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Ask JTF for Sunday, June 28, 2009

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imaknick:
what is your opinion on former representative Richard Armey?

Confederate Kahanist:
Dear Chaim

Do you think Fox news spends to much time talking about topics that are not that important and are redundant such as the Carrie prejean situation rather than talk about the real situations?  Also what is your opinion on Glenn Beck?

Thanks

Maimonides:
Shalom Chaim and Thank you as always for your hard work and for answering my questions?

What is your opinion of,HaRav, Professor Daniel Hershkowitz, who is the current Minister of Science & Technology in Israel? I heard him speak on Arutz Sheva, and he appears to be a righteous Jew with the same goals that we have.

Also what is your opinion of Ya’akov Dov "Katzele" Katz, who from his views and war record also appears to be a righteous Jew?

I know that Katzele is chairmen of the National Union Party, while Hershokowitz  leads a separate party due to a split over the leadership of the Religious Zionist movement, but are they not both righteous Jews who just have a mere disagreement?

Secularbeliever:
Shalom Chaim,

Last week I asked about limits on faith and I did not expect you to agree with me although I think you might have misunderstood some of my points but I don't want to continue that discussion.  I want to talk about the reasons and benefits of faith from my point of view.

Even if they were non religious people I think men like Begin, the Sternists, the IDF leaders and even Ben Gurion and the leaders of the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto had many elements of faith.  They were able to look at an entire world largely opposed to them and still follow a belief into action that created miraculous results. 

My own reasons for faith are largely based on two experiences or events.  In 1967 I was 12 years old and attending Hebrew School.  My parents were non practicing, in fact my father who was a very good man was non religious bordering on anti religious.  They sent us to the Orthodox Synagogue (it was easy walking distance) for our Jewish education but told us not to believe what we learned there, when I came home and asked why we don't keep kosher, not travel on Shabat etc.  As weird as this sounds I was far from the only person with this experience.  So when we learned all the Biblical istory they would tell us they were just stories sort of like fairy tales.   We knew about the founding of Israel but that was sort of viewed as a fluke not a miracle of Biblical proportions.  So in May 1967 when the situation in the Mid East heated up, most people expected another massacre of Jews.  They all felt it was a shame but not much we could do about it.  My mother offered a useless suggestion that if she did not have a family she would go to Israel to help in some way (her single brothers and sister did not).  Of course as history showed the Jews not only defeated the enemy but made huge advances.  Later it was all easily explained by the excellent showing of the IDF the Arabs parking all their planes in a neat row for the IAF to take out etc.

This is to me what faith is all about.  There are plenty of brave people who had faith that was not rewarded.  I have read of how the Polish Cavalry units tried to fight off the Nazi Panzer units and were massacred.  Their bravery and faith were not rewarded.  Faith must be mixed with bravery, skill, and reason.  I am sure that Israeli intelligence knew that the Arab planes were all neatly lined up and had a plan to take them out to win the war quickly.  This told me that the stories I read in the Bible were not fairy tales.  That there was something extraordinary about Jews and that if we did the right things and were smart about it we could have spectacular results.  Today the fact that so much attention is focused on Israel and Jews despite the fact that we are such a tiny proportion of the world's population and control a miniscule amount of land tells me something is unique about us that cannot be explained by other means.  How many Jews have had huge influences on history?  Einstein, Freud, Marx, etc.  They might not have been religious, they might have even in many cases had lousy ideas.  Yet their influence is way out of proportion to what numbers what indicate they should be.

As a second revelation of sorts, when I was in my teens and early twenties it was the widely held belief that casual sex was a physically harmless activity.  Penicillin would take care of any diseases and birth control would prevent unwanted pregnancies and if all else failed abortion would solve any problems.  Leaving aside any moral or emotional issues it sounded plausible.

I lived in San Francisco when young gay men started dying of some mysterious ailment.  A buddy of mine treated some of the first victims and said he was sure it was a sexually transmitted ailment.  Others thought it was caused by the drugs that were popular in the gay community.  In time we learned about AIDS.  Over time hundreds of thousands of people died from it (maybe my count is low) and millions of others are suffering from it in some form.  Arrogant people were taught that something is bigger than people and there is a cost to immoral behavior.

Minuteman:
Dear Chaim,

Do you think it is possible for someone who is a muslim, nazi, self hating jew, communist, black racist or who is outright immoral, to change his or her ways completely and become a righteous individual? 

God Bless America, Israel, and the West

Minuteman

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