Abraham Joshua Heschel

The Bible is the book of anticipations.  The ground for the hope is in the promise.  The future has a face, and on its face to see the glory.

There is evil, there is anguish.  There is death, agony, exile.  But beyond all darkness is the dawn.

“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast… And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, avail that is spread over all nations.  He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people who will take away from all the earth; for the Lord has spoken.  It will be said on that day, “low, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us stop this is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation”” (Isaiah 25:6-9).

The evil state of the world, with its ugliness and violence, will not endure forever.  At the end of days, and a climax of days, there will be a new dawn of history.  Redemption will come, cleansing the world from war and hatred.  This is God’s pledge and Israel’s hope.  At the same time, biblical eschatology and all our hopes for the future are mysteriously centred in the Holy Land.

There is a unique association between the people and the land of Israel.  Even before Israel becomes a people, the land is preordained for Israel.

Even before there was a people, there was a promise.  The promise of the land.  The election of Abraham and the election of the land came together.  The promise of the land to the patriarchs is the leit motif in the Five Books of Moses.  Israel’s claim upon Canaan goes back to the earliest period of its history and was thought of as having its origin in the will of God, since it was to the Lord that this land belonged and he alone could dispose of it.

Beyond the promise of the land and increasing prosperity, the promise to Abraham was a blessing for all the families of the earth.  The gift of the land is an earnest of a greater promise.

The granting of the land of Canaan to Israel by the Lord is a scene reflected upon again and again.  “Then he brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Deuteronomy 26:9).  Thanksgiving for this grant remained alive in never-ending praise throughout Biblical history.

Pagans have idols, Israel has a promise.  We have no image, all we have is hope.

Israel reborn is a verification of the promise.

History goes on in time as well as in space, and according to biblical faith, the promise of redemption of all peoples involves the presence of this people in this land.ⁱ

Editor’s Note: For Christians, the idea of a promise should bring to mind Paul’s words: “the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.ⁱⁱ”  A startling and intriguing proposition. 

[i]  Source: Heschel, A J (1967).  Israel: An Echo of Eternity. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  New York.  Pages 99ff.

[ii]   The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Eph 3:6). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, authored a number of widely read books on Jewish philosophy and was active in the American civil rights movement.   

Under the controversial Holocaust law, it is now considered a crime for anyone, apparently anywhere in the world, to accuse “the Polish Nation” of complicity in crimes committed by the Nazis during World War II. In addition to mandating how people will be allowed to talk about Poland’s past, the law also has dangerous ramifications for Poland’s future.

The initial aim of the law, which is contrary to Poland’s obligations under international human rights law, was to prevent people from describing Nazi German death camps in occupiedPoland as “Polish camps”. But its scope actually goes much further. The issue at stake is not about the events surrounding the Second world war but about freedom of expression and the excessive use of the law to crackdown on dissenting opinions. By outlawing any utterance or written statement or image that is seen to damage “the reputation of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Nation”, or that suggests Polish responsibility for or complicity in “Nazi crimes”, it further restricts the right to freedom of expression and will have a wider damaging effect.

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OPINION: Truth can be elusive. Consider the recent furore over the Polish government’s introduction of a law that, according to some critics, will greatly restrict public discussion of Poland’s involvement in the Holocaust during World War II.

The new law prohibits mention of “Polish death camps” – on the face of it, an interference in the right of free speech. Yet it’s hard not to feel sympathy for Poland’s lawmakers.

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…the Polish government is correct, as du Fresne points out, that the extermination camps were built and administered by Nazi Germany and, thus, using the term “Polish camps” is misleading. Yad Vashem – the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem – also agrees with this point. As does Alex Ryvchin, the Israeli government, and the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand.

Every rational person also agrees that thousands of Poles risked their lives to save Jews in the Holocaust. This is evidenced by the fact that more Poles are recognised as Righteous Among the Nations than citizens of any other country in Europe (there are 6,706 Polish names recorded, compared with 601 Germans). So, too, reasonable people agree that the recent claim of the Polish Prime Minister that there were “Jewish perpetrators” of the Holocaust is objectionable, yet would also agree that that making such claims should not be outlawed.

All these points lead to the conclusion that this is not a black and white matter. Poles, like every other nationality, were and are a heterogeneous people. Some lost their lives saving Jews; others locked Jews in a barn and set them alight. It is that very complexity, the inability to divide a people neatly into a category of evil or saintly, that necessitates research and debate, and that renders the proposed law such a bad idea.

While Holocaust expert, Deborah Lipstadt, has labelled the law a form of Holocaust denial, the core reason for condemnation is that it legislates against making a claim that is objectionable to a certain government, regardless of historical accuracy.

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Karam al-Hilu

In a November 25, 2017 article marking the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, published in the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Lebanese journalist Karam Al-Hilu compared the meager accomplishments of the Arab world in the past century with those of the rest of the countries of the world, particularly Israel. He noted that Israel’s supremacy in the areas of science, economy, society, and politics is the source of its strength as well as the source of the Arabs’ failure in confronting it.

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Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East Editor

On Friday Feb 2, TVNZ aired portions of an interview between Jeremy Bowen of the BBC and Oren Hazan regarding the upcoming trial of Ahed Tamimi.  During that interview Hazan said if he had been the soldier, he would have violently retaliated against Tamimi for the slap.  Pesach Benson shares his opinion of the interview.

Of the 120 Knesset members that the BBC could have interviewed for an Israeli point of view on Ahed Tamimi’s trial, reporter Jeremy Bowen chose a disgraced, provocative politician — and well-known enfant terrible — Oren Hazan.

Viewers of “Is a Slap an Act of Terror?” on the prime time “BBC News at Ten,” wouldn’t be aware that Hazan, a Likud MK, has a history of disgraceful PR stunts and character issues — or that he had been suspended from the Knesset the same day that the segment aired.

This was not a random selection made by Bowen, the BBC‘s Mideast editor.

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Earlier today, we shared an insightful article by J P Pagano published on Forward.  His article gave rise to our quote of the day, and is worthy of particular attention:

We live in a time of hateful rhapsody where truth is relative and fear prevails.

This is a conspiracist moment and it’s bad for the Jews.

Read more: https://forward.com/opinion/393107/how-anti-semitisms-true-origin-makes-it-invisible-to-the-left/

…the left is doomed to erase anti-Semitism because it’s ill-equipped to understand it.

For in a key sense, regular racism — against blacks and Latinos, for example — is the opposite of anti-Semitism. While both ultimately derive from xenophobia, regular racism comes from white people believing they are superior to people of color. But the hatred of Jews stems from the belief that Jews are a cabal with supernatural powers; in other words, it stems from the models of thought that produce conspiracy theories. Where the white racist regards blacks as inferior, the anti-Semite imagines that Jews have preternatural power to afflict humankind.

This is also why the left is blind to anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism differs from most forms of racism in that it purports to “punch up” against a secret society of oppressors, which has the side effect of making it easy to disguise as a politics of emancipation. If Jews have power, then punching up at Jews is a form of speaking truth to power — a form of speech of which the left is currently enamored.

In other words, it is because anti-Semitism pretends to strike at power that the left cannot see it, and is doomed to erase — and even reproduce — its tropes.

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