Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Judaism

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Wednesday, November 30, 2022

The Buraq Wall was never where the Kotel is

Palestinian routinely claim that the Kotel, or Western Wall, is really a Muslim shrine - the Buraq Wall, where Mohammed supposedly tethered his flying steed during his miraculous "night journey."

It turns out that most Muslims never believed that until the 1929 riots and after Israel built the plaza in front of the Kotel in 1967.

The Shaw Commission report of 1930, about the riots that started at the Wall in 1929, describes the competing religious claims to the wall - and does not mention the legend of the Buraq at all, only that it is part of the Haram esh Sharif like all the other walls.

One of the Holy Places in connection with which it has not infrequently been necessary to give rulings of the character indicated above is the Western or Wailing Wall; in Jerusalem. This Wall; forms part of the western exterior of the ancient Jewish Temple; being the last remaining vestige of that sacred place it is regarded with the greatest reverence by religious Jews, whose custom of praying there extended back to at least the Middle Ages. ....The Wall is also part of the Haram-esh-Sherif, which is an Islamic place of great sanctity, being reckoned next to the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina as an object of veneration to Moslems.

If the Kotel was considered the holy "Buraq Wall" by Muslims at the time, certainly that would have been mentioned here. Although it must be mentioned that the testimony included the idea that the Muslims had exaggerated the importance of the Buraq Wall:

Merriman introduced part of Chancellor’s statement to the Permanent Mandates Commission in July, in which he stated that the Moslems are trying to invest El Burak with a sanctity never before attached to it. Merriman implied that the Government was as skeptical as the Jews regarding the sacredness of the pavement to the Moslems.

Wikipedia points to an obscure German source from the 1860s that appears to say that the Muslims claimed the entire Western wall of the Temple Mount to be the Buraq Wall.

A 1932 academic paper in the Journal of Biblical Literature, by C. D. Matthews, discusses the topic of where Muslims believe Mohammed tied the steed and entered the Temple Mount:

Among the orthodox who maintain the legends of Islam as historic truth, the famous "Night-Journey" of the Prophet sanctifies, as could nothing else, Jerusalem as a city of Muslim shrines, especially the Rock itself, from which Mohammed ascended into Heaven, and the Wall of al-Buraq, where Gabriel, the angelic conductor, tied up the divine steed on the arrival at the "further mosque" from Mecca. Unfortunately, this last spot is identified as the same as the "Wailing Wall," involving a clash of religious sentiments which has often led to tragic results. Of course, the factious can always find factors. But is the Wall of al-Buraq the same as the Wailing Wall? The spot of contention is the southern end of the western wall of the Haram area. Muslim tradition is now well established that this is the holy station of their Prophet. Some accounts of the Night-Journey, as for instance our own author, say that Mohammed entered through a "gate through which the sun and the moon incline"--or shine at setting. This would indicate, of course, a western or southwestern gate. It agrees with the ordinary identification as the now walled-up Bab an-Nabi underneath the Gate of the Moors, Bab al-Maghribah, just south of the Place of Wailing, in the western wall of the Haram.

He's saying that the Muslim consensus in Jerusalem was that the Buraq was tethered to the south of the Kotel, under the Mughrabi Gate - not where the Kotel is, north of the gate.

But that's just the beginning:

Further, Ibn al-Fakih (903) says the place of the tying up of al-Buraq is in the angle of the southern minaret-which was at the southwest corner of the Haram. And Ibn 'Abd Rabbih (913) says it is under the corner of the masjid-which Le Strange (in his book Palestine Under the Moslems) takes to mean the Aqsa but which can as well refer to the entire Haram and therefore Aqsa, mean the same as the statement of Ibn al-Fakih.

But Muqaddasi (985), a citizen of Jerusalem and a most careful writer, speaks of the "two gates" of the Prophet, in such terms as positively to identify his choice as the ancient double gate in the south wall of the Aqsa. There used to run here a large entrance which is still a subterranean opening from within the mosque. The location of the former double gate is just as near the southern minaret on the southwestern corner as is the Gate of the Moors in the southern portion of the western wall.

Further, Nasir I Khusrau (1047), despite the earthquake which came between Muqaddasi and him, resulting in changes of structure and name, still speaks of this gate under the Aqsa as the gate of the Prophet. He says (as quoted by Le Strange, P. M., pp. 178-9): "The gate of the Prophet... which opens toward the kiblah point-- that is, towards the south... The Prophet... on the night of his ascent into heaven, passed into the noble sanctuary through this passageway, for the gateway opens on the road from Makkah." It is only when we come to Mujir ad-Din, as late as 1496, an author whose work was almost entirely of secondary material, that we have a definite change of reference to the southwestern gate in the western wall as the gate of the prophet; and even here the author is speaking mainly of the Gate of the Moors over the walled-up gate which he says incidentally is also called Bab an-Nabi. (See Le S., p. 182.)

Finally, Le Strange (p. 182), who had studied thoroughly all the Arab geographers and historians on Palestine, takes the gates of the Prophet as named (not in order) by the two earliest writers Ibn al-Fakih and Ibn 'Abd Rabbih, to be identifiable with those named in the southern wall by Muqaddasi and Nasir. This places the weight of testimony on the western portion of the southern wall of the Haram area, not the southern portion of the western wall, as the proper Wall of al-Buraq of Muslim tradition.

The blue section is where the Kotel is, the green is where the Buraq Wall was accepted as Muslim tradition as of 1932, possibly at the southern corner, and the orange outline covers areas where the original Muslim traditions placed the Buraq Wall.

So when Palestinians today claim that the Western Wall is really a holy Muslim Buraq Wall, they are lying. And it is a lie about Muslim tradition itself, meaning that they are willing to change their own history and legends just to take away any Jewish claim in Jerusalem.

That is what hate looks like.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

We are family: the secret of Israel's success

The Economist reports that the birthrates of Israeli Jews has been rising and that of Arabs in Israel and the territories has been dropping - and the Israeli Jewish birthrate is bucking the trends around the world.

In short, the demographic bomb that was predicted for decades to destroy Israel has nearly fizzled.

But the article then touches on an important point that rarely makes it to the media.

Excerpts:

"If an Israeli woman has fewer than three children, she feels as if she owes everyone an explanation—or an apology.” That, at any rate, is the view of a leading Israeli demographer. When she visits London she is struck by its dearth of toy shops. Israelis have many more children than their counterparts elsewhere in the rich world. Whereas the average Israeli woman has 2.9, her British and French peers have 1.6 and 1.8 respectively.

Yasser Arafat, who led the Palestinians for three-and-a-half decades, described “the womb of the Arab woman” as his “strongest weapon”. Demographic projections used to suggest that Arabs living between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean would eventually outnumber Jews.

At the time there was indeed a wide demographic gap. In Israel itself Arab women were having almost twice as many babies on average as Jewish women. But in the past few decades this gap has disappeared, as the birth rate of Israeli Arabs has fallen while that of Israeli Jews has risen.

In 1960 the fertility rate of Israeli Arabs stood at 9.3. In the next 35 years it dropped by almost half, to 4.7, before sliding to 3.0 today (see chart). The birth rate of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank also declined, from 4.6 in 2003 to 3.8 in 2019. In this Palestinians and Israeli Arabs have followed a path trodden by women elsewhere. Across the OECD, a club mostly of rich countries, the average fertility rate has fallen from almost three in 1970 to 1.6, well below the rate of about 2.1 needed to keep a population from shrinking.

This makes the rising birth rate of Jewish Israelis all the more surprising. Between 1960 and 1990 their fertility declined from 3.4 to 2.6, suggesting they were in step with their sisters elsewhere. But then they began to buck the trend, driving the birth rate back up to its current level of 3.1.

Almost all this increase is caused by Israel’s growing number of ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) Jews, who have a fertility rate of 6.6, more than double the national average and three times the rate of secular Jews. ....

But it is harder to explain why secular Jewish Israelis also have more children than the norm. Most work; paid leave for Israeli parents is not especially generous. Nor is child care cheaper than in other rich places. Some argue that Jewish Israelis make more babies because they foresee a rosier future: Israel ranks among the world’s top ten countries in happiness.

Another reason may be that the state encourages baby-making by, for instance, bankrolling fertility treatment. It subsidises in-vitro fertilisation to the tune of $150m a year. Tiny Israel has about the same number of frozen embryos as America. This may have only a slight effect on Israel’s birth rate, but it signals that the government wants its citizens to procreate.

One more explanation may be that Israeli grandparents tend to help out more than their peers in many other rich countries. Since Israel is small and densely populated, grandma is never far away. In one survey 83% of secular Jewish mothers aged 25-39 said they were supported by their child’s grandparents, whereas only 30% of German mothers said the same. In Israel the traditional family structure is still strong. In France and Britain more than half of babies are born out of wedlock. In Israel it is under 10%.

That last paragraph is the most important one.

Arabs and anti-Zionists pretend that Judaism is a mere religion. But it is so much more than that.

Jews are beyond a people, beyond a tribe.

We are family.

This is the fundamental issue that modern antisemites simply cannot grasp. It is that sense of family, of mutual responsibility, of a shared past and a shared destiny, that is the secret of Israel's success and strength.

The entire reason for legendary Israeli rudeness and loudness is because one lets their guard down around family. Israelis will ask each other personal questions because that's how one treats family. Walking on eggshells to make sure people won't be offended or react unpredictably is for strangers, not for relatives.

"Jewish geography" - the invariable start of a conversation between Jews from different places to find out who they know in common - is a game that only works for cousins.

Normal people, even the most altruistic, care more about their families than about others. It is natural. That is why Israel cares so much about the survival and future of the Jewish people.

The modern antisemites see this family dynamic and twist it into "Jewish supremacy." That is a perversion. It is nothing of the sort. It is the way that strong, functional families act. And it is a good indicator of how strong societies remain strong.

Strong families make better neighbors with others than disconnected individuals can, but they also circle the wagons together against threats. And this last sentence just explained Israel's policy towards its Arab citizens and neighbors better than hundreds of academic papers and articles can.

Bethany Mandel had a great thread last week about the bonds between Jews. A slightly shortened version:

I was at the county fair today with all the kids and ran out of cash and don’t carry a bank card. My kids were distraught and wanted more ride tickets. So I said “lemme go ask that Jewish guy if I can Venmo him for cash.” My kids were like WHAT you can’t just go up to a stranger and ask to bum cash. And I was like guys, he’s not just some guy, he’s a Jew. Watch me. He went to the ATM, got us cash, I Venmo’d him in exchange, and they learned a valuable lesson about being Jews.

My kids don’t remember it, but I did this another time. I was on a full flight alone with three kids and had to use the bathroom. My older two were too young to hold the baby. So I got up, looked around, saw a Jewish guy four rows back in the middle seat, and handed him the baby. I came back and he was like oh, wait, I follow you on Twitter. And everyone around him was like wait you didn’t know him…? I was like no. They asked why I trusted him. I was like first off - where is he gonna go? Second, he’s a Jew. So he can hold my baby. They were 🤯🤯🤯.

Proud Jews get it. We viscerally understand how we are all family. We experience how visiting Israel, even for the first time, feels like returning home, both religious Jerusalem and secular Tel Aviv.

We are family. If you don't get that, you don't understand Jews and you don't understand Israel.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Jordanian news site: Palestinians were the biggest victims of the Holocaust, and Jews are today's Nazis

This was predictable.

Columnist Hamada al-Farana at Jordanian news site Ad Dustor writes:

The Palestinian Arab people were the most affected peoples in the whole world from the results of the Nazi fascist European massacres against the Jews for several fundamental reasons:

Get out the popcorn.

First, because we, as Arabs, Muslims and Christians, our culture does not allow us to accept collective punishments against humans, and to treat them with contempt, hatred, or hostility, on the basis of religion, nationalism, sect, or their positions and convictions.

That's great! That means that they do not hate Jewish Zionists because of their nationalism, positions or convictions!

Ummm...

Secondly, because Jews and Judaism are part of our Arab people and nation. Judaism is one of the monotheistic religions that complements Christianity and Islam, even if the diligence and diversity differ among them. The difference between Jews and Judaism on one side and the Zionist movement on the other, is the difference between Islam and Muslims from the two organizations Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Well, only a slight contradiction between two adjoining paragraphs.

Thirdly, the Palestinians paid a heavy price because of the Holocaust, as Zionism and the colonial countries of Europe exploited the Nazi massacres against the Jews, and worked to displace and resettle them in Palestine, and to establish a Jewish state for them on the land of the Palestinian people...

Fourth, and this is the most important, that the Palestinians paid the price of the European massacres of the Jews, so Palestine was colonized, half of its people were expelled outside their homeland, and they were subjected to displacement and exile, and massacres were committed against them.

Yup. The biggest victims of the Holocaust wasn't six million Jews, but the Palestinians whose leader supported the Nazis.

For these reasons, we sympathize with the tragedy of the Jews in Europe, and we reject, as Arabs, Muslims and Christians with the Palestinians, those Nazi fascist crimes against the Jews, just as we reject and condemn, at the same time, with the same force, the massacres of the Israeli colony and its daily crimes against the Palestinian people, including killing, destruction, persecution, besieging and starvation.

I like the "starvation" part. I haven't found any examples but it can't hurt to throw that in.

And just as the civilized international community did by chasing down the chased down the Nazis and prosecuted them for what they did against the Jews, the leaders of the international community and human rights institutions, and those with living consciences should try Israeli criminals in accordance with fair values and human rights, and not to evade just and equitable punishment.

What the Palestinian President said, what he expressed, and what he meant, is the core of the bitter truth that needs to be addressed by the European and German people.

So we have Holocaust minimization, Holocaust distortion and Holocaust inversion, as mainstream Arab political opinion.

Hamada al-Farana is a former minister of Jordanian parliament and has been a member of the Palestinian National Council since 1984.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Retired Reform rabbi adopts Muslim terminology in bizarre attempt at Jewish-Muslim amity

Rabbi Allen Miller is a Reform rabbi who retired in 2006. Lately he has been a prolific writer for Eurasia Review, trying to find commonalities between Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

I have no problem with such a quixotic quest. But in order to convince his audience, he adopts Muslim terminology and legends as fact.

In one recent article, he notes the similarity between Hajj and the three annual pilgrimage festivals in the Torah, fixating for some reason on Sukkot. This isn't news - much of Muslim tradition is based on Jewish tradition. But his language is jarring for a rabbi:

The Ka’ba is the original center of Hajj. Destroyed in the days of Noah, it was rebuilt by Prophets Abraham and his son Ishmael. After several centuries it was desecrated by later generations of idol worshippers. During the many centuries when the Ka’ba was desecrated, Prophet Solomon built a Temple as a center for Haj on the site where Prophet Abraham bound his son Isaac as an offering.

...Most of the many thousands of Jews from foreign lands outside the Land of Israel; and the tens of thousands of Jews from all over the Land of Israel outside the city of Jerusalem; who used to came each year to celebrate the week of Sukkot in Jerusalem at Bait ul-Muqaddas, the furthest sanctuary; ceased coming.
...
For Muslims, the Furthest Sanctuary is located in Jerusalem. “Glory to He Who carried His servant by night, from the Holy Sanctuary to the Furthest Sanctuary, the precincts of which We have blessed. so that We might show him some of Our signs. Surely He is All-Hearing, All-Seeing. [Qur’an 17:1]

It is significant that the ruins of the Jerusalem Temple was the site of Prophet Muhammad’s ascension—miraj– up to the heavens.

One might say the destruction of the Furthest Sanctuary center of monotheistic pilgrimage in Jerusalem by the pagan Romans was, five and a half centuries afterward, overcome by Prophet Muhammad’s ascension—miraj up to the heavens, and the soon to be realized removal by Prophet Muhammad of the 360 idols from the paganized Ka’ba in Makka.

Not only did the Prophet rid the Ka’ba of all its impurities, but he also reinstated all the rites of Hajj which were established by Allah’s Permission, in the time of Prophet Ibrahim.

If you are going to call yourself a rabbi, at least stick to Jewish terminology - King Solomon, Beit HaMikdash, Avraham Avinu.

And while Miller tries to pretend he can attract Muslims by shamelessly adopting their legends as fact, the Muslim world is regarding the visit by American rabbis to Saudi Arabia as a "scandal."

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Iran's Mehr News describes "What does the word 'Zionist' mean?"

Written by Hezbollah's "foreign relations official" Khalil Rizk, it is a bizarre description of Judaism from someone who has never met a Jew in his life.

Here is what I learned about Judaism/"Zionism":

* The followers of the Zionist idea believe in their faith that the Messiah, the Savior, will come at the end of time to lead his people to Zion, the “holy land” and rule the world.

* Not every Jew is necessarily a Zionist. An example of this is Orthodox Judaism, which forbids the collective return of the Jews to Palestine and considers it heretical.

* Sephardic Jews they look down on the Ashkenazi Jews, and therefore they were forbidden to marry them.

* Dancing in prayer gained great importance for the Jewish groups in Eastern Europe, and it became a part of their daily lives. It became a kind of religious ritual through which the dancer reaches a state of ecstasy and religious joy, as they dance in circles. The dance begins slowly, then gradually increases in rhythm until it reaches a state of ecstasy, accompanied by swaying movements, movements of hands and feet, jumping in the air and applause, and so on until the Jewish dance with prayer became one of the sacred duties, and there is a special prayer that they recite right before the dance.

* Among the prominent landmarks in Al-Aqsa Mosque is the Al-Buraq Wall; It is the western wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, or the "Wailing Wall," as the Jews call it, because their prayers there take the form of weeping and wailing. The wall was not part of the alleged Jewish temple, and there is no evidence that the temple was located at the Al-Buraq Wall. It became for the Jews a place of worship after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration in 1917.

Jews praying at the Kotel, 1880

We can learn so much about Judaism from Iranians and their allies!

If nothing else, this article proves that when Iranians and Hezbollah say "Zionist" they really mean "Jewish."

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Know How to Answer, part 13: "Jews are not a nation"

Nearly six years ago I gave a lecture at Yeshiva University on how to answer anti-Israel arguments. Since the lecture was over an hour and twenty minutes, I decided to break it up into 20 sections, one each to answer one popular anti-Israel argument.

Here is part 13, which is very short.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Selichot Friday/Sunday: Jerusalem and Peace, the two things the world tries to take away from the Jewish people

I've been occasionally commenting on some specified piyutim (intricate poems said before and during the High Holy Days) during the Selichot services.

I was struck by a pair of piyutim, one from Friday's service and one from Sunday's, in the Ashkenazic order of the service.

On Friday, the longest piyut was dedicated to Jerusalem. The author is unknown. The word "Jerusalem" introduced every verse and the end of every verse was an explicit Biblical quote about Jerusalem. Altogether the word was mentioned 54 times in this one prayer alone, begging God to restore Jerusalem to its former glory.

That's 54 more than the number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Quran.

In Sunday's selichot, there was a remarkably similar piyut using essentially the same form (reverse alphabetical acrostic instead of straight for the second word of each stanza), probably by the same poet-scholar. but instead of "Jerusalem" the motif is "Shalom," peace.

"Peace" and "Jerusalem" are part of the Jewish DNA.

The irony is that the world wants to ensure that the Jewish people have neither.

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