RUTHFULLY YOURS

1. The US connection: Columbus Day is celebrated around Sukkot. According to “Columbus Then and Now” (Miles Davidson, 1997, p. 268), Columbus arrived in America on Friday afternoon, October 12, 1492, the 21st day of the Jewish month of Tishrei, the Jewish year 5235, the 7th day of Sukkot, Hosha’na’ Rabbah, a day of universal deliverance and miracles. Hosha’na’ Rabbah is celebrated 26 days following the beginning of the Creation, and 26 is the numerical value of Jehovah (יהוה). Hosha’ (הושע) is the Hebrew word for “deliverance” and Na’ (נא) is the Hebrew word for “please.” The numerical value of Na’ is 51 (נ=50 and א=1), and Hosha’na’ Rabbah is celebrated on the 51st day following Moses’ ascension to Mt. Sinai, which marks the conclusion of the repentance process (of Yom Kippur).

2. Sukkot – the 3rd Jewish pilgrimage, following Passover and Shavou’ot (Pentecost) – is a universal holiday, inviting all peoples to come on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as expressed in the reading (Haftarah) of Zechariah 14: 16-19 on the first day of Sukkot: “Then, the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up [to Jerusalem] every year to worship the Lord Almighty and to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles.” According to the Sukkah tractate of the Mishnah (the oral Torah), the 70 sacrificial bulls of Sukkot represent the pilgrimage of 70 nations to Jerusalem; a demonstration of universal solidarity and comity. Sukkot expresses the yearning for universal peace, highlighting the Sukkah of Shalom (peace). Shalom is also one of the names of God. Shalem (שלם) – wholesome and complete in Hebrew – is the ancient name of Jerusalem and of 32 towns (Salem) in the USA.

I presume that I am to feel honored that a Jew, one Roger Cohen, during the break from synagogue services in London on Yom Kippur this year, penned, without breaking his fast, an op-ed for the New York Times entitled “Jews as Far as Possible” the whole point of which was to focus on my residency in Shiloh and to defame me as a “Messianic Jewish settler”.

His title originates in a phrase of Maimonides he quotes:

“We have freed ourselves of our previous deeds, have cast them behind our backs, and removed them from us as far as possible.”

The phrase is from Maimonides’ “Guide for the Perplexed”, Book Three, Chapter 46 in discussing the sacrificial goat to be sent off to Azazel:these ceremonies are of a symbolic character, and serve to impress men with a certain idea, and to induce them to repent; as if to say, we have freed ourselves of our previous deeds, have cast them behind our backs, and removed them from us as far as possible.

Cohen may have seen it in Rabbi Sacks’ April article. Cohen’s conclusion is that

Jews, as I said, are a practical people. Their interest is in the feasible not in magic wands.Possibly short of words, he again quotes, this time Stefan Zweig, who defined Jews as“the ever-recurring — since Egypt — community of expulsion,”

So short of words was Cohen we know because his op-ed of last October carries the same theme and the same title, The Community of Expulsion. At that High Holiday season he was upset that his Rabbi had not mentioned the Gaza hostilities of last summer. Zweig’s quotation is found in his memoir sent to his publisher a few months before doing what, presumably, Cohen perhaps thinks as practical: he and his wife committed suicide. His Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday, in which you can read this: “The real determination of the Jew is to rise to a higher cultural plane in the intel­lectual world.”) reflects at one point on the situation the Jews of Austria found themselves during the Hitler ascendancy and the persecution that followed and it readsonly now, for the first time in hundreds of years, the Jews were forced into a community of interest to which they had long ceased to be sensitive, the ever-recurring — since Egypt — community of expulsion. But why this fate for them and always for them alone? What was the reason, the sense, the aim of this senseless persecution? They were driven out of lands but without a land to go to.”

“As heaven knows, good cannot overcome evil unless both are acknowledged and only one fought for.”

As his five-day visit to the United States comes to an end, Pope Francis continues to receive the undivided attention of audiences as major in number as in stature.
It is not clear whether the head of the Holy See is worried about the danger of succumbing to the sin of pride from having his ring kissed so readily by so many illustrious figures.
Something for which the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church ought to hang his head in shame, however, is his repeated sins of omission.
While Christians across the Middle East are being terrorized, tortured, sold into slavery and slaughtered, the pope spoke before the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, at Ground Zero and other venues about peace and justice.

Bill Clinton blasts media for overblowing Hillary email scandal: ‘Never seen so much expended on so little’

President Clinton isn’t buying into the scandal swirling around his wife’s use of personal emails during her time as Secretary of State.
In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, the 42nd President of the United States said the controversy is merely “catnip” that the Republican Party is tossing at his wife in order to distract voters from the real issues like student loan debt, income inequality, mental health care and more.
“I actually am amazed she’s borne up under it as well as she has; I’ve never seen so much expended on so little,” Clinton said.

There are some decisions which I simply cannot fathom how anyone could make. We’ve discussed here the issue surrounding U.S. Army Special Forces Green Berets Captain Dan Quinn and Sergeant First Class Charles Martland. These men were relieved of their positions by the chain of command because they physically assaulted an Afghan police officer who had raped a young boy and beaten his mother.

We reported on SFC Martland’s appeal regarding his involuntary discharge from the Army because of the adverse actions taken against him and placed in his personnel record. Captain Quinn left the Army.

We shared with you earlier this week how the U.S. Military has issued orders to troops in Afghanistan to disregard the instances of sexual abuse of young boys by Afghan officials – even if they occurred on U.S. Military bases. We know three Marines lost their lives in Helmand province when one of these “chai boys” took the AK-47 of the pedophile Afghan police chief and gunned them down while they worked out in the FOB gym.

And now we get this news.

As reported by The Daily Caller, “The U.S. Army has just rejected the appeal of Green Beret Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, who received a discharge scheduled to take effect Nov. 1 for shoving an Afghan rapist to the ground. “Consequently, your request for an appeal and continued service is disapproved,” U.S. Human Resources Command (USAHRC) said in a Sept. 14 memo sent to Martland. The reason for the denial? The office said that Martland’s appeal attempt “does not meet the criteria” because it brings no new information to the table.

The European Union’s plan to force poorer nations to accept thousands of refugees.

On Tuesday, national sovereignty gave way to mandatory multiculturalism in the European Union. A plan to relocate an additional 120,000 Middle Eastern migrants was imposed by EU ministers over the objections four Eastern European countries adamantly opposed to the plan. Slovakia’s Robert Fico illuminated the resistance. “As long as I am prime minister, mandatory quotas will not be implemented on Slovak territory,” he declared in Bratislava.

Slovakia was joined by the Czech Republic, Romania and Hungary. Finland abstained from the vote. Yet despite the quartet’s disapproval, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, led by France and Germany, pushed through the plan proposed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker during his annual State of the Union address in Strasbourg earlier this month. The plan called for 160,000 migrants to be forcibly redistributed from Italy, Greece and Hungary to all other member states, save Britain, Ireland and Denmark, who remain exempt from EU treaties. In addition, Junker called for a review of the “Dublin system” that determines which EU nation is responsible for asylum claims.

In order to make the plan more politically palatable, 66,000 migrants are currently slated for relocation, joining 40,000 migrants approved for asylum in July. The remaining 54,000 had originally been allocated to Hungary where they are currently camped out. But Budapest refused to abide a plan it characterized as an invitation to economic migrants. Thus, those migrants will be reallocated in 2016, possibly among Greece, Italy, Croatia and Austria, bringing the overall total of relocated migrants to 160,000. The plan is ostensibly limited to Syrian, Iraqi and Eritrean asylum-seekers, but the details have yet to be worked out. All of those migrants are people who have purportedly crossed the Mediterranean Sea from Turkey and northern Africa, fleeing the unrelenting violence in Iraq and Syria.

Republican presidential candidates will keep Iran front and center as proof of the Obama administration’s national-security malpractice. But they don’t all seem to grasp why the Iran nuclear accord is flawed and why it matters so much.

Among the main criticisms is that the deal reflects President Obama’s lack of negotiating skill. But he knows how to negotiate — look at how he handled Congress on this matter. The accord is weak because along the way he changed his goal; he decided to paper over the nuclear problem in order to pursue a broader partnership between America and the clerical regime in Tehran.

Not long ago, President Obama promised to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. He demanded that Iran dismantle its relevant facilities. And he implied (“all options are on the table”) that he would use military power, if necessary, to block Iran.

But after a while, he saw he couldn’t talk Iran’s clerical leaders out of their nuclear ambitions. Without admitting as much, Mr. Obama gave up on stopping Iran. Instead, he aimed simply to slow them down for a while.

That was a momentous reversal. He signaled it by changing the way he talked. One couldn’t always hit home runs, he said. One had to bend to reality. What was important was getting the best deal possible.

The unique demands of the nation’s highest office conflict with orthodox Islamic teaching.Does Charles Krauthammer get Islam wrong because he gets the Constitution wrong? Or does he get the Constitution wrong because he gets Islam wrong?

This conundrum comes to the fore — and not for the first time — after Dr. Krauthammer’s serial denunciations of Dr. Ben Carson. In a Sunday Meet the Press interview, Carson opined that Islam is inconsistent with the United States Constitution and, therefore, that he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation” — meaning he would not recommend that voters elect a Muslim president.

Dr. K decries Dr. C’s remarks as “morally outrageous,” albeit “sincerely felt.” With Democrats in distress, the columnist fears Republicans are undermining their golden 2016 opportunity: “It is certainly damaging to any party when one of its two front-runners denigrates, however thoughtlessly, the nation’s entire Muslim American community.”

But what loseth a man if he denigrates a tiny community — a large percentage of whose members are Islamists reliably aligned with Democrats — but gains the esteem of a vast political base convinced that Washington is insane on matters Muslim?

Donald Trump got roundly booed Friday when the businessman, near the beginning of his Values Voters Summit speech, dissed Marco Rubio, calling the Florida senator “a clown.” Rubio had said some unkind things about Donald the day before, but had not resorted to ad hominems.

During the booing, Trump, although clearly taken aback, went on, citing a litany of Rubio’s sins in the immigration area, emphasizing the senator’s participation in the Gang of Eight, as if coaxing the audience to agree with him. They didn’t much. The Donald compounded the error by later insisting the boos were “cheers.”

On The Kelly File, pollster Frank Luntz — no fan of Trump’s — said Donald casting these kind of aspersions on a U.S. senator was not presidential and possibly a turning point as it showed the public, indeed a decidedly conservative part of that public, growing unhappy with Donald. Perhaps. I’m not sure. It wasn’t that big a deal in the grand scheme of things.

Still, it showed someone who is really not learning as much as one would expect from the experience of running for office. You would think Trump, a casino owner, would know “there’s time to hold ‘em and a time to fold ‘em.” Apparently not.

A very sharp analysis of the Syrian situation from the New York Observer’s John Schindler, who lays out a case that Russian influence in the Middle East is on the rise while America’s is being frittered away by the incompetents at the White House.

How incompetent?

The forces Mr. Putin has just deployed to Syria are impressive, veteran special operators backed by a wing of fighters and ground attack jets that are expected to commence air strikes on Assad’s foes soon. They are backed by air defense units, which is puzzling since the Islamic State has no air force, indicating that the Kremlin’s true intent in Syria has little to do with the stated aim of fighting terrorism and is really about propping up Russia’s longtime client in Damascus.

The White House is left planning “deconfliction” with Moscow—which is diplomatic language for entreating Russians, who now dominate Syrian airspace, not to shoot down American drones, which provide the lion’s share of our intelligence on the Islamic State. The recent meeting on Syrian developments between Mr. Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who clearly finds dealing with the Russian strongman preferable to parleying with President Obama, indicates where power is flowing in today’s Middle East.