Towards A Jewish Mindset

Towards a Jewish Mindset

There are no shortcuts.

Yoel Meltzer
11 Sivan 5769/June 3, 2009

For more than 15 years Israel has been plagued by the "Oslo mindset". This way of thinking, which did not appear out of a vacuum but slowly evolved over the course of years, is still alive and kicking despite all that has transpired. Its current outward manifestation, the much talked about "two-state solution", is gaining momentum every day despite the obvious danger that undertaking such a measure would entail to the state of Israel.

Although the "Oslo mindset" has had many opponents, most have invested their energy in opposing the various outward manifestations of the mindset, rather than focusing on the faulty mindset itself. The result of this has been that Oslo opponents simply gained a reputation of always "opposing", like a group of pessimistic naysayers, without ever proffering any alternative of their own. Moreover, by constantly focusing on the outward manifestation, they repeatedly engaged the Oslo proponents in a battle they were sure to lose, since who can appear victorious when arguing against measures allegedly designed to bring "peace" or "improved security"?

Unfortunately, the Oslo opponents continue to make the same mistake. The real battle should have been, and still needs to be, against the mindset. Moreover, rather than simply wasting negative energy attacking a certain way of thinking, positive energy should be invested in promulgating a different way of thinking. This point is crucial, since changes in the way one thinks, be it as an individual or a nation, are frequently the catalyst for changes in the physical realm. Obviously, it would have been preferable if such an approach had begun 15 years ago, but nonetheless it's never too late to start. Therefore, I would like to briefly present some key points of what can hopefully become the cornerstone of a proper and healthy "Jewish mindset".

Although the following is certainly not an all-encompassing list and many of the points are not new, it is my firm belief that these ideas need to first be outlined in a clear and concise manner in order for them to be easily disseminated, discussed and internalized by as many Jews as possible.

The 18-point list, the basics for a healthy "Jewish mindset", is as follows:

1. There is a purpose to the unfolding events of history and there is a purpose to life. It's not all random.

2. Real, authentic Judaism is much more than what it has been reduced to, to a black and white system of "do's and don'ts". The halachic side, although very important, is only part of the picture.

3. The Jewish people have been chosen for a special role in the world.

4. This role can only be fulfilled by the collective Jewish nation living in the Land of Israel.

5. Establishing complete sovereignty in the Land of Israel and creating a model society, from top to bottom, according to the ideals and morality of Judaism, is essential for fulfilling this role. However, the nationalistic aspect of Judaism is not an end-goal in and of itself, but rather a platform that will enable us fulfill our lofty "international role" of being a "light unto nations".

6. Israel must interact with the world in order to have an influence, but at the same time must remain separate and independent, in order not to be further confused and fragmented by the assimilation of non-Jewish ideas and values.

7. Israel can and must sever the dependency on US economic aid.

8. The real goal of the Jewish state must be alive in our hearts and minds in order to affect our daily lives.

9. Without internalizing these ideas and changing our mindset, and eventually our lives, the endless killing in this region, as well as in the world, will continue.

10. The future of the world is dependent on the Jewish people getting their act together.

11. Properly understood, the real goal of the Jewish state is the most idealistic undertaking in the history of mankind.

12. Continuing along on the same path, functioning within our individual and collective "comfort zones", will not lead us out of the mess. We must, as individuals and as a nation, constantly strive to expand and stretch our comfort zones.

13. Every Jew should feel proud, yet humbled, in the role he has been given, and totally motivated and inspired to do his part.

14. Complaining will not change a thing and it is a waste of precious energy.

15. A positive, vision-oriented way of thinking is essential.

16. The Arab and Iranian threat are serious problems facing the Jewish state and, like any problem, they must certainly be dealt with. However, they are not the source of our problems, but the outward manifestation of our own internal problems. Thus, dealing with them alone will not bring us the desired harmony and salvation. The real problem is internally, within the Jewish people themselves, and stems from a lack of clarity as to our true purpose in the world. This problem, which is largely the result of a non-Jewish mindset prevalent amongst the Jewish people, is the real obstacle that stands in the way of ultimate salvation.

17. There are no shortcuts.

18. The world is waiting.


Yoel Meltzer has an MA in Middle Eastern Studies and lives in Israel.

Cross-posted on Esser Agaroth.

More Codependent YeSh"A Coucil PR Crap

10 Iyyar 5769

Tremping (hitchhiking) into Jerusalem Erev Shabbath, I had an opportunity to take a picture of the huge billboard at the entrance to Shiloh, Shevuth Rahel, and their surrounding hilltop communities. The sign next to the blond haired, blue-eyed boy, dressed up in a Kohen Gadol (High Priest) costume, reads "Yehudah and Shomron (Judea and Samaria), the story of every Jew."

The billboard is part of the YeSh"A (Judea, Samaria, and Azza) Council's latest attempt at a public relations campaign to win over the hearts of "regular" Israelis, living on the coast, in the Gallil, and in the Negev.

The campaign is not only codependent and a waste of taxes, but also just plain crap.

(Click To Enlarge)

The photo from the campaign's official website shows children who are all light-skinned and pug-nosed. There is not even a parallel English site. If there were, then this display would at least make a little sense, playing on the sympathies of their Christian "friends" and wealthy American Ashkinazim. Nope. They didn't even think of that, did they? (Is an English version hidden somewhere under a completely unrelated URL?) I am very surprised about this, too, as this photo more reminiscent of Christian, school Bible plays and Christmas videos, than of anything Jewish.

Although one point of the campaign is to remind Jews that Yehudah and Shomron comprise the heart of the Jewish Homeland (true), thus "the story of every Jew,"

The photo also does not present any boys with long payoth (side locks) or large kippoth (male head coverings). Bigdei Tzitzith (fringed garments) are conveniently hidden underneath the children's costumes, even though during the periods represented, such garments were worn where they can be seen, much like today's hilltop youth.

This was an obvious attempt to avoid any associations with hilltop youth which they consider to be an "extremist" element. The irony is that more than a few of such "extremists" (my eyes are rolling) live in Shiloh's surrounding hilltop communities, as well as in Shiloh itself.

If the YeSh"A Council thinks that gaining the support of the Israeli public actually means something, then they are living in a fantasy world. Do they actually think that the numbed-out Israeli public will come out and protest further expulsions of Jews?

Look what happened when YeSh"A residents went door to door (Ofra to Holon, Shiloh to Qiriyath Ono, etc.) to convince Likud Party members to vote against the proposed party policy to pull out from Azza (A reasonable idea, no?). Sure, sixty percent of those who voted in the referendum, voted against the proposal. However, then Prime Minster Ariel Sharon ignored his party's wishes, and expelled 8,000 Jews from their homes anyway.

Re-vamped, re-re-vamped, or not, the YeSh"A Council collaborated with the government in the expulsion of Jews from Azza. When Neve Deqalim resident Efraim Tashnady approached the local authorities and "rabbis" in Azza about what the plan was to resist the expulsion, the response was to pray. He was dumbfounded (Hebrew).

I am dumbfounded that there are Jews willing to place their faith, yet again, in the YeSh"A Council. Sure, good Jews like Shomron Council Head Gershon Mesiqa, are members now. But when people like Danny Dayan as YeSh"A Council's head, and Sha'ul Goldstein and Pinhas Vallerstein with their hands on its cookie jar, people are nuts for even giving it the time of day.

The YeSh"A Council receives its budget directly from the Office of the Prime Minister. In most "normal" countries, this would be called a conflict of interest.

So, just what exactly does the YeSh"A Council have in mind this time?

Cross-posted on Esser Agaroth.

CHUTZPAH AND ARROGANCE BEYOND BELIEF!!!!

Blogmaster's Rant: And what is the Vatican please tell me? Is the Vatican not considered a separate "Country", issuing their own Passports, having emissaries and diplomatic missions throughout the world? Is the Vatican not considered an independent State per se? Please tell me how many Jews, Protestants, Baptists, Lutherans, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Episcopalians, Atheists, or Moslems live within the walls of the Vatican? How many "Citizens" of the Vatican are not Catholic? What Hypocrisy! Oh, and while we are having this little conversation, when will the exclusively Catholic Vatican City return the treasures that you have stolen from the Second Temple and hold in your vaults? Least we forget the Nazis that you sheltered and funneled to safety!

Catholic leader rejects 'Jewish state'

Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST

Dec. 19, 2007

Israel's identity as a Jewish state discriminates against non-Jews, the Holy Land's top Roman Catholic clergyman said in a pre-Christmas address on Wednesday.
"If there's a state of one religion, other religions are naturally discriminated against," Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah told reporters at the annual press conference he holds in Jerusalem before the Christian holiday.

In his address, which he read in Arabic and English, Sabbah said Israel should abandon its Jewish character in favor of a "political, normal state for Christians, Muslims and Jews." "This land cannot be exclusive for anyone," he said.

With his statements Wednesday, Sabbah, a longtime advocate of the Palestinian cause, waded into a debate that has marred the fledgling peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel has defined itself as the homeland of the Jewish people since it was established in 1948. The Palestinians, however, refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, saying that would mean Palestinian refugees who lost their homes after Israel's creation would not have the right to return.

Israel opposes any return of refugees, for fear they would eventually outnumber the Jewish majority. Israeli leaders recently demanded that Palestinians recognize Israel's Jewish character as part of peace talks that got under way last week, but the Palestinians have rejected the call.

Aryeh Mekel, a spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry, had no immediate comment.
Sabbah, who has been the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem since 1987, is the first Palestinian to hold the post and is frequently critical of Israel.

He also lashed out at Israel for visa restrictions he said were unfair to Christian clergy. "A state in this land must...be open to welcoming to all believers of other religions," he said.
According to the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations, there are an estimated 170,000 Christians in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Jewish Enemy Within....

The Jewish enemy within

Posted By Melanie Phillips

Emanuele Ottolenghi has written an important and profound article in the Jewish Chronicle. He has spotted a particularly striking and grotesque aspect of the odious hatred of Israel displayed by an increasing number of Jewish intellectuals on the left. Redefining moral virtue to exclude every characteristic other than being a left-wing personality, they seek to redefine Jewish moral virtue to exclude Jewish nationalism. Claiming to be returning to authentic Jewish values, they therefore purport to speak in the interests of Jews and Judaism by saving Jews from themselves in their reprehensibly un-Jewish embrace of Zionism and Israel.
Thus Jewish nationalism is un-Jewish, apparently, because it promotes war rather than peace (ignoring, of course, the inconvenient truth that Israel is a militarised society only because it is the historic victim of an unremitting war waged against it); and Jews are said to have a duty to be hostile to Jewish nationalism because Jews were the victims of nationalism. This, of course, is so absurd as to be incredible to anyone outside the bizarre thought system of the extreme left; the equation of fascism with national self-determination not only suggests a form of cultural nihilism, since it would make it morally beyond the pale for any people to have its own nation, but is contradicted by the left’s own championing of Palestinian and other supposedly nationalist movements claiming the very same right to self-determination.
More fundamentally, however, these Jewish Israel-haters – most of whom have only a tangential connection with Judaism – reveal by these arguments a profound ignorance of Judaism and Jewish history and ethics (an ignorance underlined by the way they use the salvation language of Christianity to denounce Jewish self-determination). They appear to think that Zionism, or Jewish nationalism, is a kind of colonial neologism that was appended to Judaism in the nineteenth century. But the Jews’ identification of themselves as a nation, and a nation moreover that had its national home in Israel for hundreds of years until the Romans occupied it and threw them out, is absolutely integral to Judaism as a religion. Jewish peoplehood was introduced with Abraham when God chose his descendants to become a mighty nation to carry the divine message; Jewish nationhood was born in the exodus from Egypt; the mourning for the loss of Zion and the longing to return are woven into the Jewish religious calendar and Jewish religious liturgy.
Moreover, the idea that the Jews should not fight to defend their homeland but turn the other cheek is not a Jewish religious concept at all. On the contrary, the Bible makes it clear that the Jews had a duty not only to fight for their homeland, but to destroy their enemies by causing the kind of devastation which the modern state of Israel would never dream of enacting — unlike its Arab enemies, who would and regularly do. The idea that Jews have a duty not to fight for their collective life but instead to surrender and die is profoundly un-Jewish – indeed, it is suicidal by any standard, and no people would be expected to adhere to such a monstrous precept. But for the Jewish Israel-haters, the Jews alone apparently must choose their own destruction as the pre-condition for their moral redemption. As Ottolenghi observes:
Calls abound for Jews to repent, condemn Israel, hear the gospel of anti-Zionism and convert to a new, exciting form of Judaism, based more on Karl Marx and Rosa Luxembourg than Theodor Herzl and David Ben Gurion. So is the rush to heed them. With antisemitism rising across Europe alongside violence in the Middle East, Jews have been under pressure for several years now. Instead of getting sympathy for the harassment they are subjected to, Jews have earned only scorn for their refusal to denounce Israel first.
That is the sad truth — one that anti-Zionist Jewish intellectuals, with their demonising rhetoric against Israel and their patronising attitude towards fellow Jews, have irresponsibly abetted. To shield themselves from shame and abuse, Jews are asked to discard Israel from their own collective identity. This step, and an active denunciation of Israel as the antithesis of progressive and Jewish values (themselves, in this vision, synonymous with one another), will gain them full acceptance. Scores of Jews, especially among the progressive intellectuals, indeed comply in public acts of mea culpa, thus lending an alibi to antisemites and gentrifying anti-Jewish prejudice in the process.
For these Jewish Israel-haters, Jewish victimhood is the authentic Jewish moral experience. To put it another way, to them the most elevated kind of Jew is a dead Jew. And that is surely the real crime that Israel commits in their eyes – that it was restored specifically to ensure that never again would Jews be powerless victims but instead would fight for the survival of the Jewish people. And that is unforgiveable – because what these Jews of the left really hate is not just Israel but Judaism itself.
Article printed from Melanie Phillips’s Diary: http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary
URL to article: http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1642

CALL TO ACTION

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
B'nai Elim International Headquarters .......



CALL TO ACTION! .......

"Call to Arms "



Letter from Matt Finberg (former Chairman of Bnai Elim).

by Matt Finberg


Shiloh, Eretz Yisrael

B'nai Elim Photo: Matt Finberg


Organized opposition is coming together to attempt to thwart the pathetic proposal to surrender most of Israel to Muslim terror organizations. That's the cold plain truth.
Unfortunately for us, Bush needs this "Middle East Peace" to cover his butt for his failure to otherwise stabilize the region and to cement his relationship with his business partners in the oil producing Islamic nations such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Nigeria. Iraq may well be unpredictable as an oil source for the next decade, and even the wiliest analysts in the State Department cannot help the Bush family with Iran.
Why is the U.S. Secretary of State meeting (negotiating) with Syria when its leadership over the past 2 generations has consistently promised to deliver a death blow to Israel if given the opportunity?
I think that all who follow the region understand that Syria is the conduit for Iran to fund and arm the Muslim irregular forces in and around Israel.
The proposed Middle East peace conference is a red herring; the real issue is that Islam is not a religion of peace and Islmaofacism threatens Israel's very existence and has its eyes on the U.S. too. Europe is a lost cause.
The proposed Olmert surrender must be thwarted by all lawful means necessary. Israelis will not go down without a fight which will make the heroic stand of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters look like a game of checkers if we are attacked. Olmert has an approval rating of somewhere between 5% and 7%, but the voters are so indifferent to elections and government because of political battle fatigue that they lack the strength to cut him off at the pass before he embarks on his fool's errand/devil's mission. 95% of us are either politically comatose or caught up in the corruption of the current system.
Torah teaches us that where there is no leader, be the man (leader) and don't look back. Although the protest at the embassy didn't stop the expulsion from Gush Katif, thoughtful and engaged Israelis appreciated the effort.
What would be most effective would be for every concerned American Jew to come to Israel and demonstrate with us in the streets to stop this. Even if only 10% heeded this call, 600,000 people could have a huge impact.
As they cannot or will not for a variety of reasons, they should do the closest thing to taking to the Israeli streets by demonstrating outside the Israeli embassy in Washington. Most won't due that because they have been conditioned to worry about what the gentiles will think if we do our dirty laundry in public. Accordingly, something along those lines which also targets the State Department and the White House may have an impact.
We no longer have the luxury of doing our dirty laundry in private; to do so is as pathetic as the situation of a battered spouse who hides her bruises and lies to save herself and her family from embarrassment. Too often, she ends up dead.
The world must know the truth before it's too late.



More to come from Shiloh, Eretz Yisrael. Kol tuv,



Matthew S. Finberg

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‘LET US SEARCH OUR WAYS”

‘LET US SEARCH OUR WAYS”

“Everyone must ask: Why were the Jews so blind as not to see the evil coming? Why were they so complacent when the sword was being brandished before their faces? But the fact is that for many years our "prophets" so lulled us that we no longer saw reality and failed to anticipate the evil...

Every change made by the Jew-haters has thus been repeated without change by some of our own brethren. Is it any surprise, therefore, that these uncircumcised of heart did not attempt to prevent the disaster and were not aroused to come to the rescue of their people in its time of trouble? On the contrary, we can be sure that their ilk have been, and always we can be sure that their ilk have been, and always will be, a stumbling block and plague to the whole House of Israel...

It is useless to try to convince those Jews who hate Zion and Jerusalem, and whose sole wish is to make us forget the memory of our ancestors, our beliefs, and our sense of kinship. Having destroyed our traditions and mocked and derided the whole heritage of Israel, why should they spare the Land from their venom?”

The above is from an 1881 essay by Peretz Smoleskin… and is as appropriate today as the day it was written some 126 years ago. Why can’t we learn our lessons? Are we destined to remain victims of inept leaders or is it time for a change! Without a strong, determined, and conservative leadership who recognize that Israel stands alone and only we may determine our destiny, Israel is doomed as a Jewish Homeland and Jewish State. For futher opinion, please read an article by Arlene Peck: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/7366

Bill Maniaci
B’nai Elim Blogmaster