PURIM 5775: THE JEWISH PEOPLE WILL DEFEAT THE CURRENT AMALEKS: HAMAS, I.S., AND IRAN’S AYATOLLAHS

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Contents:

Purim 5775 – Today’s Amalekim: Baruch Cohen, CIJR, Mar. 5, 2015 — Today’s enemy of Israel, Amalek, is Hamas.

Purim Lessons: Jerusalem Post, Mar. 5, 2015 — One of the striking aspects of the Book of Esther, which we read on Purim, was the way the Jewish people were saved.

Purim or Munich?: Jeremy Rosen, Algemeiner, Mar. 1, 2015 — Purim is this coming week.

The Therapeutic Joy of Purim: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Rabbisacks, Mar. 1, 2014— There is a unique law in the approach to Purim.

On Topic Links

IDF's Purim 2015 Clip (Video): Arutz Sheva, Mar. 5, 2014

Heroics Aside, the Story of Purim Is the Bible’s Greatest Farce: Tablet, Mar. 4, 2014

The Lessons of Purim and Iran: Julie Shain, Algemeiner, Mar. 4, 2014

Five Reasons Spock Was the Quintessential Jew: Moshe Rosenberg, Tablet, Mar. 3, 2014

PURIM 5775 – TODAY’S AMALEKIM

Baruch Cohen

CIJR, Mar. 5, 2015

In loving memory of Malca Z’’L

“Remember what Amalek did to you…”

—Deuteronomy XXV: 17

Today’s enemy of Israel, Amalek, is Hamas. Like the Biblical Amalek, it aims to disrupt Israel’s march through history toward its unique destiny – the state for all Jews. Don’t be afraid! Lacking any sense of morality, today’s Amalekim pursue any action they deem necessary for their goal, without any regard for justice or civility. Today’s Amaleks seek, similarly, to annihilate the Jewish State – and thus to keep other nations away from Israel’s guiding moral light.

Throughout the centuries the Jewish people have had to face many such enemies. The treacherous firing of missiles by Hamas’ thugs at Israel’s civilian population is a typical Amalek act. Such unprovoked vicious enmity towards Israel is typical of the Amalek character. Hamas –like all the other terrorist enemies of Israel, Sunni and Shiite–perpetrates the legacy of their evil antecedents. And they will be remembered in history as such, for their destiny will be the same as that of all of Israel’s past and present enemies!

The Purim story and holiday will not die as long as prejudice and antisemitism exist in the world. The much-loved prophetess Deborah concluded her thanksgiving victory song as follows: “And the land was quiet for forty years.” After defeating the current Amaleks, from Hamas to IS to Iran’s ayatollahs, may there be peace for 400 years and more, for Israel and the entire world.: “Remember what Amalek did to you”. 

To all of CIJR’s friends, followers and to the entire House of Israel: Hag Purim Sameach! Enjoy the Purim holiday!                 

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PURIM LESSONS                                                                                                                     

Jerusalem Post, Mar. 5, 2015

One of the striking aspects of the Book of Esther, which we read on Purim, was the way the Jewish people were saved. Haman, a powerful Persian viceroy, plotted to destroy the Jewish people some 2,500 years ago. A courageous Jewish woman, Queen Esther, who was married to the Persian emperor, Ahasuerus, exposed the plot and gained the confidence of the emperor. But Ahasuerus did not put his military at the disposal of the Jews. He did not order his soldiers to intervene on their behalf. What he did do was give the Jews the right to defend themselves against their enemies.

Until that point the Jewish people had, apparently, been living in the sort of passivity that often characterized Diaspora communities throughout the ages. They could not imagine taking up arms to defend themselves against their enemies. Once the Jews were given the legitimization to stand up for themselves, however, they rose to the occasion.

One cannot help but note many of the similarities that exist between the ancient story told in the Book of Esther and contemporary affairs. It was only natural that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would mention some of the similarities in his historic speech before the US Congress on Tuesday, just one day before Purim began. As was the case 2,500 years ago, noted Netanyahu, “the Jewish people face another attempt by yet another Persian potentate to destroy us.” He was referring to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei who spews rabid hatred of Jews and calls for the destruction of Israel.

Of course there are also many differences. President Barack Obama is no Ahasuerus. The US president is a strong and loyal ally of the Jewish people. Obama’s foreign policy approach regarding Iran’s nuclear program differs strikingly from the sort of policy most Israelis would like to see the US pursue. But this is a function of Obama’s understanding of America’s principal interests, which include more nation-building at home and less involvement in military conflicts around the world.

As part of its “light footprint” policy, the Obama administration is working toward pulling out US troops from Afghanistan and has no intention of committing US troops on the ground to the fight against Islamic State; it adopted a “lead from behind” strategy in Libya; it has been wary of arming Ukrainians to defend themselves against the Putin regime’s revanchist aggression; it has refrained from signing trade deals and weapons sales with Taiwan, apparently out of fear of clashing with China. And with Iran, the Obama administration has chosen engagement over confrontation.

Another thing has changed since the days of Mordechai and Esther. The Jewish people is no longer dependent on the goodwill of others when it comes to its defense. The Book of Esther takes place at a time when the Jews were just beginning to restore their sovereignty in their homeland after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. Mordechai and Esther lived in exile in Persia as the return to Zion began.

Today the Jews have restored their sovereignty. They have created one of the most dynamic and innovative societies in the world. Out of necessity, they have built one of the most powerful militaries in the world. They have the ability to defend themselves against their enemies. No country has a bigger stake in seeing a peaceful resolution to the conflict with Iran over its nuclear arms program. Through Iran’s proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, Israel can be targeted. Destabilization in the region would have direct implications for Israel.

But Iran’s expansionist aggression makes a peaceful resolution difficult, if not impossible, to attain. Perhaps after another round of sanctions with the added impact of falling oil prices, the Iranians can be convinced to abandon their designs for nuclear weapons. Perhaps not. Either way, the days are over when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies.

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PURIM OR MUNICH?

Jeremy Rosen                                                                                                      

Algemeiner, Mar. 1, 2015

Purim is this coming week. It’s a story that can be read as being about an ineffectual, drunken leader – a disaster just waiting to happen. Here is a king manipulated by his advisors into making disastrous decisions. Weakness always allows either dangerous, proactive demagogues to emerge or self-interested vipers to step into the vacuum. This is a lesson the USA is having to learn all over again.

“Munich” has many associations. The Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 was when Hitler failed in his first attempt to gain power. The PLO massacred Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. But in between was the infamous 1938 conference at which Britain sacrificed Czechoslovakia in the hope that it would bring peace. Hitler saw this as weakness and went on to invade Poland and Russia. Britain, instead of avoiding a small war, got dragged into a far wider and nastier one.

Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister at the time, will forever be remembered for his smug grin as he waved a piece of paper on his return from Munich declaring “peace for our time.” This was the prime example of appeasement. Appeasement is the Achilles heel of naïve, fainthearted liberals and social democrats. Much of the British aristocracy (as the American plutocracy) did not want to go to war. They thought Hitler was a good “chappie.” Even King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson were enamored. The students of Oxford University voted not to fight for King and Country. Cambridge University provided a whole network of lethal Soviet spies because they believed Russia’s Marxist claptrap would make the world a better place.

America saved Europe. Instead of gratitude, it was resented and excoriated as an aggressive bully. At least its nuclear threat gave Europe the longest stretch of peace it had in centuries. But now the USA is going through precisely the same appeasement mindset that Britain did 80 years ago.

I was brought up and educated in that post-war liberal mindset, in the warm, fuzzy belief that humans were basically reasonable and utilitarian. Socialism would help resolve all social difficulties. Normal men and women would always choose the moderate course over the extreme. Negotiations would always produce results, whereas violence and aggression never could. Universal values would always trump vested nationalist interests, and if we made love enough we could always avoid war. Mine was the generation of Sartre, Joan Baez, John Lennon and all the other talented ingénues. My default position was left wing.

But reality – the need to make a living, the realization that people did not behave rationally and would not necessarily love you if you tried to be nice – soon set in. The world was a more complicated, nuanced place than the hippies believed. Nasty President Johnson achieved a lot more by being tough than others did by being nice.

History might never exactly repeat itself, but certain cycles do indeed keep on recurring. After eras of American imperialism, fighting dirty wars all round the world in its struggle against communism, the USA has had a very mixed record of both positive intervention and incompetence. Bush senior intervened to save Kuwait. Clinton intervened to stop Serbia (but not Rwanda). Meanwhile both Iraq and Afghanistan, after initial military victories, have remained failed, corrupt terror-ridden states, for all the billions wasted on them.

The record of current liberal America is pathetic. The administration seems to think, in abstract liberal fashion, that if you talk sweetly, are conciliatory, and spend money, this will win friends, and people will start loving you. The Obama administration has now given us a sequence of disastrous policies (or lack of them) from Libya to Syria, from ISIL to Pakistan, from Cairo to Riyadh via Teheran. And it’s not just with failed Muslim states.

Russia grabs Crimea. No, says the USA you can’t. Russia arms rebels in Western Ukraine; they down a passenger jet using Russian missiles; they break every truce and are pushing on because we know they want a land passage into Crimea from Russia proper. NATO and America’s reaction? No weapons to help Ukraine protect itself. Only hot air and ineffectual sanctions that the Russians have already found ways around.

And why is Putin feeling so confident? Because Obama couldn’t stand up to him in Syria. Would not arm moderate rebels while there were a few still left. Still won’t arm the Kurds for fear of offending Turkey (who think nothing of insulting him) or being accused of colluding in the breakup of the artificial cobbled state called Iraq. All of which allowed ISIL to thrive and take Mosul. Now that he realizes they are not Little Leaguers, he thinks he can defeat then without boots on the ground, relying on an already discredited Iraqi army or Sunni tribes who are closer to ISIL than they are to the Iraqi Shia.

I would not intervene whatsoever in the Middle East. Let them sort their own differences out. It’s as much a fundamentalist, messianic, religious sectarian battle as a political one. The Imperialist powers made a hash of it. Now let the cards fall where they may. America doesn’t need Saudi oil any longer, and its bigger challenges lie much further to the east.

Terror from Islamic fanatics is a threat, but America and the rest of the free world should focus resources on protecting themselves within their own borders, not venturing into alien territory and cultures it does not understand in the vain and arrogant hope of changing them. Let the dysfunctional Middle East destroy itself or else wake up to the fact that blaming Israel is no way to build a just society. Using scapegoats is always a recipe for failure.

The Liberal agenda refuses to see things as they are, choosing instead to see things as they would like them to be. They still believe Achashverosh’s descendants in Teheran are negotiating in good faith. It might not be a drunken fog, but it’s a fog nevertheless. We all have our dreams and ideals. But we also need to be realistic and practical. In the end self-defense is always best. Nowadays no ally can trust America to come its aid. Neville Obama may not be drunk with wine, but he is certainly intoxicated with his own dogmas.

Happy Purim.                          

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THE THERAPEUTIC JOY OF PURIM                                                                                        

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Rabbisacks, Mar. 1, 2015

There is a unique law in the approach to Purim. Mishe-nichnas Adar marbim be-simcha: “From the beginning of Adar, we increase in joy.” It is stated in the Talmud (Taanit 29a), and is based on the passage in the Megillah (Esther 9: 21-22) in which Mordechai sends a letter throughout the land instructing Jews “to observe the fourteenth day of the month of Adar and the fifteenth day, every year – the days on which the Jews obtained rest from their enemies and the month which for them was turned from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday.”

This in turn refers back to the text in which Haman decided on the timing of his decree: “In the first month, the month of Nisan, in the twelfth year of Achashverosh, they cast pur (that is, lots) before Haman from day to day, and from month to month until the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar” (Est. 3: 7).

The difficulties though are obvious. Why an entire month? The key events were focused on a few days, the thirteenth to the fifteenth, not the whole month. And why simcha? We can understand why the Jews of the time felt exhilaration. The decree sentencing them to death had been rescinded. Their enemies had been punished. Haman had been hanged on the very gallows he had prepared for Mordechai. Mordechai himself had been raised to greatness.

But is joy the emotion we should feel in perpetuity, remembering those events? The first warrant for genocide against the Jewish people (the second if one counts Pharaoh’s plan to kill all newborn Jewish males) had been frustrated. Is simcha the appropriate emotion? Surely what we should feel is relief, not joy. Pesach is the proof. The word “joy” is never mentioned in the Torah in connection with it.

Besides which, the Talmud asks why we do not say Hallel on Purim. It gives several answers. The most powerful is that in Hallel we say, “Servants of the Lord, give praise,” – meaning that we are no longer the servants of Pharaoh. But, says the Talmud, even after the deliverance of Purim, Jews were still the servants of Achashverosh (Megillah 14a). Tragedy had been averted but there was no real change in the hazards of life in the Diaspora.

It seems to me therefore that the simcha we celebrate throughout the month of Adar is different from the normal joy we feel when something good and positive has happened to us or our people. That is expressive joy. The simcha of Adar, by contrast, is therapeutic joy.

Imagine what it is to be part of a people that had once heard the command issued against them: “to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews—young and old, women and children—on a single day” (Est. 3: 13). We who live after the Holocaust, who have met survivors, heard their testimony, seen the photographs and documentaries and memorials, know the answer to that question. On Purim the Final Solution was averted. But it had been pronounced. Ever afterward, Jews knew their vulnerability. The very existence of Purim in our historical memory is traumatic.

The Jewish response to trauma is counterintuitive and extraordinary. You defeat fear by joy. You conquer terror by collective celebration. You prepare a festive meal, invite guests, give gifts to friends. While the story is being told, you make a rumbustious noise as if not only to blot out the memory of Amalek, but to make a joke out of the whole episode. You wear masks. You drink a little too much. You make a Purim spiel.

Precisely because the threat was so serious, you refuse to be serious – and in that refusal you are doing something very serious indeed. You are denying your enemies a victory. You are declaring that you will not be intimidated. As the date of the scheduled destruction approaches, you surround yourself with the single most effective antidote to fear: joy in life itself. As the three-sentence summary of Jewish history puts it: “They tried to destroy us. We survived. Let’s eat.” Humour is the Jewish way of defeating hate. What you can laugh at, you cannot be held captive by.

I learned this from a Holocaust survivor. Some years ago, I wrote a book, Celebrating Life, to write my way out of the depression I fell into after the death of my father, zikhro livracha. It was a cheer-you-up book, and it became a favourite of the Holocaust survivors. One of them, however, told me that a particular passage in the book was incorrect. Commenting on Roberto Begnini’s comedy about the Holocaust, Life is Beautiful, I had said that though I agreed with his thesis – a sense of humour keeps you sane – that was not enough in Auschwitz to keep you alive.

“On that, you are wrong,” the survivor said, and then told me his story. He had been in Auschwitz, and he soon realised that if he failed to keep his spirits up, he would die. So he made a pact with another young man, that they would both look out, each day, for some occurrence they found amusing. At the end of each day they would tell one another their story and they would laugh together. “That sense of humour saved my life,” he said. I stood corrected. He was right.

That is what we do on Purim. The joy, the merrymaking, the food, the drink, the whole carnival atmosphere, are there to allow us to live with the risks of being a Jew – in the past, and tragically in the present also – without being terrified, traumatised or intimidated. It is the most counter-intuitive response to terror, and the most effective. Terrorists aim to terrify. To be a Jew is to refuse to be terrified.

Terror, hatred, violence – the dark forces that are currently ravaging country after country in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia – are always ultimately self-destructive. Those who practise them are always, as was Haman, hoisted on their own petard, destroyed by their very will to destruction. And yes, we as Jews must fight antisemitism, the demonization of Israel, and the intimidation of Jewish students on campus.

But we must never let ourselves be intimidated – and the Jewish way to avoid this is marbim be-simcha, to increase our joy. The people that can know the full darkness of history and yet rejoice is a people whose spirit no power on earth can ever break. Purim sameach. Elaine and I wish you a Purim full of joy.

Please See Friday’s Isranet Daily Briefing For Our Annual Purim-spiels—Ed.

CIJR Wishes All Our Friends and Supporters: Hag Purim Sameach! Enjoy the Purim Holiday!

Contents

On Topic

IDF's Purim 2015 Clip (Video): Arutz Sheva, Mar. 5, 2014

Heroics Aside, the Story of Purim Is the Bible’s Greatest Farce: Tablet, Mar. 4, 2014

The Lessons of Purim and Iran: Julie Shain, Algemeiner, Mar. 4, 2014—“Do not think that you will escape [the fate of] all the Jews by being in the king’s palace… And who knows if it is not for just such a time that you reached this royal position.”

Five Reasons Spock Was the Quintessential Jew: Moshe Rosenberg, Tablet, Mar. 3, 2014—Much has been written since the passing of Leonard Nimoy about his embrace of Judaism, whether through the priestly blessings, provocative photographs, or Yiddish theater.

Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research/ L'institut Canadien de recherches sur le Judaïsme, www.isranet.org

Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284 ; ber@isranet.wpsitie.com