Comments on: Proper compassion

By: Danny the Admin

Danny the Admin — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 23:28:54 +0000

To Rhonda: Do you care of Sudanese Blacks and Arabs as much as about fellow Americans? It’s natural for people to divide the world into neighbors and others. We cannot treat everyone equally. Obadiah wrote, “Love to everyone is no love to anyone.” When the injustice is immense, like in Rwanda, I say, let’s go help the others. But in routine matters, including routine civil wars, I won’t interfere. Jews faced that question (of helping the others) acutely in WWI. It wasn’t our war, and the Jews generally refrained from participating in it. When the British offered us (at Zhabotinsky’s insistence) to liberate Palestine – we assembled a Jewish Legion and did the job.

By: Rhonda

Rhonda — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 23:12:55 +0000

Hi,You said in your post that equality is a function of power. I’d like to say that equality is also a function of nature. The nature of the number two is different from the nature of the number one. Therefore, two does not equal one, even if relativistic moralists declare that two equals one.Webster’s New World Dictionary defines equal as:1.of the same quantity, size, value. 2.having the same rights, ability, rank, etc. 3. evenly proportioned. 4. having the necessary ability, strength, etc.I believe that in one sense, all people are equal. Each person is created by God and has choices to make and hardships to overcome. So it is right to extend care and respect to people everywhere, who are facing hardships (such as in Sudan); because all humans have an equal value in God’s eyes due to being created by One Creator.In another sense, though, all people are not equal. I do not believe that a foreigner engaged in terroristic acts deserves the same rights as a citizen who never harms another person. The nature of the person’s character and actions precludes being granted the legal status of “equality”. Now, I know that this reasoning can be twisted by tyrants into calling any unfavored group “unequal”. Such a twisting of definitions only happens when definitions submit to political prevarications (or political correctness based on relativistic thinking). The real question for our day is, “What is the truth?”Sir, I am an American gentile who cares deeply about Jewish issues. Of course, I care about other people groups as well.

By: Danny the Admin

Danny the Admin — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 23:07:14 +0000

Where ‘kill and destroy’ comes from? They were building a tower to ‘obtain a name’ for themselves, as I read the text.Anti-Semites are hardly so united. Leftist liberals and Neo-Nazis have little in common besides being anti-Israeli. They do not coordinate.Jews were never united, thus the Maccebees and Hanukah. We don’t need majority. Just act.

By: yoheved

yoheved — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 22:01:23 +0000

Recently, my daughter’s rabbi e-mailed all students an amazing analysis of the parsha of the week. This particular week was a few weeks back, regarding the parsha involving Nimrod and the tower of Babel, where the entire world conspired to build a tower to the heavens to ‘kill and destroy’ G-d.What did Ha-Shem do when he saw this? He divided them by creating new dialects and languages so they couldn’t communicate with each other. Did he hurt them? Rabbi said that not one hair on their head was touched. He left them in perfect physical health. He left their food and water supply complete and damaged nothing of their physical needs. He did not separate families from each other. He only changed the languages in the greater communities and from this they needed to separate and go their separate ways.Why was Ha-Shem so kind to them? They outwardly hated Him, and publicly and enthusiastically conspired to ‘destroy’ Him. One would think that He-Shem would take offense to this and retaliate severely. But he did not even hurt them. Not one person of that generation even suffered a scratch!The answer lies in how Ha-Shem values unison. When people work in unison, when they show the same enthusiasm in a concerted effort, when there is no discord among themselves, regardless of their activities, He-Shem rewards them in kindness. He might disrupt their plans, but he doesn’t harm them.This is why people who we know to be completely immoral and unethical prosper. The homosexual platform in the united states is so strong, and kavod is given to them, often over other groups, because they are united. There is very little discord among them.So, too, with the enemies of Israel. Their prosperity is in their unity. Ha-Shem has blessed unity as one of the top ten qualifications for human success. It’s just that simple.We don’t know the ways of Ha-Shem and why he values unity so much, even over his own kavod and definitely over the kavod given to the Jewish People. Actually, if we delve into this, the subdivisions and fractionalization of the Jewish people is what is destroying us. Serious divides among different religious groups (hasidic, modern orthodox, conservidox and conservitive, reform, secular, etc), political interests, diaspora vs. Israeli Jews, wealthy vs. poor….anything where we are not working in concert as a whole people towards a specific goal will harm us. And, if you haven’t noticed yet, we are probably one of the most divided nations on earth. No wonder our lack of success in our endeavors, like our wish for peace and the rights to our own inherited ancestral land. It just won’t happen to a divided nation. ‘A house divided will not stand’. We are barely standing.