Levitt Letter Extra News

By Daniel Pipes
www.JewishWorldReview.com

The violence by Muslims responding to comments by the pope fit a pattern that has been building and accelerating since 1989. Six times since then, Westerners did or said something that triggered death threats and violence in the Muslim world. Looking at them in the aggregate offers useful insights.

1989 — Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses prompted Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a death edict against him and his publishers, on the grounds that the book “is against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran.” Subsequent rioting led to over 20 deaths, mostly in India.

1997 — The U.S. Supreme Court refused to remove a 1930s frieze showing Muhammad as lawgiver that decorates the main court chamber; the Council on American-Islamic Relations made an issue of this, leading to riots and injuries in India.

2002 — The American Evangelical leader Jerry Falwell called Muhammad a “terrorist,” leading to church burnings and at least 10 deaths in India.

2005 — An incorrect story in Newsweek, reporting that American interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, “in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur’an down a toilet,” was picked up by the famous Pakistani cricketer, Imran Khan, and prompted protests around the Muslim world, leading to at least 15 deaths.

February 2006 — The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons of Muhammad, spurring a Palestinian imam in Copenhagen, Ahmed Abdel Rahman Abu Laban, to excite Muslim opinion against the Danish government. He succeeded so well, hundreds died, mostly in Nigeria.

September 2006 — Pope Benedict XVI quoted a Byzantine emperor’s views that what is new in Islam is “evil and inhuman,” prompting the firebombing of churches and the murder of several Christians.

These six rounds show a near-doubling in frequency: 8 years between the first and second rounds, then 5, then 3, 1, and 1/2.

The first instance — Khomeini’s edict against Salman Rushdie — came as a complete shock, for no one had hitherto imagined that a Muslim dictator could tell a British citizen living in London what he could not write about. Seventeen years later, calls for the execution of the pope (including one at the Westminster Cathedral in London) had acquired a too-familiar quality. The outrageous had become routine, almost predictable. As Muslim sensibilities grew more excited, Western ones became more phlegmatic.

Incidents started in Europe (Rushdie, Danish cartoons, Pope Benedict) have grown much larger than those based in the United States (Supreme Court, Jerry Falwell, Koran flushing), reflecting the greater efficacy of Islamist aggression against Europeans than against Americans.

Islamists ignore subtleties. Rushdie’s magical realism, the positive intent of the Supreme Court frieze, the falsehood of the Koran-flushing story (ever tried putting a book down the toilet?), the benign nature of the Danish cartoons, or the subtleties of Benedict’s speech — none of these mattered.

What rouses Muslim crowds and what does not is somewhat unpredictable. Rushdie’s novel was not nearly as offensive to Muslim sensibilities as a host of other writings, medieval, modern, and contemporary. Other American Evangelists said worse things about Muhammad than did Falwell (Jerry Vines called the Muslim prophet “a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives,” without violence ensuing). Why did Norwegian preacher Runar Søgaard’s deeming Muhammad “a confused pedophile” remain a local dispute while the Danish cartoons went global?

One answer is, that Islamists having international reach (Khomeini, CAIR, Imran Khan, Abu Laban) usually play a key role in transforming a general sense of displeasure into an operational fury. If no Islamist agitates, the issue remains relatively quiet.

The extent of the violence is even more unpredictable — one could not anticipate the cartoons causing the most fatalities and the pope’s quote the fewest. And why so much violence in India? These incidents also spotlight a total lack of reciprocity by Muslims. The Saudi government bans Bibles, crosses, and Stars of David, while Muslims routinely publish disgusting cartoons of Jews. No conspiracy lies behind these six rounds of inflammation and aggression, but examined in retrospect, they coalesce and form a single, prolonged campaign of intimidation, with more sure to come. The basic message — “You Westerners no longer have the privilege to say what you will about Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran, Islamic law rules you too” — will return again and again until Westerners either do submit or Muslims realize their effort has failed.

by Jack Kinsella
www.omegaletter.com

Osama’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in cooperation with al-Jazeera, joined in the commemoration ceremonies of the September 11 attacks on New York, Washington, and the destruction of Flight 93 over Pennsylvania by reminding anybody who hasn’t forgotten the horror of that day of who and what we are at war against.

We are at war against an enemy that lives around the corner, down the street or up the block. That enemy could be our neighbor, a friend, or even a relative. Lest one accuse me of fear-mongering or the inevitable and meaningless charge of ‘anti-Islamism’, ‘Azzam the American’ is a native-born Californian named Adam Pearleman.

He was born and raised in America, is of Jewish extraction and presumably WAS once somebody’s friend, certainly was once somebody’s neighbor, and continues to be somebody’s relative. Now he is the sworn enemy of every American and all that Americans hold dear.

What turned a Jewish-American kid from rural California into a crazed traitor to his country, his people and even to his heritage? In case you’ve forgotten, it was Islam.

And it wasn’t a specialized al-Qaeda type of a ‘perverted’ form of the ‘true Islam styled by world leaders – including George W Bush — as ‘religion of peace and love’ — but the good old American kind of Islam, taught him in Orange County, California, by American Muslims.

‘Azzam the American’ learned Islam at an Islamic mosque that presumably taught Islam the same way that churches teach Christianity – from its foundational texts. Churches, good churches, anyway, teach Christianity from the Bible.

The Bible is the source from which Christians learn about Jesus Christ, about His Great Commission to His followers, it teaches how Christians are supposed to live, outlines what Jesus Christ taught were eternal values, and what being ‘a good Christian’ means.

Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Keeping His commandments is therefore an exemplar of what it means to be a ‘good Christian’. The closer one gets to emulating Jesus Christ, the better a Christian one becomes. Jesus Christ lived a life without sin.

While humans are predisposed to sin – sin is what we do – through the teachings of the Scriptures and reliance on the leading of the Holy Spirit, Christians are able to overcome sin. Not all sin. Logic and experience clearly establish that even saved Christians still sometimes sin.

But overcoming even one temptation to sin is a victory in Christ.

‘Azzam the American’ learned about Islam in the same fashion. From the ‘revealed’ text of the Koran, allegedly dictated to Mohammed through an angel and then recorded for posterity after his death. The Koran is the source and inspiration for Islam, just as the Bible is the source and inspiration for Christianity.

The Bible turns observant Christians into choirboys. The Koran turns observant Muslims into depraved murderers. “But,” you protest, “Not all Muslims are depraved murderers.”

True enough. And not all observant Christians are choirboys, either. That isn’t the issue at hand. What IS the issue at hand is that choirboys are as much a product of Bible teaching as Azzam the American is a product of Koranic teaching.

There are Christian churches that teach things that the Bible does not. There are Christians who are barely saved. There are those who affiliate themselves with Christianity but aren’t saved at all. Going to church doesn’t make one a Christian any more than going to a garage makes one a car.

There is a name for churches that deny the central truths of the Bible. That word is ‘apostate’. It means one who has departed from the revealed truth.

But when the same principle is applied to Islam – that is, one who departs from the central teachings of Islam, the world embraces such a one as a ‘moderate’.

What kind of sense does this make? How can an apostate Muslim be a ‘moderate’? And, unless we turn logic upside down, how can one assume that the MAJORITY of Islamists are apostate and, therefore, harmless?

Assessment:

In case anyone has forgotten, Zawahiri reminded us on this fifth anniversary of the day nineteen guys with box knives murdered three thousand American civilians, By threatening to murder more of them. His ever-expanding circle of hate has widened to include his natural allies at the UN.

In his latest verbal attack, he lashed out at the UN over Resolution 1701 that ordered a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. What is so terrible about Resolution 1701? Zawahiri is only too happy to explain;

“What is so terrible in this resolution … is that it approves the existence of the Jewish state…” He also urged Muslims to intensify their resistance against the United States and warned in general terms of new terror strikes.

“You gave us every legitimacy and every opportunity to continue fighting you,” said al-Zawahri, addressing the United States. “You should worry about your presence in the (Persian) Gulf, and the second place you should worry about is Israel.”

Zawahiri also included threats to Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Zawahiri’s message was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the 9/11 murders, and his message was intended to rub salt in America’s wounds.

But in his message, he inadvertently included an unintended bit of truth. He said, “Your leaders are hiding from you the true extent of the disaster,” He is correct. Our leaders continue to tell us that Islam is a religion of peace and love that has been hijacked by a few evil men.

The war isn’t al-Qaeda against the West. Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia aren’t ‘the West’. Saudi Arabia is the heart of the Islamic world and the birthplace of Zawahiri’s Wahhabist Islam.

As a result, Zawahiri’s next sentence confirms Islam’s true nature and goal. “And the days are pregnant and giving birth to new events, with Allah’s permission and guidance.”

The ‘new events’ are new attacks, promises of new destruction. And Zawahiri confirms that they come with “Allah’s permission and guidance.”

I believe him on all counts. Especially that part that says ‘Allah’ has granted permission.

All one needs to do is read the source book for the ‘religion of peace and love’.

By Stan Goodenough
Jerusalem Newswire

“I believe there could be no greater legacy for America than to help bring into being a Palestinian state for people who have suffered too long, have been humiliated too long.”

– United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Washington, October 11, 2006.

“I believe there could be no greater legacy for America than to help secure, in their God-given land, a nation of people that has suffered at the hands of men everywhere, and been targeted for extinction for more than two thousand years.”

– Jerusalem Newswire co-editor Stan Goodenough, Jerusalem, October 12, 2006.

Condoleezza Rice is a powerful and very important person. She represents the government of the United States of America. Her beliefs and the decisions she makes affect millions of people in every corner of the globe.

I’m a nobody; my beliefs do little more than irritate most of the handful of people who hear them; my decisions only really affect the tiny circle of my immediate family.

Nonetheless, it is because I believe the word of God and in the calling He has placed on His people that I can boldly make the statement above. I am convinced that the legacy I advocate is the only one that America should pursue.

As laudable as Dr. Rice’s sympathies may appear, they are misdirected. Just take a drive through Gaza City, Hebron, Bethlehem, the Arab-populated parts of Jerusalem, capital of Israel, Ramallah, Kalkilya, Tulkarem and Shechem (Nablus) and you will lose count of the number of luxurious mansions — five six, seven stories high — towering along the skylines of these “Palestinian” cities.

Wind your way through the gently-sloping Samarian and Judean hills, and see the million-dollar mosques and minarets rising from the “Palestinian” villages dotting the landscape; villages that are illegally booming into purposefully spread-out towns — Arab facts-on-the-ground. International sanctions or not, money continues to pour into the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

This is not to say that there are no impoverished Arabs in these places — there are many. What suffering they experience, however, has been visited upon them, and perpetuated, by their own Arab umma (nation). As such, it is the Arab states that should be pressured into resolving the plight of these, their people. With their enormous oil-wealth and extensive land masses, they could put the “poor Palestinians” out of their misery overnight.

But there is another people, a nation on our planet who, more than any other in the long history of the world, has been singled out for persecution, affliction, torment and death at the hands of hate-filled human beings.

Both in extent and duration, their suffering surpasses that experienced by any other people. It began long before most of today’s nations even came into being, and it continued, uninterrupted, from the classical civilization of antiquity, through the dark and middle ages, the enlightenment, and into modern times — right up to our day.

Virtually every nation has meted out pain to this nation. I do not really need to list the lands. The Jews have been hated everywhere. And the one, single purpose behind that persecution was to get them to assimilate; to make them disappear.

But they survived. Courageously, tenaciously, they clung to their national identity and the expression of their faith, and they survived. Against all the odds, through two genocidal wars — one that saw two-thirds of them annihilated by the Romans, the other that saw two-thirds of them annihilated by the Nazis — and through the long tunnel of tribulation that spanned those holocausts, they survived. Finally, against all the precedents of history, they returned to their land and their land was returned to them.

But their return, instead of diminishing the hatred, fueled it. For nearly 60 years they have been under perpetual assault — militarily from the Islamic nations, politically from the Western ones.

Today the whole world wants to take their little land away from them. Those who do not want to cut it in half want to erase it completely from the map.

The whole world? Not quite. There is still America. But there is not much time. The United States is rapidly slipping away. Caught in the current, it sits at the head of the international attempt to disconnect the Jews from their land; its resistance to that effort steadily worn away.

It is late; but still not too late. America can still turn around. America, already universally despised and opposed, will lose little if reverse its course.

Imagine if the United States put the brakes on the whole land-for-peace process?

Imagine if the President of the United States informed the General Assembly of the United Nations that America was no longer willing to aid and abet the rest of the world in stealing Israel’s land to give to the Arabs.

Imagine if the United States cut diplomatic ties and ended trade relations with every Arab state that

refused to open its doors and offer full citizenship to the “Palestinians.”

Imagine if the United States made the continued existence of all diplomatic and trade ties with Washington conditional on each nation realigning itself with the Jewish state against the Arab-Islamic bloc.

Imagine if the United States made its full military might available to protect and defend Israel against any and every attack upon her.

Imagine if the United States positioned itself shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel against the rest of the world.

Imagine if the United States became the first and only nation that put the people and land of God above their own national interests and pursuits.

Imagine being the person who helped align your nation with Israel against the rest of the world.

Now THERE is a legacy worth pursuing!

THERE is a legacy worth paying any price for.

THERE is a legacy that would last, not just for 100 years, not even for just a millennium, but for all eternity.

It is a legacy hardly attained to by any other nation in the history of the world — the legacy of the sheep nation.

And, ultimately, Dr. Rice, THAT is the legacy that would see peace come to Israel, the Palestinian Arabs and all the other Arabs in the Middle East.

By Amil Imani

The dictionary defines religion as, “The expression of man’s belief and reverence for a superhuman power recognized as the creator and governor of the universe.” By this definition Islam qualifies as religion, so do numberless others. A definition this broad is ambiguous and must be further defined with the specific tenets and practices of the belief.

Simply because someone or some people say that they believe in a superhuman deity and revere him, the belief is accorded the privileged status of religion?

It is generally assumed that religion addresses issues of importance to daily life as well as matters that transcend it. Religion is thought to exercise a civilizing influence by ordering the social life, promoting spirituality, as well as advancing an array of human virtues. Zoroaster, for instance, based his faith on the triad of goodly thoughts, goodly speech and goodly deeds: Moses framed the fundamentals of his faith in the Ten Commandments; and Jesus placed love at the core of his religion.

Many people adhere to religion for providing them with comfort and a compass in life. It is these assumed benevolent features of religion that confer it special status. Yet concern with religion overreaching has led societies to enact safeguards against that possibility. Some, for instance, feared that Christ was a rebellious Jew aiming to challenge the ruling Romans. Perhaps to assuage this fear, Christ emphatically proclaimed, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” To this day, there are those who still believe that the Christ was a mere social revolutionary.

In the case of Islam there is no ambiguity at all. The mosque and the state were one and the same from the very start. During his lifetime, Muhammad embodied in his person all three branches of worldly secular governance—the legislative, the judiciary and the executive—as well as the religious domain. As a messenger of Allah, he transmitted Allah’s laws, adjudicated according to those laws and implemented Allah’s design. He also prescribed a set of religious instructions for the spiritual life of the faithful.

After Muhammad, the Islamic rule was continued by Caliphs and Imams. To this day, wherever it is able, Islam governs as the state, either directly as is the case in Saudi Arabia, or indirectly as practiced in places such as the Islamic Republic of Iran.

When religion crosses the line that separates it from the state, serious problems present themselves. In the case of Islam, the rule of the people, by the people, for the people is supplanted by the rule of Allah, by the faithful to Allah, for the pleasure of Allah.

Other problems arise. Liberty, deeply cherished by democracies, is replaced by submission—unquestioning obedience and adherence to the dictates and precepts of the all-knowing and all-wise Allah. It is this total form of submission that, among other things, prompted the Muslims to systematically burn libraries of the lands they invaded. They justified their action by contending that the Quran, the comprehensive unerring book of Allah, contained all perfect knowledge that humanity needs. To this day, in places where Islam rules many books are banned, newspapers and magazines are systematically either censored or shut down, and other non-print media are methodically blocked.

The contempt for free inquiry is encapsulated in the statement of Muhammad, “Al-elmo noghtatan katharoho al-jaheloon”—Knowledge is only one dot, expanded by the ignorant.

Once liberty is surrendered for submission, a host of serious consequences present themselves. The individual becomes little more than a passive obedient vessel of Allah and his perspective of himself and life is drastically changes. Once he submits to the all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-alls, then he is absolved of the responsibility of having to chart his own way in life.

There is considerable allure in submission to a powerful that is willing and able to take care of the person. It is not a bad arrangement. The problem is that all past claimants have invariably been proven as either fraud or failures in honoring their part of the bargain. Islam is no exception. A cursory glance is enough to show the condition of Muhammad’s flock. In spite of huge material wealth, Muslims in the oil-rich countries are imprisoned in the paralyzing mentality of submission and all the terrible ancillaries that go with it.

There is no reason to believe that Muslims have inferior intelligence. Their inferior existence is strictly a function of the primitive doctrine of Islam: a doctrine of nihilism, ignorance, and violence that denigrates this life and fixes the starry eye of the faithful on the next life. A case in point is the Islamic madressehs in places like Pakistan. Never mind the girls. Girls are not in the calculus—women are incidental in Islam. Consider the boys. Millions of young boys are enrolled in madressehs—religious boarding schools—learning very little beside memorizing and reciting the Quran. This is a case of total submission: Islam at its best, as championed by the oil-money-flushed Saudi patrons of the Wahabi sect.

Sadly enough, instead of Muslims marching out of the suffocating swamps of submission to the meadow of liberty, Allah’s faithful aim to drag the rest of humanity into the deadly Islamic quagmire. Islam may have been an improvement to the life of the savages that roamed the Arabian desserts some 1400 years ago. The 21st century world is not willing to surrender to the clearly failed and failing Islamic experiment, simply because of the claim that it is the one and only true religion of Allah.

Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and an essayist who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran. He maintains a website at http://amilimani.com/index/

By Rabbi Avi Shafran
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

At a recent large rally near the United Nations, it was encouraging to see the breadth of support for Israel and outrage at Iran’s current leadership. Not only were Jews of very different stripes present — from the bare-headed to the black-hatted — but there was quite a representation of non-Jews as well, white and black, American, European and even Middle-Eastern.

The event’s organizers deserve credit for all the work they put into it, and the vast majority of the tens of thousands of Jews who participated surely left with only good feelings. And yet, something — or, perhaps better said, Something — was missing: a clear expression of the Jewish people’s faith in the Almighty.

The void was most starkly evident during the speech of famed lawyer and author Alan Dershowitz. After reading a lengthy indictment of the Iranian president and his policies, Mr. Dershowitz invoked a verse from the book of Isaiah that speaks of the ultimate futility of the plottings of the Jewish people’s enemies.

“Utzu eitzah v’tufar; dabru davar v’lo yakum,” the former yeshiva bochur (religious studies student) eloquently intoned. “Plan a conspiracy, and it will be foiled; speak your piece and it will not stand.”

Very inspiring, except that Mr. Dershowitz left out the final words of the verse, “ki imanu [K]el” — “for God is with us.”

Whether he did so intentionally or not, the truncation seemed to symbolize an attitude that is sadly prevalent today.

The prophet Isaiah was not the only one whose words were edited. When a Jewish band called “Blue Fringe” struck up the classic “Am Yisrael Chai” — “The Nation of Israel Lives” — it used the title words for both parts of the song. In the original rendition, though, which became one of the signature songs of the Russian refuseniks during the dark years of Soviet Jewry’s anguish, the words to the second part are “Od Avinu Chai” — “Our Father Still Lives.” No room for Father, apparently, on the Fringe.

The Torah predicts how, amid affluence and security, it may happen that “your heart will become haughty and you will forget Hashem your God… and you will say ‘my strength and the power of my hand has amassed for me this success’.” (Deuteronomy 8:14-17)

To be sure, the Jewish people will persevere and, at history’s end, emerge triumphant. But Jews’ trust must not be placed in military prowess, even that of a Jewish State. “Israel,” we do well to remember, refers in the Torah not to a country but to a people.

And even our people, we know all too well, is not immune to the hatred and bloodlust of the rest of the world, at least not until the Messiah arrives.

No, not might, but right is the source of our protection. The only thing that can offer security to the Jewish nation — in our ancestral land or anywhere else — is the blessing of Him Who chose us from among the nations.

And so when Jews gather together because of threats against their brothers and sisters, nothing belongs in the hearts of the gathered more than God. And nothing more than He belongs on the lips of those standing before the microphones.

At the recent rally, shofars were blown. Against the disturbing background of the “my strength and the power of my hands” speeches at the rally, the sound seemed a call to arms — even, it seemed, to trust in arms. But the shofar on Rosh Hashana, of course, is a call to repentance, to thoughts of God.

After the Days of Judgment, Jews observe the holiday of Sukkos by siting in supremely vulnerable structures, “temporary dwellings” that by definition are exposed to the elements.

Even had the Talmud not informed us that our sukkos are meant to remind us of the seemingly insubstantial “clouds of glory” with which God protected our ancestors from all harm and attack, could we have had any doubt that our fragile holiday abodes hold the message that our true protection comes not from things physical — or political, or military?

It is a fundamental Jewish message, and an eternal one. But it holds particular resonance, I think, for our own unfocused Jewish times.

By Rabbi David Aaron

“I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your seed.”

– Deuteronomy 30:19 Goodness that isn’t chosen is not complete goodness. If we didn’t choose goodness — if we were just naturally good, or if goodness was the only option available — how could that be the highest expression of goodness?

I know a fellow that has dozens of guests over at his home every weekend. When I complimented him on his hospitality, he said, “What are you talking about? It comes naturally to me. It’s not a struggle for me. I love to do this!”

Is he really choosing goodness? If it comes naturally, is it complete goodness? Goodness that wasn’t chosen is not the greatest good. Only after you struggle with evil and chose goodness will you accomplish true and complete goodness.

Does God struggle with evil? Can God experience complete goodness through overcoming evil and choosing the good?

Yes, through you and me. God participates in complete goodness through our choices. Our service to God is to choose goodness. That’s why we’re in a world so full of allurements to do evil — so that we can rise to the challenge and choose good. That’s our service to God. For there to be choice, evil has to be pretty attractive. There is no choice if we’re not interested in one of the alternatives. In other words, if somebody puts in front of me a gorgeous, delicious meal, and next to it a plate of (forgive me) vomit, would it be a tremendous choice that I opted for the meal and not the vomit?

Therefore, in order for there to be the optimal opportunity to choose goodness, evil has to be extremely attractive. People think the Devil is an independent character who has a red ugly face, horns on his head, and a pitchfork in his hand. Kabbalah teaches that the forces of evil were created by God and the strongest ones are a counterfeit of good. They look just like goodness. That’s why they present such a great challenge. Evil and good are not always like black and white. High-grade, superclassy evil looks just like good, but it’s counterfeit nevertheless. Counterfeit means that it looks like the real thing but isn’t.

I walk into a store. I hand the cashier a bill. The cashier says, “Thank you, sir. Oh, wait a second! … Sir, I’m sorry, this hundred-dollar bill is worthless; it’s counterfeit.” I then begin to argue, “What are you talking about? This is a hundred-dollar bill! Do you see the number 100 in the corner?”

The cashier shrugs. “No, I’m sorry, sir, this bill is a worthless piece of paper. President Washington’s right eyeball is slightly off.”

“No, no, this is one hundred dollars. What’s an eyeball got to do with it?”

“Sir, just because it looks, smells, and feels like a hundred-dollar bill doesn’t make it a hundred-dollar bill. Unless it’s printed at the U.S. Mint, it’s worthless.”

So, too, the choices for goodness in real life are often much more subtle than most people recognize. There is a subtle but real difference between “looking good” and “being good.”

Torah and Kabbalah teach that God created the world in order to facilitate the possibility for ultimate goodness, which means goodness that has been chosen. Our service to God is to choose goodness.

Life is all about choices. There are always choices to be made. Every day we are all handed choices. Every day we all get different challenges. No one can expect life to be a piece of cake in a world of choices.

But don’t worry. Try your best, and if you make a mistake, you can do teshuvah. You can be forgiven. Remember, God knew the stakes were high, and God is with you in your pain and struggle.

In fact, the Talmud tells us that before God created the world, He created the power of teshuvah, because the likelihood of our making mistakes was so great that we couldn’t even last a moment without the possibility of teshuvah already available.

Teshuvah is amazing. The Talmud teaches that if we transgress but later on change because we fear punishment, then our offense is considered null and void. But if we transgress but later on mend our ways because of our love for God, then our offense is counted as a merit in the spiritual realm.

Imagine a person who spent their whole life choosing evil and darkness. But moments before they die, they do teshuvah for the love of God. They are able to take all their offenses and turn them into merits and light. How is this possible?

When we do teshuvah out of fear, it means we’re afraid of the pain that is the likely consequence of our choices. When fear motivates our personal transformation, it is because we want to protect ourselves. And that’s a noble move.

However, when we do teshuvah out of our love for God, the underlying motivation is that we acknowledge the pain and disappointment we have caused God. We realize that God was counting on us to beat evil and choose good, and we failed Him. And we are so sorry for the missed opportunity to reveal this great goodness born out of choice.

Teshuvah done out of love arises from the realization that we are here on earth to perform a divine service — to choose goodness for God’s sake. God wants to participate in complete goodness through our struggle against evil and our choice to do the good, but we have failed Him. We do teshuvah not because we fear punishment but because we love God and know that we have, so to speak, let God down. This realization itself brings us closer to God, even closer than we were before we made the mistakes. Therefore, all our offenses turn into merits. The darkness is converted into light.

If God is absolutely good, why did He create a world that has so much evil? Ultimate goodness, which is the goodness achieved through choice, requires the possibility for evil. Once you understand this, you will appreciate how central a role evil plays in this world. What’s so good about this world is the evil in it. This world offers the opportunity to beat evil and choose good.

In other words, Kabbalah is teaching that the main feature and advantage of this world is the evil in it. This world was not created for what is already good in it. This world was created to be a forum for a new and higher kind of goodness — the goodness born out of overcoming evil and choosing to do good.

Imagine you walk into a factory and you see them trucking in tons and tons of garbage. You then find out that they actually buy this garbage and that it is their most valued raw material. This all sounds crazy to you until you find out that this factory is actually a recycling plant. They take garbage and turn it into usable products. Welcome to World, Inc.!

Yes, this world is really a recycling plant. This is why it is filled with so much garbage. All the trash around us and within us is here for us to recycle into usable products — lessons and realizations, growth and accomplishments. Before I learned this lesson from Kabbalah, I always wondered why there was so much evil in the world. However, after this secret was revealed to me, I asked: Why isn’t there more evil in this world? The answer, of course, is that there is less evil because we are working so hard and succeeding in our mission on earth to choose good.

By Stewart Ain

www.JewishWorldReview.com

A broad swath of center-right American Jewish groups is expressing shock and outrage that millions of dollars being raised by Jewish federations in North America for the post-war recovery effort in Israel is being used in part to help Israeli Arabs.

“To placate Israeli Arabs in the north who were celebrating Israel’s defeat is totally absurd,” fumed Helen Freedman, former director of the Americans for a Safe Israel. “Let the Arab countries take care of them. They are a fifth column that is working to support Hezbollah and Hamas, and we foolish Jews are saying there is no difference between Israeli Arabs and Jews who were victims of this war.”

Stephen Savitsky, president of the Orthodox Union whose own Israel emergency campaign merged with that of the United Jewish Communities, said he was unaware that the UJC money went to help Israeli Arabs. Told it does, Savitsky said he plans to ask the UJC to “segment the money” raised from OU members “to make sure it goes to the places we want.”

He said that before the campaigns were merged, the money the OU raised was designed to “help Jews in need.” He said it went to provide entertainment and food to those in bomb shelters and that “whoever was in the shelter we serviced; we didn’t discriminate.”

But the idea of the campaign, Savitsky said, was to “raise money to help Jews in need.”

“If we help in Haifa and there are non-Jews there, we should not discriminate. But we would not go to an Arab village or town to give services.”

A spokesman for the UJC said the money raised did not go to municipalities but rather to provide services for those in need — Jews and Arabs alike.

Howard Rieger, the UJC’s president and CEO, when asked for a breakdown of the money, said that of the $92 million spent to date from the Israel Emergency Campaign, a total of $9 million, or some 10 percent, “went to [Israeli] Arabs.” He said the campaign has thus far raised $329 million in pledges, and defended the decision to use the money to help Israeli Arabs and Druze.

“About one-third to one-half of those killed [by Hezbollah rockets] were Israeli Arabs, as well as Druze who serve in the Israel Defense Forces and died in the IDF,” he said. “We were getting kids out of harm’s way [in the north], and we think it is a fair and valid use of the funds” to help Israeli Jewish and Arab youngsters.

Rieger said his organization was asked at the very beginning if it wanted to treat Israeli Jews and Arabs differently and that “our answer was no.”

“We’re proud of that,” he said.

Asked about distribution of the rest of the money, Rieger said a committee is expected to decide that in about a month.

Freedman said, however, that she finds it distressing that the decision to use part of the money for Israeli Arabs was not widely known.

“I am sure that most people who give to the UJC have no clue that a percentage of their money is going to Arabs,” she said. “I think they would be horrified. I have copies of letters from people who wrote to Howard Rieger denouncing” the move.

Among the e-mails Freedman said she received and shared with The Jewish Week was one from a man who called the help to Israeli Arabs “absurd,” especially in light of the fact that the UJC “gave nothing” to the Jews made homeless by their expulsion from the Gaza Strip last summer.

Another writer wrote his response in rhyme: “How odd of G-d to choose the Jews, and how odd that Jews support those who want them to lose.”

Steven Mostofsky, president of the National Council of Young Israel, said he was “really surprised” to learn that Israeli Arabs were benefiting from the Israel Emergency Campaign, which was launched shortly after the outbreak of the Israel-Hezbollah War in July.

“It’s not that I want to seem harsh or that this is an anti-Arab statement, but money raised from Jews because of a war against Jews should only be used for Jews,” he said. “There are plenty of Arab not-for-profits in the United States. They should be supporting the Arabs. … Any money that is raised because of the recent war should go to benefit the Jews who suffered in the war — those whose houses and businesses were destroyed and hospitalized soldiers whose families need support.”