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Jun. 3rd, 2005 08:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ymarkovFrom Bondage to Freedom
by Moshe Feiglin
Nissan 5765 (April 05)
"How will you behave towards secular Jews after you come to power?", a secular Jew asked me. "Who are your rabbis?", a religious Jew asked me.
I suddenly realized that both of them are suffering from the same illness -- they regard leadership as a kind of paternalism, that spreads its wings over its subjects, supplies their needs, thinks for them, decides for them. "How will you behave towards me?", asks the secular Jew anxiously. Obviously his fate lies in the hands of the leader, and he has never assumed personal responsibility. He has no freedom of choice.
"Who are your rabbis?", asks the religious Jew, since obviously he has no personal responsibility. Obviously, if his Rabbi tells him to obey the expulsion order, he must do so. Why should I think otherwise, I believe in G-d and therefore I have to ignore the fact that He gave me something more than animals have, the right to distinguish between good and evil. I must forget the divine spark in me in the name of religion and delegate this right of choice to the rabbis.
"Why should I behave towards you?", I asked the secular Jew, but he didn't understand what I was saying. "Who am I, that you are trying to clarify how I will behave towards you?", I again attempted to explain. "Am I your father? My job is to give you the freest possible environment in which you can decide for yourself, to regard yourself, to be yourself. I am your servant, not your father nor your master."
"Why should you care who are our rabbis?", I replied to the religious Jew. "Do you agree with what we say? Do you disagree? What do you yourself think? If you wish to consult your rabbis, that's OK. If you don't receive a satisfactory answer from them, approach other rabbis, or other moral, wise people, and go from one to another until you discover the truth. You can then decide if you agree with me or not. But why should you care who my rabbis are?"
"And if you like the names and I can persuade you to evict the children of the Cohen family from their home and land, for which they paid with their amputated legs, and if I can persuade you to give their home, that you took away from them by force, to Mohammed Dahlan who chopped off their legs, because I have rabbis who suit you, do you think that this argument will help you when you stand in the final judgment? I believe that the Creator will say to you: I gave you the most precious gift of all -- I gave you free will. I gave you rabbis in order to help you to choose, not to choose instead of you. I created animals without free will, but I created humans who can decide for themselves. I can understand secular people who obey the order. Some of them lack natural morality strong enough to meet the challenge. But you? Not only have you ignored natural morality, but you have taken My Torah and turned it into idolatry and desecrated My name!"
So the religious and secular Jews, the Rightists and the Leftists, are all in fact in the same luxury "Gulag". They have all become accustomed, in the State of the Reds, that they should be behaved towards. When a new immigrant arrived in Israel he was given an absorption package: A Jewish Agency bed, an initial allowance. If he said that he was religious, he also received a prayer book. How nice. On its flyleaf there was a stamp: The Jewish Agency -- the Department for the Supply of Religious Needs". Big Brother supplies all the needs -- housing, a bed, food, and even the opium for the masses, for those who need it in Animal Farm.
It is very easy for the natives to become accustomed to this system. There is a tremendous temptation to give up free will. This is the same temptation that is presented by idolatry. After all, what is all this idol worship if not subjection to the forces of nature that cannot be changed, to cyclic phenomenon that cannot be modified?
The Red "majority" sang in Rabin Square the mantra of John Lennon in ecstasy:
"We imagined that there was no Heaven or Hell, no nations and no religions, nothing worth living or dying for."
When there is no good and evil there's no need to choose. You can forget about the difference between humans and animals. You can become a beast, just as some people strip in the demonstrations of the radical Left.
It's a pleasure to be a slave, to give up the right of free will, to become "liberated", to flow with the stream, to be swept along like fishes going downstream -- dead fishes.
It's a pleasure to be a religious Jew, or a secular one.
Now Manhigut Yehudit has appeared on the scene and is attempting to free the Israelis from this slavery. But they feel good there. The prisoner has got used to the darkness, he is afraid of the light, so he joyfully accepts the brainwashing: The threat of a Halachic State! He is horrified. The Feiglinists are going to take over!
The first group of slaves have already been deprived of their human rights. The Prison Service is preparing the camps and the barbed wire fences. The IDF Chief Rabbi has prepared the spades for uncovering the bodies of the Hatuel children and their mother. The media and the institutions of "Justice" have already taken away from the evictees their human image -- they are not people but enemies of peace. After all, they should have known…
Just as in all totalitarian regimes, the other groups remain silent, in the hope that they will remain unharmed. In order to remove doubt and quieten their consciences they adopt the arguments of the regime against the demons who will be evicted: They are the enemies of peace, enemies of the sole legitimate collective idea.
The real issue involved is not Gush Katif or the Land of Israel. It is certainly not security, peace, the economy, or all the other subjects mentioned. All these are merely symptoms of the problem.
The real issue is slavery.
Israel has reached the end of a journey towards the loss of liberty, the loss of the human image, a journey that always ends at one stage or another in barbed wire fences, in camps, in death.
For the sake of peace, of course.
This year we are slaves. But we shall win -- because the Almighty will not give up our liberty so easily.
This year we are slaves, but next year we shall be free men.
by Moshe Feiglin
Nissan 5765 (April 05)
"How will you behave towards secular Jews after you come to power?", a secular Jew asked me. "Who are your rabbis?", a religious Jew asked me.
I suddenly realized that both of them are suffering from the same illness -- they regard leadership as a kind of paternalism, that spreads its wings over its subjects, supplies their needs, thinks for them, decides for them. "How will you behave towards me?", asks the secular Jew anxiously. Obviously his fate lies in the hands of the leader, and he has never assumed personal responsibility. He has no freedom of choice.
"Who are your rabbis?", asks the religious Jew, since obviously he has no personal responsibility. Obviously, if his Rabbi tells him to obey the expulsion order, he must do so. Why should I think otherwise, I believe in G-d and therefore I have to ignore the fact that He gave me something more than animals have, the right to distinguish between good and evil. I must forget the divine spark in me in the name of religion and delegate this right of choice to the rabbis.
"Why should I behave towards you?", I asked the secular Jew, but he didn't understand what I was saying. "Who am I, that you are trying to clarify how I will behave towards you?", I again attempted to explain. "Am I your father? My job is to give you the freest possible environment in which you can decide for yourself, to regard yourself, to be yourself. I am your servant, not your father nor your master."
"Why should you care who are our rabbis?", I replied to the religious Jew. "Do you agree with what we say? Do you disagree? What do you yourself think? If you wish to consult your rabbis, that's OK. If you don't receive a satisfactory answer from them, approach other rabbis, or other moral, wise people, and go from one to another until you discover the truth. You can then decide if you agree with me or not. But why should you care who my rabbis are?"
"And if you like the names and I can persuade you to evict the children of the Cohen family from their home and land, for which they paid with their amputated legs, and if I can persuade you to give their home, that you took away from them by force, to Mohammed Dahlan who chopped off their legs, because I have rabbis who suit you, do you think that this argument will help you when you stand in the final judgment? I believe that the Creator will say to you: I gave you the most precious gift of all -- I gave you free will. I gave you rabbis in order to help you to choose, not to choose instead of you. I created animals without free will, but I created humans who can decide for themselves. I can understand secular people who obey the order. Some of them lack natural morality strong enough to meet the challenge. But you? Not only have you ignored natural morality, but you have taken My Torah and turned it into idolatry and desecrated My name!"
So the religious and secular Jews, the Rightists and the Leftists, are all in fact in the same luxury "Gulag". They have all become accustomed, in the State of the Reds, that they should be behaved towards. When a new immigrant arrived in Israel he was given an absorption package: A Jewish Agency bed, an initial allowance. If he said that he was religious, he also received a prayer book. How nice. On its flyleaf there was a stamp: The Jewish Agency -- the Department for the Supply of Religious Needs". Big Brother supplies all the needs -- housing, a bed, food, and even the opium for the masses, for those who need it in Animal Farm.
It is very easy for the natives to become accustomed to this system. There is a tremendous temptation to give up free will. This is the same temptation that is presented by idolatry. After all, what is all this idol worship if not subjection to the forces of nature that cannot be changed, to cyclic phenomenon that cannot be modified?
The Red "majority" sang in Rabin Square the mantra of John Lennon in ecstasy:
"We imagined that there was no Heaven or Hell, no nations and no religions, nothing worth living or dying for."
When there is no good and evil there's no need to choose. You can forget about the difference between humans and animals. You can become a beast, just as some people strip in the demonstrations of the radical Left.
It's a pleasure to be a slave, to give up the right of free will, to become "liberated", to flow with the stream, to be swept along like fishes going downstream -- dead fishes.
It's a pleasure to be a religious Jew, or a secular one.
Now Manhigut Yehudit has appeared on the scene and is attempting to free the Israelis from this slavery. But they feel good there. The prisoner has got used to the darkness, he is afraid of the light, so he joyfully accepts the brainwashing: The threat of a Halachic State! He is horrified. The Feiglinists are going to take over!
The first group of slaves have already been deprived of their human rights. The Prison Service is preparing the camps and the barbed wire fences. The IDF Chief Rabbi has prepared the spades for uncovering the bodies of the Hatuel children and their mother. The media and the institutions of "Justice" have already taken away from the evictees their human image -- they are not people but enemies of peace. After all, they should have known…
Just as in all totalitarian regimes, the other groups remain silent, in the hope that they will remain unharmed. In order to remove doubt and quieten their consciences they adopt the arguments of the regime against the demons who will be evicted: They are the enemies of peace, enemies of the sole legitimate collective idea.
The real issue involved is not Gush Katif or the Land of Israel. It is certainly not security, peace, the economy, or all the other subjects mentioned. All these are merely symptoms of the problem.
The real issue is slavery.
Israel has reached the end of a journey towards the loss of liberty, the loss of the human image, a journey that always ends at one stage or another in barbed wire fences, in camps, in death.
For the sake of peace, of course.
This year we are slaves. But we shall win -- because the Almighty will not give up our liberty so easily.
This year we are slaves, but next year we shall be free men.
