Actually, it was quite appropriate that I screened that film this past weekend, considering the parsha we read; Vayechi. It recounts the death of Jacob, his final words to his sons, and the oath that Joseph made with him to see to it that he would be buried at Machpelah with his wife Leah, his father and mother, grandfather and grandmother, and Adam and Eve, in the plot that Avraham purchased from the Hittites.
A story is recorded in the Sefer HaAggadah concerning the burial of Jacob that is particularly noteworthy. It concerns the sons of Ishmael, Esau, and Keturah who came to Machpelah to wage war against Jacob's sons, who had come up from Egypt to bury their father. Joseph, who had been made viceroy over all of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh himself, had placed his crown on Jacob's coffin. When they saw this, instead of waging war they removed their crowns and placed them on the coffin with Joseph's in homage to the servant of Hashem.
The story continues that Esau himself appeared, seeking to keep Jacob from being buried in the final plot in the cave, attempting to claim it for himself. Jacob's sons reminded Esau that he sold his claim as Isaac's firstborn son, and his portion as an heir. Esau demanded the bill of sale, to which they replied that it was in Egypt. Jacob's son Naphtali was sent to retrieve it.
Hushim, Dan's son, who was hard of hearing, asked what was going on. When the events taking place were related to him he said, "...until Naphtali returns from Egypt, is my father's father to lie shamefully unburied?" Hushim took a club and struck Esau on the head so hard that his eyes fell out of their sockets landing at Jacob's feet. According to the story, Jacob opened his eyes and smiled, which is why in the Book of Tehillim (Psalms) it states that "the righteous man will rejoice when he seeth revenge; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked," (58:13).
It would do well for those who currently, and wrongly claim to alternatively be the descendants of Ishmael, Esau, the Hittites, Jebusites, Philistines, and possibly parasites, to take note of this story.
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11 comments:
Just discovered your (excellent) blog. I am still ROTFLOL from reading your 'about' ...boy, some people can really write, eh?
Couldn't find your email address so I am commenting here instead.
Although Sefer ha-Aggadah is just that: aggadah=rabbinic folklore, legend and anecdotes--it illustrates through homiletics and allegory what the Torah implies are the ways of the righteous, and the inevitable future consequences of evil.
On the other hand, when I read about Eliyahu Chai's hesped of his father, Rav Meir Chai, a"h, I am proud to be a Jew, highly civilized, shunning evil, and valuing life. We will kill them when they rise up to murder us, but not go out to kill them in revenge (see Jameel's post on this).
Kol tuv-will be honored if you visit...
-I'm sorry, I'm a little naive: what does "Oy my Valve" mean?
Welcome LL.
You are right, we are counseled in the Torah that when an enemy rises to kill us we are to kill them first. We are also advised to wipe out the seed of Amalek entirely.
Ultimately all of this is in the hands of Hashem. It is our place to have faith, seek to live a righteous life, and drive our enemies out when they seek to do us harm.
The message of the story of Hushim is a reflection of what the Torah teaches. When an enemy comes to take even the stubble from the field, even on the Sabbath, we are bidden to take up arms and drive them out, lest they come back to take the field...
Esau came to take what rightfully belonged to Jacob. Hushim acted correctly. In the end you are right. This is not a story about vengeance. Vengeance is taken by HaKadosh Borachu. But it is incumbent upon us to defend what is ours.
What is vengeance for the Jew? Living by our ways in strength and cutting down our enemies who seek to divest us of what is ours and destroy us. In other words; living well is the best revenge.
Still, Jews busting Narzi heads is awesome.
As far as the blog name goes, it used to be "Oh My Valve," a Confederacy of Dunces reference. I changed it to Oy My Valve after Cast Lead began, and the liberal racist bloggers of America reared their ugly, duplicitous, lying heads.
I saw that movie last week and like you...loved "the Jew Bear". Although, I have to wonder how many idiot college kids will write an essay about how we won the war when we blew up Hitler in a movie theater. You know that's gonna happen because most college kids these days are too damn lazy to study and get their information from the movies they rent at Blockbuster or the crap they read on Huffington Post.
Great blog this. And an interesting article about vengance. Thanks for it.
M.E. these are the same kids trying to get their broomsticks to fly in their dorms.
O.V.G. Thank you. Welcome to my little corner of cyberspace.
i loved the movie too!
camille
While reading this article I was tuned into BBC and was shocked to hear an Israeli professor say that
Jews neither Semites nor Israelites, and have no claim to Palestine; the Palestinians more likely to be Israelites and all of us that are here under the right of return have no claim to this country, nor is there any proof historically or genetically that the Jews were ever exiled. His name is Shlomo Sand and he has a book out called the invention of the Jewish people. I am absolutely gobsmacked! Wait until the PA grabs a hold of this!
Hey Camille! So good to hear from you. I hope you're doing well. How's the world's bitternestest hamsteroid?
Anonymous; why are you so shocked to hear an Israeli professor say this? He doesn't see himself as a Jew, but Israeli. The Prophets warned us about the betrayers within our own people. Many teach in the universities, and many run the country.
No doubt this is the tired old story about the Khazars converting and all European Jews are descended from them. Blah blah blah. I have some bad news for this mamlachti idol worshipping douchebag: my family came from Spain and after the expulsion eventually ended up in Urkraine. We're very Jewish, and have the DNA tests to prove it. Additionally shattering this lie is the fact that the same Cohanic genetic markers are present in Cohanim around the world, be they from Yemen, Ethiopia, Europe, North America, or anywhere else.
This mamlachti douche wants to sell books, and is part of a concerted effort to deJudaify Israel and our connection to it; just as Arab and Christian archeologists and historians try and say that there was no exodus and that our people were never in Egypt, or that we were really the Hyksos who were driven out of Egypt.
None of this is new under the sun, and the PA has been spewing this crap for years. Abbas is a Holocaust denier.
Why does the PA and Jordan want the Dead Sea Scrolls? To destroy the evidence that we have been in the Land of Israel for thousands of years, and that the Falacstinians have no claim. They have tried to claim they were every Canaanite people mentioned in the Torah. They are the ones who have been proven wrong and they cannot stand it.
We know who we are. We are Yehudim. They are nothing, and Shlomo Sand is less than nothing.
Actually, Sand is not a mamlachti douche. He doesn't worship the state, he wishes it didn't exist. He ought to move to Ramallah and live with his brethren, or better yet, take a bus and a bag of Bissli over the Allenby Bridge, or return to his homeworld of Planet Sweden.
Sand is right that there were mass conversions to Judaism in history and that they had an impact on the makeup of Jewish populations worldwide. Ukrainian Jews do have some ancestry from Eastern Europe itself. Shtuey, your DNA tests may have showed Israelite lineages, and mine did too, but there are other families that show haplogroups like R1a1 which are commonly Slavic. That doesn't mean Sand is altogether right, of course. He pretends modern Jews have no significant ancestry from ancient Israel and that contention is decidedly false.
He picks and chooses evidence to suit his own needs, which is not the way of a proper historian. An example is the way he talks about DNA studies. He tries to get the reader to believe DNA evidence is invalid because the geneticists are working for Zionist politicians and manipulating data on Jewish groups, yet (as an anonymous user noted above) he accepts the DNA evidence that connects half of Palestinian Arabs to the land of Israel.
The fact is the reason Palestinian Arabs, Ashkenazic Jews, Sephardic Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Samaritans, Egyptian Karaites, and Crimean Karaites are all closely related to each other is because they all descend mainly from the same root: the Israelite people. The DNA evidence alone is enough to discredit Sand's book.
You'll find an accurate assessment of Jewish history and origins in my book "The Jews of Khazaria". The facts are in chapter 10 and appendix D in the second edition. The first edition of my book didn't contain the genetic data (which came later) and was missing some other information as well. Read and cite my book's second edition to disprove incorrect interpretations of Jewish history.
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