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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>From: Yonatan Kaganoff <A
href="mailto:ykaganoff@yahoo.com">ykaganoff@yahoo.com</A><BR> <BR> >>
I find it disturbing when when young idealistic Jewish activists who have been
active in liberal, left-wing political causes, are told by Kiruv professional
that these ideas could be find in Judaism, when the Kiruv worker knows, quite
well how politically and culturally right-wing most Orthodox Jewish communities
are.<<<BR> <BR>>>>>></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>But most of the values that move young and idealistic Jewish activists
really DO have their source in the Torah! Of course, as these young
people learn more Torah, in most cases they will come to see how leftists have
misapplied and misinterpreted these values of righteousness and justice.
But the values are still Torah values.</FONT></DIV><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>An interesting thing about America is that both its major parties derive
their fundamental principles from the Bible and therefore ultimately from us
Jews. (The two parties are not nearly as far apart from each other as
people imagine -- the American political spectrum B'H doesn't go in for
extremism.)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I don't want to write a long megillah about this but to give a few
examples briefly:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>.</DIV>
<DIV>1. tzadaka -- Dems say the govt should redistribute and equalize income,
Reps say people should give tzadaka from their own pockets--but the very idea of
taking from X and giving to Y, either way, ultimately came from us. Torah
prescriptions to give ma'aser, to share one's wealth and so on are quoted by
both sides. Other cultures -- e.g., Sodom, Sparta, Ayn Rand --
had no such notion. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>.</DIV>
<DIV>2. equality -- Torah has a dialectic -- sorry for using buzzword --
many passages extolling equality and also many passages prescribing INequality
-- so you have on the one hand the notion that the king can do things a commoner
cannot do, but OTOH a king cannot be exempt from mitzvos -- a talmid chacham
gets precedence in certain things but OTOH a judge is not allowed to favor one
side over the other in court proceedings -- etc. The Dems grab on to idea
of radical egalitarianism, equality of outcome regardless of merit, affirmative
action, income redistribution, women in the army, social
equality etc -- while Reps favor equality of opportunity, equality under
the law and so on -- but the ultimate if hazy origin of the American idea
of equality is the idea that all human beings are children of G-d, all are
tzelem Elokim and all have value in Hashem's eyes.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>.</DIV>
<DIV>3. Punishment in general and death penalty in particular -- the idea
that a just society will punish wrong-doers comes from the Torah, as does the
idea that the true, just punishment for murder is to forfeit your life.
OTOH the idea that judges must bend over backwards to prevent miscarriage of
justice, even if some malefactors go free, also comes from the Torah -- but let
me add that the Torah assumes that justice will ultimately be done, i.e., that
G-d will punish anyone who "gets away with" his crime in a human court.
Most libs today don't believe there is a G-d and don't believe that all
criminals will eventually be punished, but they do believe that society is
better off if some guilty people go free than if some innocent people are
unjustly punished. (They aren't taking into their cheshbon the
loss of innocent people who get robbed or killed by criminals on parole but
that's another story.) But in any case, the idea that
judicial proceedings must follow rules, that judges should not be allowed
to judge arbitrarily -- comes from Torah. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>.</DIV>
<DIV>So bottom line, both sides in the American culture wars are
Biblically-derived, even if one side no longer sees or remembers its
own historic origins and even strenuously denies that this country was
built on the Bible. (Actually they're not consistent, because the side that
denies the Bible does sometimes quote the Bible to its own purposes, but
anyway....)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> And to tell a young idealist that his ideals can be found in the
Torah is not false. However, over time he does need to be weaned from
manifestations of such idealism that represent a distortion or misinterpretation
of Torah.<BR><BR></DIV></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><BR><B>--Toby
Katz<BR>=============</B></FONT></DIV></DIV></FONT><BR><BR><BR><DIV><FONT style="color: black; font: normal 10pt ARIAL, SAN-SERIF;"><HR style="MARGIN-TOP: 10px">Check out AOL Money & Finance's list of the <A title="http://money.aol.com/special/hot-products-2007?NCID=aoltop00030000000001" href="http://money.aol.com/special/hot-products-2007?NCID=aoltop00030000000001" target="_blank">hottest products</A> and <A title="http://money.aol.com/top5/general/ways-you-are-wasting-money?NCID=aoltop00030000000002" href="http://money.aol.com/top5/general/ways-you-are-wasting-money?NCID=aoltop00030000000002" target="_blank">top money wasters</A> of 2007.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>