DAVAR TORAH - MARCH 1999
Distortion Of Torah Concepts
Due To Living In The Exile
My sons, Michael and David: You, Michael, were named after the Angelic Protector of Israel; and you, David, were named after the King of Israel. When you were 8 days old we brought you into the Jewish people's covenant with God through brit mila, the covenant of circumcision, without your consent. Now some 13 years later, through this b'nai Mitzvah, you are, of your own free will, reaffirming your membership in the covenant. What special gift can I give you that will be worthy of this occasion? Only my thoughts -- a piece of me -- this Davar Torah.
The gentile prophet Balaam, who was commissioned, unsuccessfully, by Midian
and
In Succah 52b it says: “God regrets having created four things: Exile,
Babylonians, Ishmaelites and the Evil Impulse”. God regrets having created the
Exile because, although it was a just punishment for our repeated disobedience
to Him, it did not fulfill its purpose of causing us to repent of our sins
quickly so that we could be repatriated to the
One of the Torah concepts that has been “forgotten” is the Mitzvah to hate Evil. As the Prophet Amos declared in Amos 5:14-15: “Seek Goodness and not Evil ... Hate Evil and love Goodness …” King Solomon said in Proverbs 8:13: “Fear of HaShem is hatred of Evil …” King David said in Psalms 97:10: “You that love HaShem, hate Evil …” God Himself commands us throughout Deuteronomy, Chapters 13-24: “You shall destroy Evil from your midst” (Deut. 13:6, 17:7, 19:19, 21:21, 22:21, 22:24, 24:7) and “You shall destroy Evil from among Israel” (Deut. 17:12, 22:22); and just so that we shouldn't think that this Commandment to destroy Evil applies only to Evil as an abstract concept, Onkelos, in his authoritative Aramaic translation of the Torah, makes sure to always translate this very Commandment as “You shall destroy Evildoers ...” At the very least, not only are we are prohibited by the Torah from praising or honoring the Evildoer, but we are actually required by the Torah to curse the Evildoer. As it says in Bereshit Rabbah 49:1: “Whoever mentions an Evildoer without cursing him misses out on a Torah Commandment -- 'The name of the wicked shall rot' (citing Proverbs 10:7)”. And our Sages declare: “It is incumbent upon the individual to drink on Purim until he can no longer distinguish between praising Mordechai and cursing Haman” (Megilla 7b) -- this in recognition of the fact that, under normal circumstances, we find it virtually impossible to comprehend that cursing the Evildoer is as morally necessary as praising the Righteous. Unfortunately, Today, in our politically-correct world, not only do we not curse the Evildoer, but, on the contrary, we even praise and honor him. In fact, anyone who dares to curse an Evildoer whom the nations have chosen to honor risks rebuke even from the leaders of our own community. Such is the legacy of the Exile. Such is the dulling of Torah.
Nothing illustrates and illuminates the point better than a specific example. For this purpose I have chosen a recent event -- the death of Hussein ibn Talal, King of Jordan, y'mach sh'mo (cursed be his name). Upon hearing of his death, the nations of the world and their media showered this man with platitudes reserved for the Messiah, describing him as a visionary, a man of extraordinary courage, a crusader for peace, and a true friend of the Jewish people. One mourning Israeli was even quoted as declaring: “He was our King too.” And truth be told, with his regal bearing, engaging smile and excellent command of the English language it is hard for us to regard the man any differently or even wonder why we should. Let us see, therefore, if Torah Morality may have a different view of the late King.
A little history is in order. The man became ruler of
In the late king's defense, as far as we know, he never personally murdered or maimed a Jew. But then neither did Hitler, y'mach sh'mo. Perhaps then it is a question of degree, but no -- the Torah doesn't condone even the murder of one, let alone of hundreds. According to Torah Morality, a ruler, even a popular one, bears ultimate responsibility for the actions -- either ordered or permitted -- of those under his control. The proof comes from, among other sources, the Hebrew Bible at I Samuel 15. There we find that King Saul, although ordered by God to destroy all of the Amalekites as punishment for their earlier unprovoked attacks against our people, nevertheless spared its ruler, King Agag, y'mach sh'mo, because Saul had pity on the defeated monarch. When the Prophet Samuel learned of this, he, at the instruction of God, stripped Saul of his crown and demanded that the Amalekite king be brought before him. As the text continues at verses 32-33: “And Agag went to him submissively. And Agag said, 'Surely, the bitterness of death has passed.' And Samuel said, 'As your sword made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women.' And Samuel cut Agag into pieces before HaShem in Gilgal.”
As uncomfortable as 2,000 years of Exile have made us with this concept, this is the Torah's judgment upon an evil gentile ruler who has Jewish blood on his hands, even as the nations of the world all shout that: “Surely, the bitterness of death has passed.” At the very least, we should know to curse such a person's name whenever it is uttered.
Michael and David: Know to love Goodness and hate Evil; and be strong in all Torah concepts, especially the neglected ones that have been pushed aside in deference to the sensibilities of the nations and the squeamishness of our own people.
© Mark Rosenblit
[For more commentary on the importance of the Torah Commandment to hate the Evildoer, please read on! -- Mark Rosenblit]
The pope and the Holocaust deniers
By [Rabbi] Shmuley Boteach
(Jerusalem Post, January 1, 2007) [Deposed Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein's
execution reminded us that some crimes are so heinous no society can tolerate
them, and that when you murder more than one million people, even traditional
opponents of the death penalty might just applaud when you hang.
It is a lesson the Catholic Church would do well to contemplate. Last week, the
church broke ranks with nearly every moral voice and came out publicly against
Saddam's execution. But if that were not enough, Pope Benedict XVI granted a
private audience to a delegation of Iranian officials, led by Iranian Foreign
Minister Manoucher Mottaki, whose ministry sponsored the recent Holocaust
denial conference in Teheran.
The pope is the foremost spiritual leader on Earth. It shocks every moral
sensibility that he would choose to legitimize a wretch like this. More
troubling yet, the pope conveyed warm greetings to Iranian president Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad through the delegation.
Warm greetings? Ahmadinejad is calling virtually every week for
LET'S NOT finesse this. Ahmadinejad is an international abomination who can lay
strong claim to being the single most hate-filled man alive. Surely the pope
can find more worthy recipients of his time and graciousness?
Pope John Paul II was a man of great courage who helped to challenge and defeat
communism. Yet even he made the repeated mistake of legitimizing terrorists,
repeatedly meeting with Yasser Arafat. But if one might excuse those meetings
on the grounds that other World leaders did the same, the pope's actions at the
time of Arafat's death were jarring and incomprehensible. He praised Arafat as
"a leader of great charisma who loved his people and sought to lead them
toward national independence. May God welcome in His Mercy the soul of the
illustrious deceased and give peace to the
Did anyone seriously believe that God was going to welcome this baby-killer
into heaven rather than placing him in hell? Why would virtuous and righteous
men like John Paul and Benedict make such outrageous mistakes?
The Catholic Church seems to spend a great deal of time upholding its standards
of sexual morality, like condemning gay unions and contraception, and
comparably little time condemning the tyrants and dictators who slaughter the
children whose lives the church declares to be holy. So why the omission?
It bespeaks an unfortunate and continuing pattern on behalf of our Christian
brethren to refuse to hate evil. Many of my Christian brothers and sisters
mistakenly believe that God forbids hatred. They quote Jesus' teaching to turn
the other cheek and his admonishment to love your enemies as proof that we dare
never hate.
AS A radio host, I am called by many evangelical Christians who say that in
God's eyes we are all sinners, and thus from a heavenly perspective Osama bin
Laden and the average housewife from
But this is a travesty of Jesus' teachings. It would make this great Hebrew
personality into someone who had contempt for his victims as he extended love
to their murderers. Jesus advocated turning the other cheek to petty slights
and affronts to honor, not to mass graves and torture chambers.
Likewise, while Jesus taught that we ought to love our own enemies, this did
not apply to God's enemies. Our enemies are people who take our parking spot or
who are our rivals for a promotion at work. God's enemies are those who
slaughter his children.
Let not any Christian think that Jesus' sympathy was for anyone other than the
oppressed and the poor. True, the Bible commands us to "love our neighbor
as ourselves," but the man who kills children is not our neighbor. Having
cast off the Image of God, he has lost his Divine Spark and is condemned to
Eternal Oblivion, from which not even a belief in Salvation will rescue him.
He who murders God's children has been lost to God forever and has abandoned
all entitlement to love, earning eternal derision in its stead.
AMID MY deep and abiding respect for the Christian faith, I state unequivocally
that to love the terrorist who flies a civilian plane into a civilian building,
or a white supremacist who drags a black man three miles while tied to the back
of a car is not just inane, it is deeply sinful. To send warm greetings to an
Iranian president who has just hosted a former head of the KKK is an affront to
blacks throughout the world just as much as it is to Jews.
To love Evil is itself evil, and constitutes a passive form of complicity.
We are all known by the company we keep. If Ahmadinejad of Iran called for the
extermination of all the World's Catholics, the pope might
think twice before meeting his representatives. He ought to accord the same
respect to his Jewish brethren.
The writer is host of The Learning Channel's television program "Shalom in
the Home," whose second season begins on January 21. He is currently
writing a book on the necessity of hating Evil.
(©) The
A time to hate
By JONATHAN ROSENBLUM
(Jerusalem Post, January 4, 2007) [Deposed Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein's
death by hanging came too late to provide much satisfaction -- too late for the
hundreds of thousands of human beings killed on his orders -- hundreds at his
own hands. The taking of his miserable life can neither bring back the lives he
so callously snuffed out nor compensate for them.
Still, there was rejoicing at the sight of Saddam on the gallows, though
personally I would have been far happier had he fallen into one of the meat
grinders into which he, and his equally sadistic sons Uday and Qusai, dropped
so many of his subjects.
My satisfaction has nothing to do with bloodlust. I would not have been one of
the thousands of Iraqis vying for the post of Saddam's executioner. Rather it
derives from being witness to the turning of the wheels of Divine Justice. The
Midrash states that the Divine throne only became firmly established in the
world when the Jewish people sang God's praises at the Sea. Their joyous song
was a consequence of watching the precision with which the suffering of each
drowning Egyptian was meted out: The Egyptians either died instantaneously or
slowly and painfully, according to the degree with which they had afflicted the
Jews in
Divine vengeance, then, is the righting of an imbalance in the world, and
refers equally to the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the righteous.
When we merit witnessing the enactment of justice, our belief that there is
both Justice and a Judge is strengthened.
Three times daily, we call in our prayers for God to "destroy speedily all
His enemies." Can there be a greater enemy of God than one who murders
hundreds of thousands of His creations? From the beginning of human history,
God proclaimed the rule, "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his
blood be shed; for in the image of God He made man" (Genesis 9:6).
NEEDLESS TO say much of the world does not view matters as I do. And I don't
just mean the Palestinians who benefited from Saddam's generous
subsidies to the families of suicide bombers or to Saddam's erstwhile partner
in various oil scams, the notorious Russian xenophobe Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The
latter labeled Saddam's execution "the greatest crime of the 21st
century." The so-called civilized world joined in the chorus of
condemnation. The European Union and its member states expressed their
repugnance at the imposition of the death penalty in all circumstances. Tim
Hames, writing in the The Times of London, went so far as to proclaim Saddam's
execution "as ethically tainted as the crimes that produced that
sentence."
Following that logic, the execution of Nazi war criminals tried at
The critics refuse to enter imaginatively into the world of Saddam's victims
and to contemplate the true nature of his evil. They do not wish to contemplate
what it is like to be a parent forced to watch your child tortured to extract
your "confession," what it is like to spend your entire life afraid
to enter into an intimate conversation with another human being for fear that
he or she might be one of Saddam's informers, what it is like to have parents,
siblings or children taken away in the middle of the night, never to be seen
again. And then multiply such scenarios millions of times over.
During Saddam's 23-year reign of terror, nearly 300,000 Iraqis disappeared --
more than 12,000 a year, 240 a week. And that number does not even include the
hundreds of Iraqi athletes crippled and maimed for life in Uday Hussein's
torture chambers for failing to bring sufficient glory to the regime, or the
thousands of girls seized off the streets to satisfy the lusts of the Husseins.
At his trial, Saddam neither denied his crimes nor expressed the slightest
repentance. The equation of Saddam's execution, after trial, to his crimes is
on a par with those pat moral equivalencies so beloved of Left intellectuals
during the Cold War -- Soviet imperialism vs the cultural imperialism of
Yale computer scientist David Gelernter, who had a bomb sent by the Unabomber
blow up in his face, made mincemeat of this moral equivalency in his book Drawing
Life: Surviving the Unabomber: It is
through capital punishment of murders -- and not by running to forgive them --
that we as a society "show our respect for the dead and proclaim the value
of human life," he writes.
Among those rushing to condemn Saddam's execution was the
Shmuley Boteach rightly noted the consanguinity between the Vatican's
condemnation and Pope Benedict XVI's reception of the Iranian foreign minister,
who was fresh from organizing Teheran's conference of Holocaust deniers, and
his conveyance of warm regards to [Iranian president] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who
boasts of his plans for the next Holocaust.
The condemnation and the warm regards share a certain moral obtuseness, and
provide proof of our Sages' insight: "He who is merciful when he should be
cruel will end up being cruel when he should be merciful."
What is lost in the pat equation of Saddam's life with those of his victims is
horror of Evil. And that loss of horror paves the way for further evil.
The contrast between Jewish and Christian attitudes to forgiveness was recently
highlighted by the response of an Amish community to the cold-blooded murder of
five schoolgirls and the serious wounding of 10 more. At the funeral of one of
the slain girls, her grandfather spoke and said of the perpetrator, "We
must not think evil of this man." The neighbors and friends of the
victims' families professed to feel no hatred towards the girls' killer.
In contrast to the
Jews too are instructed to hate the sin and not the sinner. But sometimes the
two are inextricably bound, as in Saddam's case. And often, easy forgiveness of
the sinner diminishes the horror of his crimes. As Rabbi David Gottlieb of
Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is also "a time to hate [see Ecc.
3:1-11]." Would we really wish to live, asks Boston Globe columnist Jeff
Jacoby (an observant Jew), in a society in which no one gets angry when
children are slaughtered, a society in which there is an instantaneous
dispensation for the most horrific acts of cruelty? I would not. And that is
why I was glad to see Saddam hanging at the end of a noose.
(©) The