The Aliyah Revolution Album gets a great review in Makor Rishon
The Israeli newspaper "Makor Rishon" (my favorite Hebrew paper by far) wrote a great review of our new album. They see it as part of the cultural revolution of the Aliyah movement, and I agree. The Aliyah Revolution will bring about a burst of cultural renewal, for as we come home, we reunite with our people, our land, and our traditions, and fuse Israel with what have learned in the Diaspora. It's all happening. (Click on the photograph to enlarge and read the article for yourself)
Do you think I should be allowed to make aliyah? Part II
This is the continuation of my email discussion from below:
He wrote:
Thanks for your response. I have been invited a few times to celebrate Shabbat with Chabad and actually chose to get a bris last year. However, I find life in Jesus very satisfying! I am also disgusted of the persecution of Jews by so-called Christians. Christianity in its early stages comprised only of Jews though. I may be going to Israel with Chabad this year, it should be great. I do find it ironic that you're trying to missionize me though!
I wrote back:
Nothing ironic about it - we are in the business of spreading the true faith as Abraham did. We were given a Torah and it is applicable to all mankind. Now that we are back on our homeland, the nations are turning to us and asking us about the truth. Christianity is bankrupt, and now many people are looking for the right way to serve the Lord. I hope, truly, that you will be able to shed the extraneous husk of the J-faith and that you will be able to serve G-d properly. This may be true: "However, I find life in Jesus very satisfying!" - but the question is whether G-d finds your life satisfying to Him.
I am a Jew (I have a Jewish mother) & was raised in a church. I am proud of being a Jew & I believe Yeshua is the Jewish Messiah. Do you think I should be allowed to make aliyah? Do you think I have the right to present my beliefs to Jews living in eretz yisrael & coexist should they choose to differ with me?
----
Dear Friend,
Israel is a Jewish state and not a Christian one. Your first goal seems to be a missionary one as you want to spread your "Gospel" to Jews in Israel. If that is your goal then maybe Aliyah is not for you. If you want to live as a Christian you can do so in many other countries - ours is not of that faith. We have suffered enough under the Christendom and we did not survive the persecution just to be finally missionized when back in our homeland.
Maybe you are ready and open minded enough to be exposed to traditional Judaism? Maybe you need a good helping of a Jewish Israel more than it needs Christmas? In any case, I wish you luck. May G-d direct you on His proper path.
I want to apologize to all you Israel nay-sayers out there, this is going to be one irritating post for you.
You know who I'm talking about - those people who get all puckery and condescending, ranting on about the shameful state of affairs in our Jewish State ("it's hardly even Jewish!", they'll say). They pull out crusty old anti-Zionist rationales (that's, like, so 19th century!) and doomsday predictions, and poo-poo the attempts of good folks to get good things done in Israel. It's all a pathetic failure to them.
Well not today! Two articles were posted on Israel National News illustrating just how hard it is to keep a good chosen people down.
The first is about a reflourishing of Zionism at Jerusalem's elite Hebrew University, with a pro-IDF student union and the whole works. Grumbling curmudgeons who swear by the corrupted soul and moral decay of Israelis will have to soothe themselves with the hope that the inspiration of Jewish pride and pro-Israel sentiments won't pass to other institutions of higher learning.
The second, by our own blogger Gil Ronen, is about REALLY cool new developments by the IDF Rabbinate’s Halacha (Jewish Law) and Technology Department, instituted last year to find kosher solutions to Tzahal's operational issues. Some examples in the article include a kosher-for-shabbat car ignition for army jeeps and a special refrigerator-oven for the Israeli Navy. I know, I know - some of you LOVE to hate Israel's army. At least you can always say they helped in the expulsion from Gaza.
Check out Yoseph and Melody's "Love of the Land" blog for some great pictures of our amazing, and miracle filled adventure in the Tomb of Ruth and Yishai.
Every Pesach since I first became religious I've essentially had a repeat of the seder experience- a well groomed black hat sporting North American kiruv rabbi sitting at the head of the table spending the night sharing light-hearted parables tied into the story of Yetzirat Mitzrayim, everyone calmly getting their fill of matzah and maybe a cute performance from the kids. This year however due to me now having Israeli in-laws, I merited getting an up close view of the Moroccan and Yeminite worlds of Israel not so commonly available to those in the English speaking circles of Jerusalem.
The cultural challenges included things like trying to keep up with a table full of people who can read Hebrew 5 times faster than the speed of light and trying to reach halachik agreements over how to handle the intricacies of the Pesach laws with people who were often less then thrilled to have some yeshivish American kid come and start telling them what to do. In fact one thing I've noticed of quite a few of the non-Charedi Sephardim in Israel is that for many, opening up a Shulchan Aruch, Mishneh Breur or Yalkut Yosef and stating the halacha point blank seems to be no match in their eyes against claims of, "Who are you to tell me what to do? I was born in the neighboring town to where the Baba Sali lived!" Or, "My great grandfather was the Ben Ish Chai's milkman! You think I don't know what I'm talking about!?"
As difficult as it was at times to bridge the culture gap, I witnessed something really beautiful that put the whole idea of Am Yisrael and family in perspective for me. During Chol Hamoed one day we had a bbq up in Haifa. Here I was, wearing my frummer-than-though black and white "penguin" uniform surrounded by sabras in jeans and flip flops when my wife and I looked into a neighboring yard nearby. We saw another Israeli family quite similar to ours grilling their own food "al-ha'eish." Smack dab in the middle of the group was a man with a long beard also sporting the "uniform" with his super-tznious wife helping direct the festivities. My wife smiled and commented, "I guess there has to be one of those couples in every family!" Then it hit me, I looked at the people surrounding me that were in many ways so entirely different and yet had totally welcomed me into their family. I also looked down the street at the guy whom I'm sure had such similar Pesach experience to mine that he could probably write this post for me. I realized that's the story of Am Yisrael. As corny as it sounds, no matter how different we may look or feel we are all as Jews bound up by some common thread. What the thread is and how it works I'm not exactly sure bit it's definitely there and doing its thing. My rabbi gave several classes in Jerusalem in the last week or so and during one of them said that he never calls himself religious, just a Jew. People tell him things like, "Well look at your big beard!" He replies, "Goats can grow beards too, so what of it?" No matter how different we may look speak or act, we really are just one big family.
Tonight I made a somewhat controversial remark on my facebook page stating my satisfaction over success of the Israeli Air Force in Gaza and the fact that some of the most vicious Jew haters/killers in the world will no longer see the light of day. An acquaintance of mine whom I know to be a somewhat liberal Jew sent me a message remarking how they were upset over me making such a comment. now it's a hotly debated issue by some as to what kind of response and how much of that response we as Jews are halachikly allowed to have concerning the downfall of our enemies. I won't speak on the details of the halacha because that is the job of qualified rabbis and not a Joe-Schmoe such as myself, but I will say this- when the enemies of the Jewish people are victorious over us and cause us harm it is a chillul Hashem (desecration of G-d's name). Why? Because people will see such a thing and falsely believe that G-d forbid the Torah isn't true and Hashem has abandoned the Jews, breaking His eternal promises to us. Conversely, when Hashem grants us victory over our enemies (one of the main factors of the Channukah festival we happen to be celebrating right now) this is a great Kiddush Hashem (sanctification of G-d's name) because it shows that the Jewish people are truly meritorious and we have the support of Hashem on our side. One could say that Hashem gives the victory to us or our enemies based on how well the Jews behave which is true, but that doesn't negate the Kiddush/chillul Hashem aspect, for when the Jews follow Torah properly this is the greatest Kiddush Hashem they could do and if they don't G-d forbid, that's the greatest desecration, for the non-Jews will ask, "If G-d's own people don't follow His command, why should we?" With this in mind, I'd like to share my response to my more liberal minded Jewish friend...
I understand why you would feel upset. My question is do you believe that there is such a thing as actual evil in the world and evil people? If yes then we have what to discuss, but if not then no. I personally think it's compelling to believe there is such a thing as evil and evil people because otherwise one must say that a group of people like the nazis weren't truly evil and if everything is truly just all relative then the acts they committed can't be condemned because from their point of view they were justified.
Like I said, I believe there is evil and evil people in the world. Anybody who hates Jews and wishes to see them dead, and all the more so takes actions to kill or in any other way cause Jews harm simply for them being Jewish is evil. The fact is that the members of hamas, and the vast majority of residents in Gaza whether officially affiliated with hamas or not hate Jews and wish to see harm befall them. Therefore they are evil people in my eyes, and when evil people suffer and/or meet their end, that is a sign that there is justice in this world. According to reports, the vast, vast majority of these causalities have been official hamas members, so even if you want to say non-hamas gazans don't hate Jews, you would have a hard time arguing that these dead who WERE hamasniks didn't hate Jews. Pirkei Avot states that those who are kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind. To take pity on those who are evil will, if that path is followed long enough, eventually lead to one supporting evil themselves against the innocent. I've seen it with my own two eyes.
I respect what I assume is your great compassion to be upset over such a thing, but I just hope that you have just as much compassion and get just as upset for your Jewish brothers and sisters who have had to suffer over 3000 rocket attacks at the hands of the people who filled up the morgues today and therefore won't fill up rocket launchers tomorrow.
Rebranding Israel: FM Just Doesn’t Get It - Still!
This is not the first time Kumah has written about this.
Last week I attended the Nefesh B’Nefesh First International Jewish Bloggers Convention along with the rest of the Jblog world. One segment of the program featured Zavi Apfelbaum, the Director of Brand Management of the Foreign Ministry. At the time I did not know that she represented the State of Israel. (I didn't read the program, okay?)
(Click the video for a transcript we posted on YouTube.)
Which is why when blogger Moshe Burt (“Israel and the Sin of Expulsion”) began screaming at the top of his lungs “this is a Jewish State!,” though I agreed with him, I thought he was taking the wrong approach. But now that I realize exactly what was going on I think he was exactly right and that might be the only way to keep making the point, as Burt wrote, “until it sinks irrevocably into their consciousness.”
Let’s start at the beginning. The Foreign Ministry spent millions of shekel of taxpayer money to figure out that, guess what, the world thinks Israel is a bunch of thugs and a very cold (not weather-wise), dull, place to live or visit. Well obviously the world has branded us waaay wrong! Apfelbaum, again blaming the victim, claimed it was not the world that did it but we did it to ourselves. Perhaps I’ll grant that as a half-truth but that’s for another discussion.
So once again the Foreign Ministry plans to spend waste millions of shekel “rebranding” Israel.
The future brand and marketing image of Israel: 1. Tel Aviv Fashion Brands 2. Tel Aviv Modern Dance Troupes 3. Tel Aviv Beach Life 4. Israeli High Technology Developments 5. Tel Aviv Night Life 6. Israeli High Technology Medical Developments 7. Israeli Wine
With the exception of 4 and 6, basically they are trying to brand Israel as Italy, France or Spain.
When will they learn? Israel is a Jewish Country!
Here’s what I wrote a year ago:
Once Israel becomes "a nation like any other" we are thrust onto a world scale we have no right being on. On that scale, Israel appears to be a pretty crummy nation with nothing special at all. Hence the post-Zionists. But if we stay on the scale we are supposed to stay on, the "light-to-the-nations" scale we are untouchable! When we promote G-d, no nation anywhere can come close in terms of history, culture, food, family life, beauty, and spirituality. Indeed we have something no other nation has.
To summarize, Israel already has an excellent – but discarded - brand. The powers-that-be in the government just don’t like it very much. But this brand has been around for over 3,300 years! Let me explain it in simple terms:
New York is to “The Big Apple” as Israel is to “The Holy Land.”
Gee, whiz. Brilliant! Why didn’t anyone ever think of that before? It’s a brand we have and it’s a brand we should use. It’s a brand that will stick because it already sticks, much to the dismay of the government. Basically the country is spending millions because we don’t want people to think of us as holy! Stop pretending to be the Europeans we are not, because the world is not dumb enough the fall for it. Start being yourself, Israel, and good things will happen. In the 60 years since she was founded Israel never got to be herself - not for one day.
And Moshe Burt is right. In terms of Holy we are talking Judaism. No Muslims are going to view Israel more favorable if we tell them Israel is important to them. And the Christians already know the real deal and love the Jewish people for it. Just talk to any Christians you meet. They know the Holy Land is G-d’s gift to the Jews and they are cool with that. Very cool with it.
So here is a small part of Pinchas’s plan for “rebranding” (that’s "re" as in repeating something not as in changing something):
Shabbat
Kotel
Jewish Tradition
Jewish Children
Holy Things
The problem is the government is working backwards. Instead of displaying the beauty of Judaism and Shabbat for the world, the government does everything it can to destroy our image as a holy nation by doing things like attempting to have buses run on Shabbat. Sometimes the only way to get the message across truly is to yell it, and to yell it again, again, and again!
In my previous post, I proposed a paradigm shift when it came to Israel achieving peace with her neighbors.
Today, there was yet another reminder that the current leadership of Israel still has not understood that the old model of achieving peace, through displaying weakness before one's enemies, is not working.
The Israeli delegation to the regional conference in Jordan on the subject of economic cooperation, organized by the Netanya Academic College, was refused entry into Jordan at the Allenby crossing earlier today.
As a result, the Director General of the Tourism Ministry, Shaul Tzemach, will be unable to participate in the tourism panel scheduled for tomorrow, as outlined in the Tourism Ministry press release distributed earlier today.
Of course, Jordan is one of two Arab countries with whom Israel has signed a formal peace treaty, and little is likely to change in the wake of this insult.
In truth, Jordan;s behavior towards Israel's Director General of the Ministry of Tourism is not surprising. After all, according to Jordanian law, a Jew may not own land nor attain citizenship in Jordan.
What is surprising, however, is how the Jewish State of Israel could ever have believed it possible to have peace (normal relations / co-existence) with a country whose hatred of the Jewish people is so deeply ingrained.
If we desire the respect of others, we must first have respect for ourselves (our history, Heritage, Land and People).
There are no shortage of people in this world who have opinions, and that is doubly true within the Jewish people.
Much rarer is the individual who is prepared to stand behind those opinions - those beliefs - when they are not popular, and when it places one squarely within the minority.
King David, who, throughout his life, embodied such a quality, wrote in Tehillim (119; 46):
I will also speak of Your (G-d's) testimonies before kings, and shall not be ashamed.
Recently, over 100 million people had the opportunity to witness a more modern example of such conviction...
Dr. Mordechai Keidar, a professor at Bar Ilan University's Dept. for Arabic Studies was recently interviewed by Al-Jazeera's top journalist, Jamal Rayyan. (The interview can be found above).
In the interview, Keidar was asked if Israel's decision to continue building throughout Jerusalem - in areas over the "Green Line" - represented the metaphorical nail in the coffin for the peace process.
Keidar responded:
"To tell you the truth I don't quite understand this. Must Israel ask permission from some other authority in the world? It has been our capital for 3,000 years. We have been there since the time your forefathers used to drink wine, bury their daughters alive, and pray to multiple gods.
So then, why must we speak about this? It has been our city for 3,000 years and will be for eternity."
Rayyan then asserted Islam's claim to Jerusalem, as stated in the Koran. To which Keidar responded that Jerusalem is not mentioned even a single time in the Koran.
Rayyan decided to try a different approach:
"Let's talk politics, please. Doesn't this decision oppose the Road Map, which determines that Israel will halt construction of the settlements in Jerusalem?"
To which Keidar responded:
"The Road Map does not mention Jerusalem. Jerusalem is outside of negotiations. Jerusalem belongs to the Jews, Period! We cannot discuss Jerusalem in any way. You return to this issue time and again, but Jerusalem is not referred to in the Road Map. My brother, go and read the Road Map...
My brother, Israel does not involve itself in housing that Qatar constructs in the Qatar Peninsula. What do you want with Jerusalem? Jerusalem is ours for eternity and no one, not Al-Jazeera or anyone else, has any say in it. Jerusalem is solely a Jewish city and no one else has any connection to it."
How refreshing to see how one can assert the right of the Jewish people to a Jewish state in Israel, not through apologetics and guilt, but out of conviction and pride. To know that our right to a Jewish state in Israel is not limited to history dating back 60 years - to the Holocaust - but that our connection to this Land predates that of the Christians or Muslims by thousands of years.
And to do so in front of 100 million viewers who don't agree with a word of what you're saying...
This last March Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav was the site of a gruesome arab attack against the heart and soul of religious Zionism. Yet just a few months later throngs of people showed up for their annual Yom Yerushalayim celebration. At one in the morning people filled the streets as the block was closed off and the sounds of singing and dancing could be heard in all the surrounding neighborhoods. No matter what tragedy our enemies may hurl at us, people like those at Merkaz HaRav show that the Jewish people are dedicating their lives to Hashem and our land and we won't be stopped or intimidated. Kol hakavod to all the bochurim and rebbeim there, may you only hear good news from now on.
Malkah and I had the opportunity to speak with Academy Award winning actor Jon Voight on our show. Jon was in Israel for the state’s 60th anniversary festivities. While here, Voight joined Chabad-Lubavitch in welcoming children evacuated from the devastated Chernobyl region of the Former Soviet Union to Israel. He also toured Sderot and strengthened the people there. )))CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO OUR INTERVIEW(((
Here I am in sunny California, in the dreamlike town of Santa Barbara. I was invited to participate in the Jewish community's celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary. As I was introduced to the crowd, a loud roar greeted me. While I would have liked to believe that the extended applause was for me, I knew better - it was for the Jewish state, which I had the honor to represent.
I gazed out at the mass of people - like me, the vast majority being the oldest of the baby-boomer generation. I could not help but wonder: What is it about Israel that pulled at the heartstrings of these 60-somethings? Why would they want to assume the headaches of Israel, and the need to defend it from the onslaught of the ultra-liberal members of the local community, many of whom were affiliated with the California university system, that included the Santa Barbara campus - a hotbed, like its sister school, Berkeley, of virulent anti-Israel activism?
With Israel mercilessly and oftentimes unfairly attacked because of its continued occupation of the West Bank, one would think that Jews abroad would lower their Israel profile.
So, why such an impressive turnout to fete Israel? Jealousy.
LET ME explain. A while ago, I attended my 40th high-school reunion. The night before the main event, 15 of the Jewish members of the class gathered together. In the course of our conversations, I learned that most of my childhood friends had amassed wealth I will never approximate, live in homes so big my entire apartment would fit into their living rooms, had traveled the world, visiting places I only read about, and were engaged in important work that significantly impacted people's lives.
And yet all of them, by their own admission, were jealous of me by virtue of the fact that I live in Israel.
As children of the '60s, we were social activists - civil rights, anti-Vietnam, Soviet Jewry. More important than feeling a moral compulsion to create a new social order or espousing liberal slogans was translating our social concerns into action - being carted off to prison demonstrating against segregation in Selma, Alabama, Oxford, Mississippi and Little Rock, Arkansas; blocking entrances to army recruitment centers; and chaining ourselves to the gate of the Russian embassy.
As the activist '60s gave way to the mellow '70s and the reactionary '80s, concomitantly with the natural aging process that saw us become grandparents in the '90s, the rigor of youthful activism diminished. My friends felt a measure of guilt for their lack of involvement today, but also felt a vicarious satisfaction in knowing that their classmate in Israel was still carrying a torch of social concern. It mattered little what side of the political spectrum I was on. The fact of my engagement made them envious.
Throughout their lives they believed that to be socially involved was a central moral value, but as they grew older, they felt they had failed to fulfill their ethical obligation to remain active and pass that value on to their children. They mused about what it would be like to live in a country like Israel, where social commitment seemed to be a national trait. They wished that the requirement to serve in the army or do national service was something their kids had experienced.
I might add that of the 15 participants in our pre-reunion get together, only 13 were still married to the same person. Even though most of my friends were married to non-Jews, their sentimental attachment to Judaism was such that they preferred their children to marry Jews, as is natural in Israel, but not the case for almost all of their kids.
They rightfully believed that there is less of a generation gap in Israel, and that parents and children here share a commonality of experiences that binds them closer to one another. Virtually all the children from their blended families lived nowhere near them, unlike the normal family configuration in Israel, where kids live in a small radius of their parents and each other - another reason for my classmates' envy.
I expected my friends to ply me with questions about the occupation, Gaza, settlements, Hizbullah and Hamas, along with terrorism, war and the threat of a nuclear confrontation with Iran. Not that they were disinterested in such weighty matters or did not have their criticisms of Israel, but surprisingly that was not their focus when we talked, although they admired Israelis' resilience in the face of danger and their ability to be leaders in the fields of literature, art, medicine, technology and science.
Most interesting of all was that they were envious of the excitement that descends upon Israel, with the greatest amount of envy being directed to our living in sealed rooms during the Gulf War (the kind of excitement we could live without). They saw my life in Israel as being far more adventurous than theirs in America; as one classmate longingly put it: "You do not live a boring life."
And so, as I looked out at the crowd, I recalled my reunion and realized that with all the monumental challenges we Israelis face, we lead an enviable life. In acknowledgement and appreciation of this simple fact, throngs of people filled the public square to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary.
Guess what? Israel is the happiest place in the world! So concludes noted Asia Times Online columnist Spengler after compiling the number of suicides in counties against their fertility rates, arguing that those choosing to create life and avoid death must be happy. And not only does Israel score higher than everyone else, she scores leaps and bounds higher, simply blowing away the competition.
It this fantastic article Spengler explains why this is so. And in a nutshell it's about Jews keeping the Torah together as a nation. He explains how we declare in the Aleinu prayer "G-d did not make us like the nations of other lands, and did not make us the same as other families of the Earth. G-d did not place us in the same situations as others, and our destiny is not the same as anyone else's."
On her 60th birthday Israel remains a nation UNLIKE any other. And that is precisely the secret of her happiness.
The articles is below and I have bolded important portions.
Hat Tip: DQ ----
Why Israel is the world's happiest country By Spengler
Envy surrounds no country on Earth like the state of Israel, and with good reason: by objective measures, Israel is the happiest nation on Earth at the 60th anniversary of its founding. It is one of the wealthiest, freest and best-educated; and it enjoys a higher life expectancy than Germany or the Netherlands. But most remarkable is that Israelis appear to love life and hate death more than any other nation. If history is made not by rational design but by the demands of the human heart, as I argued last week , the light heart of the Israelis in face of continuous danger is a singularity worthy of a closer look.
Can it be a coincidence that this most ancient of nations [1], and the only nation persuaded that it was summoned into history for God's service, consists of individuals who appear to love life more than any other people? As a simple index of life-preference, I plot the fertility rate versus the suicide rate of 35 industrial countries, that is, the proportion of people who choose to create new life against the proportion who choose to destroy their own. Israel stands alone, positioned in the upper-left-hand-quadrant, or life-loving, portion of the chart [2]. Those who believe in Israel's divine election might see a special grace reflected in its love of life.
In a world given over to morbidity, the state of Israel still teaches the world love of life, not in the trivial sense of joie de vivre, but rather as a solemn celebration of life. In another location, I argued, "It's easy for the Jews to talk about delighting in life. They are quite sure that they are eternal, while other peoples tremble at the prospect impending extinction. It is not their individual lives that the Jews find so pleasant, but rather the notion of a covenantal life that proceeds uninterrupted through the generations." Still, it is remarkable to observe by what wide a margin the Israelis win the global happiness sweepstakes.
Nations go extinct, I have argued in the past, because the individuals who comprise these nations choose collectively to die out. Once freedom replaces the fixed habits of traditional society, people who do not like their own lives do not trouble to have children. Not the sword of conquerors, but the indigestible sourdough of everyday life threatens the life of the nations, now dying out at a rate without precedent in recorded history.
Israel is surrounded by neighbors willing to kill themselves in order to destroy it. "As much as you love life, we love death," Muslim clerics teach; the same formula is found in a Palestinian textbook for second graders. Apart from the fact that the Arabs are among the least free, least educated, and (apart from the oil states) poorest peoples in the world, they also are the unhappiest, even in their wealthiest kingdoms.
The contrast of Israeli happiness and Arab despondency is what makes peace an elusive goal in the region. It cannot be attributed to material conditions of life. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia ranks 171st on an international quality of life index, below Rwanda. Israel is tied with Singapore on this index, although it should be observed that Israel ranks a runaway first on my life-preference index, whereas Singapore comes in dead last.
Even less can we blame unhappiness on experience, for no nation has suffered more than the Jews in living memory, nor has a better excuse to be miserable. Arabs did not invent suicide attacks, but they have produced a population pool willing to die in order to inflict damage greater than any in history. One cannot help but conclude that Muslim clerics do not exaggerate when they express contempt for life.
Israel's love of life, moreover, is more than an ethnic characteristic. Those who know Jewish life through the eccentric lens of Jewish-American novelists such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, or the films of Woody Allen, imagine the Jews to be an angst-ridden race of neurotics. Secular Jews in America are no more fertile than their Gentile peers, and by all indications quite as miserable.
For one thing, Israelis are far more religious than American Jews. Two-thirds of Israelis believe in God, although only a quarter observe their religion strictly. Even Israelis averse to religion evince a different kind of secularism than we find in the secular West. They speak the language of the Bible and undergo 12 years of Bible studies in state elementary and secondary schools.
Faith in God's enduring love for a people that believes it was summoned for his purposes out of a slave rabble must be part of the explanation. The most religious Israelis make the most babies. Ultra-Orthodox families produce nine children on average. That should be no surprise, for people of faith are more fertile than secular people, as I showed in a statistical comparison across countries.
Traditional and modern societies have radically different population profiles, for traditional women have little choice but to spend their lives pregnant in traditional society. In the modern world, where fertility reflects choice rather than compulsion, the choice to raise children expresses love of life. The high birthrate in Arab countries still bound by tradition does not stand comparison to Israeli fertility, by far the highest in the modern world.
The faith of Israelis is unique. Jews sailed to Palestine as an act of faith, to build a state against enormous odds and in the face of hostile encirclement, joking, "You don't have to be crazy to be a Zionist, but it helps." In 1903 Theodor Herzl, the Zionist movement's secular founder, secured British support for a Jewish state in Uganda, but his movement shouted him down, for nothing short of the return to Zion of Biblical prophecy would requite it. In place of a modern language the Jewish settlers revived Hebrew, a liturgical language only since the 4th century BC, in a feat of linguistic volition without precedent. It may be that faith burns brighter in Israel because Israel was founded by a leap of faith.
Two old Jewish jokes illustrate the Israeli frame of mind.
Two elderly Jewish ladies are sitting on a park bench in St Petersburg, Florida. "Mrs Levy," asks the first, "what do you hear from your son Isaac in Detroit?" "It's just awful," Mrs Levy replies. "His wife died a year ago and left him with two little girls. Now he's lost his job as an accountant with an auto-parts company, and his health insurance will lapse in a few weeks. With the real estate market the way it is, he can't even sell his house. And the baby has come down with leukemia and needs expensive treatment. He's beside himself, and doesn't know what to do. But does he write a beautiful Hebrew letter - it's a pleasure to read."
There are layers to this joke, but the relevant one here is that bad news is softened if written in the language of the Bible, which to Jews always conveys hope.
The second joke involves the American businessman who emigrated to Israel shortly after its founding. On his arrival, he orders a telephone, and waits for weeks without a response. At length he applies in person to the telephone company, and is shown into the office of an official who explains that there is a two-year waiting list, and no way to jump the queue. "Do you mean there is no hope?," the American asks. "It is forbidden for a Jew to say there is no hope!," thunders the official. "No chance, maybe." Hope transcends probability.
If faith makes the Israelis happy, then why are the Arabs, whose observance of Islam seems so much stricter, so miserable? Islam offers its adherents not love - for Allah does not reveal Himself in love after the fashion of YHWH - but rather success. "The Islamic world cannot endure without confidence in victory, that to 'come to prayer' is the same thing as to 'come to success'. Humiliation - the perception that the ummah cannot reward those who submit to it - is beyond its capacity to endure," I argued in another location. Islam, or "submission", does not understand faith - trust in a loving God even when His actions appear incomprehensible - in the manner of Jews and Christians. Because the whim of Allah controls every event from the orbit of each electron to the outcome of battles, Muslims know only success or failure at each moment in time.
The military, economic and cultural failures of Islamic societies are intolerable in Muslim eyes; Jewish success is an abomination, for in the view of Muslims it is the due of the faithful, to be coveted and seized from the usurpers at the first opportunity. It is not to much of a stretch to assert that Israel's love of live, its happiness in faith, is precisely the characteristic that makes a regional peace impossible to achieve. The usurpation of the happiness that Muslims believe is due to them is sufficient cause to kill one's self in order to take happiness away from the Jewish enemy. If Israel's opponents fail to ruin Israel's happiness, there is at least a spark of hope that they may decide to choose happiness for themselves.
Why are none of the Christian nations as happy as Israel? Few of the European nations can be termed "Christian" at all. Poland, the last European country with a high rate of attendance at Mass (at about 45%), nonetheless shows a fertility rate of only 1.27, one of Europe's lowest, and a suicide rate of 16 per 100,000. Europe's faith always wavered between adherence to Christianity as a universal religion and ethnic idolatry under a Christian veneer. European nationalism nudged Christianity to the margin during the 19th century, and the disastrous world wars of the past century left Europeans with confidence neither in Christianity nor in their own nationhood.
Only in pockets of the American population does one find birth rates comparable to Israel's, for example among evangelical Christians. There is no direct way to compare the happiness of American Christians and Israelis, but the tumultuous and Protean character of American religion is not as congenial to personal satisfaction. My suspicion is that Israel's happiness is entirely unique.
It is fashionable these days to speculate about the end of Israel, and Israel's strategic position presents scant cause for optimism, as I contended recently. Israel's future depends on the Israelis. During 2,000 years of exile, Jews remained Jews despite forceful and often violent efforts to make them into Christians or Muslims. One has to suppose that they did not abandon Judaism because they liked being Jewish. With utmost sincerity, the Jews prayed thrice daily, "It is our duty to praise the Master of all, to acclaim the greatness of the One who forms all creation, for God did not make us like the nations of other lands, and did not make us the same as other families of the Earth. God did not place us in the same situations as others, and our destiny is not the same as anyone else's."
If the Israelis are the happiest country on Earth, as the numbers indicate, it seems possible that they will do what is required to keep their country, despite the odds against them. I do not know whether they will succeed. If Israel fails, however, the rest of the world will lose a unique gauge of the human capacity for happiness as well as faith. I cannot conceive of a sadder event.
Notes
[1] There are many ancient nations, eg, the Basques, but no other that speaks the same language as it did more than 3,000 years ago, occupies more or less the same territory, and, most important, maintains a continuous literary record of its history, which is to say an interrupted national consciousness.
Declaring Independence - On Israel's 60th Birthday
On this, the holy occasion of the 60th birthday of the Modern State of Israel, I want to share with you how truly happpy I am, with all my heart, to be living in the State of Israel today. So many good Jews have fallen prey to the cynicism and dysphoria sown by lost souls and destroyers, causing them to reject and slander the State of the Jews, decrying its birth and publicly deploring it.
I reject this attitude and practice, now and forever. I declare that the Ehud Olmerts, Dorit Beinisches, and Yisroel Dovid Weisses of this world will NOT steal this state from me, nor will they rape me of my love, joy, and hope for the future of this incredible, flourishing project. I'll be damned if I will budge one inch in ceding my country or my spirit to them, or to those who join them in their practice of shaming, violating, and quashing the Jewish people on their soil.
I declare Independence, on behalf of all the good, sweet, hard-working Jews of Israel, from the mind-control of repression, injustice, and lies perpetrated by a small group of oligarchs, and vow that I will make it my life's mission to establish the Jewish people, proudly, eternally, as a "free nation in our Land". Free to embrace our identity, to love one another, to work together, to seek justice, to serve G-d without shame or inhibition. This is MY country, and if I have to fight my own small War of Independence everyday for the rest of my life, that is what I will do.
At this time, 60 years ago, after a global attempt to annhilate them utterly, the Jewish people struggled with the last breath left in their body to wrest life from the clutches of a cruel world. Some of those whose lives were built on hardship and dreams for the future survived the camps to die on the battlefield. They did not give in to the mighty evil which had battled them for so long, in so many permutations, but rather declared their independence from fear and faced their destiny boldly and simply, fighting for the establishment of a small, precious Jewish State.
Because of these, and so many who have lived and died for the nation of Israel in the last 60 years, as well as the last 600 and before, we are here on our holy soil today. Let us not give any more power to the forces of gloom and doubt, but rather take up the torch of our fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers who carried Hashem's promise to the Jewish people deep in their hearts. Damn those who place obstacles in our path, cloud our minds, and darken our hearts. Declare your Independence today, and let's pray that together, we will live to celebrate the destruction of our enemies and the defeat of evil forces within and without. Let's pray that together, we will celebrate the 100th birthday of the Modern State of Israel on the Holy Land of Israel, the glory of the world, the rightful inheritance of our people.
While I was working on my computer today, a man from the local city council came to install a beeper in my house. Though Beit El-proper has a loud speaker which makes important and emergency announcements for people in town, it is neither particularly easy to understand (it sounds a lot like Charlie Brown's teacher), nor is it powerful enough to reach the mountaintop neighborhood in which I live. This beeper will provide us with the ability to stay well informed when we need it most.
I struck up a conversation with the installer, asking this friendly man with a flowing white beard where he was from originally. I suspected he was from South America, recognizing his accent from numerous pleasant encounters with Jewish doctors from South America in my Israeli medical plan. I was right - he was born in Argentina. However, he said, his family was originally from Lebanon - his grandfather went down to South America to be the Chief Rabbi in the early 1900s. The Succat David yeshiva in Jerusalem was subsequently established in honor of this man's grandfather, who was a noted kabbalist in his time.
"You have some great roots!" I told my guest. "Baruch Hashem" he said, modestly. He then proceeded to explain the beeper device to me, how to check it, and how to know if the message was for an emergency or just for some important information.
How great is the nation of Israel! Even the seemingly ordinary Jew you encounter at your doorstep may have a close and personal connection to the secrets of the universe, to excellence, to nobility, to divinity. Surely this should remind us to judge the Jewish people and their fledgling country for the good - just scratch the surface, and you discover priceless gems wherever you look. Indeed, we should only feel optimistic about the future of these great people in the land of their fathers.
So I just returned Home last night. I didn’t fly El Al (that’s for another blog post) but I flew Israir – another airline of Israel. And so toward the end of the flight, last night, the pilot came on and announced that Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) was just starting and he would now shut off the entertainment system (the movies, video games, and much of the audio selection.) There was a large group of Christians on the flight (that’s for that other blog post too.) It struck me that all those Christians were eating Kosher meals (special glatt kosher meals, by the way, again another post someday) and observing Yom HaShoah, because guess what? They were flying on our airline. Not to compare anything to Yom HaShoah, but when a Jew has to wait extra long for a bus in New York City on December 25th is it because that Jew is in their country?
And when the siren sounded at 10 O’clock this morning I found myself standing in exactly the same spot I stood one year ago, a busy Jerusalem street. Last year I took pictures (Arutz-7 wanted some for a photo essay, and it is important to share with those that are not here,) but I felt just awful snapping photos then. But this year, would be different.
I also wondered what those Christians tourists felt when they saw everything stand still as motorists stood outside their cars. And what about those Birthrighters I saw in the airport coming to Israel for the first time. (That’s also for that other post.) On the very first day they arrive the siren is the very first thing they experience? What would it remind them?
It no doubt reminded all of them this morning as it reminded me, of way too many terrible, sad and haunting thoughts. But it also reminded me of one powerfully inspiring thought. Indeed, this is our country, our Home!
