Haman, Anti-Semitism, and the Internet
Friday March 14, 2008
Categories: Jewish Issues
It has been said that if you say something often enough and emphatically enough, more and more people will believe it. Something that at first may seem obviously ridiculous with repetition becomes accepted fact. That is why Holocaust deniers are...
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About Virtual Talmud
This blog is no longer updated and is closed for comments. We welcome your comments about Judaism in our Judaism forums.
Brad Hirschfield currently blogs on Windows and Doors.
Author, radio and TV talk show host, and President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Brad Hirschfield is the author of You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism. Listed as one of the nation’s 50 most influential rabbis in Newsweek, and a regular commentator on Court TV, he is the creator of the popular series, Building Bridges, airing on Bridges TV, and the co-host of the weekly radio show, Hirschfield and Kula.
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So goes the saying that it takes only one bad apple to spoil the barrel. Fear and ignorance are the source of all hatreds. Where these are allowed to persist all of humanity suffers, not just Jews.
Those who sit complacently and do nothing are as guilty as the hand that wields the sword.
To be named the chosen people is to sit at the table of Damocles. It is an honor any time. That's how advertizing works... by endless repeating.
I am a minister in the denomination known as the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). My father was an Orthodix Jew and my mother a Christian. Although I am a Christian minister, I am very proud of my Jewish heritage, and do what I can to stand for Israel. I live in the Rio Grand valley (Edinburg, Texas, to be exact), and with all the attention on the issues concerning the Mexican border, I wonder what I can do to help dispel the growing anti-Semitism in our nation.
As my father once told me,"The Internet is NOT gospel!" and everything that is posted on the internet needs to be discerned with critical and lateral thinking.As my sister once told me,"Don't believe everything you read!" and as one German friend of mine once said 20 years ago,"Computers can't lie,but the people who put false information in them can!". Antisemitism predates the internet, but the internet is a double-edge sword and just as evil people may post their propaganda online,we can fight back online with the truth!
1/ According to Judaism Haman is not 'sick'. 'Sick' implies a biological cause, and with the right pill/Dr Phil he would be leading a singsong at the next NCSY event.
In Judaism Haman is evil not 'sick'. I would have thought that this is what is taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary, but I guess I was wrong.
2/ Reading to the end of the book of Esther we find the answer to the problem-the King gives the Jews to go out killing their enemies themselves.
My Grandfather(my father's father) was a German Orthodox Jew, in the early 1930's he married my Grandmother, an Irish Catholic woman. His family declared him dead, but I want to learn about my heritage, a part of me is missing and I am no whole. The fact that people use the internet for the purpose of spreading lies and untruths about Israel and the Jewish people does not make the internet evil, the ideas of the anti-semitical thinkers are evil. No one deserves to be hated just because of their heritage, the very idea that because a person is of this or that religion, they are evil or going to be a person who will hate another is ludicrous and inane. We all, must stand together against the idea that one or another is hated because of religion, skin color, heritage or any other label that may be attached to them for any reason. I will learn who my family is if it takes the rest of my life to do it, it is a part of me that needs to know the past so that I can teach my children about the future. I, will not bow down to the gods of secularism for any reason, I am a person of conscience and faith. The Covenant, shows me that if I stand for G-d, G-d will stand for me. I will always stand against anti-semitism in any form, I, will stand against injustice wherever I see it. No one is going to change my mind that life is not valuable and that growth cannot happen. But these things will not happen unless we open our hearts to the truth and see that we are all one.