Dynamics of Civil War – Mishpatim
מִדְּבַר שֶׁקֶר תִּרְחָק וְנָקִי וְצַדִּיק אַל תַּהֲרֹג כִּי לֹא אַצְדִּיק רָשָׁע (שמות כג, ז).
According to the Tur, when some event occurs during the week, it is hinted to in the parshat hashavua. The Tur was referring to events in the Jewish calendar, but I believe it to be true also of current events. HKB”H has orchestrated it that, davka this week, parshat Mishpatim, is the week when everything is converging regarding the proposed judicial reform by the new, democratically elected right-wing government in Israel. Already, for the past few weeks, there have been escalating, media-fueled, mass demonstrations by the left-wing, opposing the reform and most recently we hear unbridled incitement to assassinate the prime minister and instigate civil unrest if the reform is passed in the Knesset. As a backdrop to this, we are currently experiencing a wave of vicious Arab terror attacks and the murder of innocent civilians, among them small children.
Everyone who knows me knows that I am non-confrontational by nature and that my life’s mission is to promote smiles, peace and unity in Am Yisrael. I have, however, decided to veer from my normal modus operandi of דְּרָכֶיהָ דַרְכֵי נֹעַם וְכָל נְתִיבוֹתֶיהָ שָׁלוֹם in this shiur and speak out, in the face of all the lies and hidden agendas that are maliciously misleading and steering our nation on a slippery slope toward disaster.
When you study the history of our nation, it is not always easy to conceptualize the reality of the events as they occurred at the time, until you experience a live-action replay of them in front of your very eyes. Only when you actually live them yourself, do you truly understand the history. We are currently experiencing a carbon-copy replay of a similar period in our history which did not end well. They say that those who do not learn from history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them. In understanding the history and its aftermath we can get a pretty good idea of where we are headed – unless we wake up. I urge you to forward this shiur to as many people as you can and open as many eyes as possible.
I will begin with a Mishna in Pirkei Avot (1, 3) –
אַנְטִיגְנוֹס אִישׁ סוֹכוֹ קִבֵּל מִשִּׁמְעוֹן הַצַּדִּיק. הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר: אַל תִּהְיוּ כַּעֲבָדִים הַמְּשַׁמְּשִׁין אֶת הָרַב עַל מְנָת לְקַבֵּל פְּרָס, אֶלָּא הֱווּ כַּעֲבָדִים הַמְּשַׁמְּשִׁין אֶת הָרַב שֶׁלֹּא עַל מְנָת לְקַבֵּל פְּרָס, וִיהִי מוֹרָא שָׁמַיִם עֲלֵיכֶם.
Shimon HaTaddik was one of the last remnants of the אנשי כנסת הגדולה and he passed his knowledge onto his student Antigonus ish Socho (from the name it is possible to identify the period this took place – during the Hellenistic occupation of Eretz Yisrael). Amongst the students attending Antigonus’ shiur was one named Tzadok and another named Baitus.
Sefer Avot de’Rebi Natan, a commentary on Pirkei Avot (written by the Tanna Rebi Natan, the Rav of Rebi Yehuda Hanasi), says that when Tzadok and Baitus heard this shiur, they misinterpreted their Rebi’s meaning. Antigonus was teaching that our service of HKB”H should not be with an ulterior motive – to receive reward. Our service of HKB”H should be out of אהבה and not because we expect to receive reward.
Tzadok and Baitus misinterpreted their Rebi’s shiur to mean that “there is no reward, period”. (The Rambam’s translation of this Mishna phrases it a way that does not allow for ambiguity. This is why another Mishna in Avot 1, 11 says - אַבְטַלְיוֹן אוֹמֵר: חֲכָמִים, הִזָּהֲרוּ בְּדִבְרֵיכֶם שֶׁמָּא תָּחוֹבוּ חוֹבַת גָּלוּת, וְתִגְלוּ לִמְקוֹם מַיִם הָרָעִים, וְיִשְׁתּוּ הַתַּלְמִידִים הַבָּאִים אַחֲרֵיכֶם וְיָמוּתוּ, וְנִמְצָא שֵׁם שָׁמַיִם מִתְחַלֵּל).
They were living through a שעת השמד, in which the Greeks were trying to eradicate Yiddishkeit in Am Yisrael. Until then, Am Yisrael had lived in a reality that when you observed the commandments of the Torah you were rewarded, and if you violated them you were punished. Suddenly, in this new Hellenistic reality, davka the ones who continued to observe the Torah were those who suffered most, while those who violated it and converted to Hellenism, seemed to be reaping the rewards.
Normally, a student who is uncertain of his Rebi’s meaning would go and ask him to clarify. However, it appears that these two students Tzadok and Baitus obviously had some flaw in their character which made them interpret the lesson in the way they wanted to understand it and not according to its intended meaning. They refused to accept that there is “no reward” for observing the Torah (if they would have asked their Rebi, he would have explained that sometimes the reward is both in this and in the next world, and sometimes – like in that time of שעת השמד – the rewards were all in עולם הבא). As a result, they “lost it” and created two breakaway sects, called the צדוקים and the בייתוסים. The common denominator of both these sects was that they believed only in the תורה שבכתב and rejected the תורה שבעל פה (basically they picked and chose which parts of the Torah they wanted to keep and which they didn’t – the צדוקים were the first “reform” Jews). This was as opposed to Chazal (or actually the predecessors to what became “Chazal” – the פרושים), who followed תורה למשה מסיני and continued to observe both the תורה שבכתב and the תורה שבעל פה.
The צדוקי doctrine found “fertile ground” amongst the Kohanim of the time. It seems counter intuitive that the Kohanim davka, those who were in charge of running the Beit Hamikdash, the teachers of Torah in Am Yisrael, would be attracted to such a doctrine - that totally flew in the face of their beliefs and role in Am Yisrael. However, when you examine the surrounding circumstances you begin to understand why.
The Kohanim at the time were descendants of the Chashmonaim, the same hero Chashmonaim (Mattiyahu Kohen Gadol and Yehuda HaMaccabi) who defeated Antiochus and restored the Avodah to the Beit Hamikdash.
Mattityahu had five sons. To Yehuda (HaMaccabi) he gave the task of heading the military. To his second son Shimon (HaTarsi) he delegated the social and religious leadership. After the death of Yehuda HaMaccabi, Am Yisrael appointed the popular Shimon as Kohen Gadol and Nasi, roles that were henceforth to be passed to his children by inheritance.
Shimon’s grandsons, second generation descendants of “privileged lineage”, began to suffer the maladies that accompany inherited leadership – political intricacy, sibling rivalry and power struggles. Grandson Yehuda Aristobolus 1st, despite the fact that he was a Kohen from שבט לוי and not a descendant of מלכות בית דוד, declared himself “king”, waged war with his rival brother “Yehonatan” Alexander Yannai (or Yannai for short) and imprisoned him. When Yehuda died, Yannai assumed the leadership and also called himself “king”. Yannai did yibum and married his late brother Yehuda’s wife Shlomtzion, (sister of Shimon ben Shatach, the Nasi of the Sanhedrin). Yannai waged many successful military campaigns and managed to re-occupy much of the Davidic kingdom of Israel.
The Kohanim in the time of “King” Yannai (who mostly lived in Jerusalem at the time, nearby the Beit Hamikdash) were a kind of “elite”. They were extremely wealthy, they managed and ran the Beit Hamikdash and they enjoyed numerous political and commercial connections with the new Roman Empire. Due to their “elevated” status they considered themselves to be superior to the rest of the population and lost touch with the rest of Am Yisrael.
The Sanhedrin and the Chachamim (Perushim) did not like the Kohanim’s abuse of privilege and power, especially when Yannai declared himself king. This further escalated tension between Yannai and the Perushim.
It was in this environment that Yannai decided to become a צדוקי – motivated by his lust for power and his animosity toward the Chachamim. This resulted in a total split between the Chachamim (the social and religious leadership) and the Kohanim צדוקים (the political and administrative leadership).
Shlomtzion, being the sister of the head of the Sanhedrin, was a tzaddikah and did not follow in her husband Yannai’s path. She kept close ties with her brother Shimon ben Shatach. The Chachamim Perushim, unlike the צדוקים, were intricately connected with the פשוטי העם, the simple folk, the rest of Am Yisrael.
Growing up in a home like that, it is not surprising that Yannai’s two sons Aristobolus 2nd and Hyrcanus 2nd suffered the same “disease” as the prior generation and waged a continual bloody battle with each other over succession to the throne, a civil war that resulted in over 50,000 dead.
With no clear victory in sight for either side and with the civil war ravaging Am Yisrael, the various factions reached the conclusion that it was impossible to resolve this dispute internally. They decided to turn to the Roman general, Pompei to arbitrate and resolve the dispute. This turned out to be the sword of Damocles that descended upon Am Yisrael, as the Romans had their own agenda and this was the invitation for them to march in and assume control. Am Yisrael, already infected by the “virus” of domestic civil war, continued the dynamic of internal hatred and self-destruction which eventually resulted in the destruction of the second Beit Hamikdash and our exile that is still running 1953 years later.
Fast forward to the present day.
The well-published purpose of the current proposed judicial reform is to eliminate total power wielded by a small minority “elite” and to create a better balanced system where absolute power does not reside with any one part of the system – a series of equal weighted checks and balances between the legislative and judicial systems.
Since I am a member of the demographic that supposedly “describes” this minority “elite” (white, European/Anglo-Saxon, Ashkenazi, upper class, [ex]-hitech, etc.), I would like to analyze exactly who this “elite” is and how they got to the status they did.
The modern State of Israel was originally established predominantly by a white, European/Anglo-Saxon, Ashkenazi, etc. (maybe not all upper class and certainly not hitech) population. There were a few Sefardim involved, but they were by far the minority. These were pioneers escaping the pogroms in Europe who came to settle Israel, in the 1800’s and the early 1900’s, in the עלייה ראשונה ושנייה. The leaders of these pioneers were white, European, etc., for example Austro-Hungarian Theodore Herzl, Polish David Grün (Ben Gurion), Russian Chaim Weizmann. Together with the small, local “indigenous” Jewish population, which also included some (much fewer) Sefardim, they drained the swamps, built settlements and cities, created an army, a government and brought about the establishment of a Jewish State. They obviously did not do it alone. They had lots of סייעתא דשמיא and were obviously part of a larger plan of HKB”H.
The State of Israel was created predominantly by secular Jews. Much (not all, but the vast majority) of the Torah world in Europe did not support the Zionist movement. The primary Torah influence in the establishment of the State of Israel was (a minority of) religious Zionists from Europe and the “indigenous” Torah presence in Jerusalem, Tzfat, Tiberius – Agudat Yisrael, etc.
Shortly following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, there was a massive קיבוץ גלויות predominantly, but not only, of Sefardi Jewry from the Arab countries.
At this point almost the entire political/power structure in Israel was dominated by those who had established it – white, secular, Ashkenazi, etc. They (we) were the government, the judges, the generals, the deans of academia, the industrialists and for the most part these icons were idealistic pioneers to be revered and to be respected for their part in the miracle that is now the State of Israel. They were not perfect - they made some very serious mistakes along the way, like with the Yemenite children (a serious scar on our history) and handing the keys of Har Habayit to the Waqf, but for the most part they were a Divine instrument that practically reversed almost 2000 years of Diaspora.
The traditional (masorti) Sefardi and religious Ashkenazi Holocaust refugees, from their humble beginnings in refugee camps (ma’abarot), slowly started becoming politically aware and in the 1970’s changed the face of Israeli politics when Menachem Begin and the Sefardi dominated Likud party, replaced the previous 30 year Ashkenazi Labor/Mapai dominated government. The last 46 years have included a few ping pong switches between Likud and Labor (and unity) governments, however the trend in the Israeli political demographic has grown in favor of the right-wing, Sefardi masorti and religious population, with the most recent elections reflecting 64% of the Jewish vote comprising that demographic. Recent years have also seen a decline of the left-wing, iconic political parties like Labor and, most recently, Meretz, who have all but disappeared from the political map, to be replaced by a potpourri of “in-vogue” so-called “central” parties (that are really the remnants of the original Labor/Meretz parties).
That is the shift in the democratically elected political system. However, the remaining seats of power, that are not democratically elected, such as the judicial system, the academia, the military (the chief of staff is a political appointee but the internal IDF hierarchy is not democratically elected), continue to be dominated by the same demographic that existed in 1948. Judges are not elected in democratic elections by the general public. They are elected by a committee consisting of 4 politicians (one justice minister, one other minister and two members of the Knesset) and 5 members of the judicial system (one head of the supreme court, two other supreme court judges and two members of the lawyers’ bar association). Since the majority of this committee is part of the judicial system, this majority basically dictates who the judges are in Israel and they have consistently appointed judges who are like them. Of the 82 supreme court judges appointed since 1948, only 7 were of Sefardi origin. Similarly in the universities, the vast majority of those who reach the highest positions of power are Ashkenazi (for example in Hebrew University, of the 23 rectors only 3 were Sefardi, in Ben Gurion University of the 10 rectors, only one was Sefardi, etc.). Similarly in the military (IDF), of the 23 chiefs of staff since 1948 only 6 were Sefardi.
Sociologists would have a field day with these statistics and you can explain it away with all kinds of reasoning, but the figures speak for themselves. They speak about the “sectorial ghost” השד העדתי, referring to the “imagined” discrimination against the Sefardi originating Jews in Israel, but perhaps it is not that imagined after all.
The balance of power in Israel has always been a fragile puzzle, but in 1995 this balance was upset with the appointment of Aharon Barak as head of the Supreme Court. Regarded by many to be a brilliant jurist, even internationally, Barak instigated a judicial revolution. With only the only the Declaration of Indepence as a general guide and in the absence of a formal constitution, Barak orchestrated a series of events that basically gave the Supreme Court the final say regarding everything that happens in Israel. Currently the Supreme Court has veto power to revoke and cancel laws formulated by the democratically elected legislative body, the Knesset.
As a result of this dramatic shift in power, it does not really matter which government is elected in democratic elections, they are powerless to effect policy they were empowered to by the majority electorate. The balance of power therefore rests in the hands of a few, undemocratically appointed judges, who are accountable to – no one. They claim to be the checks and balances over the legislative body, but who are their checks and balances?
It would not be an issue if the supreme court judges were impartial in their adjudications, however they consistently rule in favor of the liberal/left-wing point of view and against the conservative/right-wing. The definition of the State of Israel is that it is a Jewish-Democratic State with equal weights to the “Jewish” and “Democratic”. Aharon Barak, the instigator of the judicial revolution is a self-proclaimed atheist, he does not believe in G-d. How can you be Jewish and not believe in G-d? Barak is a self-proclaimed ignoramus of Biblical Jewish law, from which incidentally, all other systems of law in history have been derived. How balanced do you think a case involving a Jewish/Religious issue could be in his court? in the supreme court of the Jewish-Democratic State? His successors are all devout followers of his philosophy and modus operandi.
The supreme court is supposed to be checks and balances and the counterweight to the legislative body, but they are only active and fully functioning when that legislative body is right-wing. They have never revoked/cancelled any law legislated by a left-wing government.
This is what the proposed judicial reform is intended to address and rectify. This is the platform upon which this current government was elected, it was one of the central features of the election campaign. This is the mandate the democratically elected government was given by the majority vote of the citizenship.
As a result of these proposed reforms, the left-wing has understandably gone ballistic. The minority left-wing controls the supreme court, the academia, the military, the media – all the seats of power that are not democratic. The true purpose of the media is to keep the government in check. They do, but only when that government is a right-wing government. The previous government which was decidedly left-wing enjoyed a year and a half of “radio silence” from the media during their reign. The media is therefore only doing their job when it conflicts with their life philosophy?
It is not surprising that the left-wing and the seats of power they dominate are going ballistic, because they now stand to lose that power. They have always relied on the supreme court to consistently keep this country left-wing and to curtail any right-wing policy.
I do not believe they are evil people. Certainly the pioneers of the country were not “evil” people, they were icons and heroes. However their second generation descendants (like the 2nd generation Chashmonaim descendants) have been infected by the disease of power! The need to preserve that power under any circumstances is what drives them, not morality, not democracy! In the name of preservation of power they are willing to break every law they threw the right-wing into jail for when they demonstrated against the expulsion of Gush Katif! They have placed the right-wing prime minister under the “proverbial microscope” to try dig up every possible bit of “dirt” against him and oust him via prosecution in the left-wing courts when all their democratic attempts have failed. The same left-wing bodies of power that overlooked the much more serious and criminal activities of a previous prime minister who was responsible for the expulsion from Gush Katif. If they would apply the same microscope to any of the leaders since the establishment of the state, not one would emerge unscathed! And they are crying that this is the end of democracy!?? It is the end of their minority power over the democracy.
The greatest fear of someone who has consistently and knowingly downtrodden others is that those who they have downtrodden will do the same to them when the wheels are turned one day. This is what caused the hundreds of thousands of Arabs to flee Israel in 1948 and become refugees, the guilt that all the centuries of pogrom, theft, rape and murder that they inflicted on the Jews would be repaid to them when the Jews seized power.
מִדְּבַר שֶׁקֶר תִּרְחָק.
The Torah tell us to distance ourselves from lies and the left-wing fabricated “reality” in the media – are lies! The simple truth is they now stand to lose their power. That is what this all about – who has the ultimate power.
Are the right-wing politicians any better? Probably not! I do not have a very high regard for any politician, they are not my favorite life form. Just like any revolution, those that seize power, eventually become exactly like those they rebelled against. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That is the way it was with the צדוקים and Yannai. That is the way it was in the French Revolution. That was the way it was in ousting the apartheid regime in South Africa and ending up with an equally or worse dictatorial regime.
That is the way it will probably be if the right-wing gets their way and replace the left-wing judges with right-wing judges. The left-wing are not completely wrong, they have the experience of 75 years of being in power and seeing what it does and how it corrupts and they know it will be the same if the right-wing does it. They know because they have been there – they are there and they know how corrupting that power is! “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”, they are screaming because they themselves are guilty of exactly that they are screaming about.
The important thing to remember here is how many people are “screaming” in the streets, 150,000, 300,000? That is about 5% of the Jewish population in the country, tops! Are they representative? No, they are only 5%. They are a loud 5% (they control the media so they are also amplified 100X) but still only 5%. Contrast that with 64% of the Jewish population who voted for this government and for the proposed judicial reform. They are the “silent majority”, but they voted with their feet during the election. If they had to go to the streets that would not be 300,000 people like you see in the demonstrations, it would be 4.5 million people. They would not shut down the Ayalon, they would shut down the entire country!
I am not worried about the 5% screaming, I am worried about who they are screaming to. They are not directing their screams at the Israeli public, they know who the Israeli public is. They are directing their screams at the American public, the European public, they are falsely portraying the true view of the Israeli public. They are targeting the “enemy at the gates”, the enemy who has his own agenda. When a country is truly your friend and ally, you do not need to repeatedly and publicly proclaim “So-and-so - our true friends!” over and over again. The need to do so is because they are not our true friends and allies. They have their own agenda and it does not match ours. It didn’t in the time of Pompei and it doesn’t today with the contemporary “Roman Empire”.
The lust for power is so strong that no negotiations, no reconciliation or discussion will do any good. The left-wing will not relinquish the power that they have enjoyed for 75 years under any circumstances.
That places us at exactly the same impasse that existed in the time of Yannai’s sons that resulted in a bloody civil war. They thought they could resolve it by running to the enemy for solutions, but the enemy just replaced their war for a much larger war that exiled us for 1953 years (and counting). Will that make those who are now running to the “enemy” for salvation rethink? Probably not.
So are we headed for another, unavoidable civil war?
There is one element in the equation that everyone is forgetting. And that is HKB”H. HKB”H is watching over us. He is especially watching over us in Eretz Yisrael אֶרֶץ אֲשֶׁר ה' אֱ-לֹקֶיךָ דֹּרֵשׁ אֹתָהּ תָּמִיד עֵינֵי ה' אֱ-לֹקֶיךָ בָּהּ מֵרֵשִׁית הַשָּׁנָה וְעַד אַחֲרִית שָׁנָה.
Just last week there was an earthquake in Turkey/Syria. The epicenter of the quake was closer to Tel Aviv than to many areas in Turkey that have been devastated, but in Tel Aviv they only felt a slight tremor. How do you explain that? It is השגחה פרטית. If you examine the earthquake statistics in Israel throughout history, you find that from the time Yehoshua conquered Israel until the Greek occupation (a period of 1062 years), there was only one recorded earthquake (1050BCE in the Negev). During the Greek occupation there was one (138BCE in Acco). During the early Roman occupation before the destruction of Bayit Sheini there were two (31 BCE in the Jordan Valley, 33 CE in Jerusalem). In other words from the time of Yehoshua until the destruction of Bayit Sheini (1270 years) there were a total of 4 earthquakes. After the destruction of the 2nd Beit Hamikdash in the last 1953 years there have been 19 earthquakes, the last one in 1927, before the establishment of the state of Israel. The same fault lines today as 3000 years ago. So how do you explain how Eretz Yisrael knows when Am Yisrael are living in it and when they are not?
This is not to say that there cannot be chas vechalila an earthquake here. It all depends if HKB”H wants to punish us or not. So far all we have felt are tremors. Warnings! At the same time the Jews are fighting with the Jews there is a spike in terror attacks. What does this tell us? Our enemies spot weakness and attack when we are fighting with each other? Yes, but also more warnings from HKB”H.
We, the “silent majority”, the 64% who voted this government in and also the other 31% of those who didn’t (excluding the radical 5% demonstrating in the streets), we are the sane majority. We are the 95% majority who do not want to see civil war in Israel, Jew fighting Jew. We need to be silent no longer! We, the 95%, the sane majority need to make our voice heard, we need to take to the streets and drown out the 5% of the fanatics who are so far gone they fly our enemies' flags at their demonstrations, who are so lustful for power that they will break every law they “hold dear” to keep hold of that power.
But most importantly, we need to turn to HKB”H and plead with Him to have mercy on us, to forgive the misguided amongst us, the self-hating Jews who place their faith in the goyim rather than in G-d, (because nothing we can do is working to get them to do tshuva) - To end our שעבוד מלכויות and redeem us.
