Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Purim

Showing posts with label Purim. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 07, 2023

The crime of "Judaizing" - what's old is new again

Times of Israel has an interesting article about how crypto-Jews in Mallorca would continue to celebrate Purim by calling it the "Feast of St. Esther."

A brave woman named Ana Cortés admitted to the Church that she was still celebrating Jewish holidays and studying (illegal) Jewish texts.

The crypto-Jews of Mallorca paid a heavy price for clinging to their Jewish faith. Pedro Onofro Cortés was burned at the stake. Ana Cortés was sentenced twice for the crime of “Judaizing” or secretly practicing and teaching Judaism, once in 1677 and again in 1688.

Indeed, historical works about the Inquisition mention the "Judaizing" charge brought against crypto-Jews.

Today, the same term "Judaizing" is still being used as an epithet - when referring to Israel "Judaizing" Judaism's holiest city.

Just as it was then, the term is used by antisemites to make it moral crime to keep Jews or the Jewish capital - Jewish.

It was an insult then and it is an insult now. And in both cases, it is only antisemites who use the term as an epithet.

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The Purim Ball at New York's Academy of Music in 1865 was one of the most extravagant events of the year - and the reviewer in the New York Herald found it extraordinary.

You can expand the illustration above from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper to get an idea of the revelry.

It had jokes and merriment, political spoofs and newspaper parodies, costumes and music, so much so that the poor writer couldn't cover everything.

Perhaps the other Academy of Music Purim balls were comparable, although I haven't found any descriptions quite like this. It did seem that the Purim balls nationwide would typically go all night. Those Jews knew how to party!

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!

Massekhet Purim: Talmud parody from the 14th century

Google Books has a 19th century printing of Massekhet Purim, a Purim parody of the Talmud, along with two other Purim parodies of the Passover Haggadah and of the Selichot said in prayers before fast days and other occasions.

The Talmud parody is pretty funny, with the names of rabbis (and commentaries) all jokes.

I'm not sure about the commentaries, but the Talmud text of the "tractate" was written in the 14th century by Kalonymus ben Kalonymus, who had written a number of serious works as well.

It looks like Jews have extended his original work over the years: this version of the work sold at auction includes a fifth chapter.This handwritten version at the Internet Archive looks very different, as does this 18th century handwritten and illustrated version, even though all of them are attributed to Kalonymus b. Kalonymus.

We need an Artscroll translation!

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Hamas and the PA calls on Palestinians to attack Jews who visit the Temple Mount on Purim

This week is the holiday of Purim, celebrating the salvation of Jews from the schemes of the Persian Empire and its evil vizier Haman to destroy them.

Hamas, which shares Haman's desire to destroy the Jews, is now telling Palestinians to attack any Jews who want to visit the Temple Mount this week for the occasion.

Mohammed Hamada, a Hamas spokesman, issued a statement saying that Hamas "warns the occupation and its colonial settlers against desecrating the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque during the so-called “Feast of Purim” amid its calls for storming the Mosque on 16th and 17th of March."

He said that "the occupation's desecration of Al-Aqsa Mosque is a crime and violation of all heavenly norms and laws, and a direct provocation to our Islamic nation."

Jews visit the site every Sunday through Thursday, and for the past few years they have even been quietly praying there, without incident. But Muslim fanatics want there to be an incident, and they want bloodshed.

"We call upon the masses of our Palestinian people in Jerusalem, West Bank, and 1948 occupied lands to confront the Zionist storming, protect Al-Aqsa, and prevent the Zionist extremists from desecrating it," Hamada said.

This mirrors a Saturday statement from the PA’s top Islamic judge and presidential adviser Mahmoud al-Habbash who is also trying to incite violence:

Al-Habbash said that "terrorist groups and settler gangs are taking advantage of Jewish religious occasions to storm the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and try to impose a fait accompli as part of the Judaization schemes that target the Holy City in general and the Temple Mount in particular."

He called on our people everywhere, who are able to reach the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, to intensify their presence there in the coming days, to thwart the plans of the settler terrorist groups, and to defend the mosque with all their determination.

Al-Habbash called on scholars, thinkers and governments of the Islamic world to carry out their religious and moral duty towards the city of Jerusalem and the Noble Sanctuary, “to emphasize the Islam of the mosque and to send a clear message to the world that violating Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa is a violation of the faith of more than a billion and a half Muslims in all parts of the earth, and that the religious war that the occupation seeks to ignite will burn the whole world with its fire, and no one on the face of the earth will be spared from it or its consequences.”

In other words, if a billion Muslims decide to start World War III, it will be because they were forced to by Jews walking quietly in Judaism's holiest spot. Yet, he claims, it is the Jews who want a religious war.

This is all incitement to violence. It happens every day. And the West ignores it, and acts surprised when Arabs attack Jews.

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

Read all about it here!

From Pharaoh to space lasers: Blaming Jews is the original conspiracy theory

Yesterday, social media (including myself) had a field day with the revelation that in 2018, Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had come up with a theory that California wildfires might have been started by public utility PG&E, which worked with the Rothschild family, using a satellite that redirects the sun's rays to Earth, in order to clear room for a high-speed rail project that the governor wanted.

Invoking the Rothschilds is of course one of the favorite memes of antisemites, using that banking family as a proxy for supposed Jewish control of the world.

This is not the only antisemitic conspiracy theory that Taylor Greene has espoused. Also in 2018, she shared a video that claimed the "Great Replacement" theory, quoting a Holocaust denier that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation” to replace white Europeans with Muslim immigrants.

She has also claimed that no plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. While she did not blame Jews for this theory, many 9/11 conspiracy theories end up pointing back to Jews as the perpetrators. There are at least six antisemitic 9/11 conspiracy theories, from the Mossad to "Israeli art students" to "4000 Jews told to stay home on 9/11."

Conspiracy theorists and antisemitism go hand in hand. Not every conspiracy theory invokes Jews, but Jews pop up very often in these theories.

It didn't start with the grand theory of the Elders of Zion secretly pulling the strings of the world. It didn't start with the blood libel or the accusation that Jews poison the wells causing the Black Death in the 14th century.

Jews have been blamed for conspiracy theories from the very first moment of becoming a people.

After all, look at Exodus 1:8-11:

A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.”

Jews saved Egypt from famine. They were model citizens. But Pharaoh created a conspiracy theory that they were a fifth column to destroy Egypt.

This is literally the first thing that scripture says about the Jewish people.

It is not the only conspiracy theory in the Hebrew Scripture involving Jews: Esther 3:8:

Haman then said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws; and it is not in Your Majesty’s interest to tolerate them."

Sad to say, no amount of education is going to eradicate this sort of antisemitism. All we can do is expose it and expose the people who are behind it.

Like Pharaoh and Haman, the haters won't change.

Purim and natural hate

As I was reading the megillah this Purim, it occurred to me that the most resonant part of the story today is that Haman's hate for Jews was so irrational, although he pretended to justify it using weak arguments that people are more than willing to swallow to justify their own bigotry.

It is exactly the same today, as the Israel-haters are completely irrational. Their hate comes first, and their justifications come later. Answer their points and they will come up with others, because the entire basis of their antipathy to Jews is baseless, irrational hate.

The biggest lie they say is that they are "pro-Palestinian."

It just occurred to me that people who claim to be "pro-Palestinian" - like the entire staff at Electronic Intifada - are against any Palestinian being naturalized in any Arab country, and in fact they will say they are against Palestinians becoming citizens of any other country until they can "return" to destroy Israel. To these supposed lovers of all things Palestinian, they demand that millions of Arabs with Palestinian ancestry remain stateless, indefinitely.

What love they show!

But there is one recent exception where they fought mightily for a Palestinian to be a citizen of another country.

Terrorist Rasmea Odeh, as they fought hard to allow her to remain an American citizen. And even that they tried to justify on the basis of whatever crazy legal arguments they could find to hang their love for a murderer of Jews on.

Purim teaches us that the haters of Jews and Israel aren't ever going to go away. All we can do is win, over and over again.

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Esther's Secret Prophecy: The Link to the Nazi Regime (Judean Rose)

One of the issues with remembering Amalek, one of the key commandments connected to the Purim holiday, is identifying who they are, today. How can you know absolutely that someone is part of the evil nation of Amalek? Because we're not only commanded to remember them, but to obliterate every trace of them.

A new video may not tell us all the answers, but it does give us a lot of food for thought by tying the recent history of the Holocaust and the Nazis, to the story of Purim, 24 centuries earlier, in Persia.

Of course, genocide is genocide, no matter when it is attempted. In Germany or Persia, modern day Iran. The irony is that the same actors are still trying to wipe out the Jews. In Iran, they say it straight out. In Germany, they're paying the big bucks to organizations dedicated to eliminating the Jewish State.

Same difference.

While it would be easy to just enjoy the festivities of Purim without worrying about its deeper meaning, it pays to keep in mind that the Jews, all of them, fasted for Esther's success in foiling Haman's evil plan. They worked hard to examine their character flaws and repent. The Jews pulled together as a nation to do this one thing together.

And apparently, the result of Jews pulling together to repent was so powerful that it had repercussions at the Nuremberg Trials, 24 centuries later. Which makes it a good day for drinking. (I'm a bourbon girl myself.)

Happy Purim!

(h/t Sarah Leah Silverman)

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Introducing Queen Esther Coffee

MEMRI brings us another insane Egyptian cleric, who says that the girl on the Starbucks logo is none other than Queen Esther!

Following are excerpts from an address by Egyptian cleric Safwat Higazi, which aired on Al-Nas TV on January 25, 2009.
"Today, I would like to talk about the Starbucks coffee shop. Starbucks is to be found in Mecca, in Al-Madina, opposite the King Abdul Aziz Gate in Mecca, opposite the Al-Majid Gate in Al-Madina, as well as in Cairo. Starbucks is to be found everywhere, with this logo. This is the Starbucks logo.
"Has any of you ever wondered who this woman with a crown on her head is? Why do we boycott Starbucks? I will tell you, so you will know why you should boycott this company, and what this logo stands for.
"The girl in the Starbucks logo is Queen Esther. Do you know who Queen Esther was and what the crown on her head means? This is the crown of the Persian kingdom. This queen is the queen of the Jews. She is mentioned in the Torah, in the Book of Esther. The girl you see is Esther, the queen of the Jews in Persia." [...]
"King [Xerxes] gave an order that the seven most beautiful girls in the kingdom be brought to him. So they held contests and auditions, and selected the seven most beautiful virgins, one of whom was the Jewish Esther, whose uncle, Mordechai - or actually, it was her cousin’s brother - was a villain.
"It was Mordechai who hatched this plot. Esther was one of the seven girls brought before King Xerxes in the palace. When Esther, who was very beautiful, was shown to King Xerxes, she captured his heart, and he chose her to be his queen. He placed a crown on her head, and the crown you see here [Higazi indicates the Starbucks logo] is the crown of the kingdom of Xerxes, and this is Esther, who became Queen of Persia, instead of Queen Vashti."[...]
"Can you believe that in Mecca, Al-Madina, Cairo, Damascus, Kuwait, and all over the Islamic world there hangs the picture of beautiful Queen Esther, with a crown on her head, and we buy her products?
[...]
"We want Starbucks to be shut down throughout the Arab and Islamic world. We want it to be shut down in Mecca and in Al-Madina. I implore King Abdallah bin Abd Al-‘Aziz, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques: It is inconceivable that in Mecca and Al-Madina, there will be a picture of Queen Esther, the queen of the Jews."

It saddens me that Muslim clerics on TV are so nutty as to make it impossible to spoof them. They always seem to come up with something even crazier than any comedian could credibly make up.

(h/t Sammish and Reuven Koret in the comments)