The Last Word on “King’s Torah”

by David Bedein, INN

They admit that they never even read it. You cannot even buy it. The writer, however, reviewed it more than a year ago. Read what he says about it.

Our agency received the book, Torat HaMelech [King’s Torah, ed], for review, more than a year ago.

We read Torat HaMelech and concluded that this was a compendium of Rabbinical opinions about how to cope with non- Jews during a time of combat. All perspectives were presented in the book.

Shortly after our agency received the book for review , an New Israel Fund client, an organization known as the “12th of Heshvan” ( The Hebrew date for the day that Yitzhak Rabin was killed) distributed select quotations from the book, leading people to believe that the book advocates the murder of non Jews.

The organization went to the Israeli police, who confiscated all copies of the book from the publisher. Other reporters could not receive a copy of the book for review. They had to rely on the snippets that they received from the “12th of Heshvan” organization

To convince the public of their perspective, the “12th of Heshvan” organization used a radical community organizing tactic, taken from Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals:

Accuse the adversary of an extreme position, even if he never took that position.

The adversary falls into the trap of defending a position that he never took, instead of challenging the integrity of the temerity of the accusation.

The accusers of Torat Hamelech and maligners of its Rabbis – Rav Lior, Rav Shapiro and Rav Yosef – have by now convinced the public domain of Israel, and even the Israeli law enforcement system, that the book indeed advocates the premeditated murder of non Jews, and the book’s authors have gone on the defense.

Jerusalem lawyer Asher Fink, who is organizing the campaign to arrest the authors and endorsers of the book, said to our agency that he would not accept the idea that the book, Torat HaMelech, represents a compendium of ideas on the subject. Fink was emphatic in insisting that the book represents a manual for murdering non Jews.

Fink said that he studied in a Yeshiva, and that the Rabin killing changed his perspective and has influenced his life .

It would be appropriate for journalists, academics and Rabbis to request review copies of Torat HaMelech, to decide for themselves whether the book is a compendium of opinions or a murder manual.

Meanwhile, a prominent Rabbi who had attacked the book, Torat HaMelech and its authors, in the well read publication Shabbat B’Shabbato, admitted to our agency that he never read the book.

However, as mentioned, the police have confiscated all copies from the publisher.

Meanwhile, our agency sent a letter of query to every official of the Israeli law enforcement system to ask them if they have read the book, TORAT HAMELECH.

Israel Minister of Justice Neeman’s spokesman provided an angry “no comment” to the question as to whether Neeman had read the book.

Neeman , for the record, is the first Orthodox Jew and the first Talmud scholar to hold the position of Israel Minister of Justice.

Other Israeli law enforcement system officials would not responded to the question as to whether they had even read the book.

One Israeli police official said, off the record, that “selections of the book that we have received were enough to warrant a police investigation”.

Yes, selections of the book.

So there you have it: A nation that prides itself in the democratic due process prosecutes the authors of a scholarly work because a political lobby hands over tendentious selections of a book to to the police.

Is there something rotten in Jerusalem?

July 11, 2011 | 18 Comments »

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18 Comments / 18 Comments

  1. @ Viiit:

    Ted, I find it in a real bad taste, highly immoral, if not illegal that the Yammit82 to continue to plagiarize Obadiah of Samsonblinded.org
    http://samsonblinded.org/blog/duty-of-genocide.htm.

    I linked to his post on the title in red and at the close where it says Read Full essay here!!!

    That you are so concerned with gotcha and are to lazy to read completely or click a link is a reflection upon you more than me. BTW, two years ago I spoke with Obadia Soher and he gave me permission in writing to use his stuff with links as I have done here. If here or there I was remiss it was an oversight or laziness and no nefarious intention otherwise was intended.

    I guess I’ll have to pay closer attention to you in the future, now that I see what you are, little man/woman or beast what ever fits.

    Not only he plagiarizes, but he even refers to his plagiarism in other posts as to “his”.

    Where?

  2. Yamit linked to the Samson Blinded article thinking that was enough. It isn’t. I prefer that he just link to it and them make a point. He should also identify the author. I don’t like him posting the whole article especially when one can’t distinguish who wrote what.

    So Yamit please stop posting the whole article in your comments.

  3. Ted, I find it in a real bad taste, highly immoral, if not illegal that the Yammit82 to continue to plagiarize Obadiah of Samsonblinded.org
    http://samsonblinded.org/blog/duty-of-genocide.htm.

    Not only he plagiarizes, but he even refers to his plagiarism in other posts as to “his”.
    Having plagiarism shamelessly posted here detracts from your otherwise most excellent blog.
    I know you have warned him before, but to no avail. Yammit is either not willing or not able to behave in a respectful and civilized way. Perhaps you would consider banning him from your blog. And perhaps this would help him to learn some basic ethics.

  4. Jews living in the Land of Israel in the reestablish national home of the jews should first ask what G-d says about the peace process and the land for peace policies of jewish leaders.

    Duty of genocide authentic Judaism; unburdened by modern Humanist anti-Jewish values.

    “In that day will I make the chiefs of Judah like a pan of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire among sheaves; and they shall devour all the peoples round about, on the right hand and on the left… And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.” Zechariah 12:6, 9

    Rabbis, when they were real rabbis, maintained that Jews must kill all the inhabitants of the Promised Land during the invasion. Joshua bin Nun allegedly sent three letters to the Canaanite nations before the invasion:
    Whoever wants to leave, leave;
    whoever wants to make a treaty of tribute and servitude, make the treaty;
    whoever wants to fight, fight.
    They were given no 4th option

    The promise of eviction touches on the fundamental question of free will. At every junction, the choice can only be made once; there is no Replay option. God gave the natives the relatively easy choice of moving out, but it was up to them to accept or reject it. Just as in 1948, the natives had to vacate their villages in good order so that Jews could take them over. They couldn’t even take their idols with them, as Jews are commanded to destroy those traces of foreign worship (v.24). Is that just? Definitely. Not in your common sense of human morality, but in the ultimate sense: whatever God has pronounced is just. Genocide, thus, can also be just.

    At the time of Deuteronomy, just as they did 3,000 years later, the natives exercised their free will: they said, No. Pharaoh responded similarly to God’s demand to release the Jews; God took away his free will by hardening his heart, so that the pharaoh could suffer the punishment for his prior offenses. The Canaanite nations, on the on the other hand, exercised their free will unhindered, and the time has come for them to suffer the consequences.

    “Only from the towns of the nations which Lord your God gives you for inheritance, you shall leave none alive. But you shall cease, cease them” (Deut20:16-17). The commandment can be interpreted in a minimally bloodthirsty manner: evicting the natives leaves none of them alive in our towns and ceases their existence in the land God promised to us. Such a relatively peaceful interpretation, however, flies in the face of the context.

    Jewish law distinguishes between two kinds of war: obligatory and voluntary. The obligatory war is fought to conquer the Promised Land and defend it from any enemy, even one who offers a land-for-peace deal (like the Amonites) or merely demands straw and hay. The voluntary war is fought for expansion of the boundaries of the Promised Land. The earlier verses deal with a voluntary war: much of the population, notably newlyweds and cowards, are exempted from military service. Now the Torah spells out the consequences of the enemy’s freedom of choice clearly. He can accept the Jewish offer of peace or fight.

    The peace deal that normal Jews offered to our enemies would have sent your Temple rabbi running for the Criminal Court in Hague: the surrendering inhabitants had to accept “tribute and servitude.” They could, however, continue pagan worship because these things happened away from the Promised Land; contrary to the liberal tikkun olam nonsense, Jews did not intend to serve as a beacon to nations who could persist in their pagan filth. The Exodus 20:24 commandment to extirpate foreign worship only applies to the Promised Land, not to the entire territory conquered by Jews.

    The enemy can also reject the rather illiberal Jewish peace initiative. Upon respecting his freedom of choice, Jews are commanded to slay all adult males and take women and children captive (Deut20:14). Here lies a concept of immense importance: they are not enemies spared out of humanitarian concern, but as a harmless trophy. The defeated enemy’s women and children suddenly became rootless and can be safely assimilated into the Jewish nation. As Moses, the humblest of all people, told Jewish soldiers, “But leave alive for yourself all female children who did not know a man.” (Num31:18) Enemy women and children can be left alive only insofar as they can be distributed among the conquerors, albeit on relatively humane terms of treatment.

    Obligatory wars are fought on divine command to purify the land; those wars are critical to Israeli nationhood and religious objectives. Obligatory war has to be harsher on Israel’s enemies than a voluntary war. If all the adult males are killed in voluntary wars, then that is all the more reason for them to be killed—rather than merely evicted—in obligatory wars. Once they have refused the divine command to flee before the Jews, they lose the benefit of the divine offer which allowed them to stay alive. God is merciful to his creatures: the natives are killed so that they don’t compound their sin of opposing God and his people.

    Many rabbis take refuge in the list of nations to be exterminated: the Torah lists seven of them, none of which exists today, though some Palestinians claim descent from the Canaanites. Palestinian Arabs, who refused to vacate the divinely established Jewish state, need not be exterminated according to this logic. As a human being educated in atheistic morality, I would be greatly relieved had it really been so. Unfortunately, the list of nations is clearly illustrative. In those days, nations did not exist. People thought on the level of kingdoms, towns, and clans. It is extremely unlikely that any town’s population considered themselves, for example, Canaanites. Deut20:16 is clear: “From the towns of those people which God your Lord gives you for inheritance, leave none alive.” If we constrain this verse to the long-gone nations, then we have to assume that today God gave us no land at all. Indeed, we’re commanded throughout the Torah to take the land of “those nations”—six or seven of them. If the nations don’t exist, Jews have no religious right to take over the land. Nevertheless, the Torah commands us to return from Exile and take over this land (Deut30:5). Thus, the list of particular nations is expendable; Jews must take the towns in the Promised Land from whatever nations happen to have settled them at the time. And when we take the towns, the exterminatory commandment of Deut20:16 kicks in.

    Machiavelli agrees: exterminating the natives is the only way for a conqueror to establish himself in the land. If he does not follow the cruel logic of conquest, the natives would become “thorns in his side,” which the Palestinian population has indeed become to Israel.

    The Palestinians exercised their freedom of choice in 1948 when they fought the Jewish state. There is no room, accordingly, for the peace process. And in case you think that the Torah is out of sync with modern realities, ask the Native Indians who were exterminated by good Christians arriving from Europe

    read full essay here

  5. In every nation, in every movement, there are people whose views are often murderous. Israer is dealing with this by preventing their actions and even the distribution of their message, while governmemts of Muslom nations either look the other way or encourage the most vicious elements in theor lands.

  6. Shy Guy, I never said he wasn’t. I simply pointed out he would be treated differently if he belonged to Israel’s “protected classes.” In the Jewish State, some Jews are more equal than others!

  7. Pinchas, you’re not a rabbi. If you are a leftist or a Muslim qadi (Islamic religious judge) nothing will happen to you. If you call for the murder of Jews, endorse terrorism or call for Israel’s destruction, that my dear grasshopper, is free speech. Calling for defensive action against hostile Arabs is naturally, “incitement.” If you are suspected of just having the wrong opinion, you can expect to be hauled into an Israeli police station. Even the KGB didn’t lock up people merely for having a “thought crime!”

  8. Shy Guy, the Koran is a book that glorifies jihad and violence. So does Mein Kampf. You can buy them at any Israeli bookstore.

    Why is a rabbinical book treated differently? A call for a violence is not the same as acting on it. And if Shai Nitzan and his leftist gang of fellow censors were consistent, they would move immediately to close down the IDF.

    It has actually killed Arabs! The accused Rabbis for the record, have murdered none!

  9. The Israeli Left approves enthusiastically of muzzling Rabbis with force, whose opinions of which it disapproves but screams its an infringement on democracy to take away their right to boycott Israel!

    Don’t let their blatant hypocrisy detain you. Israel’s First Amendment is only for leftists and Arabs.

  10. Let’s get a grip on this. the book deals with the legality of killing civilian non-combatants in a war against the Jewish people. This has happened in every single war in history, so the topic is valid for discussion. Note one of the next articles on this site where Muslims advocate the murder of ‘non-believers. Why are we not arresting and questioning these Muslim religious leaders?

  11. Ironic isn’t it? The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a well know fake and forgery that libels Jews as murderers of non-Jews and yet it is available everywhere. Here we have a real collection of rabbis accused of publishing a real book on murdering non-Jews and nobody can get a copy. Can somebody please get a clue? Somebody?

  12. Rabbinic Text or Call to Terror?
    By Daniel Estrin
    Published January 20, 2010, issue of January 29, 2010.

    Jerusalem — The marble-patterned, hardcover book embossed with gold Hebrew letters looks like any other religious commentary you’d find in an Orthodox Judaica bookstore — but reads like a rabbinic instruction manual outlining acceptable scenarios for killing non-Jewish babies, children and adults.

    DANIEL ESTRIN
    On the Shelf: The Pomeranz Bookseller in Jerusalem is among the bookstores that are selling copies of ‘The King’s Torah.’

    “The prohibition ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder’” applies only “to a Jew who kills a Jew,” write Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. Non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and attacks on them “curb their evil inclination,” while babies and children of Israel’s enemies may be killed since “it is clear that they will grow to harm us.”

    “The King’s Torah (Torat Hamelech), Part One: Laws of Life and Death between Israel and the Nations,” a 230-page compendium of Halacha, or Jewish religious law, published by the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva in Yitzhar, garnered a front-page exposé in the Israeli tabloid Ma’ariv, which called it the stuff of “Jewish terror.”

    Now, the yeshiva is in the news again, with a January 18 raid on Yitzhar by more than 100 Israeli security officials who forcibly entered Od Yosef Chai and arrested 10 Jewish settlers. The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, suspects five of those arrested were involved in the torching and vandalizing of a Palestinian mosque last month in the neighboring Palestinian village of Yasuf. The arson provoked an international outcry and condemnation by Israeli religious figures, including Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, who visited the village to personally voice his regret.

    West Bank Rabbi, Author of Terror Text, Arrested for Mosque Torching
    The Odd Couple
    A Seed Is Planted in the Land of Israel

    Yet, both Metzger and his Sephardic counterpart, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, have declined to comment on the book, which debuted in November, while other prominent rabbis have endorsed it — among them, the son of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Sephardic Jewry’s preeminent leader. Also, despite the precedent set by previous Israeli attorneys general in the last decade and a half to file criminal charges against settler rabbis who publish commentaries supporting violence against non-Jews, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has so far remained mum about “The King’s Torah.”

    “Sometimes the public arena deals with the phenomenon and things become settled by themselves,” Justice Ministry spokesman Moshe Cohen told the Forward.

    A coalition of religious Zionist groups, the “Twelfth of Heshvan,”—– named after the Hebrew date of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, has asked Israel’s Supreme Court to order Mazuz to confiscate the books and arrest its authors.

    “You open the book, and you feel that you read a halachic book. And it’s a trap,” said Gadi Gvaryahu, a religious Jewish educator who heads the coalition. It was, in fact, “a guidebook [on] how to kill,” he charged.

    Family members who answered phone calls placed to the homes of both authors said they did not wish to comment.

    In 2008, author Shapira was suspected of involvement in a crude rocket attack directed at a Palestinian village. Israeli police investigated but made no arrests.

    Co-author Elitzur wrote an article in a religious bulletin a month after the book’s release saying that “the Jews will win with violence against the Arabs.”

    In 2003, the head of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, was charged by then-Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein with incitement to racism for authoring a book calling Arabs a “cancer.”

    In 2006-2007, the Israeli Ministry of Education gave about a quarter of a million dollars to the yeshiva, and in 2007-2008 the yeshiva received about $28,000 from the American nonprofit Central Fund of Israel.

    “The King’s Torah” reflects a fringe viewpoint held by a minority of rabbis in the West Bank, said Avinoam Rosenak, a Hebrew University professor specializing in settler theology. Asher Cohen, a Bar Ilan University political science professor, thought its influence would be “zero” because it appeals only to extreme ideologues.

    But the book’s wide dissemination and the enthusiastic endorsements of prominent rabbis have spotlighted what might have otherwise remained an isolated commentary.

    At the entrance to Moriah, a large Jewish bookstore steps from the Western Wall, copies of “The King’s Torah” were displayed with children’s books and other halachic commentaries. The store manager, who identified himself only as Motti, said the tome has sold “excellently.”

    Other stores carrying the book include Robinson Books, a well-known, mostly secular bookshop in a hip Tel Aviv shopping district; Pomeranz Bookseller, a major Jewish book emporium near the Ben Yehuda mall in downtown Jerusalem; and Felhendler, a Judaica store on the main artery of secular Rehovot, home of the Weizmann Institute.

    The yeshiva declined to comment on publication statistics. But Itzik, a Tel Aviv-area book distributor hired by the yeshiva who declined to give his last name because of the book’s nature, said the yeshiva had sold 1,000 copies to individuals and bookstores countrywide. He said an additional 1,000 copies were now being printed.

    Mendy Feldheim, owner of Feldheim Publishers, Israel’s largest Judaica publishing house, said he considered this a “nice” sales figure for a tome of rabbinic Halacha in Israel. He said his own company, which distributes to 200 bookstores nationwide, is not distributing “The King’s Torah” because the book’s publishers did not approach the company.

    Prominent religious figures wrote letters of endorsement that preface the book. Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, son of former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, blessed the authors and wrote that many “disciples of Torah are unfamiliar with these laws.” The elder Yosef has not commented on his son’s statement.

    Dov Lior, chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and a respected figure among many mainstream religious Zionists, noted that the book is “very relevant especially in this time.”

    Rabbi Zalman Nechemia Goldberg, one of the country’s most respected rabbinic commentators, initially endorsed the book, but rescinded his approval a month after its release, saying that the book includes statements that “have no place in human intelligence.”

    A handful of settler rabbis echoed Goldberg’s censure, including Shlomo Aviner, chief rabbi of Beit El and head of Yeshivat Ateret Yerushalayim, who said he had “no patience” to read the book, and spoke out against it to his students.

    Previously, Israel has arrested settler rabbis who publish commentaries supporting the killing of non-Jews. In addition to Ginsburgh, the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva head, in 1994, the government jailed Rabbi Ido Elba of Hebron for writing a 26-page article proclaiming it a “mitzva to kill every non-Jew from the nation that is fighting the Jew, even women and children.”

    “The atmosphere has changed,” said Yair Sheleg, senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, who specializes in issues of religion and state. Previous governments took a tougher stance against such publications, he said, but “paradoxically, because the tension between the general settler population and the Israeli judicial system…is high now, the attorney general is careful not to heighten the tension.”

    It is not uncommon for some settler rabbis, in the unique conditions of West Bank settlement life, to issue religious decrees, or psakim, that diverge from normative Jewish practice. In 2008, Avi Gisser, considered a moderate rabbi from the settlement of Ofra, ruled that Jews may violate Sabbath laws and hire non-Jews to build hilltop settlements. And In 2002, Yediot Aharanot reported that former Israeli Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu sanctioned Jewish harvesting of Palestinian-owned olive trees.

    Read more: http://www.forward.com/articles/123925/#ixzz1Rns3M0AK

  13. Is it possible for someone to take the time to translate the book into english or know of anyone who has already done so?