HAVE OUR RABBIS CAUSED DIVISIVENESS AND OUR TRAGIC HISTORY ?
While Jews
world-wide identify themselves as Jews, only a minority ( 10 - 20 % ) observe the laws of Sabbath, kashruth, mikveh and family
purity, holidays, etc. Many living in Israel, even the majority of the Israel Defense Forces are not religious. This is strange
since all Israelis read the Hebrew Scriptures in school. How can it be that the clarity of the Covenant's laws and requirements
are ignored by those who put themselves in danger on a regular basis? They learn our history in school. They have parents
and grandparents who are survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. And yet there remains a strange disconnect between our history and
the failure of Israelis and Jews in general to avail themselves of the protective blessings offered in the Torah.
It is my belief that a simple reading of the blessings and the curses in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 should cause a
normally endowed human being to take the observance of God's Torah laws as a matter of life and death. I believe that
if the simple laws of the Covenant, as they are presented in the written Torah, were presented to Jews that they would conform
their lives with the Covenant. They could compare these two chapters of the Torah with the actual history of our people and
see that God had purpose in establishing Israel and that HE is gravely serious about our absolute conformity with the spirit
and laws of HIS Covenant.
So why have Jews, especially Jews of the past two centuries been so rebellious ? And
why now, in the face of a new holocaust, do Jews fail to protect themselves when the memory of the worst Holocaust is still
alive ?
I believe that the blame for this rebelliousness rests with the rabbis of Israel. From their early beginning
over two thousand years ago, they took it upon themselves to transform the meanings of God's intentions and laws and passages
in the Torah. Because their perspective and rabbinic laws were so different, so contradictory, so out of the spirit of the
Torah, they invented a myth. This myth was that an "oral law", which every observant Jew is forced to believe,
was given simultaneously to Moses with the written Torah.
As a result of the disconnect between written Torah
laws, given by God at Sinai and those fabricated by the rabbis of Israel, the people of Israel have become tragically
divided in their beliefs about who they are, what they are and what, if anything, they are obligated to perform to access
the blessings and avoid the curses of the Covenant. Much of the antipathy by some orthodox sects toward the new state of Israel,
e.g., is based on the erroneous belief that we are not allowed to take Israel by force. This belief has created often violent
controversy in Israel especially. Yet the fact is that Joshua was given the mantle to CONQUER the land of Israel by force
of arms - and by Moses and God !!!
Mostly, I find it strange that the rabbis themselves do not have a conscious
mechanism which questions what they have done and what the people have suffered under their leadership. The normal response
of leaders who preside over a debacle is to investigate - as Joshua investigated after the Battle of Ai (Joshua 7)- and to
question themselves. Even after the worst debacle in the history of Israel since the Exile began, the rabbinic leadership
will question whether in fact the Holocaust was really a curse rather than question the fabricated system of Judaism which
they invented. I believe that the Holocaust which destroyed millions of observant Jews warranted soul searching and truth
seeking, but this did not happen. Instead, we frequently hear that there are now more yeshivas and more synagogues than at
any other time in our history. That this is true does not diminish the horrors our nation has endured. Nor does this diminish
our guilt in deserving such awful curses. What we need is direct, straight talk about our culpability so that we can go forward
into the future earning only God's blessings.
God warns us, as I have written often, that to observe His Torah means His written Torah. The
Torah is simple, straight forward and except for a couple of laws regarding virgin marriage it needs little if any clerical
commentary. That the people of Israel listened and observed what their rabbis taught them for centuries before printed books
existed is understandable. It is also understandable that printed Holy Scriptures in the hands of literate Jews was bound
to lead to an explosion of questions. How is it possible that God tells us things in the Torah and rabbis explain them in
such diametrically opposed ways ? How is it possible that the relationship between our obligations and our destiny is not
of maximum importance ?
Since movable type led to the printing of millions of Bibles in every language, those
who claim to observe God's laws have become more disunited than united. What the rabbis did in fabricating meanings and
laws, the Catholics and Moslems and Protestants did as well. So with their respective version of God's written Torah in
one hand and a gun in the other, the servants of God challenge the beliefs of their fellow humans and prepare to annihilate
those who refuse to accept their respective theologians' explanation of God's Written Torah. No one made this
up, though it is a horror story that was bound to occur given the invective of the clerical characters of our respective religions.
Since the repackaging of God and His Covenant was first committed by Jews, I exhort our rabbis to question themselves today.
Have we not rebelled against God and angered Him with our falsifications of His laws and His intentions ? If we have a conscience;
if we care about our people who are once again in the bulls eye of another Holocaust, we will sit and ask ourselves and then
ask each other why we receive God's curses and not His blessings. If we are honest with each other, we will see how we
have erred and how we can truly return to our Father in Heaven, observe His actual written Torah laws and earn His blessings
of unity, victory, security, peace, prosperity and joy.
Remember, on this Day of Remembrance that while our
rabbis have taught us volumes, they have not promoted the brit lev of which Moshe, Jeremiah and Ezekiel spoke. Instead of
strengthening the heart as the seat of memory and understanding and conscience, they have been a force for confusing and destroying
the hearts of our people. I believe that one of our problems is that our rabbis feel compassion for our people. They
likewise believe that the earlier rabbis also loved their people. And since they all share this ubiquitous love of the people
of Israel and the highest intentions; it does not dawn on them that grave errors in understanding God's written Torah
have been made and passed on in spite of the terrible consequences to all of us! They must overcome the belief that
their good intentions are the measure for the effectiveness of their performance. It is the consequence of their work which
is the measure by which to judge their performance. A person or nation is free when they understand the relationship between
their obligations and their destiny. Israel's Divine destiny has not been realized YET! And the destiny of our historic
punishments is a failure to meet our genuine obligations. This failing is what our rabbis must currently consider.
The Day of Remembrance is next week. And Yom Kippur follows shortly. It is prudent to question ourselves; to question the
egotism that sustained our mythology and to question the genuine cause of genuine curses. Note that Deuteronomy 31 : 29 warns
us against angering God with the work of our hands in the end of days. Moses says, "For I know that after my death you
will in any wise deal corruptly, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the end
of days; because you will do that which is evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him through the work of your hands."
The work that Israel is doing now in this period called the 'end of days' is among other things, writing Torah commentaries
which misrepresent Torah, God's Spirit and His agenda. The great Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch says about Deuteronomy
31 : 29 that the people of Israel and the Torah are and "remain the finger of God, the directing finger of God to mankind".
This factual statement requires that we, the people of Israel be meticulous about translating Torah; impeccable about explaining
its meanings and absolutely faithful to the Spirit of God as revealed in the written Torah. To our misfortune, we as a nation
have failed at all three. The end of days is here; the world is preparing us for another Holocaust; our leaders, secular,
religious and military are in some kind of fantasy land and we and our loved ones are once again in the bulls eye of a barbaric
hatred that is about to launch such massive and colossal destruction in our midst, that only God's Grace will save us.
Isn't it wise and prudent this Yom Kippur to earnestly search our souls about the possibility that we have indeed been
WRONG FOR A VERY, VERY LONG TIME ?
Best wishes for us all to awaken and to earn all of the blessings in God's
Treasure House.
