It's a very very Mad World

I think this may have been part of what Chazal had in mind when they said, "Let Ben David come... but don't let me be around to see it..."

Head of Roman Catholic Church greeted by head of Secular Zionist Church

The Washington Times had an interesting piece on the Vatican a few weeks ago which I mean to comment on but things have been a little hectic lately. However in honor of "His Un-Holiness" being in town I guess now is as fitting a time as ever. Before I begin, let's do a short word-association quiz. Please take mental note of the very first thing that comes to mind when you think of the following:

1) Buddhist Monk
2) Voodo Witchdoctor
3) Catholic Priest


Let's see if your answers resemble mine at all... 1) orange tunic & sandals 2) doll with a pin 3) child molester. I could be wrong but I'm guessing my personal #3 is a pretty common first answer these days. And indeed the WT's piece speaks about the UN's Torture Committee issuing a special report on abuse cases in the church. The findings themselves didn't seem to contain any bombshells - mainly just that members of the church have problems keeping their hands off the kiddies (wonder how much money was spent discovering that huge revelation?).

However there was one very eyebrow raising suggestion the committee included in its report: "The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child rebuked the Vatican in February for its handling of the sexual abuse scandal and suggested that the Catholic Church update its canon to approve homosexuality, abortion, birth control and premarital sex."

Now it's nothing new that the UN supports such values, and I could frankly care less what the Church's policy on these things are as no matter what they may claim about their spirituality and holiness, they have a marked history of transgressing the 3 true cardinal sins: Murder (i.e. Inquisition), Niuf (molestation/underage rape), and Avodah Zara (worshiping a guy on a stick). However what is worrisome is that suddenly the UN feels it has a mandate to start dictating to major world religions what their policy should and should not be regarding controversial issues of tremendous moral impact. Just as they feel it's their right to re-write the rules of Catholicism, what's to stop them from attempting to make a few edits to the Gemara or Rashi on Tanach when they discuss the Jewish people's connection and G-d given rights to the land of Israel? Rav Kahane HY"D was branded a racist for trying to pass laws in the Knesset that were based straight out of the Mishna Torah. If the state's participation in certain UN committees, or it's standing in the UN in general was threatened by what the Torah has to say about our relationship to Israel I wonder just how willing today's politicians would be to try and censor rabbinic figures and books who state the truth on these issues? Given that Rav Yaakov Yosef and Rav Dov Lior were stalked and arrested like mafiosos a couple of years ago not even for any sefarim they themselves wrote, but simply for writing a haskama on somebody else's book it's troubling to speculate.

Let's pray the UN and the rest of the world just leave us alone and keep their attention focused on the guy in the bathrobe and Bar Mitzvah kipah.

Arutz Sheva links - Radio Interview and Expulsion Video

Just wanted to share two interesting links from Artuz 7:

The first is an interview I did with radio host Ari Louis further discussing the Vatican and it's efforts to take over Kever David: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Radio/News.aspx/5372#.U3khiXfWbe0


The second is video of the recent home destruction last week. In the middle of the clip you can view the cousin of our friend I wrote about getting beat up by police on her roof:
http://www.inn.co.il/wap/Item.aspx?type=0&item=276240

The "Miracles" of Secular Zionism

Not nearly as much coverage as is deserved is being provided as to the recent home demolitions and essentially mini-expulsion that took place yesterday. Ynet reports that several residents ascended  to the tops of the houses to protest the destruction and "were removed and the demolition went ahead using tractors and engineering equipment." I find "removed" a somewhat insufficient description of what happened. My wife has a friend whose relative happened to live in one of the homes that was destroyed. The family only received notification the night before that the following day their home was going to be bulldozed to the ground. The mother while protesting her home being destroyed was apparently thrown off the roof and broke several of her ribs.


A week after the big fanfare of "Yom HaAtzmaut" it's amazing to see the miracles secular zionism and their "independence" has wrought. Throughout the ages of this long hard exile Jewish mothers were forcibly converted to Islam, those resisting dying with the words of Shema on their lips. Jewish mothers were raped and subsequently slashed to pieces in European pogroms. Jewish mothers held on to their scared naked children as the Germans filled their lungs with Zyklon-B in the death camps. But through it all we held on so that these heros of the Jewish people could bring us back to our homeland, build us a state, and form an army of our very own - an army for the Jewish state filled with Jewish soldiers. At last we could be a "nation like all other nations." And after so much suffering at the hands of others in foreign lands at long last Jewish mothers can be thrown from the rooftops by Jewish soldiers instead of by anti-Semitic non-Jewish ones.

Har Tzion and the Vatican - the Backstory

Rumors of a secret government plan to relinquish properties sitting on Mt Zion, including the tomb of David HaMelech have been in an out of the news for probably at least a year now. Recently they seem to have been picking up steam and getting a lot of mention in the blogosphere as well. However many people may not be aware of just how deep the historical and spiritual roots of this controversial deal go. While the spiritual analysis is my own, the follwing historical information is based off the book "Where Heaven Touches Earth," by Dovid Rossoff. It's an incredibly well written and finely documented book of the Jewish history of Jerusalem, and I highly recommend reading it on the "inside" for the full account of this story as well as many others.

In 1898 Kaiser Wilhelm the second of Germany visted Jerusalem to great fanfare from all the city's communities - Jews, Christians, and Muslims, which involved extensive preparations that would forever change the face of Jerusalem. When entering the old city through Sha'ar Yaffo have you ever wondered why there is the actual gateway - i.e. "Jaffa Gate", but then right next to the gate it is a much larger passageway?

It turns out the Kaiser specifically wanted to ride into Jerusalem on horseback, however Ottoman law forbade anyone who wasn't a citizen of the empire from doing so through the city gates. In order to appease the Kaiser while still keeping within the letter of the law a compromise was reached whereby the city walls would be breached and the Kaiser would be able to ride his horse through the hole - thus not riding through the gate itself.

While virtually the entire Jewish community of Jerusalem, Sefardim, Chassidim and Perushim, attended the welcoming ceremony, Rav Yosef Chaim Zonnenfeld was a notable exception. He quoted a mesorah from the Gra that the Germans are descendants of Amalek and that therefore the Kaiser didn't have a din of a non-Jewish king that one should make a bracha on seeing.

During the Kaiser's visit to Eretz Yisrael the Turkish Sultan gave him a gift of property on top of Mt Zion. However, living in Germany, the Kaiser didn't have much personal use for Jerusalem real-estate so he in turn gave it over to the Catholic Church. Presumably the Church retained control of the area until the formation of the modern state of Israel... and it's a likely reason why on the face of it they desire to have it back.

I'm no professional archeologist but the idea that the room above the kever is where the "Last Supper" supposedly took place is preposterous. Even supposing such an event did occur, according to their own narrative Yashka lived at the time of the second Beit HaMikdash which was roughly two thousand years ago. Now over the ages dust and rubble and garbage accumulate up slowly raising the level of the ground - hence the need for archeological "digs." If you want to study a previous era in Israel you need to literally dig it up as the current ground level always belies past ones. An obvious example would be the Kotel. Due to the enormous size of the structure it still juts out from the ground quite a ways, however anyone who has ever gone on one of the Western Wall Tunnel Tours has seen first hand just how far down the retaining wall actually goes and just how much altitude the sands of time have covered up.

Now the building which lies upon the site of Kever David is level with the perimeter wall of the Old City - however this wall was built by the Turks long after the fall of the Roman empire which itself came about several hundred years after the destruction of the Temple. Therefore the current structure which supposedly contains the room of this famous meal must have at its earliest been built over a THOUSAND YEARS after the event was supposed to have taken place! Thus we're left with two possibilities - either the claim is entirely false or perhaps this room is the "second coming" of the original room.

Now maybe I'm just being a little overly silly and your average Catholic priest would counter that the current room is simply a maker or the original location - I can buy that. However what I have a hard time swallowing is given the relatively generous religious freedom said average Catholic priest could have praying at the site, what exactly necessitates the Church retaining official control of the site? As there's several quite large active churches in the vicinity it's not like they can claim that we're running them out of town. However looking at the story with Kaiser Wilhelm, things start to fall a bit more into place. The Catholic church is the traditional religious institution of Europe which is populated by the spiritual descendants of Eisav. Indeed according to Rav Zonnenfeld and the Vilna Gaon the Germans are the epitome of Eisav - Amalek. And here we see that an Amaleki king psychically breached the walls Jerusalem after which he handed over Kever David to the spiritual clutches of Eisav via the church. As the blemish in Jerusalem continuously gets fixed by the city growing faster and faster by the day, they wish to regain what they are losing by focusing on the tomb of David HaMelech - the very king from whose line the Mashiach will come to finally vanquish their power once and for all (perhaps vainly hoping to forestall their inevitable spiritual defeat). May it be G-d's will to save us from losing our spiritual as well as physical connection to our holy tzaddikim, and in King David's merit may his true descendant finally come for the FIRST and FINAL time to redeem us once and for all.