from the heart of jerusalem: rabbi binny freedman

Again we ask, has the world gone mad?

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The Yazidi people fleeing into the cold cruel mountains of Iraq to avoid massacre; hundreds of thousands of Kurds running across the borders into Turkey and Jordan to escape beheadings and mass rape in Syria; and hundreds of thousands of people on the move to stay one step ahead of the Islamist fundamentalists in Southern Sudan and the Nuba mountains, all while Iran moves ever closer to joining North Korea in its quest for nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

And where are the forces of good while all this mayhem is taking place? What is the West’s response to the violence and terror in Syria, Iraq and Iran, Lebanon and Gaza, the Sudan and the Ukraine, Darfur and North Korea? All of Rome is fiddling, while the world burns. How can this be?

Where is America, the supposed leader of the free world for the past 75 years, the same country that fought Nazism all the way to Berlin, and brought the cruelty of Communism to a halt in Korea, and in Russia? Where is Great Britain, whose forces fought the armies of tyranny to a standstill at the Somme in WWI, and whose Royal Air force, greatly outnumbered, fought off the might of the German Luftwaffe over the skies of Europe in WWII?

While tens of thousands die every month, and millions lie awake in fear for their futures, the British parliament is busy affirming a Palestinian State, the United Nations establishes committee after dysfunctional committee, and the United States dialogues with Congress on the merits of bombing a despotic government that’s been using chemical weapons against its own citizens, all the while afraid to get “boots on the ground” and in continuing meetings and discussions with Iran.

How could a United States presidency that began with so much hope have fallen so far?

This week’s portion, the story of Noach, presents a fascinating insight on this topic.

Noach is the only individual ever described as a tzaddik (a righteous person) in the entire Torah; he is the only one deemed worthy of saving the world and is picked by G-d to build an ark that will allow humanity to survive.

And yet, there are two details that the Rabbis note which suggest that while he is righteous, Noach is also righteously flawed.

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