March 25, 2013, - 6:19 pm
Passover 2013 – From Slavery to Freedom (While We Still Have It)
To my friends and readers:
Tonight at sundown, the Jewish holiday of Passover begins. We Jews celebrate our freedom from slavery in Egypt and also our eventual receipt of the Torah from G-d via Moses and Mount Sinai as well as our eternal land, Israel. I will be out of blog commission for the next two days, but I’ve prepared timely stuff in advance which will be posted in my absence, so please come back. I’ll return on Wednesday Night, and will post one or two more things tonight before my Seder begins. I’ll be celebrating Passover and having my Seders with a friend who is not only an Orthodox Jew, but a descendant of Ulysses S. Grant (from his father’s side of the family who were not Jewish). Very cool, right?
Passover Seder Plate
As I’ve noted many times on this site in the past, 80% of the Jews remained slaves in Egypt. Egypt Syndrome preceded the modern Stockholm Syndrome, as most of the Jews enjoyed their captivity of hard labor, gazillionth class citizenship, and a lack of spirituality and faith in G-d. Today, a similar 80% of American Jews are still living in slavery of the mind. They voted for Obama (twice!) and continue to pander to our enemies in Islam and the left, both of whom would destroy us, like the Egyptians wanted to. (There are also Jews on the right who refuse to take a critical look at anti-Israel Republicans like Darrell Issa and crazy, destructive nutjobs like Rand Paul who would cripple our fight against Islamic terrorists on U.S. soil and abroad and yet want to make dangerous illegal aliens into U.S. citizens).
As I’ve noted, there are many Jewish people who are still slaves in Egypt mentally. They try desperately to please Jew-hating Muslims and anti-Semites. They are not proud of who they are. They’ve never been taught the beauty and spirituality of full observance of Judaism. And, thus, they will never be free. Their politics also enslave them, and they, sadly, pass this on to their children. Egypt Syndrome preceded the modern Stockholm Syndrome, and it has been passed on from generation to generation for some.
I am proud I am not like them. Tonight, as with Jews around the world, I will participate in the Seder, the traditional Passover ceremonial feast, in which we remember not only what slavery in Egypt was like and what it was like to be freed, but also that there are those who would destroy the Jewish people in every generation, including this one. As I’ve noted on this site oh so many times, those people are now the Muslims that surround us and who seek to destroy not just the Jews, but also the Christians around the world. They are also my liberal fellow co-religionists and the liberal Christians who defend and promote these Muslims. To me, they are far worse because without them, we’d be able to defeat the problem. Yes, there are also fools like Pharoahbama. But like the ancient Pharoahs of Egypt, he and his ilk will disappear and new, even more dangerous bad actors will appear and do even more harm. Heck, even Iran’s Ahmadinejad is term-limited, but there will be another choice of the ayatollahs to take his place and do the same madman’s bidding.
Passover Matzoh
Tonight, I’ll also be celebrating my freedoms, including my free speech and to continue to bring you this site, as I celebrate Passover with the CAIR Action Network lawsuit against me hanging over my head now after more than two years, and continued attempts by CAIR Action Network and other Muslims to silence me. I also have had, over the last year, new Muslim death, rape, and torture threats, which the FBI investigated but which the politically correct Justice Department declined to prosecute. And you know about the Nazis from Ohio now targeting me. So, I will celebrate my freedom with extra gusto on this first night of Passover.
I’ve written about Passover many times in years past (see also here and here), and you can read even more details here, here, and here. I need not repeat them here, other than the Debbie’s Notes version: We celebrate Passover for 8 days. We hold two Seders (one in Israel)–one for each of the first two nights. We cannot eat bread or anything leavened for the entire eight days. We also can’t eat stuff that, back in the day (and currently) could be made into flour, like corn, many nuts, peas, beans, etc. We have to buy special food (I spent more in the last two days than I spend on food in more than a month), including special soda. Coke and Pepsi make us what is essentially the Mexican version of their soda pops, as it does not contain corn syrup. We can’t eat any food with corn syrup on Passover.
To my Jewish readers, I wish you a Happy and Kosher Passover. To my gentile readers, I hope you will enjoy the stuff I’ve written for while I’m away. Again, I will post one or two more things before the holiday begins tonight.
See ya back live Wednesday Night. Ya’ll come back now, ya hear.
Tags: Egypt, Jewish Holidays, Jews, Judaism, Passover, Passover 2013
Well, I don’t want to put a damper on your Seder with a descendant of Ulysses S. Grant, but a little history on Grant is in order here. The Jewish Virtual Library does such a good job of telling the historical events, that I’ll simply cut-and-paste them below:
In 1862, in the heat of the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant initiated one of the most blatant official episodes of anti-Semitism in 19th-century American history. In December of that year, Grant issued his infamous General Order No. 11, which expelled all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi:
The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department [the “Department of the Tennessee,” an administrative district of the Union Army of occupation composed of Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi] within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order.
Post commanders will see to it that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from headquarters. No passes will be given these people to visit headquarters for the purpose of making personal application of trade permits.
The immediate cause of the expulsion was the raging black market in Southern cotton. Although enemies in war, the North and South remained dependent on each other economically. Northern textile mills needed Southern cotton. The Union Army itself used Southern cotton in its tents and uniforms. Although the Union military command preferred an outright ban on trade, President Lincoln decided to allow limited trade in Southern cotton.
To control that trade, Lincoln insisted it be licensed by the Treasury Department and the army. As commander of the Department of the Tennessee, Grant was charged with issuing trade licenses in his area. As cotton prices soared in the North, unlicensed traders bribed Union officers to allow them to buy Southern cotton without a permit. As one exasperated correspondent told the Secretary of War, “Every colonel, captain or quartermaster is in a secret partnership with some operator in cotton; every soldier dreams of adding a bale of cotton to his monthly pay.”
In the fall of 1862, Grant’s headquarters were besieged by merchants seeking trade permits. When Grant’s own father appeared one day seeking trade licenses for a group of Cincinnati merchants, some of whom were Jews, Grant’s frustration overflowed.
A handful of the illegal traders were Jews, although the great majority were not. In the emotional climate of the war zone, ancient prejudices flourished. The terms “Jew,” “profiteer,” “speculator” and “trader” were employed interchangeably. Union commanding General Henry W. Halleck linked “traitors and Jew peddlers.” Grant shared Halleck’s mentality, describing “the Israelites” as “an intolerable nuisance.”
In November 1862, convinced that the black market in cotton was organized “mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders,” Grant ordered that “no Jews are to be permitted to travel on the railroad southward [into the Department of the Tennessee] from any point,” nor were they to be granted trade licenses. When illegal trading continued, Grant issued Order No. 11 on December 17, 1862.
Subordinates enforced the order at once in the area surrounding Grant’s headquarters in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Some Jewish traders had to trudge 40 miles on foot to evacuate the area. In Paducah, Kentucky, military officials gave the town’s 30 Jewish families—all long-term residents, none of them speculators and at least two of them Union Army veterans—24 hours to leave.
A group of Paducah’s Jewish merchants, led by Cesar Kaskel, dispatched an indignant telegram to President Lincoln, condemning Grant’s order as an “enormous outrage on all laws and humanity, … the grossest violation of the Constitution and our rights as good citizens under it.” Jewish leaders organized protest rallies in St. Louis, Louisville and Cincinnati, and telegrams reached the White House from the Jewish communities of Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.
Cesar Kaskel arrived in Washington on Jan. 3, 1863, two days after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. There he conferred with influential Jewish Republican Adolphus Solomons, then went with a Cincinnati congressman, John A. Gurley, directly to the White House. Lincoln received them promptly and studied Kaskel’s copies of General Order No. 11 and the specific order expelling Kaskel from Paducah. The President told Halleck to have Grant revoke General Order No. 11, which he did in the following message:
A paper purporting to be General Orders, No. 11, issued by you December 17, has been presented here. By its terms, it expells (sic) all Jews from your department. If such an order has been issued, it will be immediately revoked.
Grant revoked the order three days later.
0n January 6, a delegation led by Rabbi Isaac M. Wise of Cincinnati, called on Lincoln to express its gratitude that the order had been rescinded. Lincoln received them cordially expressed surprise that Grant had issued such a command and stated his conviction that “to condemn a class is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad.” He drew no distinction between Jew and Gentile, the president said, and would allow no American to be wronged because of his religious affiliation.
After the war, Grant transcended his anti-Semitic reputation. He carried the Jewish vote in the presidential election of 1868 and named several Jews to high office. But General Order No. 11 remains a blight on the military career of the general who saved the Union.
—————————————————————Sources: American Jewish Historical Society and Karp, Abraham, From the Ends of the Earth: Judaic Treasures of the Library of Congress. DC: Library of Congress, 1991.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/grant.html
RA: I know all about it. And so do they. Which is why it’s so ironic that we are celebrating Passover together tonight. Also, I got them the book, “When General Grant Expelled the Jews
.” DS
Ralph Adamo on March 25, 2013 at 6:38 pm