Jihad is really a way of life

Jews can learn from it

By Ralph Dobrin

My wife and I recently renovated our bathroom. It’s amazing how much work such a small project involves. It took a lot of hard physical labor, resoluteness and intelligence on the part of the workmen who made it all possible. Three men did most of the work: a pumber called Danny, who brought two other men, both of them Arabs from suburbs in the eastern part of Jerusalem. There was Yusuf, who helped Danny strip away the walls and floor tiles and dismantle the pipes, which were old and corroded; and Hassan laid the floor and wall tiles.

And what a huge effort it was on their part! True, they were paid for their efforts, but nevertheless, I had to appreciate that for a few days of their lives they dedicated their strength, intelligence and and experience to me personally. For a while these three men became a central part in our life. So we cared for them. We cared that they were drinking and eating enough; that they were sufficiently rested from their grueling work from time to time. We weren’t just being nice. After all, if you expect people to do a good job for you, you’ve got to care about their physical well-being.

From time to time we would chat with them. Sometimes we praised their work and occasionally we would ask them to pull out a tile that hadn’t been placed absolutely straight. Each time they obliged very willingly. Yusuf spoke Hebrew fairly well, while Hassan had a little difficulty. My wife and I once had a fairly basic command of Arabic. So we practised our rusty Arabic with them. They seemed very happy that we could converse, albeit very haltingly, in Arabic.

Every day I prepared lunch which we ate together, while chatting about work, family, health and the Israel-Arab conflict. About this latter issue, they said a few things that I didn’t agree with, and I countered calmly, to which they responded calmly.

The fact that they are part of a nation with which my nation is locked in a desperate, mortal struggle, seemed to have no bearing on the degree of amiability in our relationship, even though I made it clear that nationalistically I have views that place me more Right Wing than Avigdor Lieberman.

I had noticed that Hassan took himself to a corner a few times a day and prayed. Sitting down to have dinner with him on the evening that he finished his work, I touched on the subject of religion.

“Religion is an important part of your life?” I asked rhetorically.

He nodded.

I continued: “I saw you praying.”

His expression seemed to say, “So what?”

I proceeded: “A lot of people in Jerusalem are religious. Isn’t that so? There are Muslims, Jews, Christians.”

“We all have the same rab” (master of the universe), he replied.

I reckoned that we were on friendly enough terms for me to be able to say: “You undoubtedly know that many people all over the world are worried about Islamic fanaticism.”

He just stared at me impassively. His docile manner emboldened me and I continued: “A lot of people are acting like crazy madmen in the name of Allah. Hamas, Hizbollah, El Khaida. They kill thousands of innocent people. They kill Jews and Christians. They kill Muslims and they even kill themselves.” I smiled to try and maintain a friendly discourse. After all, the man had helped make a marvelous bathroom for us and he was now sharing a meal with me and my wife at our dinner table. But it is not every day that I can engage a devout Muslim in a conversation on this crucial issue.

He responded: “The people who do all this killing are so badly mistaken. The Koran is against such acts. That is not really religion. The people who do these things are not real Muslims.”

“I had the impression that they are very dedicated Muslims,” said I. “And they call what they do Jihad,”

“That’s not jihad,” he responded.

I replied cheerily: “Oh, I thought that jihad was waging war in the name of Allah.”

He was cautious with his words. Slowly, in his imperfect Hebrew, interspersed with Arabic words that we happened to understand, he explained: “Jihad is not just making war to defend Islam. Jihad is really service to God. I serve God through humility, modesty and the way I support and raise my family. I do this by trying to be honest, hardworking and productive. And the way that I can support my family and be productive is by laying floor tiles and wall tiles in people’s homes. This is my jihad. That’s why I work as cheerfully and as well as I can. That’s why I take care to lay every tile as straight and as perfectly as I can. At the end of the day I want to be able to say that I did a good day’s work. That, for me, is jihad.”

How can anyone not be impressed with this outlook, I concluded. Later I checked the Wikipedia and in different words it more or less confirmed what Hassan had said.

All this leads me to recall conversations that I have had with Haredim. Quoting freely from the Scriptures and Sages, they always give me the impression that they reckon that everyone else is out of step and that only they have the right answers. And I bet that Hassan, like the Haredim or like any other religious group, thinks that his religion is the only right way to commune with God.

But the main difference between Hassan and a very large part of the Haredi men is that for Hassan and his peers, working hard for a living is part of their credo. And they are the ones who build Israel’s cities, grow the produce, fix the cars, repair the plumbing, work in our factories and clean our streets. Without their hard work, Israel couldn’t function as an orderly state. On the other hand, while some of the Haredim do work – like the rest of the Jewish population in Israel, but mainly in jobs that don’t require too much muscle, sweat or soiled hands and clothes – to a large extent many Haredim make a lifestyle out of sponging off the rest of society, using Torah study as a reason.

Now I bet that Hassan is no less devout to the rab (it has the same meaning in Hebrew) as any resident of Meah Shearim, Bnai Brak, Betar Ilit, etc. He prays five times a day. He does so quietly. Some of the content of his prayers is similar to Jewish prayer. But he spends little time on his duvenning. Most of his time is dedicated to being as decent and trustworthy a human being as possible. And as productive!

Now, please don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to promote Islam. Some of the nastiest, most evil scoundrels in the world are those who intone “Allah hu’akbar!” five times a day.

But as a way of life, Hassan’s personal take on Jihad, which can be summed up briefly as “be a real mensch,” is what the rabbis should be emphasizing to their communities and to the students in the yeshivot. They should be drumming into their heads the importance of productive labor in order to earn their living; not to be too proud to dirty their hands in the course of an honest day’s work; to strive for perfection in whatever they do; to practise humility; and for God’s sake, not to expect hand-outs from the rest of society.

Surely, that’s how they would come closer to tikun olam (repairing the world.) And surely, as Hassan said, that is how one really serves the rab. Indeed, all Israeli Jews should digest that.

See also: www.israelandtruth.org

A CURSE OR A BLESSING?

What makes Israel so special?

By RALPH DOBRIN

Religion and history make Israel special. According to Jewish belief, this is the land promised by the Almighty to the Jewish people for ever. There are many other reasons, religiously, why Israel is so special. Many of the events recounted in the Bible took place in this land. Every hill and valley is connected with the scriptures. The poetic books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Prophetic writings created thousands of years ago allude over and over again to the Land of Israel. The prayers of 70 generations in Exile supplicate for a return to this land. All over the world, Jews turned in the direction of Jerusalem when they prayed. Even in wedding ceremonies, the destruction of Jerusalem was lamented. Countless generations were prepared to risk death in order to remain faithful to the Jewish religion, always with the hope that one day their descendants would be able to live in the Land of Israel.

Historically, there is no doubt that the Jews have had a powerful emotional bond with this Land for over 3,500 years. For much of this time their bond has been physical as well. During the long years of Exile, Jewish yearning to return was actually heightened by oppression. By the turn of the nineteenth century many Jews felt that the only solution to the oppression was the Return to the Land of Israel.

But over the centuries much of the land had become malarial wasteland. Hundreds of years of neglect and abuse had transformed large areas into barren, practically uninhabitable desert or swampland.

Famous travelers such as Mark Twain and Herman Melville comment graphically about the wretched situation in the Promised Land. A mere few hundred thousand people lived in the whole of Palestine, which at that time was still a Turkish province that also included today’s Kingdom of Jordan.

Life was fraught with disease, widespread poverty and a desperate struggle to feed one’s family. Banditry was usually more effective than farming, and was therefore quite prevalent, especially among the Beduins. Also thousands of people were killed in the periodic battles between Arab villages and tribes. The reasons for these battles were either simply to take another tribe’s land or because of an insult or attack perpetrated generations before. Often clans continued to fight each other even though no one remembered the original reason.

It was a truly cursed land. A few tens of thousands of Jews lived in various parts of the country, but mainly in Jerusalem, Safad and Jaffa. Their lives, too, were noted for their abject poverty. A main occupation was the study of Talmud. In the latter part of the nineteenth century the Jewish renaissance took place in the form of a return to the soil. Despite colossal hardships, Jews managed to establish thriving agricultural settlements.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, many local Arabs viewed the increased influx of Jews into Palestine and their building ever more settlements with great alarm. They weren’t interested in the three millennia Jewish connection to the land.

So the stage was set for a terrible, ongoing struggle between two nations. A tiny Jewish population which would become the State of Israel, standing against the local Arabs, joined by the surrounding Arab countries, and bolstered by their enormous oil revenues and international support.

Since then the conflict has continued – in many forms and on different scales. Over 21,000 Israeli soldiers have fallen in Israel’s wars of survival. Many additional thousands of civilians have also lost their lives. In terms of relative population this figure is the equivalent of a million American soldiers losing their lives
This huge sacrifice in lives alone makes Israel special.

The ongoing struggle to build and maintain a Jewish state – the only one in the world – makes Israel special.

Israel is special because no other nation on earth has survived exile and then become resurrected again.
Israel is special because history has shown that in the Diaspora, the Jew can never really feel safe from racial discrimination and persecution, and it is only in Israel that Jews can determine their own fate and fight for their security.

Israel is special because of the huge national effort directed to the Ingathering of the Exiles.
Israel is special because here the Jew can feel a tangible connection to his or her earliest roots.
Israel is special because of the hope for a better world, implicit in its very existence. Israel is more than just a country. Israel is really an ideal, that suggests a striving for all that is fine in the human spirit.

Observing Israel’s society today, this might seem to be a rather strange notion. But that is what the word Israel suggests. And in actual fact that is what Israel should be working towards, because without doing so the dream of redemption, part of which has come true in our time, is turning sour.

But on a personal level people in Israel have devoted their lives to the naturally mundane efforts of livelihood, acquisition of homes and items aimed at enhancing their comfort and entertainment. They have allowed the specialness of Israel to slip their minds. This doesn’t really make sense if one considers the Jews’ special past as a nation – a past that stretches far longer than most other nations, a past that includes colossal suffering as well as amazing achievements, a past that has had a bearing on the ethics and morals of half the world.

One of the most pressing needs of the moment is to strengthen the spirit of Israel so as to give it the moral strength to transcend its present challenges and to truly be deserving of its fabulous name: Israel! To do all this the Israelis must once again realize just how special Israel is!

To read more visit www.israelandtruth.org