Posts
TALMUDIC WARNING RE ISRAEL SUBJUGATING PALESTINIANS: RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
Hi!!!
As y'all know I spend my days studying , teaching, writing, and doing things that annoy my wife. I excel in the later, and I am mediocre in the former. Much of my studying is re-studying.
Y'all know that when synagogues yearly finish reading aloud the last verse of Deuteronomy, without any delay, we immediately begin again with Genesis. The same is true with the Talmud's 7.5 yearly cycle of studying.
As Rav Ben Bag Bag would say: (referring to the Torah) ''Turn it and turn it again, for all is in it; see through it; grow old and worn in it; do not budge from it, for there is nothing that works better than it. – Mishnah Pirkei Avot 5:22 (Verses of the Fathers) . Every time I re-read, I discover something new. It was always there, and had been read before, but I am in a new place, each day, and hence verses that didn't grab me in the kishkas, gut, some years back, scream out to me today.
With Israel's new populist, Trumpist, new law, relegating non-Jewish citizens to a second rate status, and their continuing wars with residents of Gaza, the West Bank, and now back into the Golan, the below Talmudic verse jumped out at me today.
''Rabbah bar Bar Chanah said: Once I was going on a boat and saw a fish upon whose back grass was growing. We thought it was an island. We alighted, baked, and cooked upon it. When the back of the fish became hot from our fire, it turned over. Had the ship not been so near (to enable us to jump into it), we would have drowned. (Talmud Bavli Tractate Bava Basra Daf 73b)''
When I first read it some years ago, it was just a silly fish and silly rabbi story.
But in re-reading it today I came across a commentary by Rabbeinu Ya'akov ben Asher (aka The Tur) (Germany 1269-1340): ''Rabbah bar Bar Channah saw with guidance from G!d, that in the End-of-Days, the Jewish people would regain the Land of Israel, and rule over the people, who were living there for hundreds of years while the Jews were in exile. The Jewish people will assume that this people has no hope of ever overcoming Israel, and will therefore subjugate them. When this people have suffered much, and their "backs have burnt'' they will "turn over" and successfully resist Israel. The Jewish people will drown from the many problems that will arise and only the Coming of the Messiah will save them.''
With BiBi and his ilk being given a green light from their new 'friend' Trump, along with American Christian right wing leaders, like Huckabee, to insult and harm Palestinians and their allies, the Palestinians will reach a point where their 'backs are burnt' too much and they will roll over on Israel.
Trumpism, and Bannonism is spreading in Israel but also in Europe and Asia. I spent 3 months in Europe in Autumn of 2017, and 2 months there in Spring of 2018, researching. Xenophobia is rampant, and with it anti semitism. For those Jews who think Trump is good for Israel and good for Jews for opening a US Embassy in Jerusalem and ''allowing'' BiBi to steal more and more of Arab land for Israel's Lebensraum, and treating non-Jews as Untermenschen, the way Trump treats Latinos and Muslims, they are sadly mistaken. Our rabbis warned us about this in the Talmud.
As Rabbis and Jewish leaders today, we MUST stand up against Trumpism, populism, fascism, where ever we find it, even in the halls of the US Congress, the White House and the Knesset, ''by any means necessary.''
SHALOM and BLESSINGS:
