Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects on why Purim is particularly meaningful this yr.
The only excellent news the Jewish persons are receiving at once, when the West and sadly some corners of the Church are either arguing for the genocide of the Jewish people or tacitly endorsing it, is that in a moment of genius, Jerusalem has decided to reinstate its first Purim Parade in 42 years.
When they fight to destroy you, whether covertly or not, the Jewish response has all the time been, we are going to fight back through rejoicing. Despite the very best efforts of some politicians and church leaders, Israel is a sovereign nation which is here to remain. She will subsequently do what she thinks best to eradicate the modern-day forces of Amalek, as embodied within the wicked Purim character of Haman.
It is true that a number of western individuals, including some Christians, have spoken out, and a few have even volunteered to assist in Israel and/or given donations to the Israeli war effort, thus proving that there are some modern-day Esthers on the market, not all of them Jewish. However, the overwhelming majority and positively those who’re in positions of power, haven’t simply stood on the sidelines as is common within the contemporary era where Jews are concerned, but have actually and openly called for the destruction of Israel, and subsequently of the Jewish people.
No doubt that’s the reason in a recent open debate held by the UK National Jewish Assembly (NJA) on whether there may be a future for us here within the UK, only two speakers as I recall spoke in favour (and sadly their arguments were out-of-date, factually inaccurate, and by no means convincing), while the overwhelming majority voted at the top that there isn’t a future for Jews within the UK.
It isn’t simply militant Islam, and even the undeniable fact that, because of deliberate government policies, there are 16 times as many Muslims as Jews on this country, but additionally that the Left and particularly the BBC, are viciously and continually anti-Jewish.
Rochdale, adjoining to areas of high Jewish population, was a protracted time in coming and was an accident waiting to occur; the police and judiciary have proved by their actions that they’re openly in favour of Hamas, accepting the very public call on our streets for the eradication of the Jews of Israel and arresting those that dissent; and the federal government, while silencing their very own truth-tellers, has essentially given the green light to the police to desist from arresting people and immediately halting the anti-Semitic hate marches, once they have the facility to accomplish that under the already-existing Public Order Act and anti-terrorism laws.
When you have got a situation where it seems that parts of the press, church, government and legal authorities all come out against protecting the Jewish community of this country, let alone the State of Israel, then it’s not that there isn’t a ‘hope’ as such; somewhat the query have to be asked: how can the younger generations survive on this country? Already they try to avoid UK universities just like the plague and selecting as an alternative to review in Israel.
But this is not recent; it has been the case since 1997 at the least, if not earlier, when it was already considered completely acceptable to condone hate speech and violence against Jews using ‘freedom of speech’ arguments, which weren’t permitted within the case of other groups. Only Jews have been the exception: any and all methods could be used to annihilate us, or at the least our presence, on this country. I should know, because I taught in UK universities at the moment and was personally affected by the madness.
And these are the arguments that were recommend on Sunday by one participant after the opposite during our NJA zoom meeting. It was the younger generation, often observant, who told us they’d had enough and had decided it was time to depart. Many have done so already in fact. It is a fact universally acknowledged within the Jewish community (and I do not include in our community the self-appointed quisling non-leadership) that government policies for the last thirty years have encouraged hundreds of thousands of immigrants, each legal and illegal, from areas of Eastern Europe and Muslim countries who simply hold views, based on their religions or cultural outlooks, which are usually not only hostile to Judaism, but are literally bent on destroying it. And this was in fact known on the time.
The other side of the coin, in fact, is that, while encouraging unlimited entry to individuals who don’t share our values, the UK itself not knows what it stands for, and even worse, tries to silence those brave souls who speak out in favour of the facts. Tragically, so many individuals on this country have died prematurely, risked cancellation or had to depart the UK, simply because of this of trying and failing to get up for justice and the rule of law, for mentioning that not all cultures subscribe to those concepts, the bedrock of the legal system first specified by the Hebrew Bible and later in rabbinic commentaries, but now disdained by the West and it seems even the essential Churches.
As for the schools, they’ve in fact, also for thirty, if not forty years, encouraged what they call ‘post-modernism’, where anything goes; truth doesn’t exist. And yet, post-modernists and classy leftists march hand in hand with the reactionary elements inside Islam and other quarters, supporting their recent quasi ‘religion’, through which frankly the post-modernists wouldn’t last someday were the tenets of this ‘religion’ carried out in the brand new Islamic state that they seem by their actions to crave.
I’m unsure that it’s our role to dissect why Jews and Judaism are hated a lot. We Jews have in any case given birth to therapy, psychiatry, medicine, humour, music and among the world’s biggest literature, which all purport to take care of this psychosis within the Western and Church mentality. However, when crisis occurs, then it’s how we take care of it that is actually unique, the word for crisis in Hebrew, mashbir, also denoting a birthing-stool!
So, we within the Jewish community would really like to thank all those individuals who have perhaps heeded the words of Mordechai addressed to his relative, Queen Esther, which we read to much merriment in the course of the upcoming Purim story, (Esther 4: 13-14), the identical words that shocked her into acting on behalf of her people, under decree of death for the crime of being Jewish. This is what Mordechai said to Esther:
‘Do not consider for even one moment that you simply yourself, greater than some other Jew, will manage to flee simply because you’re within the King’s house. For in case you don’t speak out presently, then rest assured, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from one other place, but you and your father’s house will perish.’
It is as if this passage were actually written for our time, when, as I write, a second Shoah is being enacted world-wide upon the Jewish people, that, after 42 years, plucky little Jerusalem has decided to resurrect her fully-fledged carnival once more.
When my family lived in Jerusalem from 1983-4, opposite Yad VaShem because it happens, we never heard the top of how marvellous the 1982 carnival had been. And this time, assuredly, the carnival will likely be just as meaningful for a individuals who have known for around 4,000 years that enormous parts of the remainder of the world would feel an ideal deal higher if Jews and Judaism were simply wiped off the map. And that’s the reason so lots of this country’s major institutions, not respected, are supporting Hamas to do their dirty work for them.
The truth of the Purim story has never been clearer to our own generation than it’s today! There could also be some surprises yet, some Esthers standing within the wings, but let’s not hold our breath. In the meantime, let’s all rejoice within the upcoming Purim festival, Seudah (meal) and Shushan Purim, when walled cities, equivalent to Jerusalem, will come out in all their finery, fully aware that we were saved once, in Persia, so many 1000’s of years ago.Â
