Freedom's Current Crisis (Or, Messianic Politics 101)
Sunday, March 16, 2008
I grew up with an intense desire to avoid political discussion at all costs. I was raised in a home that functioned on an intense undercurrent of conservative politics. However, certain things were not considered polite dinner table conversation. When I told a visiting professor, who happened to be a Communist non-practicing Jew, that our family did not discuss G-d, sex, or politics publicly, I had to scrape his jaw off the table. But, it was true. My grandfather ruled the larger roost and when it came to topics that could be perceived as divisive, we were quickly told to, "Cut it off." Outside of a few screaming memes from my mother, who anxiously shouted, "Liars! Anti-Semites!" at the occasional CNN reporter, or my father's random disparaging remarks about the Clintons, I was fairly unexposed to political dialogue. I preferred it that way. Politics were ugly and divisive, and besides, as a kid I was part of the disengaged non-electorate, anyway. I had better things to focus on-- like Torah, Judaism, and Israel.
I didn't truly begin to become aware of the tight-knit relationship between real life and politics until my first graduate seminar in the fall of 2002 when, in an introduction to film theory, my professor informed us that, "Everything is political." At first, I didn't believe him, but I came to see quite clearly that this was true: film theorists and academics in general would strive to attach political meaning to the most benign actions imaginable. Films about out of work actors doing summer stage became tomes rife with communist innuendo (at least, according to communist theorists). Suddenly, everything I encountered had a political platform. Everyone was trying to shove some ideology down my throat. And, nine times out of ten, that ideology ran completely against the moral foundation upon which I was raised.
My first year in graduate school was a nightmare. I couldn't make heads nor tails out of what my professors were trying to teach me. Fortunately, there was an "oddball" in my class, the avowed conservative libertarian among a bunch of unaffiliated liberals who had no problem speaking up and speaking sense into classroom discussions. I may not always have been able to follow him to the T, but thanks to his commentary, I could clearly see that the complex, nonsensical theories of my professors were based in dangerous ideological territory and, consequently, had far-reaching, disastrous implications. For that first year, I sat and listened-- a lot. I did what my grandfather had always taught us to do: I kept my eyes and ears open, and my mouth shut.
I still recall that night reality finally hit home. Walking up the steps to my apartment after class, it suddenly dawned on me: I'm not the one that's wrong-- they are. I realized that the moral foundation I was raised with was the right one. I also understood very clearly that, not only was I allowed to have my own opinion, I should be allowed to express it, openly and honestly. But, as I watched my conservative peer catch guff time and time again, I knew that if I wanted to complete my program successfully, it would be better for me to keep my opinions to myself. So, I did. I muddled along and became the only one in my class to graduate on time with honors.
When I arrived home, as exhausted as I was, I knew I had work to do. This time, I set my sights on studying everything I wasn't permitted to research as a student at a public university. I poured over books by conservatives, beginning with Slander by Ann Coulter, and working my way from there, first with media commentaries (authors like Bernard Goldberg) since that was my arena of study in school, and then expanding into government and history. Naturally, I gravitated towards political texts regarding Israel and the Jewish people-- books like The War Against the Jews and The Abandonment of the Jews that my mother had read in her Holocaust history course worked in naturally with books I had read for my thesis, like Hollywood: An Empire of their Own. Eventually, thanks to one of Coulter's references, I picked up Whittaker Chambers's Witness, which led me to John Loftus's The Secret War Against the Jews.
At the same time, I began to follow political news online, reading both mainstream sources as well as independent conservative blogs like Israpundit. Thanks to these blogs, I tuned into authors like Ken Timmerman (Preachers of Hate) and Ben Shapiro (Brainwashed). I also immersed myself in conservative talk radio, taking my summer off to listen to Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and my personal favorite, WABC's Mark Levin. And, I made it a point to listen to Israeli talk radio via Arutz Sheva-- the conservative, religious-Zionist "renegade" station that broadcasted off the shores of the Promised Land.
In short, I became consumed with all I had sought to ignore in the world. In a matter of three months, I had read somewhere between 30 and 40 books and spent countless hours online or next to a radio. I studied what was going on in Israel and America, with a special focus on how the media portrayed conservatives, conservative issues, and everything related to Israel and the Jewish people. In doing so, it became very clear to me that the agenda marketed by the media was the same agenda shoved down my throat in graduate school: anti-Israel, anti-G-d, and anti-everything associated with Him. Comprehending this allowed me to understand one other thing very, very clearly: In possessing these attitudes, the media and the academy, the institutions I had believed I would devote my life's work to, were against me.
And that is when I got angry.
"If the world hates you, understand that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would have loved its own. But, because you do not belong to the world, on the contrary, I have picked you out of the world therefore the world hates you. Remember what I told you, 'A slave is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too; if they kept my word, they will keep yours too. But they will do all this to you on my account, because they don't know the One who sent me." (Yeshua, Yochanan 15:18-21)
I had always known Scripture to be true. But I had never experienced the hatred of this world, so until I did, I could not fully understand the Truth I had been given. I knew that the situation I was confronting-- this battle Ronald Reagan had so easily boiled down to the fight "between good and evil"-- was bigger than me, and had been going on longer than I had been around, longer than my parents or grandparents had been on this earth, for that matter. I wanted to go back down the line, to understand how we had arrived where we were at that point in time.
First, I went back to Chambers's book that detailed the infiltration and influence of communism on the American government in the 1930s. That, I knew, had resulted in the persecution of Jewish Americans in Hollywood, as well as a lack of American response to the Holocaust. Therefore, it was clear to see that communism was an anti-Israel ideology. The next step was to read Marx for myself, as well as to research the existence of Marxism in its various forms around the globe-- Cuba, Russia, China, all anti-Israel in nature. Cuba, in fact, was the first government to establish ties with Yasser Arafat and even open a "Palestinian Embassy" on their soil. Many of the communist terrorist organizations of the 60s and 70s had strong ties to the PFLP, the PLO, and the other muslim Arab terror organizations Israel fights today.
Learning this naturally led me to study the connection between Islam and Marx. Two years before it even started to become public via the blogosphere, I knew and understood that the relationship between communism and Islam went further back than Castro and Arafat, straight to Hitler and the Mufti. Hitler, it seems, wasn't so much about the promotion of the aryan race as he was about the destruction of the Jewish people, and he found an ally in a proponent of the oldest Israel-hating religion on the face of the earth: Islam. One night I found a Koran in an old book shop, and sat there copying verses about killing Jews onto scrap paper I found in my purse. I couldn't bear to buy the book and actually have it in my home, so I scrawled notes and proceeded to bury the text back on the shelf. My research was complete. I knew, then, for sure that the battle I was witnessing had been, and always would be about the existence of Israel.
In October of 2004, five months after I had graduated, I began writing down everything I had learned over the summer. I wanted the text to be brief and basic, but strong enough to substantiate the claims I was making. The original goal was to get down on paper everything I knew to be true for my own self, lest I forget all the wonderful knowledge I had just been given. In the end, however, I realized that my brief could be a great source for people like me-- the average, hard-working, middle class reader, who wanted to understand what was going on in the world, but who lacked the time to read 40 books and sit by a radio for six hours a day.
I completed the work in less than a month. After that, life changed. I entered the working world and set this particular work aside. A few weeks ago, I pulled it out and looked at it. Four years later, it was a dated, but not out-dated piece. So many things have happened since October of 2004. Bush was re-elected on a pro-Israel platform, only to turn around and force Israel to evict 9,000 citizens in the name of "peace." Ariel Sharon, the lion of the settlements, is now comatose while 75% of the residents of Gush Katif still wait for permanent housing.
A month after the eviction, Hurricane Katrina smacked into New Orleans and evangelical preachers proclaimed it a judgement of G-d. John Hagee formed Christians United for Israel, forcing liberals into hissyfits over neocon influence and the "power and control" of the "religious right". Condi Rice and the State Department have morphed into an anti-Israel cabal bent on the division of Jerusalem by the end of '08, something the Israeli government of Olmert and Livni are more than willing to do. Eight students from the ages of 16 to 28 studying Torah at the heart of religious Zionism in Jerusalem were murdered by a muslim terrorist. Now, the disenfranchised religious Zionists are ready to take justice into their own hands.
Jewish people from France are making aliyah in record numbers while conditions for Jews all over Europe continue to worsen. Jewish students at UC Berkeley and Temple University, among other schools, have been physically attacked and pro-Zionist students all over North America are facing growing anti-Israel, pro-muslim bias on campus. At the same time, the Christian Church is dividing into pro- and anti-Israel camps, with evangelicals touting Genesis 12:3 on one hand and various denominations divesting from Israel on the other. In the midst of it all, a growing number of gentile Christians are seeking to understand the history of their own faith and, in doing so, are acknowledging and embracing the fact that their Messiah is and their forefathers were all devout, practicing Jews.
Yes, many events have taken place since October, 2004. But the text of Freedom's Current Crisis still stands as a record of everything that led up to this point in time. Yeshua taught us, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light," and so it is, this truth of our history. What frustrated me so much about academia was that everything they taught as truth was, in reality, confusing, twisted, and non-sensical. Shortly after I returned home, I was given these verses from Proverbs 3:5-6: "Trust in Adonai with all your heart; do not rely on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him; then He will level your paths." The world likes us to believe that truth is a hard thing and knowledge is impossible to achieve. The world likes us to believe that you have to possess a great deal of accredited education and associated wealth to be able to understand how life really works. This is a lie. Truth is free. G-d is free. And you cannot put a dollar value on trust. Anyone can understand, know, and live the truth. They just have to want it badly enough.
I pray that the frustration I was driven to will not be what leads you to seek out the truth for yourself. And I pray that, in its own humble way, Freedom's Current Crisis will pay honor to G-d's promise: "The truth will set you free."
Labels: America, Christianity, Islam, Israel, Judaism, Judeo-Christianity, Marxism, politics, religion
posted by Shoshana @ 12:37 PM
