Category Archives: Religion

An American Rabbi Who Can Reason: The Ten Commandments, Killing, and Murder

Christianity, GUNS, Hebrew Testament, Judaism & Jews, Justice, Law, Reason, Religion

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“American Rabbis For Israel First” wiped the floor with two feeble-minded rabbis. Admittedly—and by virtue of being publicity hounds—the rabbis had already self-selected into a pretty odious social-group sample.

Thus, when I retired (to bed), a few nights back, with the commentary of Rabbi Dovid Bendory, rabbinic director of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership—I expected little by way of intellectual fare, given the mostly liberal rabbis we’re accustomed to enduring in the public eye. Their impetus is invariably emotional, not intellectual.

Indeed, Jews, who’re usually an analytical lot, have also been infected with the contempt for reason running throughout society. “Curricula in schools emphasize the non-analytical. The media convey emotionalism. Religious institutions junk doctrine for feel-goodism, and what goes for compassion is really sappy sentimentality.” (From “Why Read Return To Reason.”)

Understanding liberty, of course, demands reason (again, from “Why Read Return To Reason”):

In the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom,” economist Milton Friedman puts his finger on the backdrop to the growth of collectivism: “The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”

In his biblically based argument against pacifism, and in defense of a “righteous killing,” Rabbi Bendory demonstrates a command of Hebrew grammar as well as impressive deductive, analytical thinking. In particular was I intrigued by Rabbi Bendory’s distinction, bolstered by references or the absence thereof in scripture, between retzach (murder) and hariga (killing).

Essentially, JPFO’s rabbinic director argues that the Sixth Commandment enjoins against murder, not necessarily against killing, and that, translated, the Hebrew Lo tirtzach! “has a clear and unequivocal meaning:

“Do not murder,” and not do not kill.

Read “The Ten Commandments, Killing, and Murder”: A Detailed Commentary by Rabbi Dovid Bendory, Rabbinic Director, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

Updated: Israel Should Help Its Kurdish Friends

Iraq, Israel, Jihad, Middle East, Religion

I hope the following unconfirmed rumor is true. Accordingly, “Israel may be attacking positions held by the terrorist Islamic State, or ISIS, militia,” in Iraq.

Israel is the region’s superpower, not the US. It should save its friends the Kurds, who’re besieged—dying or soon to die—in the north. The Kurds have been loyal friends to Israel, and vice versa. (See “Why Israel Wants an Independent Kurdistan.”)

For its part, “The United States military launched a humanitarian operation in northern Iraq Thursday night,” reports National Journal. “The military air-dropped food and water for thousands of Iraqis who have been under attack by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). That drop is now over, and the aircraft that conducted it is out of the area, says the official.”

“Nearly all the displaced are members of the Yazidi sect,” seconds McClatchy, “ethnic Kurdish adherents to a religion that combines Islam and ancient Persian pagan beliefs and is considered heresy by the radical Sunni Muslims who make up the Islamic State. Since Islamic State militants took control of Sinjar on Sunday, there have been widespread, though unconfirmed, reports that Yazidis who failed to escape the takeover have been executed, tortured and raped.”

The United Nations said this week that at least 40,000 people, including 25,000 children, were in the Sinjar Mountains with no shelter, food, medical supplies and, most crucially, because of the brutal Iraqi summer heat, drinking water. While the mountains’ remoteness and barren terrain offers some protection from the Islamic State, the militants control all approaches to the area.

Local news outlets have reported that dozens of children and elderly already have died from dehydration and that thousands more could succumb if massive amounts of aid are not delivered. Efforts to confirm those accounts by dialing the cellphones of people believed to have fled into the mountains failed, most likely because after days without electricity the cellphones’ batteries have died.

This is the face of real religious persecution; this is what authentic refugees look like. Let us hope Israel rescues its Kurdish friends.

UPDATE: Do I want Israel to be involved militarily in fighting for the Kurds? No. It can drop supplies and air lift those poor people to safety. They should. They did this before for roughly 36,000 Ethiopian Jews, who were lifted to safety in a series of daring operations initiated by successive Likud governments headed by Menachem Begin and then Yitzhak Shamir. It’s hard to imagine an American government doing the same for say, white, persecuted, Christian farmers in South Africa or Zimbabwe, who are no less oppressed than these Ethiopian Jews were by the brutal Marxist-Leninist Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, at the time.

Will I shed tears and twist into ideological pretzels over Israeli counter-aggression in the service of the Kurds? No.

Morality And Religion

Constitution, Founding Fathers, History, Law, Morality, Religion

On this Good Friday and Passover, it is worth remembering George Washington’s message on morality and religion, in his 1796 Farewell Address.

“Washington—in light of the dreadful events which had occurred in Revolutionary France—wished to dispel for good any notion that America was a secular state. It was a government of laws but also of morals,” writes historian Paul Johnson, in The History of the American People. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,’ he insisted, ‘religion and morality are indispensable supports.’ Anyone who tried to undermine these ‘great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens,’ was the very opposite of a patriot.” (P. 229)

There can be no “security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice.” Nor can morality be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

What Washington was saying, explains Johnson, is that America, “being a free republic, dependent for its order on the good behavior of its citizens, cannot survive without religion. And that was in the nature of things.” (P. 229)

It’s hard to reconcile modern-day USA with the America the Founding Fathers bequeathed and envisaged. The law, a branch in what has become a tripartite tyranny, has plunged Americans into a struggle to express their faith outside their homes and places of worship.

Forgotten in all this is that religion is also a proxy for morality. (And I say this as an irreligious individual.)

A Supremely Ugly And Evil Oligarchy

Constitution, Gender, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Religion, The Courts

“Decent people are sick and tired of conservatives in their bedrooms and liberals in every other room.” This applies to the tyranny that is the U.S. SCOTUS (Supreme Court). It also covers the Court’s philosophical complexion, unless Justice Anthony Kennedy deigns to injects a tiny smidgen of libertarianism, if you can call it that, into this oligarchy’s debates. Via SCOTUSblog:

This morning, the [SCOTUS] heard a new and different challenge arising out of the Affordable Care Act: can a business be required to provide its female employees with health insurance that includes access to free birth control, even if doing so would violate the strong religious beliefs of the family that owns the business?

Said Ugly and Evil (behold. Or under “Recent Headlines and Pictures”):

“Those employers could choose not to give health insurance [to all their employees] and pay not that high a penalty – not that high a tax,” Sotomayor said. … “And in that case Hobby Lobby [plaintiff] would pay $2,000 per employee, which is less that Hobby Lobby probably pays to provide insurance to its employees,” Kagan said. “So there is a choice here. It’s not even a penalty by – in the language of the statute. It’s a payment or a tax. There’s a choice.”

Yes, push the poor male victims of Obamacare and all right-thinking women onto the Zerocare exchange, just because some females wish to screw themselves sillier on the public dime. These despicable women “have the right to purchase the stuff, but not to rope other Americans (including insurers) into supplying it.”