Israel

"Lord, save us from those who preach death in Your name"

Bradley Burston (lately my favorite author commenting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) writes,

Forty years ago this week, just when it seemed that it would take nothing short of a miracle for Israel to survive the coming war, the betting here was that the miracle bank had run dry. Amid the pre-emptive grave-digging and the fraught goodbyes, this was a constricted, panic-choked, border-phobic gas chamber of a country – literally, the ghetto to end all ghettos.
When the miracle came, few stopped to recall the real motto of this nation: Be careful what you pray for.
From this distance, one could conclude that while the Jewish state survived the war, Judaism as we knew it – Orthodox Judaism in particular – did not. Rabbinic Orthodoxy, the Jewish people’s sworn bulwark against change, would never be the same.
1967 was the war that would persuade rabbis that they could be generals – even, or especially, if they lived in Brooklyn. The taste of power being what it is, many rabbis would soon conclude that government – and occupation – were much too important to be left to elected officials.
If absolute occupation corrupts absolutely, no group would be more corrupted by Israel’s presence in the territories than rightist rabbis.

Read on…

6 thoughts on “"Lord, save us from those who preach death in Your name"

  1. This was new to me – that the Rav had actually suggested to Narkiss blowing up the Dome of the Rock. That he had wanted to do so, and after the war spoken about the failure of the leadership in following up on the messianic dream, I knew – but that moment? Wow.

  2. Blowing up the Dome – why not, that was probably the moment to do it, the Arabs were demoralized, they had just lost, their bitterness would not have been any greater anyway, and we would have rid ourselves of that perpetual little sore pus of an outgrowth on our most sacred site.

  3. blowing up mosques? preaching genocide?
    that’s no moshiach
    that’s straight up AVODAH ZARAH!
    But I’m not worried. I know that Hashem will help us save ourselves from ourselves.

  4. Whoa Shmuel, the only ones preaching genocide are the Muslims, not Jews. Don’t create positions for me that don’t exist.

  5. I’d just like to second Mobius – Bradley Burston writes some of the most nuanced criticism of the Israeli government I’ve read, and he does an amazing job of acknowledging all of the complexities of Israeli politics.

  6. “I said, ‘Rabbi, if you don’t stop, I’ll take you to jail.'”
    I feel like banging my head on a wall. But there is a prohibition against harming your own body. Now I understand the real problem with the Israeli rabbinate. It takes the leaders that are fit to run the country and puts them in a position without real power. What a waste.
    For the idiots who think blowing those mosques up would have caused problems: Those buildings were MEANINGLESS to the vast majority of the muslim world. Most muslims didn’t even know they existed at the time. I didn’t even know about them until history class in middle-school when we learned arab history.
    Their mere existence in the middle of the Israeli-palestinian conflict is the reason why they became a center of attention. The rabbi was right. This was a great oppertunity. Now those mosques have become a rallying point for the muslim world. The illusion has been created that jerusalem holds spiritual meaning to the muslim world.
    Dear G-d, protect the jews from their own leaders.

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