Category Archives: Judaism & Jews

Rabbi Hillel The Elder Made Socialistic

Ancient History, Judaism & Jews, libertarianism, Morality, Socialism

As someone who’s fluent in Hebrew, educated in part in Israel at a time when kids learned their Hillel; I can tell the Jewish sage’s most famous quotation, on a presumably American quotation site, has been bowdlerized. The American version has been shortened and socialized.

Rabbi Hillel was a “Jewish scholar and theologian (30 BC – 9 AD).” His sayings always struck me as libertarian. Justice, after all, is libertarian.

Here’s the wrong Hillel a la America:

hillel

The correct Rabbi Hillel:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, then when?

In Hebrew, it’s very musical:

hiller-corrected

My ‘Fearless Lion Before The Enemy’ Artistic License

Hebrew Testament, Judaism & Jews

Yes I paraphrased Proverbs in “Trump’s Not Yet President, But Nieto Is Saying, ‘Si Se Puede.’”

I wrote, “The biblical proverb worked: Act like a fearless lion before an adversary, and the adversary will retreat.

It was Proverbs 28.1, I was taking considerable artistic license with it, mainly because I did not wish to call Mexico an enemy.

I should have been more explicit, but you get the gist.

UPDATED: In Order To Survive, Perhaps Christians Should Consider Converting To Judaism?

Christianity, Islam, Judaism & Jews, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

There’s none of this turn-the-other-cheek, love-your-enemy, expiate-for-enemy’s-sins stuff in The Hebrew Bible and in Judaism, generally. There’s justice. Be just to your enemies, yes! But love them, welcome them into your home, let them walk all over you, even kill you when The Prophet moves them? Never!

In order to survive, perhaps Christians should consider converting to Judaism?

Just a thought.

UPDATED: On the other hand, maybe Christianity has been hijacked by leftists. See Facebook discussion.

UPDATED (6/9/016): Cathy Young’s Blood Libel* Against Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter, Anti-Semitism, IMMIGRATION, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Reason

I’m Jewish, with all the baggage that entails (truncated family tree, etc.). But according to Cathy Young’s poorly reasoned and badly written hodgepodge, “Ann Coulter’s Anti-Semitism Runs Deeper Than You Know,” I, too, would qualify as anti-Semitic for questioning liberal Jews (that includes practically ALL so-called conservatives): They insist that while Palestinians have no right of return to Israel (agreed); the world has a “global Right of Return to the US.”

As I put it in “American Rabbis For Israel First” (August 8, 2014):

Ask any left-liberal American Jew if he supports a “Right of Return” to Israel proper for every self-styled Palestinian refugee, and he’ll likely recoil: “Are you meshuga? Never! That’s a euphemism for Israel’s demise.” The very thing he rejects for Israel, the liberal Jew is inclined to champion for America: a global right of return to the US for citizens of the world.

In “American Rabbis For Israel First” and, before that, on October 1 2010, in “Mass Immigration ‘End Of Days’ Scenario,” I suggested the apparently anti-Semitic (because logical?) notion that “mass immigration into America be looked at as a global ‘right of return'”:

Friends of Israel in America are unequivocal in standing up for that country’s right to retain its Jewish identity. What would become of that identity if all self-styled Arab refugees were to be granted the so-called right of return? Hatched by Israel’s enemies, this scheme will see millions of such refugees granted the right to immigrate to Israel proper, where they will overwhelm the Jewish majority. Friends of Israel know that Jews must remain numerically preponderant in the Jewish state if the prosperous, progressive nature of the country and its liberal institutions is to endure.

Think of mass immigration into America as a global “right of return.”

Now Young accuses Ms. Coulter of the thought crime for which I’ve long been guilty, too, because Ann wrote the following in Adios (2015):

The Young woman is foolish. She needs to show that for Ann to want for the US what Israel has claimed for itself through law is anti-Semitic. Young has not proven or argued this convincingly. The Young woman’s libel has no foundation in reason and argument.

Can Cathy Young, moreover, truly claim that Albion’s Seed founded this Christian country, America, with the view that it may one day happily become majority Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist; African, Asian or Arabian? Rubbish.

*****
* Cathy Young would probably decree it anti-Semitic to turn the term “blood libel” on its head and use it to denote defamation against a generally philo-Semitic Christian.

UPDATE (6/9): America is for the world, but Israel is allowed to stay civilized. Oy!