Category: Life

The “Left” as a Secular Religion, from “The Force of Reason”, by Oriana Fallaci (2006)

“…in the inanimate democracies,
in the inert democratic regimes,
everything can be stated except the Truth.”

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“Whether it dresses in red or black or pink or green or white
or in all the colours of the rainbow,
the Left is confessional.  
Ecclesiastic.  
Because it derives from an ideology of religious character.  
That it, because it appeals to an ideology which claims to possess the Truth.  
On one side, the Good.  
On the other, the Evil.  
On one side, the Sun of the Future.  
On the other, the Darkness.  
On one side, the Comrades.  
The blessed ones, the Faithful.  
On the other the infidels or rather infidel-dogs.” 

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“Because the Truth inspires fear.”

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“Making good men bad is perhaps more demonic than making men who are already bad worse.” – Alain Besancon

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Oriana Fallaci
– Photo by Alberto Toscani –

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Oh yes.  It is a long-term ruler this Left that gave birth to Mussolini then Hitler,
and always maintained its bond with their disciples.  
This Left which has always given trouble with its excesses and ambiguities,
its brutalities and duplicities.  
All right: it has also given something good: I recognize it.  
In Italy, for instance, it has helped to win vital battles
like the referendum for the Republic then for the divorce.  
It has also understood in time that,
if the Communist Party continued to be a satellite of the Soviet Union,
the whole of Europe would have become a gulag.  
Thus it had to accept NATO.  
But its sins greatly outweigh its merits.  
And its sins are so many that,
if Hell existed,
at the death all Communists and Company would plunge headlong into Lucifer’s throat.  
One of those sins
(I already said this in The Rage and The Pride
but I shall never give up repeating what needs to be repeated)
concerns its intellectual terrorism.  
Its presumption and assumption of holding the Truth.  
Its dogmatism.  
A dogmatism identical to the one of religions and churches.  
“If-you-don’t-do-what-I-think, you-are-an-idiot-and-a-delinquent”
is the silent slogan that through
film-makers
and school-teachers
and university-professors
and intellectuals or pseudo-intellectuals
has poisoned two generations and now poisons the third.  
(Let’s be straight.  
The Red Brigades didn’t come out of Cavour’s brain:
they came out of the belly of the Left.  
The no-globals and the mendacious pacifists
who disseminate the most obtuse illiberalism and the most bullying fascism
were not spawned by the Holy Spirit:
they were spawned by the Left.  
And this truth is valid for America too.  
Doesn’t American anti-Americanism originate from its Left?)

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The Left speaks of progress.
For a century is has been singing hymns to Progress,
to Improvement,
to the Sun of the Future.
Thus, how can it possibly be fornicating with the most backward and reactionary ideology on Earth?!
The Left was born and grew in the West.
It is western.
It belongs to the most evolved civilization in history.
Thus, how can it possibly identify with a world
in which you have to be told that marrying your mother is wrong
and eating the sheep you keep as a mistress is a sin?!
How can it possibly sing the praises of a world
in which a girl can be widowed or repudiated at the age of nine or before?!
Then my sort of malady became an obsession, and I started asking:
“Do you understand, can you understand, why the Left is on the side of Islam?”
Well…  Some answered: “Because the Left is pro Third World, anti-American, anti-Zionist.
Islam is also so.
In Islam the Left sees what the Red Brigades call their natural “ally”.
Others answered:  “Because with the collapse of the Soviet Union
and the rise of capitalism in its former States and in China,
the Left has lost the old points of reference.
Ergo it clings to Islam as to a lifeboat.”
Or:  “It’s obvious.
In Europe the real proletariat no longer exists,
and a Left without a proletariat is like a shopkeeper with no goods.
So in the Islamic proletariat the Left has found the merchandise it needs for selling:
a future reservoir of votes.”
But, although all the answers contained an indisputable truth,
none of them took account of the reasoning my question was based upon.
I continued to torment myself,
and this lasted until I realized that my question was wrong.

____________________

“…the Left is confessional.  
Ecclesiastic.  
Because it derives from an ideology of religious character.  
That it, because it appeals to an ideology which claims to possess the Truth.  
On one side, the Good.  
On the other, the Evil.  
On one side, the Sun of the Future.  
On the other, the Darkness.  
On one side, the Comrades.  
The blessed ones, the Faithful.  
On the other the infidels or rather infidel-dogs. 
The Left is a Church.”  

It was wrong because it came from a residue of respect for the Left
I had known as a child.  
The Left of my grandparents, of my parents,
of my dead comrades, of my youth’s utopias.  
The Left that ceased to exist half a century ago.  
It was wrong also because it came from the political solitude in which I have always lived.  
A political solitude which at that time
included the one given to me by moral and intellectual desert
of the phony heroes in whom I had believed as a youngster.  
Justice and freedom.  
Liberal-socialism.  
And so on.  
But above all it was wrong
because the reasonings or rather the premises
on which I had based my interrogative were wrong.  
First premise, my illusion that the Left would be laic.  
I mean secular.  
Though the daughter of secularism,
(besides a secularism begotten by liberalism
and consequently not consonant with dogmatism),
the Left is not laic.  
Whether it dresses in red or black or pink or green or white
or in all the colours of the rainbow,
the Left is confessional.  
Ecclesiastic.  
Because it derives from an ideology of religious character.  
That it, because it appeals to an ideology which claims to possess the Truth.  
On one side, the Good.  
On the other, the Evil.  
On one side, the Sun of the Future.  
On the other, the Darkness.  
On one side, the Comrades.  
The blessed ones, the Faithful.  
On the other the infidels or rather infidel-dogs. 
The Left is a Church.  
And not a Church similar to the Church which came out of Christianity,
thus open to free-will.  
A Church similar to Islam.
Like Islam it considers itself sanctified by a God who is the custodian of the Truth.  
Like Islam it never acknowledges its faults and its errors,
it considers itself infallible and never apologizes.  
Like Islam it demands a world in its own image,
a society built on the verses of the Prophet.  
Like Islam it enslaves followers.

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“Everything can be spread except the thinking which reveals the Truth.
Because the Truth inspires fear.
Because in reading or hearing the Truth
most people surrender to fear and out of fear they draw a no-trespassing line around it.”

…in the inanimate democracies,
in the inert democratic regimes,
everything can be stated except the Truth.
Everything can be spread except the thinking which reveals the Truth.
Because the Truth inspires fear.
Because in reading or hearing the Truth
most people surrender to fear and out of fear they draw a no-trespassing line around it.
They built an invisible but insurmountable barrier
inside which one can only keep silent or join the chorus.
If the dissident crosses that line,
if he or she jumps over the Niagara Falls or that barrier,
punishment descends on him or on her at the speed of light.
And those who make it possible are precisely the people
who secretly think as he or she does
but out of convenience or cowardice don’t raise their voices
against the anathemas and the persecutions.
The friends, very often.
Or the so-called friends.
The partners.
Or the so-called partners.
The colleagues.
Or the so-called colleagues.
In fact, for a while, they beat behind the bush.
They trifle; they keep a foot in both camps.
But soon they become silent and,
terrified by the risks that such ambiguity exposes to, they sneak away.
The abandon the outlaw to his or her fate,
and with their silence they give their approval to his or her Civil Death.
(Something that I have experienced all over my life but especially in these last years.
“I can support you no longer” said to me, two or three Christmases ago,
a famous Italian journalist who had written two editorials in my defense.
“Why?” I sadly asked.
“Because people don’t talk to me anymore;
don’t invite me at dinner anymore,” he replied.

From…

The Force of Reason, by Oriana Fallaci, Rizzoli International Publications Inc., New York, N.Y., 2006

Alain Besancon Quote from…

A Century of Horrors: Communism, Nazism, and the Uniqueness of the Shoah, ISI Books, Wilmington, De., 2007

Video Time!: Former (…future…re-elected!) President Donald J. Trump Visits the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Ohel in Queens, NY

Former (…future…re-elected!) President Trump Visits the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Ohel in Queens, NY

 

Video Time!: Ask your doctor about INDEPENDENCE! (The Cure for Trump Derangement Syndrome)

Ask your doctor about INDEPENDENCE

The only known cure for intractable TDS!

Via TheNewNeo (formerly NeoNeocon):

“Right now we don’t even seem to have a working president.  Biden acts like he’s retired, and Harris is out campaigning. Someone or some group (I think the latter) is running the country, and already has been for quite some time.  Biden did have some input, but for the most part he deferred to this group.  Although Kamala is a lot younger than Biden, I think she’s okay with continuing the process if she’s elected, and with governing mostly as a figurehead who gives speeches now and then as the country continues on its present terrible trajectory.”

Of Friends, Frenemies, and Enemies: The Murderous Consequences of Western Diplomacy – Melanie Phillips, interviewed by Jonathan Tobin, October 25, 2023

Video time!…

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There are times that arise in the lives of peoples, nations, and civilizations when taken-for-granted assumptions about the past and future demand examination, if not revision, if not upending.

In light of Hamas’ mass assault and terrorism against Israeli civilians – Jews – on October 7, and, Jonathan Tobin’s October 25th Jewish News Syndicate interview of journalist Melanie Phillips, perhaps (perhaps) we are now living amidst one of those times.

And so, for your consideration…

I

Why has it been this situation for a hundred years?
Why is it the only situation which is like this?
The only war that never ends in the world.
Because it’s the war that the – has been created by the West,
and continued by the West.
It relies entirely on Western support.

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“As a dog returns to his vomit, so does a fool repeat his folly.”
“כְּכֶלֶב שָׁ֣ב עַל־קֵא֑וֹ כְּ֜סִ֗יל שׁוֹנֶ֥ה בְאִוַּלְתּֽוֹ”
(Yet, what if the folly is not folly, but mendacity?)

Mishlei (Proverbs) – Chapter 26

“Now, I have a rather heretical view about this, ingrained, pessimistic view that this conflict is with us forever.  You have to ask yourself, “Why is it with us forever?  Why is this – I think I’m right in saying – the only conflict in the world, which has gone on for a hundred years, and which has no prospect, in the minds of most people, of ever being resolved.  ‘Cause every alternative is terrible.  Either we take over all their territory in which case we have however many – – “palestinians” who don’t want to be ruled by us, and we don’t want to rule them, or we do a “two-state-solution”.  Well that’s clearly impossible, so we’re – we’re completely stuck.  We – we – we can’t move.  I think it’s the wrong way of looking at it.  Why has it been this situation for a hundred years?  Why is it the only situation which is like this?  The only war that never ends in the world.  Because it’s the war that the – has been created by the West, and continued by the West.  It relies entirely on Western support.  If the West wasn’t involved; it the West hadn’t been involved, this would have been sorted.  It would have been sorted by force.  By which I mean –  I don’t mean that everyone would have been killed.  What I mean is, that, Israel would have asserted its force, and – it would have reached a settlement – with –  I don’t know that the settlement would have looked like, but basically, the “palestinian” issue would have gone away – because, the “palestinian” issue is only an issue because it’s been created as such by the West.  The West has taken this false narrative – you know, “that the “palestinians” are the indigenous people; that they were driven out of their own land; that they are now being occupied illegally in their own land, and all the rest of it.  The West has taken this up, even governments which are supposedly sympathetic to Israel; have taken this up.  Britain.  America.  The EU.  They’ve all said, “The way you settle it is to divide the land.” …  Well no; if you have a war of extermination, you don’t say, to the people who are threatened with extermination, “You’ve got to settle it by basically giving the other side, whatever you – whatever they want, because, that’s the way in which the other side will continue to say; will say to itself, ‘If we continue, what we’re doing, we’ll get all of it!’”  And that’s what’s happened for a hundred years.”

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II

What’s causing it, is Western support,
for the people who are bent on an agenda of extermination. 
And, Israel has never said that. 
It won’t say it.  … 
But victory – depends upon identifying who is fighting whom. 
And, currently, and until now – the fight,
is characterized as between Israel and the “palestinians”. 
It’s not! 
The fight is between Israel and the West.
So victory requires the West to have its own complicity in this, rammed down its throat.

***

Well, you know, if you pretend that your “ally” is your ally, whereas,
in fact they are your frenemy, then, you know, you –
you get the consequences that have followed. 

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“Well – would anyone else like to speak up?
Or shall we end this charade?”
(Commander William T. Riker)

“As you wish, Commander Riker.
The charade is over.”
(Commander Tomalak)

(Star Trek: The Next Generation, from “Future Imperfect”, broadcast November 12, 1990)

“What’s causing it, is Western support, for the people who are bent on an agenda of extermination.  And, Israel has never said that.  It won’t say it.  …  But victory – depends upon identifying who is fighting whom.  And, currently, and until now – the fight, is characterized as between Israel and the “palestinians”.  It’s not!  The fight is between Israel and the West.  So victory requires the West to have its own complicity in this, rammed down its throat.  And, they have to be told –  You know, “You are creating this.  You have created this.”  But, Israel won’t do it, because it says, “Are you crazy?!  I mean, America, you know, is our ally, and we rely on it.  And Britain is our ally, and we rely on it, and the European Union, heaven help us, is our ally, and we rely on that too!”  So we’ll manage all the – all the stuff that they come up with; all the rubbish they come up with.  We’ll manage it.  We – we can’t – we can’t throw them overboard.  We certainly can’t say what you’re saying we should say.  Because that would just – you know, that’s kicking our allies.”

Well, you know, if you pretend that your “ally” is your ally, whereas, in fact they are your frenemy, then, you know, you – you get the consequences that have followed.  And that’s why, this thing goes on and on and on.”

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III

…if the West is to survive itself, as a –
civilization,
which I think is deeply imperiled by what it’s done to itself over many decades,
at the heart of which is what it’s done to the Jewish people… 
But if the West is to recover itself,
as a morally functioning and therefore civilized entity,
it has to tell itself, that the cause that it has supported,
“palestinianism”,
is the cause of all this. 

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“…an illusion, no matter how convincing,
remained nothing more than an illusion.
At least objectively.
But subjectively, quite the opposite, entirely.”

(Philip K. Dick, “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April, 1966)

“…if the West is to survive itself, as a – civilization, which I think is deeply imperiled by what it’s done to itself over many decades, at the heart of which is what it’s done to the Jewish people…  But if the West is to recover itself, as a morally functioning and therefore civilized entity, it has to tell itself, that the cause that it has supported, “palestinianism”, is the cause of all this.  Not just the Hamas.  The Hamas is an excrescence of this.  And that the reason – for the continuation of this terrible war against Israel, is that the West has told itself this big lie.  That – supporting “palestinianism” is the way to resolve the conflict; through the division of land.  Now, until unless that happens, Israel is going to continue to be isolated to varying degrees by its so-called allies and friends in the West.  And the West is going to continue to shoot itself in the brain, as a civilization.”

A Spirit of the Ages: “Darkness at Noon”, by Yohanan Ramati (11/17/21-1/28/16)

The prophetic “Darkness at Noon” is one of the 165 poems composed by Israeli scholar Yohanan Ramati from the 1980s through the early 90s, which are collected in the volume Fata Morgana, published by the Bialik Institute in Jerusalem in 1995.  A very brief biography of Mr. Ramati, from the book’s cover, follows:

“Yohanan Ramati, born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1921, went to school in Switzerland and Vienna.  In 1935, because his father decided Poland was no place for Jews, Ramati was sent to England.  He watched Neville Chamberlain promise the world “Peace in our time” after signing the Munich pact with Hitler.  In 1939-1942 he studied Politics, Economics, and Philosophy at Oxford University.  He then worked as a coal miner in Yorkshire, before joining the British Army in which he served until 1948.

“Settling in Israel in 1949, he worked at writing reports, studies, and newspaper articles.  From 1954 to 1976 he was managing editor of The Israel Economist.  His poetry, though written after he turned 60, strongly appeals to young people in their twenties and thirties in its candor, directness, and understanding for universal human feelings and problems, despite his unconcealed Jewish patriotism.  He has often said that a person who cannot love his own people is incapable of loving humanity.  Of his musical compositions, three have been broadcast and several others have been performed at public concerts.

“Yohanan Ramati married Datia (nee Kaplan) in 1947.  One of their children, Eliora Carmon – commemorated in Ramati’s symphonic poem – was killed when the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires was blown up by terrorists in 1992.  Their two other children, Michal and Yonatan, live in Galilee.”

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Eliora Carmon, from the X account of the Israel Foreign Ministry

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The poems in Fata Morgana are divided into five sections, entitled – in sequence – “Ballads” (8 poems), “Love” (40), “Children” (6), “Animal Poems” (15), “Americana” (4), “Of Man and the Universe” (the largest section, with 70 poems, including “Darkness at Noon”), “The Jews” (6), and lastly, “Israel, Oh Israel!” (16 poems). 

Fata Morgana is entirely absent of explanatory text about the specific date of composition of Mr. Ramati’s poems, or, the “sparks” of emotion, time, and place that inspired their creation; it only includes titles and text, leaving influences to the imagination of the reader.  

As for the very phrase “Darkness At Noon”, Mr. Ramati specifically acknowledges Arthur Koestler’s novel as the inspiration for his poem.

What about “Fata Morgana”?  As described at Wikipedia, the phrase is Italian, and is the designation for, “…a complex form of superior mirage visible in a narrow band right above the horizon.  The term Fata Morgana is the Italian translation of “Morgan the Fairy” ([the enchantress] Morgan le Fay of Arthurian legend).  These mirages are often seen in the Italian Strait of Messina, and were described as fairy castles in the air or false land conjured by her magic.”  Tellingly, “Fata Morgana mirages significantly distort the object or objects on which they are based, often such that the object is completely unrecognizable.”

In literary terms, a Fata Morgana, “…is usually associated with something mysterious, something that never could be approached.”  Examples given at Wikipedia include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1873 poem by that name, the poet Christoph Martin Wieland’s use of the phrase to denote “…castles in the air,” and, the famed H.P. Lovecraft’s allusion to the phenomenon in describing atmospheric effects in Antarctica, in his famous and culturally influential 1936 short novel of cosmic horror, “At the Mountains of Madness”.

Mr. Ramati’s prophetic non-fiction essays, which I believe appeared in the Bulletin of the Jerusalem Institute for Western Defence, published between 1989 and 2009, include:

“Jewish Motives” (February, 1994)
“Friends”
“The Islamic Danger to Western Civilization”
“Israel’s Real Strategic Problems”,
“Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics – A Comparative Case Study of The Yugoslav and Middle East Crises” (December, 1996)

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Portrait of Yohanan Ramati by Sissel Vagard

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Darkness at Noon

(With apologies to Arthur Koestler, who would have understood.)

The little screens are fed by fertile brains
Of the select who know what people need

And pose as guardians of our liberties
Yet treat us with contempt.

We like their face,
The face of self-appointed oracles
Pronouncing doom on values we revered
When we could still distinguish true from false,
When love of country still was burning deep
In many souls… and in our musing minds
We contemplated a nefarious world
Without attempting to deceive ourselves
Each day and every minute.

They are dead –
Those days when some illumined were by faith
While others lived, and living made mistakes
Which were at least their own.

Like vipers’ teeth
Unholy years have left their deadly mark:
Week after weary week we watched the shades
Performing rites of gods we let usurp
The seats of power, our vision warped
By wishful dreams.

They sang to us their songs
Of everlasting peace if we succumb
Or just refrain from succouring our friends,
Describing them as denizens of hell
With skillful touches of satanic pens
Dipped into vicious venom.

Knowing us
With all our weaknesses, they made us laugh,
Feeding the cruelty in human hearts
With ridicule of all that we held dear,
Destroying values e’en as we believed
They were but joking…  And they played their parts
With charismatic lustre blinding us
To their true meaning, to the little push
Towards a tempting, effervescent glow
Obscuring the reality beneath.

* * *

“You’re lying!” says the stooge – and I reply:
Can you still tell the tyrant from the serf?
Can you still recognize your liberties?
Or do you now imagine like the rest
That these be but the freedom of the men
Who feed the screens to tell you what to think?

* * *

Democracy was once the people’s rule.
Today, it is the undisputed realm
Of those we’re not allowed to criticize
On pain of ostracism: The handsome lout
Who reads the news with just the slightest touch
Of sarcasm or appeal to guide our will,
The make-up man whose anonymous hate
Turns would-be politicians into ghouls,

The commentator with the gracious smile
Bought by a boorish sheikh whose distant wealth
Controls the pearls of wisdom we lap up,
The journalist who will report the facts
Only if they accord with his beliefs
Or with the views of the conceited ass
Who owns his paper…

Yea, integrity
May yet be found among this curious caste
But rarely, oh, so rarely!

* * *

Dare I think
Just for myself?
Dare I express a doubt
Concerning fashions deprecating pride
And whisper loyalty to my own flag?
Dare I yet offer to defend my state,
Its interest and the free allied with us?
Is our sacred blood
Really so precious that to spill a drop
To protect freedom is a blasphemy,
So oppressors vile
Need kill but five of us – the rest will run?

* * *

Protesters march with banners fiercely held
Beneath a sky abandoned.  For our sun,
The sun of human hope has disappeared
Covered by clouds of cant.
We humbly watch
The scene through the impenetrable bars
Of an infernal logic teaching us
That right is wrong and left is always right,
That weak is good and red is really white,
That fear deserves our praise, that freedom means
Your freedom to assist a foreign foe
But never mine to stop you doing so!

I want to scream, but who will hear my pain?
The little screen no longer has a place
For morons who would banish what it calls
“The Spirit of Our Age”.
So deep within
My heart must slowly break as there, outside, The darkness reigns at noon…

And further…

Yohanan Ramati, at…

… University of Saint Andrews (Correspondence)

… The National Library of Israel

… Billion Graves (יוחנן רמתי)

Alain Finkielkraut: “In The Name of The Other”

2004 and 2023

Alain Finkielkraut, from Azure Magazine

“In the Name of the Other: Reflections on the Coming Anti-Semitism”
Autumn, 2004

In the wake of that brief period
during which the West expressed itself in the idiom of racism,
Western discourse now accuses the chosen people
of believing themselves superior to other nations
and of rejecting the gospel of a common, universal identity.
Perhaps it is really the ancient condemnation of the Jew –
for his worldliness,
his particularism,
his exclusivity,
his national egoism,
his closed fraternity –
which, under the increasing burden of the Nazi trauma,
is living a new youth, reveling in its flashy modern clothes.
Perhaps there is a resonance of the Epistle to the Romans
in the affirmation that the people of Israel,
that self-infatuated people,
exempt themselves from the ordinary human condition
and except themselves from all the nations,
thus denying the equal dignity of men and obeying only their own laws.
Perhaps this sudden condemnation,
coming from the religion of humanity,
and its paradoxical incitement to anti-racist hate,
unknowingly resurrects an ancient theological debate,
of which the secularized masses know little or nothing at all.
Perhaps –
and this is a frightening thought –
the penitent-judges are incapable of condemning the scientistic belief
in the struggle of the races and the survival of the fittest
without resuscitating the Pauline spirit.
Perhaps this makes the descendants of Abraham stiffen their resolve,
affirming their dynastic birthright
and holding firm to ties of blood when they are offered a union of hearts.

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“The Religion of Humanity and The Sin of The Jews”
Summer, 2005

We no longer know how to commemorate what we are commemorating.

By “we,”
I mean the independent, volatile, democratic individual
who owes nothing to the past,
cares nothing for the future,
and has no ties to the present
besides the ones he himself establishes;
the individual who has been released,
by human rights,
from the grips of origins,
legacies,
and that which is not freely chosen,
who has been relieved of obligations to anything that might transcend him.

He is free,
like Edith Piaf or the Rolling Stones,
to abandon himself to his own inclinations,
passions,
interests,
follies,
and infatuations;
the individual who looks at history
and sees only the obstacle-ridden, corpse-strewn road leading up to him.

Just One Reference…

Alain Finkielkraut, at Wikipedia

When Visions Change: Excerpts from Rav Haim Sabato’s novel Adjusting Sights

(This “new” post isn’t really new, for its content has appeared for many years as a drop-down page in my blog’s masthead.  I’ve now converted it into a gen-u-ine post, with a variety of links.  Enjoy and be inspired!)

Adjusting Sights
by Haim Sabato (Translated by Hillel Halkin)
The Toby Press, 2003

“It was hard to say goodbye to my wife Malka on that night after Yom Kippur.  I could see how worried she war.  I too had a bad feeling.  While we were packing my things, I talked to her about faith and trust in God’s Providence.  I quoted some verses from the Bible and from the rabbis.  I knew that Providence is for the Jewish People as a whole and not for any individual.  Even Jacob, though he was promised that God would always be with him, was frightened when Esau marched against him with four hundred men.  But I managed to calm Malka down.  We were still packing when Yoel dropped by to say goodbye and surprised me by saying that the verse the Lord will not cast off His people, neither will He forsake His inheritance doesn’t apply to any single one of us, so what we all have to pray for our own lives to be spared.  Either he had read my thoughts or we were all thinking the same thing.  I hoped Malka didn’t hear him.  I don’t think she did.  Or else she pretended that she didn’t.  We put Daniel to bed.  He lay there smiling at me.  I kissed him, trying not to cry.  Malka came with me to the assembly point. She stood watching the bus pull out.” (98)

I looked at the moon and saw Dov. We had sanctified the moon of Tishrei together, the two of us, in Bayit ve-Gan with the Rabbi of Amshinov.

It was true, I thought.  Sometimes God had mercy on the undeserving and shone His light on them.  That mercy and that light stayed with you forever.  They were a debt you had to repay.  There was no getting around it.  I thought of the vow I had made while dodging bullets in the wadi.  I knew the world would never be the same.

Yes, sometimes God has mercy on the undeserving.  And sometimes He descends to His garden, to the beds of spices to gather lilies – Sariel and Shmuel and Shaya and Avihu.  And Dov.  Though we left for war together.

What was it Rabbi Akiva once said?  The Owner of the fig tree knows when it is time to father His figs.

Who can aim his thoughts as high as those of the Creator of men?  In the month of Elul we said penitential prayers in my yeshiva.  Now they echoed in my ears.

Who holds in His hand the souls of all that live
And the spirit of each mortal man.
The soul is Yours and the body is Your handiwork.
Spare the work of Your hands.

Lord of all souls, the soul is Yours.
But the body is also Your handiwork.
For this it was made, to sanctify Your name in this world.
Master of all worlds, spare the work of Your hands! (143)

And, for your consideration…

Adjusting Sights, at… 

… Wikipedia (Hebrew)

… Kirkus Reviews

679th Tank Brigade, at…

… Wikipedia (Hebrew)

Rav Haim Sabato, at…

… Wikipedia

… Wikipedia (Hebrew)

… Jewish Action

… American Sephardi (“Haim Sabato’s Classic Sephardi Sensibility”)

… Koren Publishers (Rav Haim Sabato’s books)

Aleppo Tales
From the Four Winds
Rest for The Dove
The Dawning of The Day

… Jewish Journal 

… Jewish Journal (“A Sephardic S.Y. Agnon”)

… Good Reads

… You Tube (October 9, 2023)

שיעורים קצרים לחיילים (1) – “התנערי מעפר קומי” | הרב חיים סבתו (חרבות ברזל – תשפ”ד)
Short lessons for soldiers (1) – “Get rid of comic dust” | (Sword of Iron))