'Stoning' Actress Gets It Wrong

Stoning of Soraya M actress spreads comforting falsehoods

By Robert Spencer

Does stoning really have "nothing to do with Islam"?

The Stoning of Soraya M. is a great film; I attended an advance screening of it last year in Los Angeles, and strongly recommend that you see it. It is a powerfully moving indictment of the Islamic practice of stoning adulterers, and indirectly of the Sharia in general -- however, those connected with the film are doing their level best to avoid giving the impression that the film has anything to do with Islam at all. The latest to do this, but by no means the only one, is actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, who portrays the victim's close friend. This is understandable in today's politically correct Obamoid climate, but it is unfortunate for the Muslim women who are victimized by this barbaric practice: they will never get justice as long as the world is busy making excuses for what victimizes them, instead of calling to account those who are responsible.

Anyway, Aghdashloo makes a number of factually false statements in an interview she gave Thursday to Todd Hill of the Staten Island Advance -- not just false, but misleading, and ultimately enabling those who perpetuate the practice of stoning. In it, she said that stoning has "been happening since the Stone Age, in Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Other nations and religions have gotten rid of it, and all of a sudden, after 2,000 years of monarchy we're facing it in Iran. What makes me feel devastated is the fact that it's happening there, the cradle of civilization."

"It's been happening since the Stone Age, in Judaism, Christianity, Islam." In fact, no. The Hebrew Scriptures mandate stoning but it has not been carried out in Judaism since the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., or before that. Islamic tradition contains stories of Muhammad confronting Jewish rabbis who try to conceal the fact that the Torah teaches stoning -- they seem to know that Muhammad was a brutal flat-footed literalist who would demand they carry out these teachings literally, when they understood them in a quite different way.

As for Christianity, stoning has never been practiced except among those strange Christians one encounters only in TV dramas. Jesus famously raised the bar for stoning beyond human reach when he said to a crowd that was poised to stone an adulteress, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7).

Aghdashloo also, according to Hill, "stressed that stoning isn't mentioned in the Koran." She said: "It has nothing to do with Islam. It's under the category of superstitions and traditions, but obviously those who have hijacked Islam are manipulating people and using this as an Islamic law. It is not, really."

Stoning has everything to do with Islam and Islamic law. The caliph Umar, one of Muhammad's closest companions, even maintained that it was originally in the Qur'an:

‘Umar said, "I am afraid that after a long time has passed, people may say, "We do not find the Verses of the Rajam (stoning to death) in the Holy Book," and consequently they may go astray by leaving an obligation that Allah has revealed. Lo! I confirm that the penalty of Rajam be inflicted on him who commits illegal sexual intercourse, if he is already married and the crime is proved by witnesses or pregnancy or confession." Sufyan added, "I have memorized this narration in this way." ‘Umar added, "Surely Allah's Apostle carried out the penalty of Rajam, and so did we after him." (Bukhari, vol. 8, bk. 82, no. 816)

"Allah's Apostle" is, of course, Muhammad, who did indeed carry out stonings. Here is the hadith in which he challenges the rabbis about stoning, and in which there is amidst the barbarism and brutality a final act of love and compassion:

The Jews came to Allah's Apostle and told him that a man and a woman from amongst them had committed illegal sexual intercourse. Allah's Apostle said to them, "What do you find in the Torah (old Testament) about the legal punishment of Ar-Rajm (stoning)?" They replied, (But) we announce their crime and lash them." Abdullah bin Salam said, "You are telling a lie; Torah contains the order of Rajm." They brought and opened the Torah and one of them solaced his hand on the Verse of Rajm and read the verses preceding and following it. Abdullah bin Salam said to him, "Lift your hand." When he lifted his hand, the Verse of Rajm was written there. They said, "Muhammad has told the truth; the Torah has the Verse of Rajm. The Prophet then gave the order that both of them should be stoned to death. (‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar said, "I saw the man leaning over the woman to shelter her from the stones." (Bukhari, vol. 4, bk. 56, no. 829)

Even the monkeys practiced stoning, according to another hadith:

During the pre-lslamic period of ignorance I saw a she-monkey surrounded by a number of monkeys. They were all stoning it, because it had committed illegal sexual intercourse. I too, stoned it along with them. (Bukhari, vol. 5, bk. 58, no. 188)

Muhammad's example is, of course, normative for Islamic behavior, since "verily in the messenger of Allah ye have a good example for him who looketh unto Allah and the Last Day, and remembereth Allah much" (Qur'an 33:21).

And so Islamic law does indeed mandate stoning for adultery. ‘Umdat al-Salik, a manual of Islamic law endorsed by Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the most influential institution in the world of Sunni Islam, says this about the penalty for adultery:

If the offender is someone with the capacity to remain chaste, then he or she is stoned to death..., someone with the capacity to remain chaste meaning anyone who has had sexual intercourse (A: at least once) with their spouse in a valid marriage, and is free, of age, and sane....

If the penalty is stoning, the offender is stoned even in severe heat or cold, and even if he has an illness from which he is expected to recover. A pregnant woman is not stoned until she gives birth and the child can suffice with the milk of another. (‘Umdat al-Salik o12.2, o12.6)

The film is great, and depicts the truth. It is a pity that the film's actors and producers feel compelled to deny and downplay the real cause of this crime against humanity. By doing so, they only ensure that it will keep happening.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad.

17 Comments on "Stoning of Soraya M actress spreads comforting falsehoods"

'Stoning' Actress Gets It Wrong

Aghdashloo makes false claims about stoning: 'nothing to do with Islam'

by Mark Moring

Robert Spencer of American Thinker calls out Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo (pictured here) for statements she made when publicizing her new film, The Stoning of Soraya M.

Spencer cites of few of Aghdashloo's comments in an interview with the Staten Island Advance, in which she says that stoning "has been happening since the Stone Age, in Judaism, Christianity, Islam." Spencer replies, "In fact, no," and goes on to state his case, showing where Aghdashloo gets it wrong.

Writes Spencer: "The Hebrew Scriptures mandate stoning but it has not been carried out in Judaism since the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., or before that. Islamic tradition contains stories of Muhammad confronting Jewish rabbis who try to conceal the fact that the Torah teaches stoning -- they seem to know that Muhammad was a brutal flat-footed literalist who would demand they carry out these teachings literally, when they understood them in a quite different way.

"As for Christianity, stoning has never been practiced except among those strange Christians one encounters only in TV dramas. Jesus famously raised the bar for stoning beyond human reach when he said to a crowd that was poised to stone an adulteress, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8:7)."

Spencer then goes into a lengthy discussion about Islam's history with stoning, disputing Aghdashloo's claim that stoning isn't mentioned in the Koran and has nothing to do with Islamic law. Spencer: "Stoning has everything to do with Islam and Islamic law."

I am not a follower of Chabad or the Rebbe. This is posted so as to show the resilience of Jews and Judaism.

Stalin Vs. Schneerson

82 years later, who won?

By: Rabbi YY Jacobson

If there was ever a battle fought in vain, this was it.

The year is 1924. Vladimir Lenin, the father of the communist revolution, is dead; Over 900,000 people pass through the Hall of Columns during the four days and nights that Lenin lay in state.

Josef Stalin succeeds him as the new leader of the Soviet Union. During the following thirty years, he would murder 20 million of his own people. Jews and Judaism would be one of his primary targets. He sets up a special government organization, the Yevsektzye, to ensure that Russian Jewry in its millions embrace the new ethos of Communism, introducing a paradise constructed of bullets and gulags.

Stalin would rule with an iron fist till his death in March 1953, when four million people would gather in Red Square to bid farewell to the tyrant revered and beloved by much of his nation and by many millions the world over.

At his home in Leningrad (today Petersburg), a 44-year-old rabbi, heir to some of the great Jewish leaders of Russian Jewry, summons nine young disciples. He offers them an opportunity most would refuse: to take responsibility for the survival of Judaism in the Soviet Union; to ensure that Jewish life and faith would survive the hellish darkness of Stalin’s regime. He wants them to fight “till the last drop of blood,” in his words.

They agree. He gives his hand to each of them as a sign that they are accepting an oath, an oath that would transform their destiny forever. "I will be the tenth, he says; together we have a minyan"...

An Underground Revolution

The nine men were dispatched throughout the country. With assistance from similar minded colleagues, they created an impressive underground network of Jewish activity, which included Jewish schools, synagogues, mikvaot (ritual baths used by Jewish woman for spiritual feminine reinvigoration), adult Torah education, Yeshivot (academies for Torah learning for students), Jewish text books, providing rabbis for communities, teachers for schools, etc. Over the 1920's and 1930's, these individuals built six hundred (!) Jewish underground schools throughout the U.S.S.R (1). Many of them last for only a few weeks or months. When the KGB (the secret Russian police) discovered a school, the children were expelled, the teacher arrested. A new one was opened elsewhere, usually in a cell or on a roof.

One of the nine young men was sent to Georgia. There were dozens of mikvaot there, all shut down by the communists who buried them in sand and gravel. This young man decided to do something radical. He falsified a letter written supposedly by the KGB headquarters in Moscow, instructing the local offices in Georgia to open two mikvaot within 24 hours.

The local officials were deceived. Within a day, two mikvaot were open. Several months later, when they discovered the lie, they shut them down again.

And so it went. A mohel (the person performing the mitzvah of circumcision) was arrested, and another one was dispatched to serve the community; a yeshiva was closed, and another one opened elsewhere; a synagogue was destroyed and another one opened its portals in secrecy.

But it sure seemed like a lost battle. Here was an individual rabbi, with a small group of pupils, staging an underground rebellion against a mighty empire that numbered in the hundreds of millions, and aspired to dominate the world. It was like an infant wrestling a giant, an aunt attempting to defeat a human. The situation was hopeless.

Finally, in 1927 – eighty-two years ago -- they lost their patience with him. The rabbi behind the counter-revolutionary work was arrested and sentenced to death by a firing squad. Foreign pressure and nothing less than a miracle convinced the KGB to alter the sentence to ten years in exile. It was then converted to three years, and then -- quite unbelievable in the Soviet Regime where clergy and laymen alike were murdered like flies -- he was completely exonerated. This Shabbos, July 4, the 12^th of the Hebrew month of Tamuz, marks the 82^th anniversary of the day he was liberated from Stalin’s death sentence and imprisonment.

The individual behind the mutiny was the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schnuerson (1880-1950), who became the leader of Chabad in 1920, after the passing of his father. He selected nine of his young pupils to battle with him. The one sent to Georgia, falsifying the KGB document, was my grandfather, Simon Yakabashvili, my father’s father (1900-1953). He, together with hundreds of his colleagues, Chassidim throughout the Soviet Union, was arrested in 1938, tortured mercilessly and given a 25-year sentence in the Gulag. Most of his eight colleagues who accepted the oath never made it out of Stalin’s hell. They perished in the Soviet Union. (My grandfather made it out but died several tears later in Toronto).

Investing in Eternity

More than eight decades have passed. This passage of time gives us the opportunity to answer the question, who won? Stalin or Schnueerson?

Eighty years ago, Marks’ socialism and Lenin’s communism heralded a new era for humanity. Its seemingly endless power and brutality seemed unreachable.

Yet one man stood up, a man who would not allow the awesome war machine of Mother Russia to blare his vision, to eclipse his clarity. In the depths of his soul he was aware that history had an undercurrent often invisible to most but discernable for students of the long and dramatic narrative of our people. He knew with full conviction that evil might thrive but it will die; yet G-dliness -- embodied in Torah and Mitzvos -- are eternal. And he chose to invest in eternity.

He did not know how exactly how it would work out in the end, but he knew that his mission in life was to sow seeds though the trees were being felled one by one.

Cynics scoffed at him; close friends told him he was making a tragic mistake. Even many of his religious colleagues were convinced that he was wasting his time and energy fighting an impossible war. They either fled the country or kept a very low profile.

But 80 years later, this giant and what he represented have emerged triumphant. Today, in 2009, in the republics of the former Soviet Union stand hundreds of synagogues, Jewish day schools, yeshivot, mikvaot, Jewish community centers. As summer is about to begin, dozens of Jewish day camps are about to open up throughout the former Union with tens of thousands of Jewish children who will enjoy a blissful summer coupled with the celebration of Jewish life.

Last Chanukah, a large menorah stood tall in the Kremlin, casting the glow of Chanukah on the grounds where Stalin walked with Berya and Yezhov. On Lag Baomer (a Jewish holiday), thousands of Jewish children with kippot on their heads marched the streets of Moscow with signs proclaiming, "Hear oh Israel... G-d is One." Jewish life is bustling in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, etc.

Comrade Stalin is dead; communism has faded away as hopelessly irrelevant and destructive. The sun of the nations is today a clod of darkness. The ideology of the Soviet Empire which declared "Lenin has not died and Stalin will not die. He is eternal," is now a mockery. Stalin and Lenin are as dead as one can be. But the Mikvaot built by the Lubavitcher Rebbe in 1927, they are still here.

If you will visit Russia this coming Shabbos, I am not sure you will find anybody celebrating the life and vision of Stalin or even Khrushchev and Brezhnev. But you will find tens of thousands of Jews celebrating the liberation of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in 1927 and the narrative of one man’s triumph over one of the greatest mass-murderers in human history, sharing his vision, committing themselves to continue his labor of saturating the world with the light of Torah and Mitzvos.

L’chayim!

To comment on this article, please click here.

1) This figure was given to be by Rabbi Sholom Ber Levin, chief librarian of the Central Lubavitch Library.

Nuuuu, again Jews are a part of the story

Jackson kids’ Jewish mother could regain custody

June 28, 2009

LOS ANGELES (JTA) -- Reports are conflicting over whether the Jewish mother of two of the late Michael Jackson's children will seek custody.

Jackson, the "King of Pop" who died Friday of unspecified causes, and Debbie Rowe are the parents of Prince Michael I, 12, and Paris Michael Katherine, 11. By virtue of having a Jewish mother, they are considered Jewish.

According to London's Sunday Times, sources close to Rowe said she will not fight Katherine Jackson, the pop star's mother, for custody of the children, and that she would be satisfied with more access to them.

But Iris Finsilver, Rowe’s attorney, told the Associated Press that she was certain that Rowe would seek custody of the two children. Finsilver had previously confirmed that Rowe was Jewish.

Jackson married Rowe, his former nurse, in 1996, when she was six months pregnant following his divorce from Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of the famed late singer Elvis Presley.

Rowe signed a contract waiving her parental rights after she and Jackson divorced in 1999. She later contested the contract, among other arguments expressing her fears that the children were exposed to the teachings of the Nation of Islam through their nanny and some of Jackson’s siblings.

An appeals court ruled in her favor in 2006, but ultimately the custody battle was settled out of court.

Legal authorities contacted by the Los Angeles Times in general agreed that under California law, Rowe would be likely to regain custody, even if Jackson had designated another guardian in his will.

Jackson had a third child, Prince Michael II, with a surrogate mother whose identity has not been revealed.

Theology Expert Offers Guide to Three Major Faiths

Theology Expert Offers Guide to Three Major Faiths

Iquitos Journal

Adopting Forebears’ Faith and Leaving Peru for Israel

Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Peruvian Jews celebrating the Sabbath at a synagogue in Iquitos.

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By SIMON ROMERO

Published: June 21, 2009

IQUITOS, Peru — If Ronald Reátegui Levy someday finds that he is the last Jew of Iquitos, it may well be of his own doing.

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Times Topics: Jews and Judaism | Peru

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Tomas Munita for The New York Times

Ronald Reátegui Levy, a Jewish oil field inspector, has persuaded many Jews in the town to move to Israel.

His dream, which he has vigorously pursued, is to persuade the descendants of Sephardic merchants who settled in this remote corner of the Amazon basin more than a century ago to reaffirm their ties to Judaism and emigrate to Israel.

“It is getting very lonely here,” said Mr. Reátegui Levy, 52, an inspector at Peru’s national oil company, referring to the more than 400 descendants of Jewish pioneers who have formally converted to Judaism this decade, including about 160 members of his immediate and extended family. Nearly all of them now live in Israel.

Until recently, such a rebirth of Judaism here seemed unlikely. The history of Jews in Iquitos, dating from the late-19th-century rubber boom that transformed this far-flung Amazonian outpost into a once thriving city of imported Italian marble and a theater designed by Gustave Eiffel, was almost forgotten.

But Mr. Reátegui Levy and a handful of others began organizing the descendants of dozens of Jews from places as varied as Morocco, Gibraltar, Malta, England and France who had settled here and deeper in the jungle, opening trading houses and following their star in search of riches and adventure.

The rubber trade collapsed, and fortunes here and upriver in the Brazilian city of Manaus vanished. Some Jewish immigrants perished young, succumbing to diseases like cholera. A few stayed, marrying local women and raising families. Others returned home, leaving behind descendants who clung to a belief that they were Jews.

“It was astounding to discover that in Iquitos there existed this group of people who were desperate to reconnect to their roots and re-establish ties to the broader Jewish world,” said Lorry Salcedo Mitrani, the director of a new documentary, “The Fire Within,” about the Jews of the Peruvian Amazon.

Scholars compare the Jews here with groups like the Hispanic crypto-Jews of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, the Lemba of southern Africa or the Bene Israel of India, who in varying ways have sought to reclaim a Jewish identity that had seemingly been weakened through time.

“We were isolated for so many decades, living on the jungle’s edge in a Catholic society without rabbis or a synagogue, in which all we had were some vague notions of what it meant to be Jewish,” Mr. Reátegui Levy said.

“But when I was a child, my mother told me something that forever burned into my mind,” he said. “She told me, ‘You are a Jew, and you are never to forget that.’ ”

Iquitos lies four degrees south of the Equator, reachable only by boat or plane. Isolation, intermarriage and assimilation nearly wiped out the vestiges of Judaism here. Storefronts chiseled with Jewish surnames like Foinquinos and Cohen, and a cemetery ravaged by vandals, served as some of the few reminders of the community that once thrived here.

But by the end of the 1990s, some of these descendants, including Mr. Reátegui Levy, were brought together by Víctor Edery, a patriarchal figure who organized religious ceremonies in his own home, keeping a few customs alive even if it was done by blending Jewish and Christian beliefs.

Still, the existence of the Jews of Iquitos posed some philosophical challenges to some Jews elsewhere. Since nearly all the Jews who originally settled here were men, their descendants could not attest to having Jewish mothers, ruling them out as being Jewish according to strict interpretations of Jewish law.

Moreover, the Jewish community of about 3,000 people in Lima, the capital, largely preferred to ignore the Jews of Iquitos, some scholars say, in part because of the thorny issues that the Jews here posed about race and origins. This is, after all, a country where a small light-skinned elite still wields considerable economic and political power — and Lima’s Jews are often seen as an elite within that elite.

“The notion of a Jew who looks like an Indian and lives in a poor house in a small city in the middle of the jungle is, at best, an exotic footnote to the official history of Peru’s Jewry as Lima sees it,” said Ariel Segal, a Venezuelan-born Israeli historian whose arrival here in the 1990s to study the community also helped serve as a catalyst for the Iquitos Jews to organize.

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By the start of this decade, the Jews here were gathering to observe Shabbat each Friday and during the High Holy Days at the home of the patriarch, Mr. Edery. After he died, they met on Próspero Street at the home of Jorge Abramovitz, 60, whose father, a Polish Jew, moved here long after the collapse of the rubber boom.

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The New York Times

Many people in Iquitos with Jewish ancestors formally convert and emigrate to Israel.

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While they lacked a rabbi, they conducted services in Hebrew they learned from cassette tapes. They cleaned their cemetery and began burying their dead there again. They persisted in their campaign to be recognized as Jews and to be allowed to emigrate to Israel.

Finally, they persuaded Guillermo Bronstein, the chief rabbi of Lima’s largest Ashkenazi synagogue, to oversee two large conversions, easing the way for hundreds to move to Israel. The exodus included nearly the entire Levy clan, descended from Joseph Levy, an adventurer who put down stakes here in the 19th century.

Mr. Reátegui Levy, the oil field inspector, moved in 2005 with his wife and six children to Ramla, a dusty city southeast of Tel Aviv. But despite dreaming for decades of such a move, he said he had trouble adjusting to Israeli life.

He said he missed his house with cacao and passion fruit trees, and the status of being a manager at PetroPerú. He murmured something, just audible over the din of this city’s thousands of motorcycle rickshaws, about losing the spark of love with his wife.

So, unlike nearly all the Iquiteños who moved to Israel, Mr. Reátegui Levy moved back, alone.

He still attends Shabbat at Mr. Abramovitz’s home each week, along with 40 or so other regulars who dream of formally converting and moving to Israel. While their numbers have dwindled, he encourages them and regales them with tales of fertile land in the Golan Heights and the bravery of his eldest son, Uri, who is in the Israeli Army.

But something keeps Mr. Reátegui Levy here in Iquitos, the same decaying jungle city that attracted his great-grandfather from Tangier so many decades ago. “My family, my heart and soul, all that I hold dear are in Israel,” he said. “Maybe I am back here for a reason.”

“Fear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”

A truly excellent commentary by Mr. Alperson

Op-Ed: Don’t fear ‘God,’ ‘Torah’ and ‘Judaism’

By Joel Alperson · June 15, 2009

OMAHA (JTA) -- “Fear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”

No, it's not a typo. The Shema, which starts “Hear O Israel,” is the central credo of the Jewish people. It states that there is only one God -- and as a result, only one set of divinely authored ethics and imperatives.

According to the Torah, the Jews were given the daunting task of bringing God-based universal ethics to the world. However, given the number of Jews who are uncomfortable with such a mandate and with religious imperatives in general, I now worry that our prayer could read “Fear O Israel.”

I have this worry because a great number of non-Orthodox Jews -- I am not Orthodox -- are afraid to mention the core concepts of our remarkable religion. We fear that by talking too much or even about any Judaism, even among ourselves, we’ll sound too Christian, too much like our religious oppressors of centuries past, or like Orthodox Jews.

Examples?

I’ve collected the mission statements of the largest 17 Jewish federations in North America, and not one mentions “God,” “Torah” or “Judaism.” Nor do the mission statements of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, Hillel, the National Council of Jewish Women, The Wexner Heritage Foundation, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, Hadassah and the Jewish National Fund. Of all the organizations I looked into, only United Jewish Communities mentions but one of the three words, Torah, in its mission statement.

Some surely will be quick to say that the above organizations were not created to convey religious concepts. That is precisely my point: How can we say these organizations are Jewish and at the same time don’t need to mention God, Torah or Judaism?

They are not afraid to use other religious terms -- many of them mention “tzedakah” (charity), “klal yisroel” (Jewish peoplehood) and “tikkun olam” (repair the world). Why are those words appropriate and not the others I’ve mentioned?

Many Jewish organizations apparently feel the need to embrace terms that are universal in nature and avoid terms that are more particularistic. Tzedakah, tikkun olam and klal yisroel are considered universal and inclusive terms.

But God? What about those Jews who don't believe in God, or have their doubts? Wouldn’t they be excluded when God is mentioned in a mission statement?

Torah? Authored by whom? God, man or a combination of the two? And what about those who don’t consider themselves to be Torah observant?

Judaism? Whose Judaism? Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Humanistic or something else?

The more our terms suggest that we’re not all the same, the more we shy away from using them. Yet the more we shy away from God, Torah and Judaism, the more we distance ourselves from the foundational elements of our religion and of our people. Consider, therefore, how much meaning we sacrifice to give the impression that we’re inclusive.

I realize that simply adding these words to rarely referenced mission statements is unlikely to significantly better the Jewish world all by itself. As they are currently used, the mission statements not only are guidelines for addressing our Jewish challenges. Perhaps more important, they offer insights into our collective Jewish psyches.

We must be the only people on the planet who believe we can transmit a message to future generations without saying specifically what that message is. Is it any wonder that most Jews cannot articulate Jewish purpose beyond some catch phrases or beyond merely expressing a desire that we survive as a people?

It cannot be coincidental that as generations of Jews become further and further removed from God-talk, they also give less and less tzedakah. We should no longer confuse generic feel-good terms with knowing specifically what the Torah, however we choose to interpret it, asks of us.

The great Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote that “Man is a messenger who forgot the message.” This particularly applies to we Jews: Too many have become messengers who fear their message. The sooner we overcome that fear, the sooner we can talk more about the brilliant and profound life Judaism offers us.

As we talk about, teach and increasingly live that life, more of the Jews we wish would join us will actually do so. They, too, have a need. They want purpose in their lives that money alone cannot fulfill. They want a sense of community that country club memberships won’t satisfy. In short, they want richness in their lives that Judaism and Jewish community can provide in endless amounts.

But make no mistake. We cannot effectively distinguish ourselves from all the other enticing options from which Jews can choose unless we speak to our discomfort-inducing distinctions. As we do this, our communities will become more compelling and more meaningful to more Jews. Ironically, rather than divisive, it is this approach that will make us more inclusive.

(Joel Alperson is a past national campaign chair for United Jewish Communities. He lives in Omaha, Neb. His views do not necessarily represent those of the UJC.)

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“Acknowledging Israel’s History”

In response to Obama's "Historic" speech to the Muslim world two weeks ago, Senator Robert Menendez spoke on the Senate Floor yesterday--please take a minute and call his office at 202-224-4744 to thank him.

Remarks of Sen. Menendez

Floor of the United States Senate

“Acknowledging Israel’s History”

16 June 2009

M. President,

Last Wednesday, just a few blocks down the street, a neo-Nazi opened fire at the Holocaust Museum. He murdered a security guard and terrorized the museum’s visitors, including school children, who had come to learn, to express sympathy, to pray. That evil act was the work of a killer who had made his hatred of other religions and ethnic groups well known. And it was a reminder that intolerance, ignorance and anti-Semitism have not yet been defeated in our world.

This tragedy reminds us of the need for sound understanding of one of the darkest episodes in the history of the world. Far too many misrepresent the significance of the Holocaust, especially in regards to the State of Israel and her people. And far too many deny it happened altogether, out of bigotry, hatred and spite.

In the face of so much misunderstanding, I’m compelled today to speak up about the role of the Holocaust in Israel’s history, and Israel’s challenges in preventing anti-Semitic murder from continuing to happen.

M. President,

The Holocaust was the most sinister possible reminder that the Jewish population in exile was in constant jeopardy. It was a definitive argument that anti-Semitism could appear anywhere, and its horrors galvanized international support for the State of Israel.

But let's be very clear: while the Shoah has a central role in Israel's identity, it is not the reason behind its founding and it is not the main justification for its existence.

The extreme characterization of this mistaken view is the following: the Western powers established Israel in 1948 based on their own guilt, at the expense of the Arab peoples who lived there. Therefore, the current state is illegitimate and should all be wiped off the face of the map.

This flawed argument is not only in defiance of basic human dignity but in plain defiance of history. It is in defiance of ancient history, as told in Biblical texts and through archeological evidence. And it ignores the history of the last several centuries.

Because of what’s at stake, it’s well worth reviewing this history in detail, and let me make a modest attempt at a very broad overview.

There has been a continuity of Jewish presence in the Holy Land for thousands of years. Jewish kings and governments were established in the area that is now Israel several millennia ago. After untold years of Jewish sovereignty, based in Jerusalem, the land of the Jewish people fell repeatedly to invaders: Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, many others.

Jews were repeatedly massacred and expelled, and the departure of so many from the land they had always called home developed into an unparalleled Diaspora.

From the 16^th century until the early 20^th century, the land that is now Israel was under the control of a distant Ottoman caliphate based in Istanbul—and during this time, as earlier, many Jews returned to their ancestral homeland.

The Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, and the treaty they signed with the Allied Powers granted Great Britain a mandate over the area then known as Palestine.

The League of Nations endorsed and clarified this mandate in 1922, requiring Britain to reconstitute a Jewish national home within the territory they controlled, in accordance with a declaration made by British Foreign Secretary Balfour in 1917, making the restoration of Jewish communities in that area a matter of international law.

By the time World War II had ended, there were more than 600,000 Jews living in the British Mandate of Palestine. In 1947 the United Nations approved a plan to partition the territory into Arab and Jewish states. The Jewish Agency accepted the plan. The Arabs did not.

On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel declared its independence. On May 15, five Arab nations declared war. Despite being surrounded on all sides, Israel prevailed and expanded its borders, providing a small additional measure of security against attacks which were certain to come—and did.

So, to be clear, the more than 700,000 Palestinians who left Israel were refugees of a war instigated by Arab governments, bent on seizing more land for themselves.

But the Arabs who left Israel after its modern founding weren’t the only displaced population in the Middle East. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who left Europe during and after the Holocaust, in the 20^th century, more than three quarters of a million Jews fled or were expelled from their homes in Arab and Middle Eastern nations—in cities that many of their families had lived in for nearly a millennium.

Their possessions were taken, their livelihoods were destroyed, victims of nationalism and hatred of Israel.^[1]

M. President, several thousand years of history lead to an undeniable conclusion: the reestablishment of the state of Israel in modern times is a political reality with roots going back to the time of Abraham.

And so, the way to consider the immeasurable impact of the Holocaust on Israel is not to ask whether the state would exist otherwise.

It is, at least in one sense, to imagine how even more vibrant Israel would be if millions upon millions had not been denied a chance to know it.

M. President,

The attacks on Israel have barely stopped since 1948. Not just attacks by armies but attacks by individuals, attacks by tanks and terrorists—attacks have come in the form of stones and they have come in the form of speeches. Its enemies have attempted to assassinate its people with rockets and assassinate its national character with hateful rhetoric.

Today, it is still surrounded by hostility; its back is still to the sea. It is surrounded by hostility from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

In looking at the threat Israel faces on its southwestern border, one thing must be absolutely, indisputably, unequivocally clear: there is no moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas. Israel is a sovereign, democratic state of seven and a half million people—Jews, Muslims, Christians.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. It won control of Gaza after men in ski masks waged gun battles with another branch of Palestinian leadership. It used that control to launch rockets at sleeping children in the nearby Israeli cities of Ashkelon and Sderot. This is the thanks Israel got for withdrawing from Gaza.

Hamas does not recognize agreements that Palestinian leaders have reached with Israel in the past, it does not recognize Israel’s right to exist at all—and in fact it is ideologically committed to Israel’s annihilation.

Gaza’s people thirst for freedom and opportunity but are held hostage to Hamas’s thirst for destruction, and even today, after the consequences of menacing Israel became clear in a disastrous war, weapons are flowing freely through tunnels into Gaza, Hamas has rearmed, and it is readying itself for the day when it’s going to take on Israel again.

Hamas and Hezbollah may be the head of the snake when it comes to terrorism, but the tail extends much farther back. The weapons terrorists use were sent from Iran. Money they received was sent from Iran.

Propaganda supporting Hamas’s campaign of terror and calling for Israel’s destruction was conceived in, produced by and broadcast from Iran.

The fundamentalist regime in Teheran isn't just an emerging threat, it doesn’t just have the potential to be a threat to Israel’s existence, it is a threat to Israel’s existence. And under no circumstances whatsoever can we allow that conventional threat to become a nuclear one.

Especially in light of the threat of Iran, and in light of the threats extremists pose to so many innocent civilians around the globe, the importance of Israel as a strategic ally and friend to the United States could not be clearer. It is hard to overstate the value of having such a stalwart democratic ally in such a critical part of the world, an ally in terms of intelligence gathering, economics, politics and culture.

Israel is a rose in a desert rampant with repression, a force of moderation against fundamentalism and extremism. It is an ally we can constantly depend on, and count on, to be with us in international fora and on the key decisions that affect the safety and security of Americans around the world.

For more than six decades it has been a key U.S. trading partner and a scientific innovator. We have Israeli engineers to thank for everything from advances in solar power to cell phone technology to AOL Instant Messenger.

Equipment we’re using in Iraq to fight terrorism and keep American troops safe was developed in Israel—and medical treatments we’re using in U.S. hospitals to fight cancer, heart disease and chronic pain were developed in Israel. Israeli-born actors are stars of Hollywood, and an Israeli astronaut has accompanied Americans into space.

So it’s not just in the interests of Israel to have its full history recognized, it is in the national interests and national security interests of the United States. It is in our interests to fully remember the unbreakable bond that has made us both stronger over the last 61 years, and to make it unmistakable that our commitment is as strong as ever.

M. President,

The argument for Israel's legitimacy does not depend on what we say in speeches. It has been made by history. It has been made by the men and women who have made the desert green, by Nobel Prizes earned, by groundbreaking innovations and enviable institutions, by lives saved, democracy defended, peace made, battles won.

There can be no denying the Jewish people’s legitimate right to live in peace and security on a homeland to which they have had a connection for thousands of years.

We can and must move forward in the peace process, and look for ways to reach agreement between all sides. But we cannot erase the moral distinctions between tyranny and freedom and we must not edit history.

If we stay true to history and follow our moral compass, I'm optimistic that talks can lead to understanding and resolution of the very sensitive, detailed and tough issues we face.

M. President,

The next pages of Middle Eastern history are not doomed to be stained by an endless, senseless fight to the death. It doesn’t have to be that way. Different peoples of vastly different backgrounds have peacefully thrived in the Middle East for generations upon generations, and this coexistence can happen once more.

Let us remember the words of Egyptian President Anwar Al-Sadat in 1978 when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace, words that not long before would have seemed incredibly unlikely.

He said, quote, “Let us put an end to wars, let us reshape life on the solid basis of equity and truth. And it is this call…of the great majority of the Arab and Israeli peoples, and indeed of millions of men, women, and children around the world that you are today honoring. And these hundreds of millions will judge to what extent every responsible leader in the Middle East has responded to the hopes of mankind.” End quote.

I have been to Israel. I have shaken the hands of its citizens and visited its holy places. I know that in the heart of Israelis there is a strong desire for peace.

We can never lose sight of why peace is so important.

After the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, the Jewish people would forever be mindful that no one knows what turns history will take.

And every day we’re mindful that anti-Semitism has not gone away, whether in the form of a firebombing of a French synagogue, defamatory comments by a government official in South Africa or a senseless murder here in Washington, D.C.

Israel is the one place in the world, the one place, where anti-Semitism can be structurally impossible. It is the field of hope on which fear can be vanquished, the island of refuge that can stand firm no matter how stormy the sea of history turns. And that’s why we must always keep it safe, and always keep it free.

The United States is not simply allied with a government—it’s an ally of Israel’s people. It’s an ally of Israel’s democratic ideals. It’s an ally of its history, of its aspirations for peace and prosperity, its can-do spirit and amazing resilience in the face of threats from all sides. In that sense, we’re not just Israel’s allies, we’re admirers. We’re partners. And we are friends.

I plan to do everything I can to see that we support that friendship, this year, next year, every year.

Martin Luther King said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” We know that in Israel’s quest for security there will be trials along the way, there will be setbacks and there will be dangers too tremendous for words. But if we continue the work that we do, and continue to stay true to the values that drive our journey, then that long arc will eventually reach its resting place in the land of Israel, and a just and lasting peace will be at hand. Thank you M. President, and with that, I yield the floor.