Rabbi YY Rubinstein: Chanukah: Greece's Jews vs Jerusalem's Jews

[Music] so thank you very very much for inviting me it's a real pleasure it's cold over there absolutely cold of it ah so you already know I'm Scotty Shaw I'm just warning you so just as long as you know that I have an accent I was actually when I first moved to America which was eight years ago I was giving a lecture in Manhattan and at the front there were two very elderly gentlemen and after I finished my talk I heard one of them saying to the other the guy's brilliant his friend said yeah What did he say she's I haven't a clue what he's brilliant so apparently all you really need to do is have a foreign accent and you're guaranteed that people are going to like you meanwhile are you following me because I can talk like that if you'd prefer me to continue okay okay so first of all again now that you are understanding me it's a real pleasure to be with you I want to tell you I'm not sure looking around here see there's a but there's a broad mixture of where people are from am i right are you all native New Yorkers no what are you were you you're a native New York if you're not excited way from lekha syczyk recommend we're in South Africa you from table mountain or Claremont fantastic out here where else is anybody else from so yoga accents really okay but what are you from El Salvador Fantastico all right so everybody's from different places were all Jews the important thing is we're all Jews and that's really I want to talk about because I remember many years ago a very interesting thing happened I was I was at a very very close friend and this very close friend of mine was going to visit a country called what was then known as the US do you remember there was a country called the USSR yes the USSR Soviet Union so my friend is going to USSR and there was a true story that just happened in Moscow the electrified the entire Russian Jewish Moscow Jewish community anybody here from Russia no okay so you will know Bo what okay you will know that the USSR of course being a communist country then they had the children in elementary schools had to have a daily lesson in atheism communism of course as an atheistic relay a belief system and after the children had to have a daily lesson in atheism this is a true story so in turn elementary school into a group of 11 year old kids came a teacher one day and she walks to the front of the class and the children all stood up and she arranged her papers for today's lesson she tells them all to sit down and she began her lecture she's a children today we're going to discuss good children look around the classroom so the children all start to look around the classroom what can you see can you see God therefore God does not exist and it was a little Jewish boy in this class 11 years of age and he leaps up and he said children look around the classroom what can you see can you see the teachers brain therefore the teacher has no brain which in this case was probably true I know a little boy went on to graduate which High School in Siberia I'm not terribly sure but there's there are certain sorts of Jews who are so proud about who and what they are who and what their people are there anybody who insults our beliefs our people just can't sit still and when my friend was in Moscow having that experience I was my first ever trip to the United States of America and when I arrived I was a it was about this time of the year I spent three days in New York and then I was raising funds for a Jewish organization I was involved in I had a week in Chicago and a week in Los Angeles now is my first time here in the States I did not know that Chicago has a nickname which of course is the Windy City and I have to tell you in January yes I'm glad I wasn't wearing my kilt that's all I'm saying the Windy City is also the extremely freezing cold city and when you put them both together so I remember when I arrived there in tells there's a big achieve of their cold tells on this larger shivah the week before I arrived there had been a fight in the yeshiva those of a 200 or so guys sitting learning Talmud and suddenly the doors burst open and in came about 13 or so skinheads you familiar with skinheads neo-nazis armed with baseball bats started to attack the boys in the Shiva so half hour later when the ambulance has arrived to take the skinheads away yet the police asked the rabbi who is in charge of the Shiva did he want to press charges and he said yes he wanted to press charges and a week afterwards he received in the mail a whole list of the names of the 30 guys the 30 skinheads who had attacked the boys in the Shiva so when he looked down the list he noticed that one of the boys names was Londo London now of course if you're in where I come from the UK and you come across some people the name Londo you immediately think drew but in the United States of America as the song says it ain't necessarily so because as you know I think apart from black people who are brought here against their will the largest immigrant group to the United States of America came from which country Germany where he was with known sir yes Germany and Londo is a German Jewish name but it's also a German German name and so it wasn't you know it ain't necessarily so however it troubled him and one of the other rabbis enough that he and the other rabbi went to see the parents of this boy Londa guess what he was at you but his parents had never told him he was a Jew so many friends said hey let's go and beat up the Jews yeah let's go beat up as a Jew so there are different types of Jews in the world there are Jews who are so proud of being Jewish what we are what we stand for our history our people hugged the anybody who insults as even an 11 year old boy will stand up there and challenge another other Jews tragically horrific Lee who don't even know about the are Jewish and I suppose there is a group somewhere in the middle who sort of know what being Jewish is roughly with jury for what it means but it's it's not yet a passion it's not something that burns in their heart fiercely somebody mentioned before it was a young lady over there I mentioned before that she knew me through an organization called gateways if you ever heard an organization called gateways so gateways is an organization and which specializes in reaching out to Jews who don't have very much connection with their Jewish identity and certainly back when I started working with them which is the 5th 15 years ago they were working with from campuses to communities and was my first ever weekend working for gateways the fellow is in charger is a fellow of Rabbi su shard he'd employed me I was lecturing for three months I was still based in Manchester in England which is where we move for from and and basically I was on my first try out my first weekend we've managed to get together and this is really quite remarkable I do not know how they did this but they managed to get together if I remember rightly something on the number of three or four hundred Jews from across the tri-state area and these Jews came from communities were they really were not like that little kid not like the kid who knew nothing about being Jewish but somewhere in between but they didn't really know very much about being judged in a liberal Jewish and some are rather they've been persuaded to come and spend a weekend and a very nice hotel listening to various rabbis including one with a Scottish accent anyways so basically after lecturing about four or five times I had to give the farewell lecture so there was a Sunday morning the rogue out there and my new boss is sitting at the back and so the lecture was going I think really quite well and then I decided to do something a bit naughty I decided to really be a little bit live dangerously and so I posed the following question to my audience and you got the picture a whole bunch of people 400 or so who really they know the Jewish but that's you know what Judaism is all about or maybe Jewish really means so ask them the following question I said tell me what one character trait what one characteristic do you think but the Jewish people possess the MiG sells better than anybody else have you got the question what one character trait you think the Jewish people possess that makes us better than anybody else what do you think the reactions might of my 400 Jewish people who know almost nothing about being Jewish was to that question and that invitation how do you think they reacted yeah yes he's going you're nuts peeps some people so angry somebody said I think that's racist somebody else we don't feel real better than somebody if than anybody else and somebody else in something else that people get and then there was a guy and his mother slips and I said we're out of here and I said please I said please please forgive me I'm Scottish I mean what oh that's okay that's quality is okay to be racist and not politically correct as long as you're not American and then I carried on for another few minutes and and I said let me give you an example I said suppose you could give something from a third world country a green card to a knee to lift it to any first world country in the world this was bike so this was what Lou this 15 years ago they could move to any country in the world gonna give him a green card which country do you think they'd want to move to what's every hand went up I said yes America they said I said why do you think that is and the guy said because of our can-do attitude somebody else said it's my superpower sorry I mean a kid cried before really about my own kids that's different um you can hire me you know um okay bring your superpower and stare our kids okay meanwhile back at this I suddenly said oh can do added something else ed our education system so really and then somebody else said our economy well this was 15 years ago and I said you know this is really quite funny five minutes ago I asked you won't made you as Jews better than anybody else and you were all appalled at the question five minutes later I asked you what makes you better as Americans and everybody else and every single person's got an answer why you so proud of it being Americans and so embarrassed about being Jewish thank you thank you now glad I came I said I said I suppose you asked the exact same question to somebody from Scotland are you better than anybody else yes we are absolutely convinced that we are better than anybody else in fact in Scotland we have a saying would you like to hear it in Scottish or in English okay so here isn't Scottish was like us get you in that I eat oh did I get was like us get you and that I'd eat which in English means who's like us very few and they're dead in fact if you ask us course when you better than anybody else we will give you an extremely long lecture on all the incredible achievements the Scottish people have a chief after all who was that invented the steam engine a Scotsman who was a that invented antibiotics penicillin a Scotsman who was that invented the wood surface we drive our cars on da macadam a Scotsman who Worzel invented the bicycle our Scotsman and it can go on and on I'll keep me here for a latte or I used to live in France ask a Frenchman are you better than anybody else okay think and then we'll give you and I think they could lay claim fairly to some real achievements and claims to achievements in the world of music think of Debus in various other composers art architecture military retreats I mean the French are many examples okay or how about the Germans do you remember the German national anthem don't run to Obama's Germany about everything or ask the Hungarians yeah again or ask or ask the Russians or the Spanish or the Italians or the Greeks or animal the South Africans anybody in the world we're better than eight except when it comes to Jews in so long we're so embarrassed how does that happen it's a very interesting concept it really is the story of Chanukah because it came to Konica we had our own beliefs we had our own religion our own culture or our own philosophy and our own language and then something remarkable happened to the world something called Alexander the Great and Alexander the Great who came from which country here's a trick question no Macedonia he wasn't actually agree so Alexander the Great came and he conquered most of the world as far as India remarkable achievements and he was a great friend and admirer of the Jewish people he sat and studied Talmud with a famous rabbi at the time of the Talmud called Sheba not Sadiq in the beta m'gosh a great admirer of the Jewish people and everything was fine and along came a whole new culture which was wonderful and friendly and seductive in fact I often say in my she or him in my lectures if you really hate Jews I mean you really hate Jews and you want rid of them be nice to them and it's the cultures that I've been most welcoming and friendly including where I come from in Scotland was almost no anti-semitism at all just a few years ago I was invited to go home and address the Scottish Parliament there's no anti-semitism to Israel of course which is my Semitism by another name but they print that they'd be appalled if you told them they were anti-semitic well the last 30 years Scotland's is something like an 85% intermarriage rate because of course if they're at the doors are wide open to our society to come and become like us lots of Jews do take that invitation up and along came the Greeks and they came or the beautiful new philosophy and beautiful music and and a whole new culture and for many many Jews it was irresistible and profoundly seductive and then what comes next in the story and what happens next in the story it's a strange thing you can see this repeating itself through history over again and again and again we're welcomed into society we give a ton to that society I remember seeing a picture in the book of the Kaiser the German Kaiser before the outbreak of the First World War the largest empire most powerful country in the world before the First World War which was what was which country England and the power from England came from war the Navy the British Navy Britannia ruled the waves and the Germans knew that to beat the British they would have to beat them on the high seas and they developed a new technology a new weapon a new military weapon it was his ship the ship is called a dreadnought and there was a picture of the Kaiser walking in the shipyard with the owner of the shipyard who was building these great new vessels that were going to defeat the British guess what religion the man who owned the shipyard was one of us twelve and a half thousand Jews died fighting for Germany during the first world war a hundred and fifty thousand Jews died fighting for Austria or the austro-hungarian Empire as it was during the First World War and the very good friend of mine who's a rabbi him from Germany said Hitler not been anti-semitic an equal number of Jews would have fought for Jeremy during the Second World War and died for unser Heimat our homeland we see a repeating pattern and the Hanukkah story is very much the prototype of that pattern you've got a culture that comes and welcomes the Jews into its midst nor resistance everything is fine and then when Alexander the Great died and his and his empire splits in three then suddenly cold winds start to blow the warm smile the Welcome disappears and then there is oppression just that happened in Germany and just happened in countless other exo's like that and what happened next was well the Jews who were welcoming I was rather who had been welcomed their neighborhood over to becoming Greeks we see this a lot today and this is the saddest thing of all that the Jews who bought into the alternative culture then become more anti-semitic when those winds of of cold winds start to blow that the non-jewish people and we certainly see today in the United States of America this is the first time on film I think I'm admitting I know an American citizen by the way so I'm Scottish and American but you see it very much in today in America and the political scene is certain in certain parts of a certain party which I will not mention anti-semitism is really just like in England in the Labour Party very very welcome indeed and often led by Jews a remarkable thing so the Greeks change instead of welcoming the Jews the Jews are only welcomed because either there's two types of anti-semitism look at two famous festivals Konica employee and we both see and our prayer is an extra prayer Allen Eason for the miracles that happened to us during those particular festivals and both were examples of anti-semitism the Purim story was a Hitler anti-semitism kill the Jews completely it doesn't matter if you you're not religious if you're safar the Ashkenazi you're a Jew you're dead but the Konica story wasn't like that the kind of the story was you're welcome as long as you buy into our beliefs our culture as long as you see the world through our eyes not through your own eyes and that's exactly what they did and you'll probably know they may be past all sorts of laws outlawing Jewish practice and Jewish belief and give me any examples you know any examples the band's circumcision right why because in Greek culture as we all know the Olympic Games came from Greece only men competed in the games men competed naked and if you were circumcised then you did a little uh Greek do you know the Talmud says that men had themselves under circumcised oh I won't get too details I'll tell you later and are just to make themselves look because they wore did more than anything else to be Greeks why is the D bun Oh watch Gloria sure there's another hand there Shabbos the band and a band of course what we are doing though learning Torah talking sour ideas was was a prohibition and then be banned keeping Shabbat I think it was the famous English diarist samuel peeps who wrote more than the jews of kept Shabbat Shabbat has kept the Jews they knew that that was the the beating heart of the the spirituality of the Jews get rid of that but what were they trying to achieve by outlawing the announcement of Rosh Hodesh and Jerusalem if you could see the moon with an Hadron say that the new moons and sported the announced this is the beginning of the Hebrew month what would be trying to burn with that any ideas the whole Jewish calendar the Jewish festivals somebody called rabbi Destler and his wonderful work meets Emillio he says an incredibly interesting thing he says all the greatest givers see people spraying graffiti on the wall you see that stuff if I had to do a bit of graffiti which I would never think of doing my my piece of graffiti what's the is it graffito is that the single I'm not sure my graffiti thing would be God rules okay everybody who's tried to beat God to take God on it never succeeds says rabbi desta think of the first person who tried to do it a guy called Pharaoh remember that and fair was told some of our other by people who apparently have the ability to see into the future there's going to be a born child born and he's going to take the Jews out from Egypt to freedom what was his reaction kill all the boys did here I said kill all the boys not just the Jewish boy children the non-jewish boy children too why did he want to kill them why did he want to kill his own kids because these guys that could look into the future looked into the future and they saw a picture a vision of the mind it was going to save the Jews and liberate them he looked like a Jew but he was dressed like an Egyptian so was he a Jew or was he an Egyptian wasn't sure so kill all the boys will not take any chances but why does he dress like an Egyptian did Pharaoh succeed no and he brought that boy up in his own palaces one of his own sons that's white is dressed like an Egyptian because he was going to bring it up God rules okay or if you think of the Purim story and the Purim story Haman the first Hitler calculates the ideal date to kill all the Jews and he throws Lots Purim in order to calculate the best day using all sorts of mystical magical attempts at power is he successful not only is it not successful the day that he thought would be the most opportune day to kill the Jews the Jews killed the anti-semites the gallows which he built in order to kill a home on or hang him on it Hallman is sorry Parliament to kill him Hallman is hanged Oh very singular God rules okay and in the mechanicus story they tried to outlaw circumcision so we wouldn't look different they tried to get rid of Shabbos and learning Torah so we would think different and they tried to get rid of the announcing of Rosh Hodesh so we wouldn't have any Jewish festivals because the Jewish calendar is based on the new men begin that's when you know in the middle of the month for 14th that's pace look at cetera and what's he successful not only is not successful he gave us a new festival Hanukkah God's rules okay so ultimately the truth is there to see but people don't see it people don't know why the Jewish nota legitimates all about but that's where to look ha and there to discover and the people that don't see it and who allied themselves to our enemies sadly just disappear and lose the opportunity that we have of being part of the greatest story in the whole of human history our story your story the Terris story so let's try and spread the world the word when we know other Jewish and maybe the ones that don't know what being Jewish is all about and the next time is the kind of capacity or maybe another kind of a party here maybe during this kind of I'm not sure bring them along it's so the sheer here and then the talk bring them along let them get a feel of what you already know that the thing to be proudest of all as being a part of Claudius or hell being a part of the Jewish story thank you very much [Music]