Ki Tissa — Anger!!

Anger — Can God be angry? Was Moses angry over the Golden Calf? Is anger a positive or negative trait?

Indeed, let's look at was written in our Parsha.

“They have been quick to turn aside from the way that I enjoined upon them. They have made themselves a molten calf and bowed low to it and sacrificed to it, saying: ‘This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!’”

God further said to Moses, “I see that this is a stiff-necked people.

Now, let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them, and make of you a great nation.”

But Moses implored his God יהוה, saying, “Let not Your anger, יהוה, blaze forth against Your people, whom You delivered from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand.

Let not the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he delivered them, only to kill them off in the mountains and annihilate them from the face of the earth.’ Turn from Your blazing anger and renounce the plan to punish Your people.

Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, how You swore to them by Your Self and said to them: I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and I will give to your offspring this whole land of which I spoke, to possess forever.”

And God renounced the punishment planned for God’s people.

Thereupon Moses turned and went down from the mountain bearing the two tablets of the Pact, tablets inscribed on both their surfaces: they were inscribed on the one side and on the other.

The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, incised upon the tablets.

When Joshua heard the sound of the people in its boisterousness, he said to Moses, “There is a cry of war in the camp.”

But he answered,

“It is not the sound of the tune of triumph, Or the sound of the tune of defeat.

It is the sound of song that I hear!”

As soon as Moses came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, he became enraged; and he hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain. “

My whole life, I’ve been trying to fight the trait of anger, yet, when I think about October 7th, and we hear about, talk about, the leadership fail, lack of common sense, the hostages, the rape, the destruction, my gut feel is one of anger. How could this happen? How could any human beings, if you call them that, act like this? And then, that anger intensifies when you see the action of the world, and the lies, the distortion, the distortion of the facts, the false narratives being brought up. How can one occupy their own country? Genocide. Really?

The Jews have lived through the seas of genocide. I’m sitting here just thinking about this, imagine those people’s loved ones lost their sons, brothers, parents. Anger. Anger, it could be avoided. What is clear from this situation is that there has to be a deeper message here.

This event and the world reaction is not normal. It’s like our lives will never be normal again. COVID was a wake-up call. This is a bigger wake up call. It’s a wake-up call for civilization. And what kind of future do we want to see in the world? And it is very worrying. We were brought up in 2,000 years of history. In our prayers, we have this desire to return to Zion and Israel.

Jews are from Judea. Arabs are from Arabia. Palestinians are Arabs, so they are from Arabia.

“Over 500,000 Arabs, in the 12 years between 1932 and 1944, came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions existing in no other Arab state.” President Robert Kennedy’s 1948 Reports from Palestine. https://jcpa.org/article/robert-kennedys-1948-reports-from-palestine/

The claim that “Palestinians” are the indigenous people of Israel and that most of the present Palestinian Arabs have lived in these lands since time immemorial is a total fraud. https://www.jpost.com/blogs/why-world-opinion-matters/are-arabs-the-indigenous-people-of-palestine-402785

And today, I look around the states around Israel. Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt. They are all failed states. Their economies are in ruins. Egypt is the strongest of them. They’re spending a lot of money that they receive from America on building up an army and an attack system against Israel. They’ve built a wall with Gaza and strictly control this. Yet, their economy is so fragile. And none of these countries have invested or are able to create a viable economy, except for Israel.

What’s interesting is that if you want to destroy Israel, then you’re seeking destruction, seeking to send the world back to the Middle Ages, or whatever you call it. Whereas, if you recognize the moral, economic, technical power and military power of Israel and the ability to channel that to the force of goodness around the area, then there is hope for the Middle East and the world. This is my hope.

What we need is real leadership. Leadership to fight evil. And we’ve not seen that. We see what’s happening in America, Britain, the United Nations, and it’s a sad state of affairs. And on that, we need to consider why October 7th happened.

We needed an event of this proportion to wake Israel and the world out of its slumber. And I’m angry about the double standards now made about Israel and the settlements and the settlers. Look at all the violent and murderous acts that are carried out by Palestinians on a daily basis, weekly basis on our roads and cities.

The world’s ears are closed to this and have adopted the narrative that Israel is the oppressor, and that Israel also needs to be eliminated. And this is sad, and this is what I’m angry about. How can we change this narrative? How can we channel this anger into a force of good? Force of good for Israel and force of good for the world.

Here I am sharing an extract from… Julie Burchill (a non-Jew) which sums up the absurdity in article titled — “The torment of British Jews

It’s interesting to compare the reaction of the British left to Israel with the state of Pakistan, founded a year before. ‘The Land of The Pure’ — to give it its Urdu name — is given a remarkably free ride. The inability of its founders to countenance living in a multi-religious nation caused the loss of immeasurable lives; their current persecution of Christians borders on the frenzied, while women live what can barely be described as ‘lives’ as we understand the word, with Pakistan ranking at 145 out of 146 countries on the Global Gender Gap Report 2022. (Only Afghanistan is lower!)

Yet I see no concerned crowds marching in the street about the human rights abuses of millions of Pakistani people. No Jews, no news — no Jews, no abuse.”

We say in Psalm 83 — It would appear there is new under the sun.

“A song, a psalm of Asaph.

O God do not be silent.

do not hold aloof.

do not be quiet, O God!

For Your enemy’s rage,

Your foes assert themselves. -a

They plot craftily against Your people,

take counsel against Your treasured ones.

They say, “Let us wipe them out as a nation.

Israel’s name will be mentioned no more.”

Unanimous in their counsel

they have made an alliance against You — “

Let’s go back to our Parsha to look for a way Forward — Renew the Covenant of Old as laid out in our Parsha.

“[God] said: I hereby make a covenant. Before all your people I will work such wonders as have not been wrought on all the earth or in any nation; and all the people who are with you shall see how awesome are יהוה’s deeds which I will perform for you.

Mark well what I command you this day. I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Beware of making a covenant with the inhabitants of the land against which you are advancing, lest they be a snare in your midst.

No, you must tear down their altars, smash their pillars, and cut down their sacred posts.

· for you must not worship any other god, because יהוה, whose name is Impassioned, is an impassioned God.

· You must not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, for they will lust after their gods, sacrifice to their gods, and invite you, and you will eat of their sacrifices.

· And when you take [wives into your households] from among their daughters for your sons, their daughters will lust after their gods and will cause your sons to lust after their gods.

· You shall not make molten gods for yourselves.

· You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread — eating unleavened bread for seven days, as I have commanded you — at the set time of the month of Abib, for in the month of Abib you went forth from Egypt.

· Every first issue of the womb is Mine, from all your livestock that drop a male as firstling, whether cattle or sheep.

· But the firstling of an ass you shall redeem with a sheep; if you do not redeem it, you must break its neck. And you must redeem every male first-born among your children. None shall appear before Me empty-handed.

· Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall cease from labour; you shall cease from Labor even at ploughing time and harvest time.

· You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, of the first fruits of the wheat harvest; and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year.

· Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Sovereign יהוה, the God of Israel.

· I will drive out nations from your path and enlarge your territory; no one will covet your land when you go up to appear before your God יהוה three times a year.

· You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with anything leavened; and the sacrifice of the Feast of Passover shall not be left lying until morning.

· The choice first fruits of your soil you shall bring to the house of your God יהוה. You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

And יהוה said to Moses: Write down these commandments, for in accordance with these commandments I make a covenant with you and with Israel.”

Further Reading

_______________________________________________________

Julie Burchill

The torment of British Jews

18 February 2024,

When I was a child, learning about the Holocaust, I used to believe that what happened to the Jews in Germany could never happen here. My reasons for this were vague and cultural; Dad’s Army, comic operetta contrasted with Wagner, the sheer silliness of Hitler’s strutting. No country with a sense of humour could ever surely even follow a Hitler type to the pub, let alone into a world war. Now I’ve put away childish things, and though I have a youthful spirit, every day I feel another year older. Because in my lifetime, in my country, people are tormenting the Jews.

There is a sadistic feeding frenzy to this anti-Jewish crusade

It was a wonderful feeling that day in 1977 at the anti-National Front demo in New Cross when I nearly got trampled to death by a police horse — easily the best incident of my 17-year life thus far. To the right of me, Rastafarians; to the left of me a beautifully-dressed old man waving a walking stick in the direction of the march and yelling ‘Jew-baiters — damn Jew-baiters!’ United in the cause of anti-racism, we knew who the enemy was. But now the Jews are seen as every bit as bad as the National Front by many of those who would have been on my side then.

To have lived through the routing of right-wing anti-Semitism and to see the new left-wing kind thriving really does make you feel that you have had a long life — and that you are living in rather too interesting times. As I wrote for The Spectator a fortnight after the Hamas pogroms of October 7:

‘Anti-Semitism ­– the socialism of fools — is a shapeshifter supreme. The oldest hatred has taken many forms, and is enjoyed by Christians and Muslims, communists and fascists alike. Now it can add another string to its bow. Anti-Semitism has become deeply fashionable. You might say it’s all the rage. Years ago, I coined the phrase ‘fresh’n’funky anti-Semitism’, to define a new strain of the disease which had broken free of its stale, pale, male origins and become quite the belle of freshers week balls.’

This week’s figures on anti-Semitic racism in Britain recorded that ‘incidents’ in educational settings rose ‘sharply’ with an increase of 232 per cent in schools and 203 per cent in universities compared to 2022. In an essay written over 140 years ago, Emma Lazarus said:

‘Within recent years… in our schools and colleges, even in our scientific universities, Jewish scholars are frequently subjected to annoyance on account of their race…all the patience and humanity, which the Jews have manifested in return for centuries of persecution, have been thus far inadequate to eradicate the profound antipathy engendered by fanaticism and ready to break out in one or another shape at any moment of popular excitement.’

Excitement is the often-overlooked element when it comes to anti-Semitism — an excitement that is almost sexual. There is a sadistic feeding frenzy to this anti-Jewish crusade, as though the rape rampage of Hamas made the cause of anti-Semites more, not less, worth rallying around. The ‘Paraglider Girls’ convicted this week appeared like overgrown Girl Guides, their grim insignia a twist on badges for Kayaking or being an Emergency Helper — only evil. Though it’s admirable (and typical) that some Jewish community leaders believe that it’s possible to ‘educate’ people out of anti-Semitism, we’ve seen how little actual knowledge matters on this subject, about everything from the ancient origins of Israel to how Palestinian leaders spend all that foreign aid. On the contrary, the revelling in ignorance and unfairness is part of the appeal of picking on Jews. As Alex Ryvchin said on X in December:

‘There is an old Jewish saying: the anti-Semite does not accuse the Jew of stealing because he thinks he stole something. He does it because he enjoys watching the Jew turn out his pockets to prove his innocence. The rape deniers know women were raped, mutilated and tortured. They just don’t care. And they are enjoying seeing our wounded and violated people have to turn out our pockets to prove we’re not liars.’

The fact that the pro-Palestinian marches started before Israel actually retaliated was a big tell; these people weren’t marching against Israel defending itself, but in favour of Israel being attacked. Unless they all had access to a big old time-travel machine, of course.

Another component of anti-Semitism is envy; those with little to be proud of — be they the groomers of Rochdale or the spoilt scions of the ruling class — suddenly have the chance to feel special. Too afraid to take on the actual ruling classes — indeed, many of the pro-Palestine youth belong to that class, and I’m sure they’ll be availing themselves of their inheritances when the time comes — they have found in the Jews a handy group of proxies to torment, a group with very little history of violence or fighting back. (Until, pushed to the limit, they do, when the inevitable cries of ‘overreaction!’ occur.) The recent events at the Soho Theatre — not a place you’d generally expect to see Jews driven out by a baying mob — proved that this fashionable anti-Semitism is attractive to all sections of society. All they need in common is to be grudging and mediocre. And there are such a lot of them. The latest figures on anti-Semitism are the highest since records began 40 years ago. For the first time, which seems particularly sinister, CST recorded at least one incident in every police region in the UK, which means that anti-Semitism now exists in regions even where there are next to no Jews. That’s when it stops being ‘personal’ and becomes a political belief. We know what comes next.

Of course, the half-wits having such a good time tormenting British Jews are doing exactly what you’d think they didn’t want to happen: encouraging Jews to migrate back to their ancestral homeland. This has always been a hard one for the mouth-breathers of anti-Zionism to get their heads around, hence the observation of Amos Oz that ‘When my father was a young man in Vilna, every wall in Europe said, “Jews go home to Palestine.” Fifty years later, when he went back to Europe on a visit, the walls all screamed, “Jews get out of Palestine.”’

It’s interesting to compare the reaction of the British left to Israel with the state of Pakistan, founded a year before. ‘The Land of The Pure’ — to give it its Urdu name — is given a remarkably free ride. The inability of its founders to countenance living in a multi-religious nation caused the loss of immeasurable lives; their current persecution of Christians borders on the frenzied, while women live what can barely be described as ‘lives’ as we understand the word, with Pakistan ranking at 145 out of 146 countries on the Global Gender Gap Report 2022. (Only Afghanistan is lower!) Yet I see no concerned crowds marching in the street about the human rights abuses of millions of Pakistani people. No Jews, no news — no Jews, no abuse.

Looking back, I was unrealistic to believe that it couldn’t happen here; these islands certainly saw enough persecution of the Jews in ancient times. But I thought we’d left those times behind us. Now a new Medieval mob now stalks our streets, looking for the Jews. ‘Our ancestors didn’t fight and die for British Jews to be told to hide their Star of David in the street, for Rabbis to be chased into hiding. Nor did they fight and die for a country that arrests Christians silently praying or preaching in the street. We are betraying them’ wrote Emma Webb of the Free Speech Union recently.

Anyone who has seen the Met harassing the young gospel singer Harmonie London while guarding marchers screeching about jihad will find it difficult to believe that the institutions of this country have the nerve or intelligence to fight for Christian rights, let alone Jewish ones. A few brave ones aside, politicians won’t ultimately stand up for the Jews, as that would get in the way of their vote-counting. If it’s to be done, the people will need to do it — and it seems that the young generation may well already be lost. Of course, their support for extraordinarily intolerant groups won’t end well for them, the ragbag tangle of the Funky Paraglider Fan Club, the Queers for Palestine, the Trans for Allah, the Feminists for Rape and the rest of the fresh’n’funky anti-Semitism Alliance. But they’ll deserve it.

The Jews don’t deserve it. They’ve been the most loyal and productive citizens imaginable. They’ve annoyed me so many times at meetings by insisting on singing the National Anthem when I wanted to hear only Hatikvah. But no good deed goes unpunished. It appears that we as a nation are prepared to bend over backwards to give succour to any old acid attacker or sex offender seeking sanctuary here, any amount of fake Christians or groomers of children — but not to make the Jews feel safe, after all they’ve done for us.

I believe in miracles, so I’d like to believe that this poisonous cloud will pass over us. But it’s likely that eventually ‘our’ Jews will leave, perhaps moving on to the New World, or to Israel after the war, and eventually my country will look back sadly as others have done before us, to the golden age of Jewish culture. They will be left wondering if we could have been braver in our defence of them. There’s nothing to do now but sit and wait and see whether this madness of Jew-hatred passes over us — or whether it settles like pollution in the air, infecting the brains of the young especially, until the last Jew is gone from Britain. I don’t look forward to that time, but if we don’t value them, we don’t deserve them. We’re a tough old country — we’ll soldier on. Shame, though — in both senses