Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Hell?




The section above appears on page 7 (ז) of a new book on Kabbalah for beginners and initiates entitled Petach Sha'ar Shamayim/Binyan Ari'al composed by Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Hillel of the Jerusalem Yeshiva Ahavat Shalom (it's located just behind and below Lichtenstein's Bookstore up above Kikar Shabbat).

The Yeshiva's publishing house is called Yad Samuel Franco (here's another book and another they published so you can see their imprint and that they really exist).

Anyway, getting back to the scanned Hebrew text. Among other things, it reads, in part,

"And behold, opposed to them [those within the last 150 years immigrated to Israel who desired a holy life of Torah] arose the gang of Zionists, and mixed up and fuzzied up all areas of activity, until they established for themselves a state of hell to fulfill thereby [the verse] 'and the House of Israel shall be as all the Nations'"


The Hebrew word used for hell is gehenna.

I think that's a shame to write such things. I wonder if the book's sponsor, one Eliyahu ben Esther and his wife, Varda bat Suzy, are aware that their money is being spent this way.

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