במשך כ־600 שנה בערך, בין 1260 לאמצע המאה ה־19, הוטל איסור גורף מטעם השלטונות על עליית כל מי שאינו מוסלמי להר הבית. ובכל זאת היו גם יוצאים מן הכלל. הנה אחדים
בשנים ההן התקיים עימות ממושך בין המוסלמים ליהודים בנוגע לזכויות היהודים בחצר בית הכנסת הרמב”ן, הניצב עד עצם היום בצמוד לְמסגד, מה שהביא אז לתסיסה בקרב המוסלמים. את פסקו של השליט הממלוכי במצרים, אל־מלכ אל־אשרף סייף א־דין קאיתבאי, קראו באספה מיוחדת.
ההיסטוריון הירושלמי בן התקופה מוג’יר א־דין מעיד שעל אף האיסור על עליית יהודים להר הבית הורשו בפעם ההיא נציגי היהודים להגיע למסגד אל־אקצה: “ויהי כבוא דבר המלך ירושלימה ויתאספו במסגד אל־אקצה… ויקרא את מאמר המלך… כשמוע השופט השאפעי את הדבר הזה ויגער על היהודים, הבאים שמה ברישיון הנתון להם, העומדים בתווך”.
1496
איגרת שנשלחה מירושלים בידי אחד מתלמידי רבי עובדיה מברטנורא מספרת על עליית יהודייה להר עד סמוך לכיפת הסלע – המכונה שם “המקום הקדוש ונורא”. “וסמוך אליו יש מדרש שלמה המלך עליו השלום (הכינוי הרווח בעידן ההוא למסגד אל־אקצה, א”ס). ולא ייכנסו בהם רק הישמעאלים לבדם. ומרת שטיילא… ראתה היא בפנים, באמצעות עירונית ישמעאלית, אישה חשובה היושבת סמוך למדרש. ושמעתי מפי מרת שטיילא כי הוא בניין אבנים יפים עד מאוד, בהירים כעצם השמיים לטוהר, ולמעלה ציפויו זהב טהור מעשה ידי אומן. אבל בבית עצמו לא ראתה בפנים”.
1516
רבי ישראל מפירושא, ששהה בירושלים בעת כיבושה מהממלוכים, סיפר באיגרת שלכיפת הסלע “אין שום אדם (יהודי, א”ס) נכנס מצד האיסור”, אולם בעת הכיבוש הטורקי נרשמה חריגה מכך, “שבזמן שהיה המלך התוגר בכאן היו יהודים עמו ונכנסו בתוכה, וכולם מתו”.
1567
בדיוק 400 שנים לפני מלחמת ששת הימים ביקר בירושלים אחד מגדולי משוררי יהודי תימן, ר’ זכריה־יחיא אל־צ’אהרי. ב”ספר המוסר” שכתב תיאר ביקור אסור בהר: “ואלך בחוצות העיר / וליבי בקרבי הבעיר / על עיר אבותיי וחורבותיה / ותוקף שוממותיה / והייתי מתהלך בהר הבית / ואסב שבתי תחת עצי זית”.
Whereas the whole world in Biblical times deeply felt a sense of the transcendental, through worship of God or via idols, the Western world following the abolition of idolatry came to believe in man.
Gil Weinreich Jun 19, 2023, 7:57 AM (GMT+3)
One of the most frequently recurring themes in the Hebrew Bible, from beginning to end, is man’s disloyalty to God via idolatrous worship. Yet the fact that we do not worship idols, nor know anyone else who does so, challenges our ability to fully relate to this foundational text many of us learn daily.
Thanks is therefore due to Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein for his dazzlingly encyclopedic presentation of this topic in “God versus gods” (Mosaica Press, 2018) and for a planned second volume now in the works. Reading this book will not only help better understand the Bible but should deepen our ability to genuinely understand our present world.
Indeed, a midrash dating from the geonic period foretells a comeback for idolatry in pre-messianic times, portraying the last king to rule the world prior to the final redemption as planting idolatrous trees and worshipping Baal. If this seems far-fetched, consider that New Age and neo-pagan cults have made a significant comeback in the past few decades, and that Gaia-appeasing language is nowadays freely mixed into presidential discussions about climate science and environmental policy. (And that is without taking into account the religion of Woke).
“God versus gods” tells the story of idolatry from its inception, from Adam’s grandson Enosh through the time that the Jewish Sages prayed for end to the idolatrous inclination at the start of the Second Temple period, including all of the disasters in between, which made them willing to pay a certain price for idolatry’s demise (see below). Along the way, the author provides an impressive panoply of rabbinic interpretation, including both early and late commentators, and a constant stream of linguistic and cultural contextual information – a feat of erudition requiring very wide learning.
For example, when learning that Abraham started off by worshiping the moon – until daybreak, when he witnessed the sun’s power trumping that of the moon – Rabbi Klein adds that the patriarch’s hometown was also a Babylonian cult center for moon worship, based on contemporary archeological findings. Abraham eventually concluded that the sun was also not worthy of worship, and indeed he and Isaac and Jacob fixed morning, afternoon and evening prayer times in a manner that would discredit the sun as a god.
Readers learn throughout that Jewish idolatry was frequently less bad than one might at first think, involving the deviant worship of God rather than seeking an alternative to God, and often by smaller numbers of Jews than one might at first assume from a non-careful reading of a Biblical passage. For example, the unprecedentedly evil Baal worship under the wicked King Ahab and his non-Jewish Sidonian wife Jezebel was not a populist movement, but rather imposed from the top down. Jezebel did not and could not persecute worshippers of Hashem because they were too numerous; in contrast, Baal worship was centered on one temple in Samaria, and after Jehu destroyed it, the Bible itself testifies to the eradication of idolatrous worship at that time.
The breakaway northern kingdom of Israel was an idolatrous polity throughout its 241-year history, yet it wasn’t each one of its evil kings that precipitated that kingdom’s fall to the Assyrians and the dispersion and loss of the 10 tribes, but a seemingly good deed that sealed the kingdom’s fate: When Hosea ben Elah finally removed the sentries blocking access to Jerusalem (after the Assyrians had carted off the golden calves that the wicked king Jeroboam had stationed in Beth El to divert Jews from pilgrimage to the capital), the people’s failure to take advantage of the access now given them aroused God’s fury.
From this, and other sources developed by Rabbi Klein, we learn a lesson not only about the age of idolatry but about our own times – namely, that one of the repercussions of idolatry and its modern equivalents is a dulled conscience. He cites a midrash about the elders worshiping idols in “hidden places,” which notes that since nobody objected, they shifted their worship to “behind the door.” When nobody objected to this, they moved to the rooftops. Hearing no objection, they brought their idols to their gardens. When nobody protested, they began worshiping on mountaintops. Since nobody protested, they placed their altars upon the furrows of the field. From there, idolatry moved front and center to every crossroad, every street, every urban square, the suburbs and ultimately to the Holy of Holies of the Temple, now ensuring its destruction and the exile of the two remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin to Babylon.
After this entire terrible history, which Rabbi Klein records in colorful detail, when given the chance to return from exile and rebuild the Temple, the Sages of Israel beseeched God to remove the desire to worship idols. There is no free lunch, as the economists tell us, so we lost prophecy in the exchange. The author offers numerous interpretations of this trade-off, which all help to understand the lost formerly powerful attraction to idolatry. One of these interpretations, advanced by Menashe ben Israel, suggests that idolatry conveyed some sort of effective power, parallel to the power of prophecy to foretell the future. Consequently, pagans could use witchcraft or other dark forces to inform them of the future as well. He explains that such contaminating spirits still exist in Eastern lands based on Abraham’s gifts to the children he had with Keturah, even when general access to occult powers was curtailed.
Yet while Easterners apparently still see results from idolatry, its curtailment had a powerful secularizing effect on Westerners. Whereas the whole world in Biblical times deeply felt a sense of the transcendental, be it through worship of God or via idols, the Western world following the abolition of the idolatrous urge came to believe in man. With this dulling of spiritual awareness came an emphasis on physical pleasures and the replacement of idols with various isms. Rabbi Klein promises his forthcoming sequel will offer a comprehensive discussion of the ideas and actions which are modern-day equivalents of idolatry, so now is the time to read this unique and original first volume.
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With how the hard-left mainstream media and its allies throw around the terms “Nazis” and “white supremacists,” often applying them to those merely opposing their woke racial agenda, you’d think they wholly despised Nazis and white supremacists. And with the way these establishment guardians seek to cancel anyone thus labeled, you’d think that actually exhibiting the passions in question would be disqualifying anywhere, anytime.
You would think that, that is, if you thought that thought was the issue, if you fancied that principle and not situation-determined priorities governed these self-proclaimed fascism fighters. Since they’re in thrall to feelings, however, it’s not surprising that the Western media have now found actual Nazis they cotton to — in Ukraine.
For seven years, Western institutions have warned about Ukraine’s Azov Movement, which began as a neo-Nazi paramilitary group in 2014 and became notorious for its worldwide recruitment of extremists.
Then came Russia’s invasion. Within months, Azov fighters were being feted in Congress and at Stanford University. MSNBC swooned over a Ukrainian soldier whose Twitter account overflowed with neo-Nazi images. Facebook made the stunning decision to allow posts praising the Azov Battalion, even though the company admitted that it was a hate group.
This overnight normalization of white supremacy was possible because Western institutions, driven by a zeal to ignore anything negative about our Ukrainian allies, decided that a neo-Nazi military formation in a war-torn nation had suddenly and miraculously stopped being neo-Nazi.
But the truth is that this is an easily debunked fantasy spun out by a handful of propagandists. Yet Western media has repeated their falsehoods with a neglect for the basic tenets of journalism that stretches beyond the fog of war into the realm of intentional blindness.
Golinkin buttresses his case with concrete examples of Azov’s neo-Nazi bent and the establishment’s whitewashing of it. As to the latter, he relates that in 2018, “The Guardian had published an article titled ‘Neo-Nazi Groups Recruit Britons to Fight in Ukraine,’ in which the Azov Regiment was called ‘a notorious Ukrainian fascist militia.’ Indeed, as late as November 2020, The Guardian was calling Azov a ‘neo-Nazi extremist movement.’”
In the Orthodox coddling of LGBT in its ranks, the emperor has no clothes! He is not wearing alternative garb, he is distorting Torah! Op-ed
Rabbi Steven PruzanskyJun 15, 2023, 8:20 PM (GMT+3)
“So we see there are two ways in which someone can err. One is to speak so much “truth” with so little love that he is not actually speaking truth…They are not at all worried about pushing others away with what they are saying. Perhaps they even delight in the idea…”
“The opposite of this is an equal problem: to show so much “love” that you are misrepresenting the real love of God, and are forsaking God’s truth in the process. You are so afraid of saying something that might push away the one to whom you are speaking that you cease to say anything at all controversial or potentially disagreeable.”
So writes the American religious and cultural commentator Eric Metaxas in his recent book “Letter to the American Church,” of which 95% could be co-opted (dare I say, converted) and applied to the American Orthodox Rabbinate. Metaxas’ starting point was the anti-Nazi German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who tried to arouse the German church in the 1930’s to oppose the Nazi persecution of the Jews. After spending several years in America, he returned to Germany in 1939, was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1943, and executed in April 1945, just one month before the war’s end.
Bonhoeffer failed to convince his clerical colleagues to challenge the Nazis for reasons some of which should sound familiar to us. They were afraid of antagonizing the Nazis, they were not that sympathetic to Jews in the first instance, they saw the big picture and wished to focus on teaching religion, or they just did not want to get involved in politics, controversies, or cultural issues. Bonhoeffer was horrified by this spiritual neglect and condemned them for their failures and the emptiness of the Christianity they preached.
While the Nazi horrors are sui generis, Metaxas sees a similar dynamic at play today in his denomination’s reluctance to tackle the cultural and moral issues currently roiling American society. He mentions a number of such issues. One, certainly not as weighty as the Holocaust, stands before us as we endure yet another “pride” month. For how long will we remain silent? The easy road is to say nothing, ignore it, move on, focus on other matters, and wait it out, even as the society built on certain moral (and biological) assumptions collapses around us. But it is because of that collapse and the effect that it is having on our children that silence is not an option, a simple protest needs to be registered, and a new path forward recommended.
There are no illusions, at this point, that we can have any influence on secular Jews, Israelis, or Americans on this issue. The “pride” agenda is one of the few things in which they actually believe as dogma, absolute and unquestionable. Dialogue, although not impossible, is difficult, for they have fabricated their own system of sin and virtue unmoored from traditional morality.
But it is the infiltration of this agenda into the Orthodox world that demands we raise our voices and state the obvious: the Torah world will never accept same sex marriages or the cult of transgenderism. Period. We should stop pretending that accommodation is possible. It is not.
For almost two decades now, any open discussion of these matters has been stifled by the well-funded activists, with the now familiar litany of accusations: any dissenting voice endangers their lives, encourages bullying and suicide, is cruel and unkind, insensitive and a waste of our time and energy. Those who oppose the agenda are, by their definition, haters, bigots, suffer from a phobia, and are all “obsessed.”
Some of these contentions are risible, others dubious, some debatable, but together serve the purpose of suppressing any free and frank discussion of what this movement has engendered in broader society. This is the linguistic playbook they use. A complicit media serves their purposes and advances their agenda.
And too many rabbis have responded with such banalities as “there are more important issues to discuss,” “this requires nuance” (a word that apparently means “saying and doing nothing”), “now is not the time” (the appropriate time never comes), or pandering to the mob out of an excess of sensitivity and compassion – while fearing for their jobs, a loss of respect, cancel culture, media attacks, and the like.
And so, we refuse to face the issue head on. Which means what?
It should be stated openly. The LGBT movement, especially in its Orthodox incarnation, is the modern rebellion against Torah, no different than any other rebellious movement against Torah in our history beginning with that of Korach. It makes no difference whether the rebellion is conscious or unconscious; rebellion it is.
The Conservative Jewish movement first strayed by abolishing the mechitzah in shuls, as part of its general conception of an evolving Mesorah. That revolution pales before the LGBT insurrection, which seeks to literally excise a prohibition from the Torah, mocks the very definition of marriage, denies the reality that God created human beings “male and female,” and not three or six or sixty-four genders, as some would have it. It is the very essence of a heretical movement.
Rather than be challenged and distanced, if necessary, as the non-Orthodox movements were, they are coddled, especially when they threaten to “leave Orthodoxy.” We then distort the Torah, and in the process cheat our children who think the Torah is cruel, incomprehensible, malleable, or man-made, and they soon lose respect for the Mesorah and create their own. Our youth are being raised to think that what is abnormal is quite normal, that what is unnatural is quite natural, that what is a sign of mental illness is just self-actualization that should be encouraged, patronized, and subsidized. No wonder there is such mass confusion, dysfunction, and unhappiness.
Increasingly, Orthodox Jews are being compelled (in truth, many go quite willingly) to participate in charade weddings, complete with “clergy,” rings, blessings, a chuppah, and, of course, the broken glass. All this in the guise of “maintaining the friendship, rallying around the family, trying to keep the child in the fold” that he or she has already left – and in the process, they betray what is most dear to them and trample on the integrity of the Torah.
It is all one big game of pretend, in which no one is allowed to state the quiet part aloud: the emperor has no clothes! It is not that he is wearing alternative garb.
Do we ponder the ramifications of celebrating a sham wedding that defiles the very concept of marriage and family?
Do we even take a moment to consider that a four-year-old girl who thinks she is a boy needs her parents to take her to a competent mental health professional – not a surgeon?
It is hard to imagine a greater act of child abuse to which children – teens and younger – are being subjected, and all in the name of the golden calf of compassion.
Can’t we just admit that the pronoun game (individuals thinking they are plural) or the therian game (people thinking they are really animals) – is silly, and disturbing? Can’t we state publicly that an obvious-looking man or woman who claims to be non-binary is nonsensical? We help no one by mainstreaming mental illness or by egging on people who need therapy. And those who do not protest are accomplices to a rebellion against Torah.
Metaxas writes that many clergy fear being seen as “religious legalists rather than as loving and compassionate…” But he avers powerfully, “at what point does our silence encourage someone along in their sin and in their path away from God?” Indeed, one of the few prohibitions that remain is the contemporary one that abjures judgmentalism and declares that it is wrong to assert that sins are sins, banned by the Torah.
For too long we have been playing semantic games, such as “it is no sin to be a homosexual, but only to commit homosexual acts.” That is a distinction without a difference, and a vacuous one at that. Just reflect on how inane it sounds in other contexts. For example, it is not against the Torah to be a thief, only to steal. It is not against the Torah to be a murderer, only to murder. But what makes one a thief or a murderer? Only by stealing something or murdering someone. But we would not say that a thief is always stealing, or a murderer is always murdering someone, nor would we term someone with larcenous tendencies a thief or homicidal tendencies a murderer.
Deeds matter more than do thoughts or fantasies. But why then do we dance around the issue that a homosexual is one who has committed homosexual acts and not one who just has tendencies. No one’s tendencies are proscribed, only actions, as we all have sinful tendencies. But it is because the “pride” lobby – the only sin which has such a lobby – is purposely trying to dilute the gravity of the sin and excuse the sinner.
Certainly, we must love all sinners, including the homosexual. But is it really an act of love to ignore, rationalize, or celebrate his sin? Isn’t that really the opposite of love – to condemn someone to a life of sin without trying to help them overcome their urges and re-channel their energies? Do we really love the alcoholic when we ply him with liquor? Do we really love the slanderer when we feed her gossip so that she will then share it with others? Do we really love the adulterer when we procure for him new paramours because that is what he desires? Do we really love the thief when we suggest a ripe target?
There is an impasse in any reasoned discussion of these matters, given the threats, litigation, and cultural dominance, and because we have split into two camps. One camp fully embraces the new immorality as sacred and inviolable and demands legitimacy and acceptance from the Torah world – or else. They wish to control public discourse and impose their will on our schools, shuls, institutions, culture, and children. They have intimidated into silence most rabbis and opinion shapers in Jewish life.
The second camp – call them the traditionalists – pretend these groups do not exist, wish they would disappear, and, officially, hardly acknowledge their presence. This stagnation has caused many in the modern Orthodox camp to just surrender, accept the inevitability of their ultimate acceptance in Jewish life, and with it the loss of credibility of modern Orthodoxy as a Torah movement or ideology.
Is there a way out of this morass? Yes, but it requires an honest conversation heretofore lacking.
The approach is straightforward. To the groups and activists, nothing. They need to be told in every forum, clearly and unequivocally, that the Torah is not changing, and recognition is not forthcoming. Orthodox institutions that celebrate same sex weddings are as Orthodox (and faithful to Torah) as are Orthodox institutions that would celebrate interfaith weddings that take place on Yom Kippur and serve pork.
In the public discussion of these issues, we must revive the language of sin, right and wrong, objective truth, morality, and G-d’s will as embodied in the Torah, as well as the Torah’s immutability.
To the groups and activists, nothing. It is sufficient to restate our objections and try to remove the matter from the public domain. (It would be prudent just to ignore the parades. It should be noted, however, that polls show that anywhere from 70-87% of Jerusalemites oppose having a pride parade in the holy city. Funny how the media trumpet polls showing the Likud’s or the judicial reforms’ unpopularity – and then ignore these polls which reflect the people’s desire to safeguard the sanctity of Yerushalayim.)
We owe nothing to a group. But the individual is different. As rabbis have always done, to the individual struggling privately with same sex attraction, to their families who rightly love them and want to help them, we must offer safe counsel, sound guidance, and compassion without indulging or celebrating sinful behavior. There must be assistance provided to those who desire to overcome these passions or are otherwise plagued by gender confusion or some other dysfunction, if and where possible.
We should reiterate that no person has the right to blackmail family, friends, or communities into violating the Halakha or their consciences. No child has the right to say to a parent, “prove your love for me by eating this ham sandwich with me.” Privately we should encourage the parents to love and guide their wayward children, as we would privately encourage those children to observe as many mitzvot as they can – but never, ever, compromise a Torah value, eradicate, or celebrate a prohibition or make a mockery of all that is holy by sham ceremonies.
To the secular activists, wrapped in the euphoria of their current embrace by society’s elites, there is little that can be said, except perhaps, that they too should show tolerance to those who disagree with them. Yes, we retain the right to openly disagree with them, to respect and cherish the Torah’s morality, and even to publicly encourage its observance. The bullying of the activists has already unleashed a backlash, as we have recently seen in America with the boycotts of Bud Light, Target, the anti-Catholic mockery of LA Dodgers, etc. This will continue.
Cancel culture is a travesty – but it is also a two-way street. We should respond, without fear or rancor, by eschewing platitudes (compassion is a value but it is not the only or even primary value in Jewish life; misplaced mercy has always been a bane of Jewish existence) and by reinforcing the Torah’s morality at every opportunity in a pleasant and winsome way without compromising one whit. That would be courageous in today’s environment – and that would also be what once defined leadership.
Why even write about this subject when every word here has been stated and restated? So that we do not normalize and incentivize such behavior by indifference, by failure to protest. It is clear that the social media contagion has greatly contributed to the expansion of these movements, the confused identities of young people, and the concomitant assault on Torah and the Jewish family. Let it not be said that no voice was ever raised in protest.
Rabbi Pruzansky was a pulpit rabbi in the United States for 35 years and today is the Israel region Vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values. He is the author of six books, including the recent “Road to Redemption” (Kodesh Press 2023).
