The Descent of an Honored Reputation
by: Schvach Yid

As a youngster, and for that matter as a young adult, I was one of those higher education ‘worshipping’ (not literally) kind of guys. I thought the university scene was the cat’s meow. As a native New Yorker I would regularly take the subway to the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University and amble around, taking in the sights. I considered myself apolitical and socially liberal. I wasn’t religious (sorry), I never participated in a political or social public demonstration, I never thought about the Jewish prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union (sorry), and as for Nathan Sharansky - ? Back then, Rabbi Meir Kahane was not among my favorite personalities.

As I grew older and accumulated both lousy life experiences and increasing amounts of adipose, my view of life soured and changed profoundly.

In retrospect I’m grateful I can claim to never have been one of those Yiddin who took the bait set out by the Buddhists and Hindus. For the most part, I shrugged off John Lennon’s music on the one side, and Orthodox Judaism on the other.

I’ve spent a fair amount of attention alternating between laughing at those Jews turned JuBu or HindJu and lamenting their averos.

Today, I’m pissed.

In recent posts by Rabbi Avi Shafran for Arutz Sheva, and by Little Green Footballs, the fifth grandson of the late, great promulgator of non-violent protest and world peace, Arun Ghandi, has shone a new light on just where we Jews stand as members of humanity, and just in time for the annual commemoration of one of Mahatma Ghandi’s great disciples, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Arun Ghandi’s analysis of the Jews’ ‘condition’ in the world is neither flattering to us, nor correct, and as a blood line descendent and spiritual disciple of his grandfather, Mahatma Ghandi, Arun Ghandi should know better, except for the opinion of his esteemed grandfather regarding us Jews, according to Rabbi Shafran’s article. Arun Ghandi’s opinion concerning Israel, the Palestinian Arabs, the Holocaust, and various other matters Jewish, can be viewed at:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/arun_gandhi/2008/01/jewish_identity_in_the_past.html. He is president and co-founder of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, now at the University of Rochester in New York.

Here’s a sample of his ‘informed wisdom’:The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak. Any nation that remains anchored to the past is unable to move ahead and, especially a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs.

He wants us to lay down and die. Maybe Ehud Olmert would like to appoint him to his cabinet. Sorry Arun, Judaism forbids suicide; in the Jewish community, stupidity might be considered a capital offense (not Halacha).

As for the Jewish Nation's anchored in the past, what can one say? Tanach! Perhaps Arun Ghandi calls our Torah the 'Old Testament'. Perhaps he'd prefer a shortened version of some of HaShem's commandments to us, you know, like the PesachHagaddah: 'in every generation you will regard yourselves as though you personally were taken out of Egypt'.

Judaism is all about our Jewish past as applied to our current lives, as in HaShem's revelation to us at Mt. Sinai. In Judaism, the past is present for indeed, in every generation, they have risen, and continue to rise up, against us.

Mr. Arun Ghandi, say Hari Krishna!