States were not working in the best way possible for the protection and future of the Jewish people; hadn't I just been told that by a fellow student the week before?
So, I pondered the question myself, turning it around in my mind. What has happened to our people that we would prefer the idol of peace over our inheritance from HaShem and that we would rather pretend to be safe than be protected by our Covenant with the Almighty?
Weeks later, I learned from a different source that Alexander Yannai was an avowed enemy of the sages, who became a cruel tyrannical leader against many of his own people, causing the beginnings of a long civil war within Judea that eventually gave Rome the opening for which they had been waiting. Yannai was a Hellenized Jew. What, then, were his reasons for expanding Israel to its earlier borders? Was he a man of two minds, or did something or someone change his mind? He set the pattern for subsequent leaders to invite Rome - the enemy of Israel - to come in and help mitigate the civil war within. Does all this sound frightfully familiar?
The parallels between the bankrupt leaders of the latter Hasmonean Dynasty and today's leaders in Israel are truly alarming. What began with the noble and courageous reclamation of Judea and the Jewish Temple by the Maccabees ended in disaster for the Jews, as Rome wreaked havoc on Judea, Jerusalem and the Jewish people.
What drove these leaders to recapture the land of Israel for the Jews and then turn around and give it away? Indeed, what has caused our current leadership to do exactly the same? Wasn't it Sharon who championed the settlement expansion, and who now is falling all over himself in a determined effort to give it all away to those whose vowed interest is in destroying the Jewish state?
Well, I cannot answer for Yannai or the later Hasmonean leaders, nor can I answer specifically for Ariel Sharon and the other leaders of today who are betraying the people and heritage of Israel. But I have some thoughts on world Jewry as a whole and on our corporate response to this threatening crisis.
If the cumulative weight of the Babylonian exile, combined with the assault of the Hellenizing years and encroachment of Rome caused us to act in peculiar ways, how staggering then is the weight of two thousand more years of unrelenting terror and persecution?
Since Hasmonean times, we have been beaten, tortured, persecuted, exiled and murdered - for some twenty centuries. There have been Roman, Spanish, German, Russian and Arab persecutions of horrendous magnitudes. There have been Christian, Muslim and secular atrocities heaped upon our heads. There have been forced conversions and brutal murders from ancient dynasties to "civilized" Europe. We have been burned at the stake, gassed in gas chambers, poisoned, experimented on, herded and dumped alive into trenches, and struck with horror as our children were snatched from our arms and murdered before our eyes. Our Torah scrolls, synagogues, and homes have been burned, destroyed or usurped; our businesses stolen, ruined and shattered, until the sound of breaking glass echoes in our collective ear. We have been driven out of country after country, and accused of causing every tragedy that happens to mankind. Vicious and cruel lies have been told and believed about us. Throughout the centuries, many have been forced to embrace the religions of Christianity and Islam, millions hiding yet within those folds, still afraid to come out.
And for those who weren't converted? The Shoah, the unspeakable monstrosity that rose up, broke our backs, our will, destroyed our resolve. As a people, we have not recovered. And how could we? It was evil beyond description, horror beyond expression - the silent scream we could not voice.
Yet, it is the very reaction to these monstrosities that needs to define our present and shape our future. We can truly mean what we say when we shout "never again", believing the promises of HaShem, or we can philosophize about our history, making the adjustments for survival that the world demands.
Has this not been our test from the beginning? From the Golden Calf to the ten spies to every challenge we have faced as a people, HaShem has asked us: "Whom do we serve?"
Those adjustments we seem so ready to make are costly indeed, for they ask us to forsake both our heritage and our Covenant with the Almighty. Covering our ears and closing our hearts to Hebron and Sinai, we would press on to be "good Americans and Israelis" first and Jews second, forgetting that we were once proud Germans first, Jews second; forgetting that doing that has never worked.
Flashes of our resolve have surfaced from time to time, none more evident than the fervor to return to Zion in the past century. Through the miracles of HaShem, there were miraculous victories over Arab enemies in 1948, 1967 and even in the first stages of the Yom Kippur War, until, sadly, we capitulated to political pressure.
By then, a perceived reality had set in: the world still hated us, we were exhausted, and after two thousand years of perseverance, we began to succumb to the idea we had been fighting for centuries. In order to survive at all, it was thought, we could no longer be Am Yisrael, but would have to become, finally, like the nations of the world.
This is the real Disengagement Plan.
Curling into a fetal position, the leadership of Israel and of American Jewry has decided to disengage from our heritage and to play the game the world's way - to be one of the guys on the block. Urging us not to carry the charge of a chosen people, nor lay claim to the Biblical Land of Israel, it seems they have convinced many.
If we take this path, we will still call ourselves a people, but we will have redefined our purpose and rejected our unique relationship with HaShem. We will be leaders in multiculturalism and equality for all (rather than justice, which we were to exemplify). We will invent and write, compose and discover, and we will prove once and for all that we are not a set apart people, just good people. The world will like us.
In fact, so bent are we from divorcing ourselves from our Biblical uniqueness, we have created a strategy. Like developing an auto-immune illness, where the body starts attacking itself, Israel's and many of America's Jewish leaders have decided that should any of us claim that the Jewish people have a special calling as a people, or God forbid, a divine claim to the land of Israel, those persons should be persecuted. Should any dare to declare that Israel should be a Jewish state, they need to be shut down. No one is going to stop this retreat.
Looking around the room, something within me stirred. While it may be too late for the leaders, who seem to have sold their souls, as well, I could not believe this mentality to be the real heart of Jews everywhere.
It was then that I began to notice something else. If I looked and listened carefully, I could see tiny flickers of something visible in many faces ? and sometimes heard in their voices. Could it be that behind the tremendous chutzpah of survival, and beneath the facade of global pride and misplaced sympathies, there was a hint of a Jewish spark that was still connected to the promises of HaShem?
There was something in those distant looks, carefully chosen words or facial expressions that told me deep beneath the surface were some Jewish nefashot, remembering not only our history, but the marriage at Sinai and the promises to Avraham.
While it gave me tremendous hope, I am still a realist. There is a huge chasm between remembering and doing, between recognition and fire, and it will take an enormous wind to fan those tiny sparks into flames. That which was designed to never go out, can nonetheless be hidden or even misdirected, making us zealots for causes, but not for our own destiny.
There is an even greater reason for hope, however, because within the hearts of those who see God's promise in our survival, there burns an enormous fire. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are emerging, fighting for all of Eretz Israel. This fire has jumped across the oceans, and Diaspora Jewry is beginning to awaken. I truly believe the warmth from that fire will draw the sparks that seem, at present ,to be unconnected.
I am sobered and realize I have a responsibility in all of this; next time, I will shout out, and my words, while they might ignite an argument, may also fan that spark in one Jewish soul. I must try. For if to save one Jewish life is as if to save an entire world, helping to ignite one Jewish spark must be a part of that process.
In the midst of this, I can't help but wonder what it would take to ignite that flame in the leaders of Israel and of world Jewry, and make them not like Yannai, but like Joshua.
What struck me most were not the facts of the conquest, nor the intricacies of explosive and dynamic relationships between the ancient scholars and leaders, but the insightful and haunting observations of our instructor. What Rabbi Landes believes is that Yannai's expansion of the Jewish homeland was a response to the destruction of the First Temple and exile of the Jewish people hundreds of years earlier.
I sat transfixed. In essence, Rabbi Landes was saying the Hyrcanus / Yannai expansion was a declaration that the land of Israel - all of it - belongs to the Jewish people and they were going to recover it. It was a declaration of conviction and incredible chutzpah.
I struggled to keep from shouting out in class: "Where is our fight now? What has happened to our people that we can no longer stand firm and, with resolve, take back what is being stolen from us? Where is our chutzpah? What has happened that we not only refuse to keep the Land of our inheritance, but that we would give it to those who have vowed to destroy us?"
Of course, none of these cries left my lips. If I had shouted it out, I would have been greeted with a barrage of angry arguments about the desperate need for peace, for the need to take our place in today's global society. How did I have the audacity to suggest that the leaders of Israel and of the United States were not working in the best way possible for the protection and future of the Jewish people; hadn't I just been told that by a fellow student the week before?
So, I pondered the question myself, turning it around in my mind. What has happened to our people that we would prefer the idol of peace over our inheritance from HaShem and that we would rather pretend to be safe than be protected by our Covenant with the Almighty?
Weeks later, I learned from a different source that Alexander Yannai was an avowed enemy of the sages, who became a cruel tyrannical leader against many of his own people, causing the beginnings of a long civil war within Judea that eventually gave Rome the opening for which they had been waiting. Yannai was a Hellenized Jew. What, then, were his reasons for expanding Israel to its earlier borders? Was he a man of two minds, or did something or someone change his mind? He set the pattern for subsequent leaders to invite Rome - the enemy of Israel - to come in and help mitigate the civil war within. Does all this sound frightfully familiar?
The parallels between the bankrupt leaders of the latter Hasmonean Dynasty and today's leaders in Israel are truly alarming. What began with the noble and courageous reclamation of Judea and the Jewish Temple by the Maccabees ended in disaster for the Jews, as Rome wreaked havoc on Judea, Jerusalem and the Jewish people.
What drove these leaders to recapture the land of Israel for the Jews and then turn around and give it away? Indeed, what has caused our current leadership to do exactly the same? Wasn't it Sharon who championed the settlement expansion, and who now is falling all over himself in a determined effort to give it all away to those whose vowed interest is in destroying the Jewish state?
Well, I cannot answer for Yannai or the later Hasmonean leaders, nor can I answer specifically for Ariel Sharon and the other leaders of today who are betraying the people and heritage of Israel. But I have some thoughts on world Jewry as a whole and on our corporate response to this threatening crisis.
If the cumulative weight of the Babylonian exile, combined with the assault of the Hellenizing years and encroachment of Rome caused us to act in peculiar ways, how staggering then is the weight of two thousand more years of unrelenting terror and persecution?
Since Hasmonean times, we have been beaten, tortured, persecuted, exiled and murdered - for some twenty centuries. There have been Roman, Spanish, German, Russian and Arab persecutions of horrendous magnitudes. There have been Christian, Muslim and secular atrocities heaped upon our heads. There have been forced conversions and brutal murders from ancient dynasties to "civilized" Europe. We have been burned at the stake, gassed in gas chambers, poisoned, experimented on, herded and dumped alive into trenches, and struck with horror as our children were snatched from our arms and murdered before our eyes. Our Torah scrolls, synagogues, and homes have been burned, destroyed or usurped; our businesses stolen, ruined and shattered, until the sound of breaking glass echoes in our collective ear. We have been driven out of country after country, and accused of causing every tragedy that happens to mankind. Vicious and cruel lies have been told and believed about us. Throughout the centuries, many have been forced to embrace the religions of Christianity and Islam, millions hiding yet within those folds, still afraid to come out.
And for those who weren't converted? The Shoah, the unspeakable monstrosity that rose up, broke our backs, our will, destroyed our resolve. As a people, we have not recovered. And how could we? It was evil beyond description, horror beyond expression - the silent scream we could not voice.
Yet, it is the very reaction to these monstrosities that needs to define our present and shape our future. We can truly mean what we say when we shout "never again", believing the promises of HaShem, or we can philosophize about our history, making the adjustments for survival that the world demands.
Has this not been our test from the beginning? From the Golden Calf to the ten spies to every challenge we have faced as a people, HaShem has asked us: "Whom do we serve?"
Those adjustments we seem so ready to make are costly indeed, for they ask us to forsake both our heritage and our Covenant with the Almighty. Covering our ears and closing our hearts to Hebron and Sinai, we would press on to be "good Americans and Israelis" first and Jews second, forgetting that we were once proud Germans first, Jews second; forgetting that doing that has never worked.
Flashes of our resolve have surfaced from time to time, none more evident than the fervor to return to Zion in the past century. Through the miracles of HaShem, there were miraculous victories over Arab enemies in 1948, 1967 and even in the first stages of the Yom Kippur War, until, sadly, we capitulated to political pressure.
By then, a perceived reality had set in: the world still hated us, we were exhausted, and after two thousand years of perseverance, we began to succumb to the idea we had been fighting for centuries. In order to survive at all, it was thought, we could no longer be Am Yisrael, but would have to become, finally, like the nations of the world.
This is the real Disengagement Plan.
Curling into a fetal position, the leadership of Israel and of American Jewry has decided to disengage from our heritage and to play the game the world's way - to be one of the guys on the block. Urging us not to carry the charge of a chosen people, nor lay claim to the Biblical Land of Israel, it seems they have convinced many.
If we take this path, we will still call ourselves a people, but we will have redefined our purpose and rejected our unique relationship with HaShem. We will be leaders in multiculturalism and equality for all (rather than justice, which we were to exemplify). We will invent and write, compose and discover, and we will prove once and for all that we are not a set apart people, just good people. The world will like us.
In fact, so bent are we from divorcing ourselves from our Biblical uniqueness, we have created a strategy. Like developing an auto-immune illness, where the body starts attacking itself, Israel's and many of America's Jewish leaders have decided that should any of us claim that the Jewish people have a special calling as a people, or God forbid, a divine claim to the land of Israel, those persons should be persecuted. Should any dare to declare that Israel should be a Jewish state, they need to be shut down. No one is going to stop this retreat.
Looking around the room, something within me stirred. While it may be too late for the leaders, who seem to have sold their souls, as well, I could not believe this mentality to be the real heart of Jews everywhere.
It was then that I began to notice something else. If I looked and listened carefully, I could see tiny flickers of something visible in many faces ? and sometimes heard in their voices. Could it be that behind the tremendous chutzpah of survival, and beneath the facade of global pride and misplaced sympathies, there was a hint of a Jewish spark that was still connected to the promises of HaShem?
There was something in those distant looks, carefully chosen words or facial expressions that told me deep beneath the surface were some Jewish nefashot, remembering not only our history, but the marriage at Sinai and the promises to Avraham.
While it gave me tremendous hope, I am still a realist. There is a huge chasm between remembering and doing, between recognition and fire, and it will take an enormous wind to fan those tiny sparks into flames. That which was designed to never go out, can nonetheless be hidden or even misdirected, making us zealots for causes, but not for our own destiny.
There is an even greater reason for hope, however, because within the hearts of those who see God's promise in our survival, there burns an enormous fire. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are emerging, fighting for all of Eretz Israel. This fire has jumped across the oceans, and Diaspora Jewry is beginning to awaken. I truly believe the warmth from that fire will draw the sparks that seem, at present ,to be unconnected.
I am sobered and realize I have a responsibility in all of this; next time, I will shout out, and my words, while they might ignite an argument, may also fan that spark in one Jewish soul. I must try. For if to save one Jewish life is as if to save an entire world, helping to ignite one Jewish spark must be a part of that process.
In the midst of this, I can't help but wonder what it would take to ignite that flame in the leaders of Israel and of world Jewry, and make them not like Yannai, but like Joshua.