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malenkiyscot) wrote2003-04-20 11:19 pm
malenkiyscot) wrote2003-04-20 11:19 pm
An Obituary for Saddam
More of Yossi Jacobson. Перепечатаывается отсюда без всякого разрешения.
An Obituary for Saddam
Rabbi Yosef Y. Jacobson
20 April 2003
Death of a Regime
The small, often helpless nation whose obituary many an empire and tyrant craved to write for millennia, has instead emerged as the exclusive obituary writer of history. From the dawn of civilization until today, the Jewish people have observed firsthand the rise and fall of countless brutal empires and evil dictators who held the world in a grip of terror and then vanished.
Wednesday, April 9, as Saddam´s 20-foot metal statue came tumbling down in Baghdad´s al-Firdous Square, in an isolated moment of historical grace, that same tiny nation took up its pen once more to write the obituary of a bloody regime led by a man who dedicated his life to inflict untold measures of suffering on millions of innocents. Donald Rumsfeld put it eloquently when he remarked on that day, "Saddam Hussein is now taking his rightful place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Ceausescu in the pantheon of failed brutal dictators."
We, the Jews, might add another few familiar names: Pharaoh, Amalek, Sancheriv, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Vespasian and Titus – the great anti-Semites of yore who attempted to destroy our people and relegate our seed to museum displays and history books. Yet, in reality, the reverse has transpired.
Saddam´s Hero
If you wish to know a person or a culture, look at its heroes. Saddam´s arch-hero, as he himself stated numerous times, was Nebuchadnezzar, the king of ancient Babylonia, located in the territory of present-day Iraq. Nebuchadnezzar, a powerful monarch, who ruled Babylon and most of the world for 45 years, destroyed the first Holy Temple (Beis Hamikdash) in Jerusalem, exiling and massacring more than one million Jews.
Saddam, viewing himself as the authentic successor of Nebuchadnezzar, renovated the remnants of the Babylonian king´s palace. What is more, Saddam named his nuclear reactor, the one destroyed by Menachem Begin in 1981, "Tammuz 17." Why this obscure name? Because Tammuz 17 is the Hebrew date marking the anniversary of Nebuchadnezzar´s breaching of the walls of Jerusalem on his way to decimating the capital of Israel for eternity.
Apparently, this was the frightening objective of the modern-day Tammuz 17, as well.
The Bible(1) compares Nebuchadnezzar to a lion, someone possessing the urge to control and rule the entire world, or jungle. The Bible tells of how the Babylonian king came to view himself as the equal of the king of kings, G-d. Surrender and defeat were deemed impossible in Nebuchadnezzar´s mind, as those notions applied only to mortals, not to the sovereign of the universe. It seems that Saddam´s psychological profile mirrored some of Nebuchadnezzar´s. Such monsters are usually convinced that they are not G-d only after they encounter the worms below.
A Tale of Two Histories
We have very little comprehension of the ways G-d chooses to govern our world. The prophet Jeremiah spoke about this in very poignant terms: "Were I to contend with you, Oh G-d, You would prevail; yet I will still argue with You. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all those who act treacherously enjoy tranquility? You have planted them and they have taken root; they grow, they even produce fruit."(2)
The big question of why G-d allows innocent human beings to suffer horrendously at the hands of evil people never received an adequate answer in Judaism. The Jewish prophets, sages and rabbis knew very well that some questions would always remain unanswered.
Yet, Judaism always insisted that the ultimate story of history is a moral tale, not a random one. History, from a Jewish perspective, is a journey toward redemption, directed by a moral being. Though evil often claims titanic power in our world, causing us to feel that might is right and that power determines fate, we, the Jewish people, were chosen some four millennia ago to bear witness to an alternative rendition of history, a rendition in which morality and goodness ultimately prevail.
Our very existence is the proof of this. From the perspective of natural history, in which the physically powerful prevail, the existence of the Jew is inexplicable. The Jew is the mysterious stranger in world history. The survival of a people without power, without a country, without an organized government, without an army, without any of those resources of material power that alone seem to count in human history, and its extraordinary impact and influence on the rest of the world, makes little sense. Indeed, the Jew bears witness to a higher form of history – a moral history, a Divine history, in which goodness and holiness, not might and material force, triumph and prevail.
An Ancient Letter
This view of history is dramatically depicted in the life of Saddam´s hero.
The royal Babylonian dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar lasted for three generations. He reigned himself for 45 years (Nebuchadnezzar died exactly 2,400 years ago, in the year 3363 since Creation). His son, Evil-merodach, succeeded his father and ruled for 23 years. Evil´s son, Belshatzar, ruled for two years and was defeated by the new Persian Empire.(3)
The Talmud and the Midrash present a fascinating account of the moral-spiritual reason behind the Babylonian might.(4)
Nebuchadnezzar, says the Talmud, served as a secretary and scribe for a previous Babylonian monarch. Once, when Nebuchadnezzar was absent from work, other royal secretaries of the king drafted a letter to be sent to the Jewish king of Judah, Chizkiah. This is how the letter began: "Greetings to King Chizkiah! Greetings to the city of Jerusalem! Greetings to the great G-d!"
When Nebuchadnezzar returned to work and discovered how the letter was written, he was furious. "You call Him ´the great G-d,´ Nebuchadnezzar protested, "and then you mention Him last?!"
In a moment of spiritual clarity, Nebuchadnezzar insisted that the letter be redone, and written as follows: "Greetings to the great G-d! Greetings to the city of Jerusalem! Greetings to king Chizkiah!"
The problem was that the messenger had already been dispatched to Jerusalem with the first version of the letter in his hand. So Nebuchadnezzar ran out to call the messenger back and redo the letter. How far did he need to run? Merely three steps before he caught the messenger.
In the typical Jewish perspective on the deeper forces that govern the evolution of history, our sages see this episode as the ultimate cause for Nebuchadnezzar´s royal success. In the merit of his taking three steps to honor the Jewish G-d, the monotheistic G-d that rules all of history and the entire world, the midrash says Nebuchadnezzar received the crown of royalty for three generations.
Three steps to honor G-d resulted in three generations of sovereignty.
The midrash does not mean to create this parallel only in a symbolic fashion. Our sages meant it seriously. It is clear from the words of the sages that if Nebuchadnezzar had taken four, five or six steps, the royal line would have continued to the fourth, fifth and sixth generations (thank G-d he didn´t...).(5)
CNN vs. Torah
What a different view on history! If CNN, the New York Times or even Fox News were to report Nebuchadnezzar´s rise to power, we might hear and read about the powerful and wise schemes the man employed to conquer the world. We might hear about the forces at play in the fields of politics, economics and culture that brought about this victory.
Journalists present us with the first superficial draft of historical events. Historians, blessed with hindsight, present us with yet a deeper glimpse into the forces that gave birth to those events. Yet, both versions of history deal exclusively with the external material forces at play, only those forces apparent to the human eye.
The Torah - the Bible, the Talmud, the midrash and the Kabbalah - came to the world to share with us a deeper understanding of historical events, a view seen from the perspective of the author of history Himself. In this rendition, the underlying power behind the evolution of the human race is G-d´s invisible hand directing the world toward healing and redemption.
The tremendous power of Nebuchadnezzar, for example, as seen from a Torah perspective, is essentially a moral tale, one that can be traced back to an isolated moment in his life when he chose to take three steps to honor the Creator of the world. For an egomaniac like Nebuchadnezzar, who thought of himself as a god, those three steps constituted a quantum leap. Those three steps generated a revolution in the mystical divine process of history that gave him control over G-d´s world for three generations and 70 years.(6)
Why Are Our Steps Different From His Steps?
This is the reason for the universal Jewish custom that when we take three steps back at the conclusion of our daily prayers (at the end of the Amidah, recited three times a day), we beseech G-d with the following prayer: "May it be Your will... that the Holy Temple be rebuilt speedily in our days."
The timing of this prayer seems strange. During the Amidah prayer itself we dedicate six separate blessings to beseech G-d for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and for the ultimate redemption. Why, after we have concluded the prayers and taken three steps backward to depart, do we suddenly begin to pray for the rebuilding of the Temple, as though we have forgotten to mention this earlier?
There is profound significance to this custom.(7) How did Nebuchadnezzar acquire the might to destroy the Temple? Because he took three steps to honor G-d. So every Jew, each day at the culmination of his prayers, turns to G-d and says, "If that brutal tyrant merited the power to burn Your home just because he took three steps in Your honor, don´t You think that in the merit of my own three steps - and the three steps taken by millions of Jews millions of times for thousands of years - You should give us the power to bring forth the redemption and rebuild the third holy Temple in Jerusalem speedily in our days?"
The Curtains Part
Indeed, during the past week we merited to witness one of those rare moments when the dense veils concealing G-d´s moral presence in history parted, if even for a for a brief moment. As a brutal regime and an archetypal enemy of the Jewish people was reduced to a chapter in history, we were reminded that every tyrant gets his day, and that evil is powerful, but not eternal.
Farewell, Saddam. Whenever you arrive at your final destination, say hello to Adolph from us. Tell him that Jewish children all across the globe once again asked, last Wednesday evening, the "Four Questions", to celebrate the triumph of good over evil, of freedom over oppression and of kindness over brutality.
-----------------
Footnotes:
1) See the book of Daniel and its commentators. Cf. Ner Mitzvah by the Maharal of Prague.
2) Jeremiah 12:1-2.
3) See Seder Hadoros, years 3319, 3364, 3386, and references noted there. These three generations are known in Jewish literature as the era of the "Babylonian exile." It was during this time that the center of Judaism moved from Israel to Babylon, or present day Iraq, and became the primary center for Jewish life and learning for the following 1500 years. Even afterward, a large and viable Jewish community always existed in Iraq until the early 1950s. As of this writing, there are 38 Jews left in Baghdad.
4) Sanhedrin 96a; Yalkut Shir Hashirim; Esther Rabah chapter 3; Zohar Terumah 175a. Quoted in Rashi Yirmiyah 12:5. The Talmud states that Nebuchadnezzar walked four steps, but all of the other sources quoted above (including Rashi to Yirmiyah, ibid.) state that it was a three-step trek (Cf. Maharsha to Sanhedrin, ibid., who points this out, and Mekor Chesed to Sefer Chassidim 18:6).
5) See Sanhedrin, ibid., that an angel actually prevented Nebuchadnezzar from moving forward.
6) According to the Talmud, ibid., Jeremiah was lamenting particularly about the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. And the answer to his outcry was the story of Nebuchadnezzar taking three steps to honor G-d.
7) Maharsha to Sanhedrin, ibid.
[My thanks to Rabbis Berel Wein, Benzion Krasjansky and Dov Greenberg for their contribution to this essay. My gratitude to Shmuel Levin, a writer and editor in Pittsburgh, for his editorial assistance. This essay is adapted from a transcript of a lecture delivered Thursday evening, April 10, 2003, at the Jewish Community Center of Cleveland, Ohio.]
An Obituary for Saddam
Rabbi Yosef Y. Jacobson
20 April 2003
Death of a Regime
The small, often helpless nation whose obituary many an empire and tyrant craved to write for millennia, has instead emerged as the exclusive obituary writer of history. From the dawn of civilization until today, the Jewish people have observed firsthand the rise and fall of countless brutal empires and evil dictators who held the world in a grip of terror and then vanished.
Wednesday, April 9, as Saddam´s 20-foot metal statue came tumbling down in Baghdad´s al-Firdous Square, in an isolated moment of historical grace, that same tiny nation took up its pen once more to write the obituary of a bloody regime led by a man who dedicated his life to inflict untold measures of suffering on millions of innocents. Donald Rumsfeld put it eloquently when he remarked on that day, "Saddam Hussein is now taking his rightful place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Ceausescu in the pantheon of failed brutal dictators."
We, the Jews, might add another few familiar names: Pharaoh, Amalek, Sancheriv, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Vespasian and Titus – the great anti-Semites of yore who attempted to destroy our people and relegate our seed to museum displays and history books. Yet, in reality, the reverse has transpired.
Saddam´s Hero
If you wish to know a person or a culture, look at its heroes. Saddam´s arch-hero, as he himself stated numerous times, was Nebuchadnezzar, the king of ancient Babylonia, located in the territory of present-day Iraq. Nebuchadnezzar, a powerful monarch, who ruled Babylon and most of the world for 45 years, destroyed the first Holy Temple (Beis Hamikdash) in Jerusalem, exiling and massacring more than one million Jews.
Saddam, viewing himself as the authentic successor of Nebuchadnezzar, renovated the remnants of the Babylonian king´s palace. What is more, Saddam named his nuclear reactor, the one destroyed by Menachem Begin in 1981, "Tammuz 17." Why this obscure name? Because Tammuz 17 is the Hebrew date marking the anniversary of Nebuchadnezzar´s breaching of the walls of Jerusalem on his way to decimating the capital of Israel for eternity.
Apparently, this was the frightening objective of the modern-day Tammuz 17, as well.
The Bible(1) compares Nebuchadnezzar to a lion, someone possessing the urge to control and rule the entire world, or jungle. The Bible tells of how the Babylonian king came to view himself as the equal of the king of kings, G-d. Surrender and defeat were deemed impossible in Nebuchadnezzar´s mind, as those notions applied only to mortals, not to the sovereign of the universe. It seems that Saddam´s psychological profile mirrored some of Nebuchadnezzar´s. Such monsters are usually convinced that they are not G-d only after they encounter the worms below.
A Tale of Two Histories
We have very little comprehension of the ways G-d chooses to govern our world. The prophet Jeremiah spoke about this in very poignant terms: "Were I to contend with you, Oh G-d, You would prevail; yet I will still argue with You. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all those who act treacherously enjoy tranquility? You have planted them and they have taken root; they grow, they even produce fruit."(2)
The big question of why G-d allows innocent human beings to suffer horrendously at the hands of evil people never received an adequate answer in Judaism. The Jewish prophets, sages and rabbis knew very well that some questions would always remain unanswered.
Yet, Judaism always insisted that the ultimate story of history is a moral tale, not a random one. History, from a Jewish perspective, is a journey toward redemption, directed by a moral being. Though evil often claims titanic power in our world, causing us to feel that might is right and that power determines fate, we, the Jewish people, were chosen some four millennia ago to bear witness to an alternative rendition of history, a rendition in which morality and goodness ultimately prevail.
Our very existence is the proof of this. From the perspective of natural history, in which the physically powerful prevail, the existence of the Jew is inexplicable. The Jew is the mysterious stranger in world history. The survival of a people without power, without a country, without an organized government, without an army, without any of those resources of material power that alone seem to count in human history, and its extraordinary impact and influence on the rest of the world, makes little sense. Indeed, the Jew bears witness to a higher form of history – a moral history, a Divine history, in which goodness and holiness, not might and material force, triumph and prevail.
An Ancient Letter
This view of history is dramatically depicted in the life of Saddam´s hero.
The royal Babylonian dynasty of Nebuchadnezzar lasted for three generations. He reigned himself for 45 years (Nebuchadnezzar died exactly 2,400 years ago, in the year 3363 since Creation). His son, Evil-merodach, succeeded his father and ruled for 23 years. Evil´s son, Belshatzar, ruled for two years and was defeated by the new Persian Empire.(3)
The Talmud and the Midrash present a fascinating account of the moral-spiritual reason behind the Babylonian might.(4)
Nebuchadnezzar, says the Talmud, served as a secretary and scribe for a previous Babylonian monarch. Once, when Nebuchadnezzar was absent from work, other royal secretaries of the king drafted a letter to be sent to the Jewish king of Judah, Chizkiah. This is how the letter began: "Greetings to King Chizkiah! Greetings to the city of Jerusalem! Greetings to the great G-d!"
When Nebuchadnezzar returned to work and discovered how the letter was written, he was furious. "You call Him ´the great G-d,´ Nebuchadnezzar protested, "and then you mention Him last?!"
In a moment of spiritual clarity, Nebuchadnezzar insisted that the letter be redone, and written as follows: "Greetings to the great G-d! Greetings to the city of Jerusalem! Greetings to king Chizkiah!"
The problem was that the messenger had already been dispatched to Jerusalem with the first version of the letter in his hand. So Nebuchadnezzar ran out to call the messenger back and redo the letter. How far did he need to run? Merely three steps before he caught the messenger.
In the typical Jewish perspective on the deeper forces that govern the evolution of history, our sages see this episode as the ultimate cause for Nebuchadnezzar´s royal success. In the merit of his taking three steps to honor the Jewish G-d, the monotheistic G-d that rules all of history and the entire world, the midrash says Nebuchadnezzar received the crown of royalty for three generations.
Three steps to honor G-d resulted in three generations of sovereignty.
The midrash does not mean to create this parallel only in a symbolic fashion. Our sages meant it seriously. It is clear from the words of the sages that if Nebuchadnezzar had taken four, five or six steps, the royal line would have continued to the fourth, fifth and sixth generations (thank G-d he didn´t...).(5)
CNN vs. Torah
What a different view on history! If CNN, the New York Times or even Fox News were to report Nebuchadnezzar´s rise to power, we might hear and read about the powerful and wise schemes the man employed to conquer the world. We might hear about the forces at play in the fields of politics, economics and culture that brought about this victory.
Journalists present us with the first superficial draft of historical events. Historians, blessed with hindsight, present us with yet a deeper glimpse into the forces that gave birth to those events. Yet, both versions of history deal exclusively with the external material forces at play, only those forces apparent to the human eye.
The Torah - the Bible, the Talmud, the midrash and the Kabbalah - came to the world to share with us a deeper understanding of historical events, a view seen from the perspective of the author of history Himself. In this rendition, the underlying power behind the evolution of the human race is G-d´s invisible hand directing the world toward healing and redemption.
The tremendous power of Nebuchadnezzar, for example, as seen from a Torah perspective, is essentially a moral tale, one that can be traced back to an isolated moment in his life when he chose to take three steps to honor the Creator of the world. For an egomaniac like Nebuchadnezzar, who thought of himself as a god, those three steps constituted a quantum leap. Those three steps generated a revolution in the mystical divine process of history that gave him control over G-d´s world for three generations and 70 years.(6)
Why Are Our Steps Different From His Steps?
This is the reason for the universal Jewish custom that when we take three steps back at the conclusion of our daily prayers (at the end of the Amidah, recited three times a day), we beseech G-d with the following prayer: "May it be Your will... that the Holy Temple be rebuilt speedily in our days."
The timing of this prayer seems strange. During the Amidah prayer itself we dedicate six separate blessings to beseech G-d for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and for the ultimate redemption. Why, after we have concluded the prayers and taken three steps backward to depart, do we suddenly begin to pray for the rebuilding of the Temple, as though we have forgotten to mention this earlier?
There is profound significance to this custom.(7) How did Nebuchadnezzar acquire the might to destroy the Temple? Because he took three steps to honor G-d. So every Jew, each day at the culmination of his prayers, turns to G-d and says, "If that brutal tyrant merited the power to burn Your home just because he took three steps in Your honor, don´t You think that in the merit of my own three steps - and the three steps taken by millions of Jews millions of times for thousands of years - You should give us the power to bring forth the redemption and rebuild the third holy Temple in Jerusalem speedily in our days?"
The Curtains Part
Indeed, during the past week we merited to witness one of those rare moments when the dense veils concealing G-d´s moral presence in history parted, if even for a for a brief moment. As a brutal regime and an archetypal enemy of the Jewish people was reduced to a chapter in history, we were reminded that every tyrant gets his day, and that evil is powerful, but not eternal.
Farewell, Saddam. Whenever you arrive at your final destination, say hello to Adolph from us. Tell him that Jewish children all across the globe once again asked, last Wednesday evening, the "Four Questions", to celebrate the triumph of good over evil, of freedom over oppression and of kindness over brutality.
-----------------
Footnotes:
1) See the book of Daniel and its commentators. Cf. Ner Mitzvah by the Maharal of Prague.
2) Jeremiah 12:1-2.
3) See Seder Hadoros, years 3319, 3364, 3386, and references noted there. These three generations are known in Jewish literature as the era of the "Babylonian exile." It was during this time that the center of Judaism moved from Israel to Babylon, or present day Iraq, and became the primary center for Jewish life and learning for the following 1500 years. Even afterward, a large and viable Jewish community always existed in Iraq until the early 1950s. As of this writing, there are 38 Jews left in Baghdad.
4) Sanhedrin 96a; Yalkut Shir Hashirim; Esther Rabah chapter 3; Zohar Terumah 175a. Quoted in Rashi Yirmiyah 12:5. The Talmud states that Nebuchadnezzar walked four steps, but all of the other sources quoted above (including Rashi to Yirmiyah, ibid.) state that it was a three-step trek (Cf. Maharsha to Sanhedrin, ibid., who points this out, and Mekor Chesed to Sefer Chassidim 18:6).
5) See Sanhedrin, ibid., that an angel actually prevented Nebuchadnezzar from moving forward.
6) According to the Talmud, ibid., Jeremiah was lamenting particularly about the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. And the answer to his outcry was the story of Nebuchadnezzar taking three steps to honor G-d.
7) Maharsha to Sanhedrin, ibid.
[My thanks to Rabbis Berel Wein, Benzion Krasjansky and Dov Greenberg for their contribution to this essay. My gratitude to Shmuel Levin, a writer and editor in Pittsburgh, for his editorial assistance. This essay is adapted from a transcript of a lecture delivered Thursday evening, April 10, 2003, at the Jewish Community Center of Cleveland, Ohio.]
no subject
2. непременно надо это запостить в коммюнити israel_arab .