Rabbi Michael Samuel

During the week of Yom HaShoah, while Holocaust services were being observed all over the world, the United Nations reconvened its Durban Conference to discuss human rights issues and violations that are taking place throughout the world. Traditionally, the onus of blame has always been directed at Israel, as if all the other human rights issues of the world seem to pale, in comparison e.g., the genocide in Darfur, Jihadist terrorism, or the recent Russian invasion of Georgia and the theft of their land does not seem to matter.

Curiously, on Sunday April 19th, on the day that Adolf Hitler was born, the Swiss President Hans Rudolf-Merz decided to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran.

As all of you probably know, the Iranian leader is an avowed Holocaust denier; he was slated to give the keynote address before the United Nations forum known as “Durban II”, which was being held in Geneva.

Well, as it turned out, members of the Western countries protested; entire delegations walked out of the hall right after Ahmadinejad continued to raise the vitriolic hatred of his rhetoric, blasting Israel and the United States of America for all the problems of the world. The only comical moment of the entire speech came when three clowns positioned themselves at opposite ends of the hall. When Ahmadinejad began speaking, they whipped out the clown wigs from their pockets and yelled “racist” at the Iranian president. Yes, Durban II was a circus. Read more…

Question: The Passover Hagadah speaks of four cups of wine, four sons, the four questions, and so on. What is the number four so significant in the Passover Seder? I would also like to know about the specific origin of the famous Four Questions during Seder.

Answer: Good question. In the interest of time, let me be succinct. The idea of “four questions,” the “four types of children” draws heavily on the symbolism of the number four. The number four represents a totality e.g., world’s four cardinal directions, the cosmic ordering of time as seen in the four seasons, the four elements, and the four temperaments of classical thought. Basically, the number four conveys how reality is experienced in this world.

This is certainly evident with respect to the “Four types of Children” which covers every kind of conceivable child. The wise, the contrarian, the simple, and the silent serves as a spiritual diagnostic for the healthiness of the traditional Jewish family. Our Sages used the number four to stress the importance of having each child present at the Seder.

Read more…

There is a peculiar law in the Talmud regarding the reading of the Megillah (the Book of Esther): “Anyone who reads the Megillah backwards has not fulfilled his obligation.” Why such a strange law? Why would anyone want to read the story of Esther backwards? Some rabbis have suggested over the ages that anyone who thinks the story about Haman’s murderous plot to destroy the Jewish people is passé would be wise to pay better attention to the events that shape the world. Anti-Semitism is and has always been the Achilles’ heel of Western civilization. How right those rabbinical pundits were!

Over the last century, the enemies of the Jewish people have traditionally been the same kind of peoples who oppose freedom-based societies that respect the human rights of others. We saw this in the days of WWII, as we did in the days of the Cold War with Russia—which I might add, seems to be re-occurring today with the emergence of a Mafia State in the heart of Moscow.

Purim is not the happiest depiction of Jewish life in the Diaspora, but it is a realistic portrayal of how dangerous Jewish life has often been; even today, Al-Qaida No. 2 leader warns Hamas against making a Gaza truce with Israel. Ayman al-Zawahri threatens to strike at Jewish targets all around the world.

The arch-villain Haman is more than just a cardboard character who inhabits the pages of the Bible; evil is a reality we often choose to ignore, largely because we want to believe that all cultures are equally important and civilized—such has been the mantra of multiculturalism since the end of the sixties. Of course this is errant nonsense. How does one consider a culture that engages in female circumcision or the suppression of human rights equal with countries where these rights are enshrined and protected?

The holiday of Purim stresses that evil has a name; it has to be combated. Divine redemption never occurs in a vacuum—it requires human participants and actors. Ignoring evil does not make it go away—it only emboldens dictators and thugs in power to expand their dreams of conquest and oppression until we unite and defeat it. The book of Esther shows how decent people can and ought to act—but it begins with recognizing certain hard realities about human nature and life itself. For Jews living in the Diaspora (countries outside of Israel), our belief in liberalism fails to take into account the specter of radical evil.

Instead of fighting it, Western nations and their Third World allies continue to honor mass murderers (remember how Arafat received the Noble Prize for making peace with Israel) and the henchmen of radical Palestinian and Iranian nations as though one could honestly hold these thug leaders to an ethical standard of behavior.

Yes, the ghost of Neville Chamberlain, the failed prime minister of Britain who attempted to appease Adolph Hitler by giving him Czechoslovakia, is alive and well in our country and in other Western nations who wish to bury their heads in the ground rather than to confront the autocratic forces that threaten us all. As Iranian mullahs march forward toward creating the first rogue nuclear Muslim state, we would be wise to remember the timeless lessons of Purim.