Be a Fanatic – for G-d
Does the idea of being a fanatic scare you? It shouldn’t! If they are fanatic AGAINST Hashem – we must match them!
Did you see Larry David and Alan Dershowitz go at it in Martha’s Vineyard?
Alan seemed calmer saying, “Larry, we can still talk.” Larry was irate, just screaming at him.
Larry is progressive. Alan is liberal, but he committed the “heresy” of defending President Donald J. Trump. That makes Larry David Ultra-Orthodox and Alan Dershowitz Reform.
William Barr, President Trump’s Attorney General, likened today’s politics to a form of religion. They have a strict orthodoxy and you cannot wafer: You can’t be anti-abortion and pro-gun.
It’s all or nothing and if you break a “sacred rule,” they excommunicate you. Everyone has to fit into a specific box – no free thinkers are welcome. People who don’t follow their beliefs aren’t fellow citizens, friends, or even neighbors. They are the enemy. There are saints, like the revered AOC and Ilhan Omar. There are sinners, like Alan Dershowitz.
To the followers, the reward is acceptance. To the dissidents, the punishment is to be canceled. Canceled from Facebook. Erased from society. Removed from YouTube and taken off Twitter. Like a leper or hermit, you are exiled to sub-existence.
The progressives fight with the unbounded passion of the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, and the Taliban. Why don’t we?
How They Win
The Taliban took over a country of 38 million with 80,000 fighters.
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has just 600,000 members but is always a hairsbreadth away of ruling a country of 100 million people.
The progressive wing of the American Congress consists of less than 20% of the 535 members of the American legislature, yet they dominate the national agenda.
How are these people punching way beyond their weight?
They refuse to bend. They are the extremists of the day. They are intense. They are fanatic. They refuse to budge an inch.
They are like a woman who gets into a fight with a man. The man will hold back. The woman will unleash everything with full force.
Why don’t we see it like that? We face enemies that are stronger, have more money, power, and influence, and stand for things that will destroy mankind.
They never apologize for what they say or what they stand for. They expect the world to bend for them.
They assume that everything they stand for is right and everyone else are barbarians that need to be civilized by them.
Taking Back Our Playbook
ISIS and the Taliban weren’t the only ones who are fanatic enough to rattle an empire.
The Maccabees did it first. They set the precedent. They were the first ones to fight for Hashem. To be willing to give their lives for G-d in a David and Goliath battle.
As we speak, the Israeli Minister of Finance is taking lunch money out of the pockets of Torah observant children and giving them to the Arabs. The Arabs don’t serve in the army. They don’t pay taxes. When they pray, unlike the Torah observant, it isn’t to bless the People of Israel.
Our Health Minister is more obsessed with making the State of Israel the first nation to enact the Laws of Sodom in the Land of Israel since the Nation of Sodom did it over three thousand seven hundred years ago.
We saw what happened to them. We see what has happened to America over the last decade since they enacted such laws.
Do you think it’s a coincidence that there is historic flooding all over the world – all over the world that has legalized the abominations that caused the great Flood? The Sages teach that Hashem promised to never flood the entire world all at once again – but He continues to punish sexual perversion with local flooding. If the tzaddikim screaming hasn’t woken us up yet, perhaps the water overtaking our cars and our streets will!
Why are we letting sick, perverted heretics take us all down to the pits of the earth?
Why aren’t we becoming fanatics about Torah and Hashem?
We fell into the colonial west’s deception that there is something wrong with being a fanatic.
Do you know why they try to convince us that the worst thing in life is to be a fanatic? It’s because they cannot defeat them. In war, they cannot overcome the Taliban, the Ayatollahs, or ISIS. In peace, they cannot stand against the progressives. Truly it is the progressives who are the fanatics, who are the “extreme” ones – even though they try to portray those who uphold the values of millennia as the extremists!
For America and Europe, addicted to their comforts, fanaticism is their kryptonite. It’s their Achilles heel. It is something they cannot stand up to.
It’s the same in Israel. The cultural elite are more comfortable holding hands with the Arabs, who in the last three months burned down three cities, 5,000 acres of Jerusalem, and shot a soldier in the head point blank – than they are with the Settlers, the ultra-Orthodox, and Religious Zionists.
It’s because they aren’t afraid of the Arabs, which they think they can control. They are terrified of us, who have the power to overrun them.
It’s time to wake up to this fact.
Our resolution for the New Year is to become fanatic about something.
It can be guarding our speech. It can be sexual morality. It can be focusing on the Jewishness of our Land and our country. Remembering that it is a Divine Act for a Jew to live and thrive in the Land of Israel. It is a Holy Deed for a Jew to walk four steps in Israel – yes, every four steps is its own mitzvah!
Now, more than ever, we owe it to the Jewish People to get fanatic about Hashem.
To demand total adherence to Torah law. To demand that a Jewish country prioritize Jewish citizens, educate its citizens in Torah – all Jewish citizens, and hold everyone equally responsible to eternal and unbending Jewish Standards of Life – G-d’s Standards of Life.
Beating Them at Our Own Game
It is us, the religious, who should be living up to their stereotypes about us without apologies:
-
There is right and wrong in this world. If the majority choose hedonism, that’s not democracy – it’s demonic.
-
There is racism and discrimination in this world and there should be. Those who act in righteousness should be accorded the best this world has to offer. Those who are wicked should be made to suffer harshly as a compassionate act to get them to make repentance while they still have the chance.
-
There is reward and punishment. The people of Sodom practiced injustice and perversion. Hashem eradicated all of them. Noah’s generation wanted only the “strong to survive.” Hashem wiped out the majority and preserved Noah.
-
If you are not doing mitzvot, you are wasting your life. No matter who you know or how much money you have, in the end you will be left with nothing.
What service are we doing to our brothers and sisters in this world by being “nice” and letting them continue living with zero merit?
We must work to build a society that encourages living by the Real Truth and fulfilling G-d’s commandments. A nation where putting on Tefillin and reciting the Shema are once again daily practices for everyone. Where women dress modestly, thus preserving their true inner honor of being a holy soul, instead of bastardizing it on the street. There is no greater blessing for a Jewish woman and for all of Israel than modesty.
To taste the sweet scent of Heaven.
Who gave us the choice to watch our brothers and sisters recklessly walk past bags filled with gold and diamonds and be polite by not encouraging them to open their eyes and see what’s in front of them?
Why has Hashem targeted COVID disproportionately against the religious? Why are the youth, who seem to be desiring all that is wrong, are fighting for their world with the sacrifice, passion, and aggressiveness that we should be fighting for His.
It’s time to demand a lot more from our nation.
It’s time to make them more afraid of us than we are of them.
It’s time for holy boldness. It’s time for us to fight like bulldozers and clean the world out of its chaos by letting everyone know where they can be holier, and happier.
***
David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his wife and children. Since moving to Israel in 2002, David has discovered Torah, writing hi-tech, hiking, coding ReactJS Apps, and hearing stories about the Land of Israel from anyone excited to tell them. Check him out on Highway 60 or email him your favorite Israel story at: david.ben.horin@spreadyourenthusiasm.com.
