The Knotty Jews [Addendum VIII – Mini Series – December 1^st, 2000]

In what was considered the final hours of Israel’s War of Independence [1948], while Israeli forces were pushing as far south into the Negev as they could, again for peace negotiating purposes more so than acquiring more of the scarce dessert resource, a squadron of Egyptian fighters began attacking the advance. Israeli fighters, which now included some spits as well as the lower performance Messerschmitts, took off to engage. Although outnumbering the Israeli fighters, the Egyptian pilots turned and headed back toward the triangles but their Royal Air force buddies who had been escorting them decided to stay and prove their mettle against those with the ÑD insignia. It wasn’t quite the battle of Briton, but it reinforced to the Jewish leaders at the time, Ben Gurion in particular, that we couldn’t rely on anyone but ourselves for when the time would come to defend again. Four of the RAF fighters were shot down in air-combat and one bit the dust from Israeli ak ak. The Israeli Air force suffered no casualties on this day.

Now was it really necessary for me to have to bring out these facts about the British? The fact is we all need to find ways to now get along. We can all point to what should have been could have been. The Jewish people know more about the weaknesses of our leaders than we do about their strengths going back to Moses. Look at King David who we all know sent his captain to the front line so that he could continue schtooping his warrior’s wife. We know not to trust our political leaders.

To the Jewish people God is amorphous. Every Jewish person has his/her our own idea as to what God is, means. We even question God. One of the literal translations of Yisrael is “struggle with God.” So if we are going to question God, we sure as hell are going to question man, certainly any one man that says “I am the son of God.” Now this is where things get a little complicated. I don’t know that there is any record of Jesus himself saying he was the Son of God but in the end it may not be all that important. However, with the advent of Jesus there is no longer this questioning bit. Christians are taught to accept with blind faith. Accept Jesus as your savior and you shall be saved.

This again is another of the more complicated issues. Non-Jewish people simply don’t seem to get this part that drives Jews nuts. Jewish people are programmed to feel guilty even before their parents first have sex. By the time they arrive they are already nervous wrecks. If they were to then hear that someone going back 2000 years, not quite the year dot, had in fact died for their sins, how would they ever grow up to corner the market on Nobel Prizes? Do you think they would ever leave the skirts of their mothers? Do you think they would ever grow up and get married and have their own children?

To Jewish people this all made no sense since Judaism, although it involves many elements of faith, mainly revolves around action, doing good deeds, mitzvoth. Now with the holy trinity stuff no longer is God amorphous, no longer someone to argue with when your spouse has taken all the beating he/she can take. Jewish people are also not supposed to masturbate. This all combined caused much tension between the Jewish people and their offshoots, the Christians and Muslims. The real tensions began to take hold, however, when the royalty, the rulers, those not so straight and narrow decided to extend their reins by stretching this “divine authority” thing. Jewish people, although always distrusting of their leaders, have a history of honoring their teachers for they taught the art of questioning, stretching the mind, making it strong, connecting up the dots.

Now these “Christian” Kings and Queens saw these Jewish people who had been programmed since the time of Abraham to question even when there was nothing to question, as threats to their websites, domains to some of you. So what do you do to people who are pains in your backsides? Of course, you start federal programs, pogroms to some.

I once mentioned these contentious thoughts to my friend Newell I positioned it in a rather aggressive format. I said that it goes to prove that only in a gentile world could the Holocaust have existed. Since if there were Jewish rulers the people would be questioning them all to a premature death and that no one leader would rise with any great power.

Today I see it a bit differently. It is all true the Jewish people and what Judaism represents is very much threatening to those who wish to rule by dictatorial edict. Certainly, one cannot blame the Jewish people for what has happened to them. Nor should we blame God. The terrible acts have simply been man, as one, behaving badly to his other half.

Recently, I tried making the case to certain family members that us Jewish people bear some guilt ourselves in that we should have, could have banded together sooner as one people while there were warning signs. It is very true that there was no where for Jews to go certainly after Krystalnacht for everyone shut their doors to us, or just about everyone, Japan just one exception, but who would have thought to count on them or the Chinese unless of course you had accompanied Marco Polo? However, back in 1933 statues of Hitler were being erected all around Germany. Hitler had written his campaign speech years ahead of being democratically elected. Some might argue there has never been a politician in history who said things as clearly ahead of time, as thoughtfully as Hitler did, who then carried it out to the letter T okay D -. Yes those HAS-id signs first appeared in some places as early as six years ahead of Krystalnacht.

There is a story I would like to tell you about my friend Norman’s family. Norman’s father was headed one evening toward a bar in town called Gunzenhausen about 30 miles from Nuremberg. It was toward the end of 1933 and he decided at the last minute to turn back. At that very moment a bunch of Brown Shirt thugs entered the bar, lined up all the Jews including his father’s friends and then shot them all dead. Norman’s dad ran home to tell his father who was a World War I veteran, proud to be a German, perhaps though not exactly German first. He also had kept his gun although it was undoubtedly a little rusty. From the street Norman’s grandfather called up to his wife to throw down the gun because he was now going to go after these thugs himself, perhaps thinking that he would first knock on his Jewish neighbors door and get a little gang of his own going. Norman never quite knew the details of what exactly was going on in his grandfather’s mind. His grandfather might have simply have gone “m-ash-uga” – nuts.

Norman’s grandmother refused to throw down the gun and her husband eventually got tired of screaming from the street and went inside. His wife helped calm him down by not haggling all over him. Another neighbor did come by a little later to say that the nazi authorities were talking about this “crazy person.” Norman’s grandfather was a successful businessman, a prominent banker. His main competition actually came from the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who ran bucket s-t-o-r-s in front of his bank, who didn’t quite have his over-head.

When I mentioned Norman’s grandfather may have been different to most of his other Jewish German friends, I meant it in the sense that although he had all the fine linens for all occasions and goods and services that money could buy, he, nevertheless, realized that he couldn’t rely on his brothers, neither his Christian nor his Jewish brothers when it came to saving his life, his soul some might argue. At the time getting in to America was not necessarily easy but it certainly wasn’t impossible either. Norman’s grandfather grabbed hold of the things that most mattered and headed west. When he arrived in America, he like my grandfather Israel who arrived in South Africa at the turn of the century, was now also dirt poor. But somehow Norman’s whole family managed to survive. The same could not be said of my grandfather’s sister Pessiah and her whole family.

One surviving member of her family, her son-in-law, wrote my grandfather the following letter (written in Yiddish and then translated into English).

WARSAW,

May 3^rd 1965.

My dear friend Israel…-à>>>

I have argued, not always convincingly, that the commandment “I am the Lord thy God who delivered thee out of the house of Egypt out of the house of bondage” is the most important on the basis that it states unequivocally that our individual liberty is the supreme command. I believe we forgot not so long after we wandered aimlessly in a dessert the importance of these profound words in favor of being accepted by the Gentry.

Not everyone agrees with this commandment being of greater import to that honoring one’s mother and father, to mention little of them being ever so slightly misguided by those before and before them. However, since we are all basically Hebrews, at one point or another, it therefore wouldn’t be right that we develop consensus so easily. What is so wrong, however, with once in 4,000 years?

We keep going back in time brewing over the same fukukta stuff, the problem is we don’t go back far enough. We simply need to go back to when we were one. Despite what several members of the “Washington Bunch” have at one time professed, there has never been in history quite the same holocaust as that which took place at the hands of the Nazis. Never before has there been a plan executed with such precision, with such indifference by the rest of the world all geared for one single purpose. No, it was not just to exterminate other human beings as in some tribal ethnic cleansing. It was about the extermination of the greatest gift of man passing on to man. The Nazis intended to obliterate once and for all - those revolutionary ideas that began with Abraham and continued even with Jesus Christ himself, perhaps a revitalized offshoot, not quite the dummy I once thought, if not altogether a new kind of resurrection. The Devil is in the detail (- remember though it is lawyers who mostly use this expression).

There is no doubt that Jesus Christ was very good, preaching fundamental Jewish principles. The Nazis were simply attempting to destroy the concept of One in favor of many Kings. [No doubt why many members of the English Royal Family supported Hitler -- there goes my knighthood application.] And they very nearly succeeded, were it not for people like King Golden Senior, Navy Officer Amos Wright and fighter-bomber-pilots like: Sid Cohen, Boris Senior, George Lichter, Leslie Shagam, Commander Cecil Margo, and yes my Dad played his hand in it too. My Dad’s logbooks, however, with Xs on the photos reflect the fact that many lives were lost well before the Americans decided to do the right thing.

One member of the “Washington Bunch” has been known to pontificate, “Even if there was a God who says he didn’t die or when he saw what he created, concluding with, “You lot can finish yourselves off on my BLT sandwich; I’m outa here.” Even if this Washington transplant is right, then we have nothing but each other to rely on. I think, however, it is more knotty than simply that our creator moved on. More importantly, when you make the choice, like he has, to simply light up another joint versus making a conscious decision to keep looking for “It” then you take yourself out of the batting order, the right to even strike out.