Weltanschauung Kampf

The words that we use matter.

When we speak using terms from Torah, our intention is clear. We believe that Torah is the source of our moral values. But once we start using English terms and ideas, we enter a dangerous philosophical minefield. We use words thinking that we’re expressing Torah ideas, but without realizing it, we are employing secular ideas as well.

One prime example is “human rights.” People use this term as if it’s some kind of innate, obvious Truth, yet they fail to explain why it is so. Where oh where do these “human rights” come from and why are “human rights violations” so very terrible? That’s a topic better avoided, especially in polite company.

Moreover, the definition of “human rights,” or just “rights,” changes virtually by the day. One day it’s in to call one thing a right. But then another supposed right comes and supersedes it. No one knows what new supposed right tomorrow will bring, which will turn over society even more.

But it’s almost foolproof. If you want something, anything, in our “rights”-obsessed culture, your best strategy is to call it a right. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous that particular claim of a right may sound, or may have sounded not so long ago. Once you call it a right, most people will feel intimidated. They will not want to be dismissed as insensitive and committing in any way the “sin” of … denying someone a right. And they know very well what the consequences of such disagreement will be. It will be labeled as “hate speech”. Because if you disagree with someone’s claim to be entitled to a certain right, you must, must hate him. You’re a bigoted, mean, selfish monster. You’re … “anti-human”.

But this is playing with our minds. What do people mean when they speak of these rights? When it comes down to it, “human rights” is just code for “morality without faith”. It’s the creed of the new atheist religion, one that they are now using the secular legal system to dogmatically enforce, and with ever-increasing militancy. Just as atheism is axiomatic, so is the concept that morality must be defined in secular terms.

And therefore not only should Orthodox Jews never identify with these values, we must reject them like the plague. Even if we are speaking to someone from a secular background for whom our value system is foreign, we must never use language that implies even a slight endorsement of secular values.

And the same goes for a host of other buzzwords that have become the catch-cries of the holier-than-thou secular moralists: love, peace, tolerance, equality, social justice, rule of law, abuse, racism, multiculturalism, and discrimination.

All these words and ideas, although seemingly noble and true, are meaningless and false. They do not express universal and innate ideas; rather, they express (at least, as used in modern times, in a secular framework) the new secular morality that is so utterly contrary to authentic, G-d-given morality that it is almost diametrically opposed to it. (This is not to say that they don’t each hold some kernel of truth; however, now that G-d has been censored out of the picture, these ideas have degenerated into falsehoods.)

Why are these ideas so empty? Because without Hashem investing humans with inherent value, we are just a bunch of highly developed animals. Do animals have moral compunctions? Should they be expected to think twice before taking the lives of other animals? Of course not; that would be absurd. In fact, if the secularist creation narrative of evolution is taken to its logical conclusion, the principle of “survival of the fittest” implies that on the contrary, killing those who are weaker enables prosperity and progress. (Of course, most atheists today will reject this philosophy, known as social Darwinism, but they will not be able to coherently explain why.)

Of course we should respect and honor all mankind. But not because some Enlightenment philosopher said so. He has no, well, “right” to dictate morality to us. Rather, human beings have value because G-d created mankind in His image (Bereshis 9:6) and therefore all mankind are “precious” (Avos 3:18). Of course murder and stealing are wrong. But they’re wrong because G-d forbade them, not because a “human rights ethics council” decided so.

We must declare proudly: Our morals come from Torah. We believe in the G-d-given sheva Mitzvos, the seven Noahide laws, as our basis for morality, not empty, secular “human rights”.

Please, please! Don’t convert light into darkness, and darkness into light. Chanukah is not about “religious freedom” at all. It’s about a very violent insurrection led by what people today would call “fundamentalist” “extremist” theists against the atheist tyranny of the dominant secular culture of the time.

We celebrate because the fact that we won miraculously, along with the other miracles, shows that our G-d is real and all other belief systems, most importantly the Greek culture of hedonism and humanism, are wrong and false.

(If the Maccabees had heard someone advocating the secular concept of “religious freedom”, they would have … not dealt with him kindly. If they would have heard someone going so far as to misrepresent the festival commemorating them as if it stood for this modern-day secular value, they would have been outraged and furious.)

“Religious freedom” is in effect moral relativism, which is morally corrupt, nonsensical, and the very antithesis of everything this festival stands for.

Chanukah is about miracles, which demonstrate the Truth of Hashem. The message of the festival is therefore that He is truly real, and therefore our lives should revolve exclusively around serving and worshiping Him, even if that means sacrifice. It follows that secularism is empty, false, detrimental, and evil, and must be vehemently opposed.

If one examines the various Jewish festivals and considers which is the most relevant to our day and age, I believe the conclusion is clear that it is Chanukah. The challenges and struggles of then are so strikingly similar to those of today that it should send chills running down one’s spine.

Thus, the message of Chanukah for our times is simple but supremely demanding. Secular humanism, along with all its sundry modern political manifestations—liberalism, feminism, etc.—represents the mortal enemy of the Jewish people, and ultimately, with the help of Hashem and with our personal and group sacrifice, we will prevail.

 

 

Giving thanks to Hashem for all His blessings and publicly recognizing our dependence on Him is great; in fact, it’s vital. Choosing a day to focus on that and establishing it as a national custom is nice (it sure beats choosing a day to go to the races or the football).

However, giving thanks in liberal parlance, which means refusing to mention Hashem, is heresy, and also nonsensical. It would also certainly be antithetical to the worthy intentions of those who established this holiday.

We Jews should support the former and condemn the latter.

Shmueli Boteach wrote an article here berating Mormons for ousting open homosexuals. He’s barking up the wrong tree.

The Mormons are rightly taking a moral stand that homosexual behavior is immoral and unacceptable. They see how in our confused and decadent times action must be taken, and so they’ve enacted firm rules in order to protect themselves.

Although the kids might suffer from their church’s edict, and that is indeed unfortunate, the fault is on the heads of the “parents” who feely choose to live that lifestyle, when they could choose to be chaste.

Also, there is a difference between a private and a public sin. When these folks sin openly, they set a detrimental example to the faith-based community, so the community is entitled to take measures to protect itself from these influences.

The Mormons’ measures are reasonable and understandable. Some such rules are necessary and worthy, and whether they could be a little more or a little strict is irrelevant.

In any case, of all people, Boteach shouldn’t be picking on them. Although many of their theological beliefs are heretical from a Torah standpoint, in terms of Torah-based morality, the Mormons are very righteous. Not only are they righteous in comparison with their secular counterparts, but on the whole, they are fighting bravely against the tide of secularism by following worthy standards of modesty, early marriage, and large families at far higher rates of success than most other Christian denominations.

Boteach should stick to criticising the real threat to western civilization: the radical liberal secularist agenda that promotes sexual sin as if it were a worthy deed.

Through the “it ain’t so terrible to be a practicing homosexual” sentiment of his article, Boteach is also directly supporting the radical, anti-religious homosexualist agenda, which has set its sights on destroying all religious values and replacing them with its heretical, hedonist ones. He should be standing up for timeless Torah-based, biblical values, not glossing over these sins and condemning those who take a stand against them in order to preserve their communities’ moral compass.

If we’re talking about adults’ actions having harmful effects on children, Boteach should instead speak out against the immoral law that says that homosexuals and lesbians can adopt children, and inculcate them with the false notion that one can have two dads but no mom or two moms but no dad, thus depriving the innocent, helpless child of a mother or father figure; along with this, he should call out those “parents” who take advantage of this immoral law and adopt children.

Netanyahu’s constant talk of agreeing to a “demilitarized” state for the Arabs is complete nonsense on the face of it.

What does “demilitarization” mean, anyway? It supposedly means that the Arabs have a police force but not a military.

First, a hostile police force will (and in PLO-controlled areas, this has always been so) surely gladly harbor hostile military, i.e., terror forces, violating all treaties.

Second, a hostile police force is itself a hostile military. The difference is largely semantic. The same gun that can be used to maintain law and order in an Arab village can be turned against Jews in a terror attack. This has occurred countless times in terror attacks against Jews in the Holy Land. Instead of responding with harsh retaliation, cancelling all treaties, and retaking those villages from the PLO, the government looks the other way, continues to send money and guns to the PLO, and dismisses the attacks as isolated, unrelated incidents.

Third, the Arabs themselves would be much better off under Jewish control than under PLO/Hamas thugs. Although in the long term, everyone would be better off if the Muslim Arabs in the Holy Land would simply immigrate en masse to a country like Qatar, whose leaders have sent so much money to sponsor the PLO and Hamas.

If Jews aren’t in charge of a given territory, terrorist militias will inevitably be there.

Rather, Netanyahu’s “demilitarized” language is an act of tremendous cowardice, in which he makes a fundamental concession to the long-discredited radical, left-wing notion of mass land surrender to the enemy as a form of “making peace”. Even after all the misery and bloodshed that previous deals have brought upon the Jewish people, Netanyahu agrees to the “Two State Solution”, to (even more and a lot more) “land for peace”, he just has an itsy bitsy condition.

But since it is impossible for the foolish condition of “demilitarization” to be fulfilled, you can be sure it will be forgotten once the land is surrendered, G-d forbid. We saw a similar response after the IDF redeployed from Gaza: Once military control of Gaza was first ceded, the IDF didn’t retake it when the treaties were inevitably broken and it was used as a base to attack Jews, as everyone knew it would.

Note also how towards the end of the most recent war in Gaza, Netanyahu declared that Gaza must be demilitarized as his condition to a “ceasefire”. Yet days later, there was a ceasefire without any pretense on the enemy side of agreeing to this condition.

Netanyahu is surely fully aware of all this, yet he continues preaching this madness. So in fact, Netanyahu is a traitor, plotting to cravenly surrender even more vast swaths of our G-d given land to our sworn enemy so they can attack us even more, G-d forbid.

And that’s fine, because it will be “demilitarized”.

Yeah, right.

But what does this mean for us? Hashem is sending a message to all Jews: Time and again, secular leaders and the secular values they embodied have led to disaster for the Jewish people—Begin, Shamir, Sharon, and for three terms now, Netanyahu. Don’t trust in apparently well-meaning but secular leaders. Deliverance will never come from them.

True courage and leadership against our enemies can only come from a leader of faith, one who rejects the zeitgeist and embraces only true Torah values, who fears Hashem and is proud to declare His Name, who reveres the holiness of the Land and supports the mitzva of settling the Land, and who is outstanding in his love of his fellow Jew.

In the modern zeitgeist, an ideology reigns supreme that is not so much a philosophy as a culture of strict conformity to a code of conduct no less rigid than that required in a formal religion. The penalty for disobedience to this standard is immediate: vehement public shaming and ruthless ostracism.

Unlike traditional religion based on faith in a Higher Power, though, the rules of this religion are constantly changing—and coming to encompass harsh disapproval and subjugation of increasingly larger segments of society.

The main “thought” leaders of this ideology are the feminist movement and more recently, the closely-affiliated “gay rights” movement.

This is the ideology of political correctness, which teaches professes to be all about sensitivity and tolerance. In our times, this is the most prevalent source of moral confusion, irrational thinking, and downright intellectual intimidation:

Moral confusion: Although an inner voice says one thing, when faced with the tremendous social pressure of the dogmatic leftist culture, the person’s value system shifts subconsciously to view political correctness as a superior standard of making moral judgments to any one that he used to follow (especially one religiously based). Morality and goodness is redefined at its core as slavish obedience to the political correctness agenda, while dissent from their party line is condemned as intolerance, racism, bigotry, and indeed the very essence of evil.

Irrational thinking: Attempts to question any of their accepted theories are never met with a civil, intelligent response.

Intellectual intimidation: Political correctness zealots stifle rational thought by shaming all who disagree into submission. Dissidents are contemptuously branded as intolerant, hateful, and bigoted, and treated as the incarnation of evil, or at least second-class citizens.

In obscene doublespeak, political correctness professes to be all about promoting love, harmony, tolerance, empathy, and common understanding but in reality it promotes intolerance and hatred on a scale unprecedented in the modern era. Once a person is labeled intolerant according to the left’s latest definition, license is given to condemn that person and his beliefs in a display of not only intolerance but vicious loathing and persecution that includes having him fired from his job and censured in the media.

Moreover, the political correctness police are actively campaigning for their radical new definitions of the concepts of hate speech, civil rights, discrimination, sexuality, and gender to become written into government legislation so that anyone who voices dissent from their views based on their personal convictions, and especially their religious beliefs, is liable to be sued and fined, including re-education camps. Once the radical left has co-opted the legal system to enforce its ideology on one and all, increasing turning thriving democracies in the direction of fascist, totalitarian dictatorships, all in the name of promoting peace and tolerance.

First and foremost, this ideology is now targeting religious beliefs and religious freedom. Since religions advocate a standard of right and wrong that is not politically correct, religion must be crushed. There are two levels to this: individuals citizens and religious leaders.

The public in general must know that refusal to cooperate with the left’s rules of business conduct on religious grounds will be met with a crippling lawsuit. In general, open religious expression is unwelcome in the public sphere (unlike open affiliation with modern secular movements, which will be cheered): in colleges, the military, the workplace, and at social events. In particular, public schools are enlisted to indoctrinate children in the new morality despite it conflicting with the religious beliefs of the parents of the children and the very principle of separation of church that the left holds so very dear and so often adduces as proof for its policies.

The next step is inhibiting religious clerics. Those who voice an “intolerant” opinion must be punished by being deprived of tax-exempt status; clerics must be forced by the state to perform ritual services even against their conscience and explicit religious texts, and there is even talk of mandating that religious leaders excise “offensive” verses from religious texts.

Moreover, the left are anything if not persistent. Once they’ve “achieved” one victory, they are emboldened to agitate for the next one, and then the next.

Even if it is not affecting you now, it surely will eventually. We dare not be complacent.

As believers, we must know that this is an attack on our faith, and not only on our faith, but on any faith in a Higher Being Who prescribes objective morality. This is an insatiable movement to overthrow religion, marriage, family, and ultimately all of civilization, G-d forbid. If we allow this rampage to continue in its current direction, the outcome will be disastrous. o

This is a moral war, a religious war, a civil war.

Let’s fight back.

 Tali Hatuel and her daughters. May their blood be avenged.

In recent days, in response to the as-yet unproven accusation that a Jew committed an arson attack that led to the death of an Arab child (which evidence is increasingly showing was in fact a blood libel), Jews on social media have taken to posting a long list of names of Jewish children slain in terror attacks.

The very long list of Jewish victims expresses tangibly the Muslim culture of death, and this comes from the pervasive incitement in the Muslim culture that glorifies killing Jews, which includes such vile practices as distributing candy to children when Jews are slain, awarding large payouts to families of suicide bombers, and then naming streets and plazas after them.

In contrast, among Jews, incidents of murdering Arabs in cold blood are so rare that they can’t even be counted on one hand. Jews have no culture of death at all. (What is quite prevalent, scandalously, is the opposite—a culture of self-inflicted suffering and victimhood: Jews not defending themselves from Arabs and fellow Jews, Jews neglecting to defend fellow Jews from Arabs and fellow Jews, and Jews preventing other Jews from defending themselves from Arabs and fellow Jews.)

As for the claim that it was radical right-wing “settler” rhetoric that led directly to these attacks, this is a false libel.

Yes, “settler” leaders discuss how to solve the problem of the hostile Muslims living next door to us, and continue to remind us of the extent of the propensity to brutality of Arabs even to one another. Leaders must repeat this message time and again, because the leftist-dominated media covers it up. Informing the public of these facts and discussing solutions is not inciting violence, but encouraging self-preservation.

But the very same leaders, even the most “extreme” ones, such as Dr. Michael Ben Ari, Baruch Marzel, and Bentzi Gopshtein have condemned such attacks unequivocally. The only world in which “settlers” and their leaders today serially incite such attacks is the fictitious, slanderous world of BBC, Al Jazeera, Ha’Aretz, and Shabak agent provocateurs such as Avishai Raviv.

Even if there are a very small handful of people with this mentality, this proves nothing about everyone else, as every large group will naturally contain a tiny number of radical elements as unrepresentative outliers. Moreover, these individuals often prove to be clinically psychopathic (as was the case with the murderer of Mohamed Abu Khdir and is apparently also true of Yishai Schlissel).

Yet no matter how much it conflicts with reality, leftists persist in promulgating this libel and repeating it ad nauseam.

This is one of the main “arguments” of left-wingers: Discussing the danger posed by the Muslim populace and culture is racist incitement. Thus, the Jew who blows the whistle on Arab incitement and terror activities in fact promotes wantonly inflicting harm. An act of courage is turned into a hate crime and a hero into a scoundrel. All with the goal of intimidating those who would sound the alarm of the grave danger from Arab terror into silence.

And of course, this is done by naming one or two cases and implying that they are typical, most often Yigal Rabin and Baruch Goldstein. (Never mind that both of these events are very highly suspect of involving government coverups.) These two men are constantly held up as proof that all right-wingers are frothing-at-the-mouth crazies, conveniently exempting leftists from honoring right-wing arguments with an intelligent response.

Moreover, in fact it is the leftists themselves who are guilty of endangerment and incitement (no, this is not incitement against leftists!):

Since the reality is that the presence of Arabs who identify with Hamas, the PLO, and other terrorist groups in our Land poses grave danger, hushing it up through the accusation of incitement—which unfortunately still intimidates many people—has the upshot of making Jews less aware and alert and therefore less motivated to do what must be done to restore safety to the Jewish people (such as only voting for political candidates with a proven record of opposing land surrenders, such as Dr. Michoel Ben Ari). And when the enemy sees how the leftists are minimizing and covering up their crimes, they feel emboldened to attack time and again—may G-d save us.

Hi, my name is Yehoishophot Oliver.

I’m an Orthodox Jew affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. I’m also a rabbi. This is my blog commenting on current events.

The explanation for my site name: I believe that our society is in the throes of a weltanschauung kampf, a “worldview struggle”. A titanic struggle of worldviews between a secularist, hedonistic, neo-pagan culture associated with leftist, liberal, feminist ideological influences and biblical and faith-based conservative, traditionalist, pro-chastity, pro-marriage, pro-family forces on the other.

Obviously, I identify with the latter.

Yes, the situation is in many ways far more complex, and there is much overlap and nuance between these two extremes. For instance, some people are traditional-minded but secular, while others are technically religious but ideologically very liberal. Some apparently secular folks are advancing some genuinely worthy agendas, while some apparently religious folk are advocating for fundamentally secularist causes. So to say there’s a clear-cut, black-and-white situation of “us versus them” is an oversimplification.

Still, society is struggling between two conflicting and polarizing influences:

• Even many strong traditionalists feel the tempting pull of the siren song of the new atheism. They are left with their mouths hanging open when it comes to defending their faith against very aggressive ideological attacks, and are harbor confusion and dobt inside.
• Conversely, many secularists sense the vain emptiness in modern pop culture and seek roots, purpose, and Absolute Truth. Inside, they crave to be led to a lifestyle of Higher Purpose.

In this blog, I hope to explore these issues while drawing on the wisdom of Orthodox Judaism, presenting its timeless teachings as a source for moral guidance in our turbulent times.

Unfortunately, my posts will address multiple issues, and so different posts will appeal to different people. Some posts will address issues related to the Orthodox Jewish community in particular, some will address issues related to the general Jewish community, and some will discuss issues related to society at large. Some posts will address world events, while others will specifically focus on events in the Holy Land.

Polite comments, including critiques, are welcome. Personal attacks are not.