Jews Have a Right To Be Offended

A wise man once noted that before one is respected and treated with respect, he must learn to respect himself.

And that goes for an entire people, an entire nation, as well.

Watching the way some Jews carry themselves, we wonder if the Jewish Nation really respects itself.

We are specifically referring to responses by some Jews to trends of repeated efforts by gentiles to define us. Some non Jews, unfortunately, take it even further and usurp our most precious Jewish ONLY symbols and great concepts, those that have kept us through hard chapters in our history.

Moreover, the indifference to such practices and, in some cases, even the condonation, enablement and support of such efforts by many Jews, leave some of us utterly aghast and dismayed. We see Jews attending a “Christian Seder” which distorts what a Seder is about, and smile with acceptance along with a self-deprecating joke about not really liking matzo or gefilte fish. When that Seder is later followed by an article, written by a Jew, lauding the commemoration of such a  “Seder” by Christians for whom the event amounts to no more than the celebration of the last supper of Jesus, we are dumbfounded. 

We see Jews facilitating the arrival of Christian missionaries to the Jewish Homeland and give them land in Eretz Yisrael where they set up tent. We see missionaries in Yisrael describe their mission as “bring the Gospel to the farmers of” Judea and Samaria.  We hear them sing to us about “The New Jerusalem,” and we spot them teach the Gospel at the Knesset.

Observing some of our own bending backwards to appease and pander to those who clearly want to hurt them, demean them and destroy them as a religious community, culture, and people is disheartening, to say the least.  There is no self-respect when what others do to offend Jews gets a sick kind of smile, no objection and in some cases condonation and support of it

How far will they go before someone says, enough, we don’t have to sit and smile and be nice about the theft of our heritage and the demeaning of what is ours?

We are all for cultural exchanges. At the same time, we realize that we cannot stop cultural appropriation and usurpation. It is as old as humanity. All of us are enriched by learning from other cultures, by adopting what is best of them all.  We all like good pizza, Brahms’ music, the latest clothing from New York.

 However, when cultural appropriation becomes cultural hijacking and calling it authentic, when taking the customs of great significance of one people and reinterpreting them for another to completely change them for some conflicting purpose, we are verging on deliberate efforts to erase lines between cultures, efforts that should be eliminated. 

Furthermore, why do Jews allow and accept Christian or Muslim interpretations of Jewish texts? Why do Jews remain silent when such interpretations come with demands to agree with them? Why do Jews just smile to such efforts and fear offending those that make demands on them?

Again, it is nothing more than a demonstration of a lack of self-respect.

Yes, we know, a lot of this is the result of 2000 years of developing defenses to existential threats. The ghetto leader whose daughter was kidnapped by the Lord of the Manor, raped and beaten and then returned to the ghetto, who thanked the rapist with a smile on his face for returning his daughter alive and not dead, was protecting his life and that of his whole community because under the circumstances there were no choices. That bought a few months of peace, not respect, and when it becomes a habit, long after the cause for the behavior is gone, that is just sad and sick and a drain on our survival today.

So, we ask these questions.  Do Jews have the right to be offended?  Do Jews have the guts to object to being offended?

And while we are at it when missionaries approach Jews in a city like Jerusalem, offending Jews by handing out their literature, which on more than one occasion distorts sacred Jewish writings, ask them why they are not doing it in Muslim areas and in Muslim countries. Or are they worried about offending them?

Ben-Gurion spoke of a time when Jews would be a normal nation. Being normal also means the right to be offended, the right to demand respect. Time for Jews to be normal and practice these rights.

This article was written jointly by Roger Froikin and Bat-Zion Susskind

March of the Living and why I support it (Part Two)

Last week, I wrote an article in support of continuing the “March of the Living,” where young Yisraelis visit Poland and the death camps, an experience which many of those who partake in it describe as a deeply meaningful one. It is one that is mingled with sadness, agony on the one hand and joy and victory on the other.

Soon after I published my article, a dear friend who opposes this endeavor, sent me an article written several years ago by a Holocaust survivor, Ruth Bondy. It is entitled, “After we, the Holocaust Survivors, are gone.”

Very few can argue with Holocaust survivors about their trials which, naturally, helped shape their views. No one ever could and probably never would be able to grasp the abominable ordeals that they have been through. No one could speak in their name. We can only listen to their stories and admire them for their inner strength, endurance and the sacrifices they had to make.

We can, however, disagree with some of their views. And on this subject, I beg to differ with Ms. Bondy.

Reading her words, I sense a somber timbre, a trace of disappointment and doubt in the ability of many to carry on the survivors’ torch and share with the world their torments and tribulations. “Many will be relieved,” she writes, as she goes on to name some of those organizations, politicians and government agencies that might be relieved when the Holocaust survivors are no more.

In that, I fully agree with her. The miracle of their survival may be a burden to some.

However, I was somewhat surprised to read her suggestion, almost a directive, an order to cease with the practice of “March of The Living.”

“And put an end to the outrageous “marches of the livings,” to the school trips to places where Jews died, instead of to places where they lived—Toledo, Segovia, Rembrandt and Spinoza’s Holland, Odessa, and perhaps one day to Baghdad,” she writes.

She calls Poland, a place “where Jews died.” Instead, she suggests, visiting places like Holland, Spain where Jews “lived.”

With all due respect, will someone please point out to me a place where Jews ONLY lived and never died in, sometimes, strange deaths? Can anyone deny that in many of the places that she names, Jews both lived and died? Have Jews only “lived” in Spinoza’s Holland? How about Toledo? Have Jews not suffered there or died there sometimes under horrible conditions?

Poland is not only one big Jewish graveyard as history proves. It was, and few know it, also a place where Jews DID live and a very rewarding life, for many years. Poland was not only a haven for Jews for many years, it produced some of the greatest Jewish minds, Jewish thinkers, great Jewish Zionists who added immensely to a flourishing Jewish culture and later to the Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael. I invite you to visit the Jewish museum in Warsaw. I was just there. What an eye-opening experience it was to learn that Poland, where vast parts of it are soaked with Jewish blood, was not only a big burial place for our People, it also provided a fertile cradle to our creativity and our Jewish ingenuity.

That is a fact!  And it is facts that we should teach our young ones. The many memorials and, the camps, the maps of the Ghetto, the crematoria, the gas chambers, they are ALL facts just as are the big synagogues, the gravestone are all testimonials to a formerly very thriving Jewish world, unfortunately a vanished world.

It is this vanished Jewish world that we need to educate our young ones about. It is the world that serves as a link, an important link in the chain of our Jewish existence.

When I educate my students about the Shoah, I stress that facet of our Jewish Polish heritage, a facet that I am afraid the cessation of the “March o the Living” might help erase. When my students go to Poland, they learn about the great Yeshivas and the amazing scholarship that they produced. The devastation that they face there serves as a constant reminder of a once great Jewish world, one that may evaporate into thin air should we fail to remind ourselves should we fail to see its remnants. To do that, in my view, would send a very strong message to the victims, a message they would have hoped never to receive. After all, isn’t it the very reason we continue to visit the graves of the Maccabees and the final stronghold of the heroes of Metzada? Is not our arrival at their final resting place aimed at telling them that we will never forget the sacrifices they made? Or is the memory of some heroic Jews more equal than that of other Jews?

It is this experience, I believe, that will help infuse and reignite the defiant Jewish Spirit and remind us that “Never Again,” is eternal, just as eternal as our People.

Happy Yom Ha’atzmaoot to our dear beloved Yisrael. I salute ALL those members of our Jewish People who through their death, commanded us Life!

The Anatomy of a Proselytizing Faith

I have recently come back from an exciting experience of visiting Ireland. The Emerald Isle, as some refer to it, is beautiful. Its history is fascinating, full of intrigues, wars, conquests and above all Irish Christian history.

Strangely enough, I was fascinated by the sometimes very intricate and artistically designed Celtic Cross, a recognized ancient pagan solar symbol, which can be spotted around the country’s Christian sites. I was also intrigued, riddled and staggered by its copious use in these sites. Not for long, though.

As someone who has been following the activities of Christian missionaries, I quickly found the answer to my conundrum in the modus operandum of the propylitization milieu.

The goal of any missionary faith, creed or philosophy is to spread its message to as many people and as widely as possible. This is not always an easy task, especially as most humans are creatures of habit who are not readily willing to tread into an unknown realm.

As a teacher, I have learned that a precondition to making the foreign familiar and comfortable is to, first and foremost, create a climate of safety and trust for students. It is the basic stage of human motivation, as correctly prescribed by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Missionary undertakings must be familiar with that concept. 

Their choice of tactics confirms the assumption. One only has to look around at the way missionaries operate here in Yisrael. One only needs to observe their organizations and how they raise money for their designated cause. Their ongoing calls for support and donations are almost always about feeding poor Jews, new immigrants and the elderly. Noble and just causes indeed. But that is where theirs stops - on what Maslow termed as the “Physiological” plain, one that stresses the importance of fulfilling the basic needs for food, water, and warmth.

A principle tenet of their agenda, it would appear, is to make their beneficiaries dependent on them. At least that is what I have observed here in Yisrael. Once the physiological needs of poor souls are satisfied, the missionaries are ready to move to the next level of their holy mission.

That next step in the process of successful learning, knowledge acquisition and adoption of new concepts and beliefs, as any teacher would know, is give them tools that will guide them into new realms. These are aimed at helping them overcome the fear of the unknown and the uncertain and face the alien. It is therefore of utmost importance for teachers to engage students by presenting new ideas in frames of reference that are familiar and comfortable to them as we lead them to the new and unfamiliar path.

Missionaries throughout history must have known that as well.

Imagine the first missionaries roaming the pagan fields of strange lands. How would they be able to introduce the concept of a one invisible god when the ones they worship have human traits?

The answer is very simple. To facilitate that process, all one must do is bring some of their mundane and recognizable pagan symbols into the new faith. To help facilitate the transition all one has to do is embrace their familiar and deeply rooted frames of reference into it. This would bound to make them feel more comfortable and more at home in the newly introduced belief system.

The adoption and incorporation of the Celtic Cross is but one example of such a measure.

Another example is the adoption of the name “Easter,” an important Christian holiday that is an ancient pagan celebration named after the pagan goddess Ishtar, the Sumerian goddess of fertility (hence the custom of Easter eggs and rabbits on this holy day) that was hung on a stake and ascended from the netherworld.

There are many more similar examples. Adoption of foreign symbols and customs is very common. It is also a natural growth process of any culture, a process that no one can or should try to stop.

However, and that is where I have an issue with Christian missionaries here in Yisrael. They do not only adopt Jewish customs and symbols, rather they take Jewish sources that are ours only and redefine them to fit their Christian theology, in order to mislead ignorant Jews into accepting their faith. They become salesmen selling a product by choosing misleading words and phrases and making fraudulent promises. 

This is NOT what teaching is about. This is NOT what good teaching should do.

To that, many of us, refuse to be accomplices.


Special thanks to my dear friend Roger Froikin.

It is great to have you back Home, Ms. X

Life can be one amazing rollercoaster for some. Mine has been. It is not only what happens to us that makes it that way, it is also those we attract and invite into it and those we inadvertently meet on our life’s path.

 Ms. X, the person whose story I am about to share with you, has been my friend on FB for sometimes now. Today, for some unknown reason, she shared it with me for the first time. Several hours later, I am still deeply touched by that revelation.

I decided to tell her story for two reasons. The first has to do with my desire to expose missionaries and their antics, an undertaking I have chosen as our people are very dear to me and I will fight to defend them against any efforts to steal our souls. The second, Ms. X’s story is an inspiring and in my view, a heroic account of a young woman who, despite repeated efforts to drown her spiritually and emotionally was able to unshackle herself from the chains that held her captive for a long time, educate herself about our great Jewish tradition, came back Home and is doing her share to educate young Jewish children so that they do not fall pray to missionaries and their devious antics.

Ms. X was born in the U.S. to two Jewish parents. Her biological father passed away when she was about 6 years of age. He mother remarried a Yisraeli man and they ended up living here for about two years before moving back to the U.S.

When Ms. X attended school in California, she met her first husband, a non- Jew. They settled in the Bible Belt area.

In a way, Ms. X represents a growing segment of the Jewish population in the U.S., the assimilated kind. Though born and raised in conservative Judaism, she felt that something was missing in her Jewish upbringing. It was her need to establish a personal relationship with G-d.

She was fertile ground for missionaries who rushed to fill in the void.

It happened one bright day when she was driving with her step daughter past a building which looked like a synagogue. It had Yisraeli and American flags flying side by side in front of it. The following Friday night, she to attend services there.

As she soon learned, it was a “messianic synagogue.” Upon arrival, she was greeted by a Jewish woman who befriended her and “took her under her wings” instantaneously. That woman and the “rabbi” explained to her how she could “have the best of both world” by becoming a member. They spoke to her about their close relationship with god, something they evidently learned was missing in her life and capitulated on it. They also offered solace for her terminally ill daughter and sensed that she was lonely with no family and no friends as her then husband was trying to isolate her from them. Naturally, he approved of her new affiliation. In short, she was the ultimate and perfect target for the missionaries’ mission.

At one point, her “benefactors” discovered that one of her close friends was dying of cancer. That is when they started to apply pressure on her to try and convince her dying friend to become a follower of their messiah. They laid on her that if her friend died without having accepted him, he was doomed to damnation and go to hell which, of course would be her fault.

When she tried to leave that group after over 5 years, she faced threats, pressure and intimidation. “As I was leaving the Messianics, I found you,” she told me. “I found your articles beyond helpful. I learned so much from you,” she added much to my surprise.  It was that dying friend, Ms. X told me, who had directed her to my articles. In fact, it was this mutual friend of ours that helped her during those days and bring her c back to Judaism.

Fortunately for her, Ms. X also turned to Chabbad and they, as always, were extremely supportive. It was the Chabbad Rabbi who told her, “The colour of your soul has always and always will be Jewish even if you were lost for a while.”

Ms. X is now happily married to a Jewish man. She teaches at a local Jewish school and volunteers at Chabbad Torah time. She is active in exposing missionaries, especially those targeting Jews. “My heart goes out to all those lost Jews. I want them to know that hope is not lost and that they can always come back Home.”

“I will help you in any way I can to expose their antics,” she later wrote to me in a private message. “Missionaries need to be stopped. They go after Jews and lie to them. They go after the vulnerable and the weak and exploit their need to be loved and supported.”

I will be going to sleep with a smile on my face tonight. Unbeknown to me, I have helped save a Jewish soul. According to our sages, that is akin to saving a whole world. Life is beautiful!


Happy Purim and may our Jewish People continue to go from strength to strength