Sticks, Stones and Words

Part of the pre-Rosh Hashannah cleansing of our sins, to enter the New Year pure and clean, is to ask everyone for forgiveness. Of course empty words aren't enough. Just like our prayers to G-d asking Him for forgiveness for the sins we did in the "man-G-d" category, we have to find ways to ask forgiveness of other people in the "man-man" category. Yes, there are two basic types of sin.

Actually, thinking about it, I wonder if there are three. Where do the sins against our Land, Eretz Yisrael, fall? When very few Jews lived here, and there was no "Jewish state," I guess that they were in the "Man-G-d" category for some. But considering that many otherwise Torah observant Jews don't recognize the commandment to live in our Holy Land, maybe they've disengaged it from the other divine commandments.

This year after the horrible, indescribable sin of disengagement, which ripped people out of their homes in Eretz Yisrael, it seems like the sins against the Land are combined with sins against man.

Thousands of Jews are homeless due to Disengagement. Even if they're in hotel rooms or caravans or student dormitories or rented apartments they are still homeless. Living in a "transit camp" is not living in a home. The uncertainty and insecurity are the same whether in a tent or a luxury hotel.

Money promised as "compensation" isn't compensating and hasn't arrived.

Yesterday, Yonatan Bassi, Head of the Disengagement Authority, announced on the radio that he asks forgiveness from those who blame him. Strange wording and inappropriate forum for a proper repentance. This is the same man who is getting richer everyday from Disengagement.

repentance is more than words. It demands action and "eye for eye" material compensation. None of this is forthcoming.

Why is the media, the "liberals," the civil rights activists, the world silent when Jews are suffering?

In The Merchant of Venice, by Shakepeare, Shylock said it so well:

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs
dimensions, senses,
affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons,
subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means
warm'd and cool'd
by the same winter and summer
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not
bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you
poison us, do we not die?

And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

Act III, scene i
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Merchant_of_Venice

Because of this passage, I can't think of Shakespeare as an anti-Semite. He showed more sensitivity and sympathy than the Israeli Government, media, the UN, the US and the international "experts" in humanity and human rights.

It's sad to say, but I can now see how the Holocaust happened. The world hasn't learned, and the Jewish People have learned even less. I'm disgusted by the rabbis who don't lead their people to help and defend other Jews. I don't even want to think about the politicians here in Israel and the religious leaders. With very few exceptions there was complicity, and silence, too, is complicity. And in too many cases the modern Israeli kapos acted with enthusiasm. And while I'm at it, the Israeli Jews "inside the ghetto walls" are guilty of cheering their inclusion rather than tearing down the walls that will G-d forbid lock good Jews in with terrorists.

Let me get all of this out, so I can return to preparing for the Holiday. My body and soul are soiled with all that is going on.

Forgive me.

May this coming year be much better than its predecessor.