A new king arose … who did not know Joseph

Fresnozionism.org
13 June '11

http://fresnozionism.org/2011/06/a-new-king-arose-who-did-not-know-joseph/



The history of the Jewish people in exile tended to repeat itself, following a pattern first described in the Torah, in the book called Shemot [Exodus].

The people of Israel find themselves in a place where they are tolerated, perhaps a place where the ruler is friendly or finds them useful. They do well, multiply, accumulate wealth and prestige. Many of them take on customs of the people among whom they live, and some even forget who they are.

But the local population doesn’t forget. They become jealous of the success of the children of Israel (later called Jews). And something happens — perhaps the friendly ruler dies and is replaced by one who “did not know Joseph.” Laws and customs change, rights and privileges are taken away, and suddenly the Israelites have the stark choice between leaving their homes, perhaps the only ones they’ve known, finding another place where they can start over, or being wiped out.

It happened in Egypt, and it’s been happening everywhere since then, in the Christian and Muslim worlds, in the Europe of the Middle ages and after the Enlightenment. It happened in 20th Century Germany, where Jews lived as privileged an existence as anywhere in the world.

Hitler’s defeat and the worldwide revulsion against Nazi ideology were expected to end the cycle in Europe, but today Jews are more and more beginning to realize yet again that they do not have a future there.

There are only two places today where significant Jewish populations live without fear of being thrown out: the US and Israel. The US, because of its unprecedented tradition — developed as a result of the interplay between the heterogeneous Christian sects that founded it, and the multiplicity of peoples that comprise it — in which tolerance is the highest value. And Israel because it is a Jewish state.

Unfortunately new Pharaohs — both a man and an ideology — have arisen who “did not know Joseph.” And they threaten the Jewish people in both of these safe havens.

The ideological Pharaoh is an anti-rational postmodernism, in which all truth is political, combined with a naive leftist politics in which the West is always wrong and any group defined as ‘oppressed’ is always right — and is permitted anything. Although it sees itself as tolerant, it is only tolerant of certain kinds of differences.

This ideology is taught in our great American universities, and more and more it is becoming the dominant one among our intellectual and political elites.

The old American ideology would have allowed Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren to speak his piece at UC Irvine, because freedom of speech is one of its highest priorities. The new ideology defines ‘freedom’ as the right to shut down discussion that is politically unacceptable.

'The cycle of violence between Jews and Egyptians continues': How CNN might have reported the Passover story

Stephanie Gutmann
Telegraph UK
29 March '10

Here’s how the Passover story would have been reported, back in the day, by CNN or the New York Times (courtesy Daniel P. Waxman of Mideasttruth.com):

The cycle of violence between the Jews & the Egyptians continues with no end in sight in Egypt. After eight previous plagues that have destroyed the Egyptian infrastructure and disrupted the lives of ordinary Egyptian citizens, the Jews launched a new offensive this week in the form of the plague of darkness.
Western journalists were particularly enraged by this plague. “It is simply impossible to report when you can’t see an inch in front of you,”complained a frustrated Andrea Koppel of CNN. “I have heard from my reliable Egyptian contacts that in the midst of the blanket of blackness, the Jews were annihilating thousands of Egyptians. Their word is solid enough evidence for me.”

While the Jews contend that the plagues are justified given the harsh slavery imposed upon them by the Egyptians, Pharaoh, the Egyptian leader, rebuts this claim. “If only the plagues would let up, there would be no slavery. We just want to live plague-free. It is the right of every society.”

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The Significance of Passover for Contemporary Arab and Muslim History

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
29 March '10

One of the greatest little challenges of my life--at least in terms of needing to react instantly--came when I was sitting in a meeting with high-ranking Egyptian officials during Passover. One of them asked me if it was true that the Jews had a holiday about defeating the Egyptians. I realized I had about ten seconds maximum to come up with the best answer.

And it then came to me: "Ah, I replied, those were jahiliyya times."

In Islam, the time before the beginning of that religion is viewed as a time of not only paganism but barbarism. Pharoah is a villain in the Koran. So they instantly accepted my answer: celebrating a story which ends with the drowning of pharoah isn't an act against Egypt but against a hated tyrant.

We are in a similar situation today. Change for the better will only come when the ideas and individuals who dominate the Middle East today--and oppose modernization, women's equality, democracy, peace with Israel, and real friendship with the West--are seen not as heroic leaders embodying Arabism and Islam but as unrepresentative tyrants.

That is not going to happen any time soon. It will take decades. Coincidentally, I just read the following written by George Orwell in 1946:

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The Subtext of the Obama-Israel Dispute

Amy D. Goldstein
American Thinker
17 March '10

President Obama has consistently stated that the Jewish state should not expand the so-called settlements beyond the Green Line even for natural growth. Today is the second day of the Jewish month of Nissan -- in two weeks, the Jewish people will celebrate the holiday of Passover, commemorating the Exodus from Egypt, when God liberated the Israelites from slavery. Pharaoh had tried to end "natural growth" of the Children of Israel by killing all of the Jewish newborn boys, but Moses escaped to become God's vehicle for salvation. Two weeks ago, Jews celebrated Purim, the holiday that commemorates the Jewish people's salvation from Haman's attempts to annihilate them throughout the Persian Empire (today's Iran), by retelling the story of Queen Esther.

Throughout history, non-Jewish leaders have locked Jewish communities into ghettos in an attempt to limit natural growth through hardship and disease. Just seventy-five years ago, Hitler rounded up Jews, ghettoized them, and finally murdered six million of them in Europe in an attempt to destroy the entire people. Just a few days after the eight-day Passover holiday, the Jewish people will remember the Holocaust on Yom Ha-Shoah, a day when all Israeli citizens stand silent in memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. Throughout the world, Jewish communities gather to remember, recite the names of those murdered, and light candles in memory of those whose names we still do not know.

Jews are particularly sensitive to attempts to limit their "natural growth" and the area in which they can live. President Obama continues to hit that nerve -- whether it is intentional or not.

Moreover, there is the issue of Jerusalem. For over 3,000 years, Jerusalem has been both the political and spiritual capital of the Jewish people. There has never been another.

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Let My People Go, So That They May Serve Me

Manhigut Yehudit
28 Tevet 5770
14 January '10

And G-d said to Moses, 'Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, and say unto him: Thus says G-d, the G-d of the Hebrews: Let My people go, that they may serve Me. (From this week's Torah portion, Va'eirah, Exodus 9:13)

"So that they may serve Me." This small phrase turns all the modern significance that we would like to attach to the story of the Exodus on its head. On the surface, the story is made for Hollywood (and it was!): It has the good guys and the bad guys. It has Moses, the underdog leader fighting for justice who defeats Pharaoh, the strong and evil king. The good guys win, the bad guys lose, the good guys live happily ever after, the bad guys drown in the sea, justice has been done, happy end.

There is just one small problem. That is not what is written. We were not redeemed from Egypt so that we could live happily ever after. We were redeemed from Egypt to serve the King of the world. Were it not for that fact, we would have remained there.

The famous verse from this week's Torah portion, "Let my people go" became the slogan of the struggle for Soviet Jewry trapped behind the Iron Curtain. It was a great struggle to be in; the Soviet Union was the bitter enemy of the United States and what could be nicer than fighting against the evil empire and dovetailing with the ethical and enlightened Western world?

The problem is that while we adopted the values of the US, the "good empire", we omitted the all-important phrase, "So that they may serve Me." All that we remembered was "Let my people go." Let my people go for the sake of freedom, for the sake of democracy, for the sake of Zionism, for the sake of the values of the Western world. Let my people go to the Pax Americana of which Israel is part.

But we – and the Americans – are in the process of collapse because we have forgotten that our purpose is to serve G-d.

We have lost our sense of justice for our existence and as a result, arrest warrants are already waiting for our elected government officials if they dare venture into Europe's capitals. In a sense, they are right. We did not leave Egypt to enjoy the desert climate and we did not establish the State of Israel because the world lacks democracies. Without the "serving G-d" factor, there is no significance to the Return to Zion – it only creates friction in the world. As far as the nations are concerned, if we do not carry the message that the world has been waiting for, we are extraneous – even a nuisance.

The Americans had a president who looked for meaning. He was inspired by the good Jew who helped to open the Iron Curtain. "Natan Sharansky's book, The Case for Democracy, is always at my bedside," said President Bush. And so, the American Nation followed Sharansky's message. But unfortunately, Sharansky's book did not include the connection between liberty and the service of G-d. The attempt to force democracy upon Iraq failed, naturally and the defeat of America was remolded into the image of Obama.

Shabbat Shalom
Moshe Feiglin
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