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About Gerald A. Honigman Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has done extensive doctoral studies in Middle Eastern Affairs, created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated many Arab spokesmen. He is the author of The Quest for Justice in the Middle East. His articles and op-eds have been published in dozens of newspapers, magazines, academic journals and websites all around the world. Link

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Gerald A. Honigman

A Yiddish Lesson for My Gentile Friends
November 24, 2009
 

Hey...I don't even like the language.

Don't get me wrong, I realize the importance it played for one portion of my people's history.

But it also represents the plight of a conquered people, forced into dispersion, sold as slaves wherever the conquering Roman armies traveled, and having to adapt to a new life as a downtrodden, oppressed people. Yiddish is not the language of my forefathers...Hebrew is. The language of a new, resurrected Israel which was a least partially reborn to end the Jews' latter, millennially powerless, fragile condition.

Jews fleeing or sold into slavery elsewhere besides northern Europe adapted likewise...The languages of Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and such thus also emerged as a result of the Great Diaspora. Before the Roman assault, it is also true that Jews had also spread out--or had been spread out--elsewhere as well, for a variety of reasons.

Yiddish was thus the concoction of German, Hebrew, Slavic, and some other languages that most European Jews invented in order to survive in their new surroundings. The spoken language was/is written in the Hebrew alphabet.

For some reason, Jews have a number of ways of expressing the male body part for use as a means of derision. So, get ready for your first Yiddish lesson...

Schmuck equals putz equals... phenomenon

Well, let me give you an example of what acting like a putz is like.

Israel has been behaving like the classic putz supreme for decades now regarding a few crucial issues.

While I have written about this before, the current disturbing events surrounding the captured Israel soldier, Sergeant Gilad Shalit, make it necessary to rehash this yet again.

As a father, my heart especially goes out to the Shalit family. But there is a very serious problem associated with this, one that Israel never seems to learn the lesson from.

Repeatedly, Israel has taken alive known Arab murderers and wannabes who have butchered and planned to butcher innocent Jewish civilians.

Trying to be a biblical light unto the nations in its moral behavior has only backfired on it big time – time and again. Dropping hundreds of thousands of fliers warning Arab civilians to get out of harm's way, calling them on cell phones, and so forth ( and thus telegraphing its punch to Hamas & Co.) didn't do it any good after it finally went after Hamas in Gaza last year. The United Nations still blamed the Jews anyway. Attempting to behave so in a very humanly imperfect world--especially the neighborhood in which Israel is located--has only led to such nauseating scenarios as we are now seeing played out in the Shalit Affair.

Not that long ago, Israel traded a load of other live Arab disembowelers and such of Jews for the remains of a few of the latter. Among those that Arabs got back in good health in the "trade" was the proud murderer of a small Jewish girl (he crushed her skull on a rock with his rifle butt) and her father--whom he drowned after shooting. Samir Kuntar, of course, was greeted as a glorious hero upon his arrival back in Lebanon--parade and all.

Now, since I've already brought up biblical before, let's get biblical again...

For those of you who think that one of the ten commandments says "thou shalt not kill," I've got some news. The Hebrew word does not say that; rather, it commands, "thou shalt not murder." The verb used in the Hebrew text is indeed different with a different meaning. The same way other words and concepts have been mistranslated (often deliberately) for one reason or another when translated into other languages from the original Hebrew, this same thing happened in this example as well. Indeed, there is a lot of killing going on in the historical portion of the Hebrew Bible--some murdering too.

The current issue of the day involves the proposed trade of Sgt. Shalit, who was kidnapped on the Israeli side of the border, by the same Hamas crew who killed two of his comrades for a thousand Arabs who either murdered or plotted to murder Jews and to destroy their state.

There are those who are against capital punishment. They have their right to be wrong.

I wish I could claim ownership to the saying I am about to either quote or paraphrase, but I can't...

Trying to be human to the inhumane only results too often in being inhumane to the humane.

Why should innocent people have to pay tens of thousands of dollars each year to keep alive those who deliberately target and slaughter innocents?

If there is a question of guilt, I agree that perhaps a different fate may be appropriate.

But, in far too many cases (as with Samir Kuntar), there is no question--and the guilty only live to laugh at the society which worries more about them than those whom they have butchered and others left behind in mourning having to deal with all the other consequences of those crimes. At times, those freed have lived to murder yet again.

Israel is currently now set to release many of such prisoners--again, one thousand--to try to gain the freedom of Shalit. If this "deal" happens, Israel must finally learn the lesson here--and stop behaving like the proverbial Yiddish putz.

Israel must quickly enact capital punishment--permitted by the Hebrew Bible against murderers--and get rid of too many Jew idiots who now serve as judges and weep more for murderers than for their victims.

Regardless of their geographical location, Jews too often everywhere confuse the compassion of the Hebrew Prophets to translate into serious problems or even suicide for themselves. Just look at how too many choose to vote as just one example of this.

I don't say these things as a blatant right winger. I am simply repeating the same justice that my Hebrew forbearers had the wisdom to promote in the very religious teaching of my own people.

Lastly, the problem that Israel and other nations face today indeed involves those who would murder and subjugate others--given the chance--using our own sense of "liberal" values and freedoms which are perverted to advance their own religio-political agendas. The question then becomes, will Israel and others still be foolish enough to allow this to continue?