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Visual Dispatch: What Shavuot Means For Israeli Unity |
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 by Paul Widen, June 11, 2008 |
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In the Torah reading for Shavuot, which we just celebrated, we read, "...and they encamped in the desert, and Israel encamped there opposite the mountain" (Exodus 19:2). The Hebrew word for "they encamped" is plural, while the following "Israel encamped" is singular. Why the difference? The medieval commentator Rashi suggests that the singular expression implies that Israel appeared before God "as one man with one heart." On that one occasion there was no rivalry and no bickering.
I recently heard an expansion of this interpretation by Rav Gedalyah, a senior member of my shul. The man must be in his eighties, but he still makes it to the second minyan every morning. As for myself, I attend the early minyan, and after we finish praying a few of us stick around and drink a cup of coffee and a shot of whiskey, the final preparations before facing the new day. Rav Gedalyah usually stops by where we schmooze and wishes us a good morning and peace upon the entire House of Israel. A few days ago, however, he came earlier than usual and sat down with us for a few minutes. With Israel's sixtieth anniversary celebrations still fresh in mind, he told us a story from the War of Independence.
Like so many other Holocaust survivors, Rav Gedalyah came to the British Mandate of Palestine with absolutely nothing. Here he was quickly put to work, and when the war started he became a soldier. He and his comrades received little training and had almost no equipment, yet faced an enemy many times stronger. His motley crew was sent to Latrun, where Jordanian snipers on the hill picked them off one by one. One day when it was time for afternoon prayers the Israeli soldiers were only sheltered by a tent. Jordanian mortar fire pounded the area when suddenly one of the soldiers stepped into a hole in the ground. When he pulled out his leg he discovered that the hole was in fact the opening to a cave. They all took shelter there and started praying. Five minutes later, a Jordanian mortar shell scored a direct hit on the tent where they had previously been standing.
"Rashi explains the singular by saying that the Children of Israel were 'as one man with one heart,' but how is such a unity achieved?" asked Rav Gedalyah. "The experience of that day made me think of what the text says a few verses later: 'Moses brought the people out toward God from the camp, and they stood at the bottom of the mountain.' Betachtit hahar: According to the Sages, this really means 'under the mountain.' That day at Latrun we were quite literally under the mountain, we were in a hole in the ground, and I can assure you that I have never experienced a stronger unity than I did that day. And that is how we defeated the Jordanians: not through might, but through unity."
(Above: The view from the mountain of Herodium south of Bethlehem. Photography by Paul Widen)
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Maayan
Wow
Wow thats a really powerful interpretation, and very special that he shared that story with you on Shavous!
Cori C
unity
I enjoyed this; it can be difficult to describe unity in a way that people not in Israel can completely grasp, simply because that which unifies us is usually manifested in tiny little microcosms that occur a few times a day. Sounds like your Rabbi succeeded in doing this, anyway. What shul is it?
Cori C
http://cori-c.blogspot.com
coriac@gmail.com
ThorsProvoni
Yidishkayt on Yandes
Yom Kippur and Ashkenazi Genocidalism
Facing 20th Century Jewish History
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)
As more and more information becomes available to Americans about ethnic Ashkenazi Zionist and Soviet genocidalism from the beginning of the 20th century till the present day, the need for genuine atonement by the world Jewish population this Yom Kippur and throughout the year becomes ever more clear.
In contrast with German non-Jews, Jews have come to terms neither with the crimes like mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide that a tremendous proportion of the ethnic Ashkenazi population committed during the Russian Revolution and the first decades of the Soviet Union nor with the calculated genocide and crimes against humanity that German Jewish and ethnic Ashkenazi Zionists committed in the name of the bogus concept of the "Jewish People."
Israeli Jews since the beginning of the Oslo Process have shown themselves to be an unrepentant population of murderous genocidal thieves and interlopers who are in general completely incapable of honoring agreements or of treating non-Jewish populations with decency and respect.
The organized Jewish community is actively engaged in conspiracy against rights (a Title 18 USC Section 241 violation) in order to deny Muslim and Arab Americans their fundamental constitutional rights to participate in the political culture of the United States of America.
Because of the activities of ethnic Ashkenazi American Neocon policy makers in sacrificing American interests, lives and wealth for the sake of Israel and ethnic Ashkenazi tribalism and because of the inability or unwillingness of the American Jewish leadership explicitly to take the stand that the overriding commitment of ethnic Ashkenazi Neocons to the State of Israel makes them completely unfit for high government office, a good case can be made (before a grand jury) that a large and important segment of the ethnic Ashkenazi American population is engaged in a seditious conspiracy to put down the government of the USA at a time of war (another Title 18 violation).
Ethnic Ashkenazi American groups and individuals can take the first steps to true atonement by demanding the abolition of Zionist Israel as a criminal terrorist state, the eradication of Zionism, and the indictment of prominent American Jewish leaders and intellectuals like Abraham Foxman (ADL), David Harris (AJCongress), Norman Podhoretz (Commentary Magazine), William Kristol (Weekly Standard), Charles Jacobs (David Project), Jeff Jacoby (Boston Globe), Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, David Wurmser, and Daniel Pipes (without limitation) for major violations of the United States criminal code.
In order for Israeli Jews to atone, they must return all the properties that they have stolen to the native Palestinian population, restore Palestinian residence rights, renounce Zionism, and hand over the political, military, academic and religious leadership over to the International Criminal Court at the Hague for indictment and prosecution for crimes against humanity.
"We have despatched a request to Israeli prosecutors for legal help," prosecutor Rimvydas Valentukevicius told AFP.
"We want to send Mr Arad a notice on our suspicions and to interrogate him in the framework of a preliminary probe on his possible participation in crimes against humanity in Lithuania during the Second World War," he said.
The 81-year-old Arad, who served as the director of Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Authority for 21 years, rejected the allegations in an interview to Poland's Rzeczpospolita newspaper.
A probe launched in May 2006 showed that Arad, who was a member of the Soviet NKVD secret service, may have been involved in the killing of Lithuanian resistance figures at the end of World War II.
Lithaunian-born Arad, who was active in the underground movement before joining the Soviet partisans to fight the Germans, has rebuffed suggestions that he was guilty of the cold-blooded murder of civilians.
"I have never killed a civilian," he said. "It could have happened during battle but I have never killed a civilian or a prisoner of war in cold blood."
Arad said the allegations could be part of a vendetta campaign as he had painstakingly listed atrocities committed by Lithuanian collaborators.
But Lithuanian prosecutor Valentukevicius said suspicions against Arad are based on his own memoirs and documents provided by the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Center.
"We have many documents, which allow us to think that Arad participated in criminal activities," Valentukevicius said.
Lithuania was home to some 220,000 Jews before tha war and was known as the "Jerusalem of the North."
Symbol of Palestine
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