If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?
People repeat this one verse as if all hope will be lost if we don’t defeat this new law, win this election, save this marriage, but how many of us have read the entire chapter? It doesn’t say what we often seem to think it says.
David wrote of what appeared to be a hopeless situation, “The wicked are ready to destroy all those who are pure of heart. If all support is gone, what can the righteous do to prevent it?” But he didn’t stop there. He followed that with an observation on the reality that is hidden behind what we see and a profound statement of faith. To paraphrase, he wrote,
Adonai is still on His throne in Heaven and, although it appears that He has closed His eyes to our suffering, this is only a test for our benefit. He will destroy the violent and the wicked; a violent end is their inescapable destiny. But He loves the righteous and He is always watching over them.
Whatever you may be suffering, however evil your circumstances might appear, God still sees you. The sense of abandonment that you are experiencing is a test. Hold fast to your faith, because God has promised that the end of the faithful will be glory and life, while the ultimate demise of all oppressors, no matter how powerful they appear to us right now, will always be an ignoble and permanent grave.
For the righteous ADONAI loves righteousness and His countenance is toward the upright.
The first century church dealt with a recurring conflict between missionaries to the gentiles and a group that is sometimes called “the Party of the Circumcision.” Acts 15:1 tells us that
…some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.”
The rest of the chapter discusses this controversy and how the Jerusalem Council responded. I don’t like to reproduce large blocks of text from the Bible here, but I think it’s necessary because the council’s ruling is easy to misinterpret without considering the full context.
Act 15:1-33 (1) But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” (2) And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. (3) So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. (4) When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. (5) But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.” (6) The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter.
(7) And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. (8) And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, (9) and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. (10) Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? (11) But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” (12) And all the assembly fell silent, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.
(13) After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brothers, listen to me. (14) Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name. (15) And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, (16) “‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, (17) that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things (18) known from of old.’ (19) Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, (20) but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. (21) For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.“
(22) Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brothers, (23) with the following letter: “The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. (24) Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, (25) it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, (26) men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (27) We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. (28) For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: (29) that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”
(30) So when they were sent off, they went down to Antioch, and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. (31) And when they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement. (32) And Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, encouraged and strengthened the brothers with many words. (33) And after they had spent some time, they were sent off in peace by the brothers to those who had sent them.
I can see how it might appear to the casual reader as if the Jerusalem council ruled that the Torah does not apply to gentile believers. But a reader more interested in the broader context and a fuller understanding of what he reads might notice a few details that seem to indicate otherwise.
First, let’s define the controversy.
Verse one says that some men came from Judea and told the new gentile believers that, in order to be saved, they must be circumcised according to the “custom of Moses.” Paul, Barnabas, and some others went to Jerusalem (in Judea) to discuss this issue with the apostles and elders (v2). When they had brought the Jerusalem council up to date on their mission to the gentiles and had described the controversy at hand, some of the same group of men were there and reaffirmed what had been told to the gentiles (v5). These might have been the “others” who had accompanied Paul and Barnabas, possibly to ensure that both sides of the argument would be represented fairly.
This is the question that the Jerusalem Council convened to answer: Must the gentile converts be circumcised according to the custom of Moses in order to be saved and should they be ordered to keep the law of Moses? As you can see, there are actually two questions, and if you are unfamiliar with the written Torah, it will be very easy for you to misunderstand the nature of these questions from the text in Acts alone.
Note that verse one states “circumcised according to the custom (ethos in Greek) of Moses.” There is no general command anywhere in Torah to circumcise grown men. There were specific circumstances in which the Hebrews had neglected the command to circumcise their infant sons, and so they rectified that by circumcising themselves as adults, but those were one time events. Nowhere did Moses write, “If a foreigner wishes to be grafted into Israel, he must be circumcised,” or “a grown man who was not circumcised as a child must be circumcised as an adult before he can be acceptable to God.” The Law only stipulates that a newborn boy must be circumcised on the eighth day. This “custom of Moses” was just a custom of men and came with a long list of extra-biblical do’s and dont’s known as the Eighteen Measures of Shammai (briefly mentioned in this Jewish Encyclopedia article). By demanding that new believers must be circumcised in order to be saved, they were adding to God’s Law, something He expressly forbade them to do.
Verse five says that the Pharisees also wanted to order the new converts to keep the whole Law of Moses, something that they clearly weren’t even doing themselves. As Yeshua told them years earlier, “By your traditions you make void the commandments of God.” In fact, since their circumcision was only a man-made tradition, it’s very likely that the laws they intended weren’t the Law of Moses at all, but either the Eighteen Measures or else the full body of draconian and contradictory Jewish law. Peter’s statement (v10) confirms that this is almost surely the case:
Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? (Acts 15:10 ESV)
How could God’s Law as delivered through Moses be such an onerous burden when God Himself says that it was not?
Deuteronomy 30:9-16 ESV (9) The LORD your God will make you abundantly prosperous in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your womb and in the fruit of your cattle and in the fruit of your ground. For the LORD will again take delight in prospering you, as he took delight in your fathers, (10) when you obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that are written in this Book of the Law, when you turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. (11) “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. (12) It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ (13) Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ (14) But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. (15) “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. (16) If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
How could they have been unable to bear the burden of God’s Law about which David wrote such stirring words:
Psalms 119:44-48 ESV (44) I will keep your law (Hebrew: Torah) continually, forever and ever, (45) and I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts. (46) I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame, (47) for I find my delight in your commandments, which I love. (48) I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.
So what was the yoke that the Apostles and their fathers couldn’t bear except for the innumerable regulations that lawyers had piled on top of the Divine Law? Yeshua was continually rebuking them for “teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:9), and this was just more of the same. The “party of the circumcision,” as Paul would refer to them, wanted to make all of these new gentile believers into full-fledged Jews, complete with a Jewish ritual conversion and all the rules and regulations that were impossible to keep and often in direct contradiction to the written Torah.
The actual question at hand was not whether the Law of God (aka the Mosaic Law) applied to the gentile converts, but whether they ought to be required to keep the Jewish traditions that had been added to God’s Law.
Peter urged the council to reject this proposal. What was too difficult for the Jews who already knew the Torah well would surely be even more difficult for the gentiles, and many would turn away in discouragement.
This is James’ final ruling on the issue:
Acts 15:19-20 ESV “(19) Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, (20) but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.”
Clearly he rejected the idea that the converts must be circumcised to effect salvation, but did he go so far as to reject Torah observance altogether? It almost reads that way! But what about keeping the Sabbath, stealing, coveting, dishonoring parents, and oath breaking? If you refrain from sexual immorality, but hate your brother, have you really done well (v29)? Of course not! Paul, Peter, John, and James all wrote strongly against a number of immoral behaviors that James didn’t even mention, so we know that James didn’t mean for them to interpret his ruling as license to commit everything under the sun so long as it didn’t violate one of these four prohibitions. That would be putting God to a far more severe test than the legalism he was refuting.
So what did he mean? The vital clue in the very next verse is usually ignored:
“For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.” Acts 15:21 ESV
James said that they should not trouble the gentiles, but only tell them to avoid these four things, because Moses is taught in every synagogue every Sabbath.
The Apostles had rejected the Circumcision’s premise that a ritual conversion was necessary and had then gone much further than anyone had expected. Not only did converts not need to be circumcised and keep all of the Pharisees’ man-made traditions, but they didn’t even need to keep God’s Law in order to be saved! This was truly radical! But it wasn’t the end.
What were they to do with their salvation now that it was assured apart from circumcision? This is the question that James was really answering. Let me give you my amplified version of his ruling:
“Let’s not discourage the gentiles with a treatise on every moral particular. We’ll keep it simple and easy with just four really important things that will facilitate fellowship between Jews and gentiles. They can progress from there by learning over time just like Jewish children for many generations, hearing Moses read aloud and discussed in the synagogue every Sabbath.” James’ words embodied a great principle of human nature: demand too much, too fast, and you’ll get nothing at all. You’ll break people instead of advancing them.
The controversy addressed in Acts 15 was never about whether gentile believers in Yeshua ought to keep God’s Law as given through Moses. It was about conditions for salvation and for acceptance into fellowship.
This is the very essence of God’s grace: He loves us right where we are, and we don’t have to keep any set of rules to be saved. His grace is sufficient for our salvation. We don’t need to be circumcised, dunked, shaved, bathed, anointed, slain in the spirit, or sprinkled for His grace to be effective at covering over all of our sins and making us His own. All we have to do to be saved is throw ourselves on His mercy, begging His forgiveness and throwing our sins at His feet.
But the liberty we have in Messiah does not mean we are free to make void the Law of God. As Paul said to this idea, “Heaven forbid!” It only means that we are not condemned by our failures as we progress toward the mark of perfect faithfulness. We are free to obey God without fear that every misstep will send us plunging into the abyss.
Start where you are and work to do a little better every day. And if you do these things, you’ll do well.
Someone once wrote, “It is absolutely bizarre that some Christians are still under the impression that they have an obligation to abide by Jewish Law.”
I completely agree.
If that surprises you, then you might be operating under the same lexical error as the original writer. The problem is a confusion of terms. Most Christians will read this phrase and actually understand it to mean “It is absolutely bizarre that some Christians are still under the impression that they cannot be saved unless they obey the Law given to Israel at Sinai,” and that’s probably what the writer meant too, but it’s not what the words, as written, mean at all.
Take the word “obligation” for instance.
If I am obligated to abide by posted speed limits everywhere in the United States, does that mean I will lose my citizenship if I exceed the limit at any time or even if I ignore them altogether? Of course, not. That’s absurd. It only means that I’ve broken the law and thereby placed myself under the jurisdiction of the local justice system, often colloquially known as “The Law”.
At no time before, during, or after my speeding episode was my citizenship in jeopardy. Likewise, no one is under any obligation to keep Torah in order to earn salvation, nor is anyone who is already “saved” or grafted into the nation of Israel obligated to keep Torah in order to keep that status. Which is not the same thing as saying that he is not obligated to keep Torah.
Anyone who claims to be grafted into the tree of Israel is obligated to keep Torah because God commanded Israel to keep it forever. Yeshua (Jesus) said further that anyone who refuses to keep it and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven. Notice that the offender is still “in the Kingdom,” but has been demoted by his disregard of God’s commands.
Be careful also of the term “Jewish Law.” It’s confusing because it’s often used to describe contradictory ideas. For example, many people are under the mistaken impression that Torah requires ritual handwashing before eating bread. Matthew 15 describes an incident in which a group of Jewish religious teachers asked Yeshua why his disciples didn’t wash their hands before eating as required by the “tradition of the elders.” Yeshua responded with a question of his own: “Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” There is no commandment in Torah to wash one’s hands before eating. This was a “tradition of the elders” only. It was Jewish Law, but not God’s Law, and God isn’t concerned with Jewish Law.
“In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” (Matthew 15:9 & Isaiah 29:13)
This was the same battle that Paul fought all through his ministry. He was constantly correcting people who were conflating Jewish Law with God’s Law. People who say believers in Yeshua shouldn’t keep “Jewish Law” are making the exact same mistake the Pharisees did: they replace God’s commands with man’s. Either they reject God’s Law and keep a new “Christian” set of laws against drinking, swearing, and smoking, or they reject God’s Law because they don’t want to make the mistake of keeping “Jewish” law, not understanding that they are not the same.
Is God’s Law Jewish? Only if you use the term “Jewish” to refer to all things related to Hebrews and Israel. It’s not technically accurate, since the term originally only applied to the Kingdom of Judah and not to the Kingdom of Israel and the tribes that were scattered by the Assyrians, but human language is rarely technically accurate. Referring to all Israelites as Jewish has a long history–even Paul did it at times–so I won’t quibble with that too much. Just be aware of the difference and be aware that the writings of the Jewish sages, the Talmuds, and the Jewish traditions are NOT the same as the written Torah. They are commentary, and often they are even very good commentary, but they cannot change, add to, or remove anything from God’s Law.
If you are grafted into Israel as Paul described in Romans, then the Law that God commanded the Israelites to keep applies to you. If you are not, then nothing that Yeshua said applies to you either, since he said that he came only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Yeshua and Torah are a package deal. Either you’re in or you’re out. Either Yeshua and Torah both apply to you or neither do.
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. (James 2:10)
Good luck trying to become righteous before God through the law…I wish you the best.
This person was equating “righteous” with “saved”, which isn’t entirely wrong. It’s just irrelevant. Whether or not a Christian is obligated to keep God’s Law has nothing at all to do with whether or not it makes a person sufficiently righteous to merit salvation. Abstaining from murder doesn’t make one righteous in this sense either, but no one believes Christians are therefore free to commit murder.
This person is essentially saying, “You can’t keep the Law perfectly, so don’t even try,” which is precisely the opposite of what James was trying to say. Just three verses earlier, he quoted Torah (the Law) from Leviticus 19:18, “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scriptures, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well.” Does it really make sense to interpret James as saying “If you’re trying to keep the Law, you’re doing a good thing, but since you can’t keep all of it, don’t try to keep any of it”? How absurd!
No, James was saying, “It’s great if you love your neighbor, but don’t forget about all the rest of it.”
Nobody’s perfect. We’re all going to fall short of God’s standards (aka Torah). That’s why Yeshua’s sacrifice was necessary. But don’t take inevitable failure as permission to fail. It’s not.
The Prime Ministers isn’t a comprehensive history of Israel. It’s a collection of vignettes concerning an insider’s interactions with the country’s prime ministers up through Menachem Begin. It’s a very personal account that focuses on the personalities rather than the events.
There were some slow parts. (It’s a history, so you have to expect that.) But overall, this was a fantastic book. I loved it, especially the last half that focused on Menachem Begin. If only every world leader could have the kind of character, kindness, and realistic idealism that Begin possessed. The author’s portrayal of some of the biggest characters of the latter 20th century filled them out and made them more real to me. Carter, Reagan, and Shimon Peres dropped a couple of notches in my estimation, while Kissinger, Thatcher, and Begin all rose.
I’ve been reading a lot of biographies lately, and this book underscored a commonality I’ve seen among the great men and women of history. They’re just regular people with all the same flaws and motivations as the rest of us. There are a few things that set them apart: personal discipline, a clear vision, and the drive to make that vision real. If you can put those three things together, you can make things happen.
Ye are strangers and sojourners with me. God’s plan for the Promised Land was that it would be inextricably tied to a particular family. A tribe was allotted a defined region and within that region each family was assigned a particular piece of land according to the size of the family. Less productive land was assigned more generously. If a man died childless, there were provisions to ensure that his inheritance stayed within the family as much as possible. Within a few limits, what a man did with his land was completely up to him. Yet from this passage we can see that no one but God really owns the land. In fact, no one truly owns anything at all outright. Everything belongs to God and all authority, even that over our own bodies, is only delegated to us from Him. He blesses whom He will bless and He curses whom He will curse.
If you abuse the authority which God has given you, you should not be surprised when He takes it away. We speak in terms of “my” this and “your” that for the sake of simplicity, but in reality nothing is mine and nothing is yours. We are only strangers and pilgrims in our own lands.
Harvest in the Promised Land. (Ruth and Boaz by Nicolas Poussin)
Leviticus 21:1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Speak unto the priests the sons of Aaron, and say unto them…
On some sense, I am sure that everyone is created equal, but I have yet to define what that sense might be. From birth we are all different. Some are stronger, some are hairier, some have different parts, and those differences confer varying responsibilities and powers.
God holds the physical descendants of Aaron to a higher standard than he holds the rest of us. For example, he deals with their sexual immorality much more harshly. The daughters of Aaron must remain virgins until married. If they don’t, the penalty isn’t just stoning. It’s burning.
Aaron’s sons are held to a higher standard than his daughters. Emor gives a short list of things that a priest may not do that other of God’s people may:
Touch the corpse of anyone who is not an immediate relative.
Shave his head or disfigure his beard.
Marry a woman who has sex outside of marriage or who has been divorced.
Drink alcohol while serving in the sanctuary.
The High Priest has an even higher standard than that. He may not
Touch the corpse of even immediate relatives.
Marry a widow or any non-virgin.
Leave the sanctuary while performing the duties of his office.
Bring anything unclean into the sanctuary.
Paul alluded to this same concept when he told Timothy and Titus his standards for Church leaders. He never intended those lists to be taken as absolute laws for all believers. (Or even for all church leaders, for that matter! They aren’t priests serving in the Temple, after all.) He was illustrating how good leaders must have a different code of behavior. There is no sin in preparing and burying a corpse nor in having a rebellious child, but God said that his priests shouldn’t do those things.
That God’s standards for some people might be different than his standards for others only surprises the inheritors of the so-called Enlightenment. Many good things have come from the philosophical and theological revolutions of the past, but some things have also been lost and corrupted.
One characteristic of what computer programmers refer to as “elegant” code is that it accomplishes much with little. In other words, a complicated process reduced to a few simple lines of instruction. One can usually tell a novice programmer by the convoluted nature of his code.
Torah is like an elegantly written piece of software. While it seems at times to be just a long list of dos and don’ts, in reality, it is a simplified portrayal of deep and nuanced concepts. A set of instructions on what to do in a particular circumstance often (always?) opens into a multi-dimensional framework of truths concerning the nature of God, man, redemption, and spiritual health and sickness, but only if you look at it from the right angle. Here are just some of the characteristics that a passage contains greater mysteries than appear on the surface:
Unusual Hebrew spelling.
Altered Hebrew characters, whether in size, shape, position, or orientation.
Thematic parallels with other passages.
Parallel or mirrored structure, often called a chiasm.
Numerological and pictographic double-meanings.
Puns and cognates.
At Ashrei, Rabbi B discusses some of the deeper meanings of “clean” and “unclean” in Leviticus 11-15 (aka the Torah portions of Sh’mini, Tazria, and Metsora), and how these concepts contain real and applicable spiritual import for people in ages and cultures.
It is in the most unlikeliest of places that we often discover the most precious of treasures. From time to time I hear from people who read the Bible how they skip certain sections when reading because those sections seem tedious and boring, or even irrelevant. When expressing this sentiment they often cite the lengthy genealogies or the detailed laws concerning sacrifices or laws pertaining to cleanliness.
Although I understand and sympathize with the sentiment somewhat, I often respond by reminding them that “All Scripture is given by inspiration of G-d, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of G-d may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (cf. II Timothy 3:16). And all means all, including the passages we are about to consider in this and subsequent posts.
I believe that G-d’s Word is inspired, literally “G-d-breathed,” all of it. Not just some of it, or just the part starting with the Gospels, but all of it, very single word, every single syllable. I also believe that in the beginning was the Word, that the Word was with G-d, that the Word was G-d, and that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (cf. John 1). That being said, I believe that we can find the Messiah being proclaimed on every page of the Bible. Let’s begin by taking a look at one of those long, tedious, and detailed sections of the Torah and see what we might discover.
Read the rest here: The Leper Messiah. (The linked blog is no longer online. Sorry! http://mayimchayim10.blogspot.com/2016/05/it-is-in-most-unlikeliest-of-places.html)
1. Primary marketing shenanigans.
2. Glenn Beck’s lunacy.
3. Endorsements from Bush, Graham, et al.
4. Delegates shenanigans.
5. Collusion with John Kasich.
6. Carly Fiorina VP pick.
Much of this was SOP for political campaigns of the last 20 years, but taken as a whole in this particular election cycle, it’s almost like failure was planned.
1. The term “Judeo-Christian” doesn’t refer to rabbinic Judaism, but to the faith lived and taught by the Jewish prophets, the Jewish Messiah, and the Jewish teachers who came to be known as Christians.
2. Rejecting the Jews because they “killed Jesus” is self-refuting. Jesus IS a Jew. God killed Jesus. You killed Jesus. If you reject the Jews because they killed Jesus, then you also must reject God, your neighbor, yourself. More significantly, you must reject Jesus, because, if He is who Christianity claims Him to be, nobody could have killed Him without His help.
3. Words change meaning over time. Get used to it. The English language exists because the English people changed the pronunciation and usage of German, Celtic, Latin, & Greek words over time. The word “antisemite” doesn’t mean “opposed to all descendants of Shem”. That’s the literal meaning of the Greek and pidgin Hebrew roots, but it’s not how the word is used. It means “opposed to the physical descendants of Jacob and adherents to the cultural and religious system known as Judaism.”
The Prime Ministers isn’t a comprehensive history of Israel. It’s a collection of vignettes concerning an insider’s interactions with the country’s prime ministers up through Menachem Begin. It’s a very personal account that focuses on the personalities rather than the events.
A few thoughts on half-witted antisemitism: