What Happens to the Rothschilds?

I.  What happens to the Rothschilds?

II. What's to learn when Jews succeed?

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I. What happens to the Rothschilds, Neimans and Marcuses, Guggenheims, the Goldmans and the Sachs, the Groucho Marx and Karl Marx and other families?

Look through the obituaries and biographies of the figures we listed before (How Odd of God. . .). It's astonishing how few left behind any living descendants who still identify as Jews. (Looking at the family trees, the relative scarcity of grandchildren, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, was also remarkable.)

Consider the The New York Times. It was "a Jewish paper," supposedly, from the early 1900's, when it wasowned by the members of two Jewish families that had emigrated from Germany, the Ochs and Sulzbergers. We couldn't find a single Ochs or Sulzberger of The Times' families, or a blood relation of their familes, who is still Jewish.

Very few Jewish families are more than three or four generations removed from fervent Torah-observance. When we say fervently observant, we mean Orthodox, or "traditionally observant."

These are people who, like Tevye the Milkman in Fiddler on the Roof:

  • begin each morning with a prayer on their lips
  • pray to HaShem through the day
  • study Torah every single day (this isn't the burden that some people think it is)
  • celebrate the holiness of shabbos/shabbat for 25-hours, starting Friday night
  • consciously try to live the Torah in every aspect of their lives - even down to the level of , for instance, which foot, the left or right, gets shod first.

(It's the right, actually, in keeping with the practice of the High Priest at God's altar.)

My ordinances you shall do, and My statutes you shall keep,
to walk in them: I am the Lord [HaShem] your God. You shall
therefore keep My statutes, and My ordinances, which if a man
do, he shall live in the them. I am HaShem.
Leviticus 18:4-5

"Israel is a nation only by virtue of its Torah," the rabbis teach. This proposition has been proven true in history over many generations. We will say more about it presently, but right now, let's look at the famous banking family, the Rothschilds.

Rothschild family - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family

Rothschild family - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family#Prominent
descendants of Mayer Amschel Rothschild

Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the family, has, as far as we can see, no Jewish descendants - or anyway, no Jewish descendants who are recognized by other Rothschilds as members of the family - now living.

After two generations, they began marrying non-Jews, converted to other religions, rejected the Torah or forgot it, baptized their children as Christians or took up new religions, and raised their children ignorant of the Torah that Mayer Rothschild would have sacrificed his life for, and also ignorant of His God, HaShem.

For this is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the nations, who shall hear all these statutes, and say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.'  Deuteronomy 4:8

We don't mean to dispararage non-Jews, God forbid, or non-Jews of Jewish descent. In the Holocaust, considerable numbers of those who tried to save the lives of Jews were only two or three generations removed from Judaism themselves.

We discussed the phenomenon of the Jews remaining Jews only by virtue of the Torah in an issue of Covenant Connection. It's short. It's worth reading: 
Let's Sing (Covenant Connection, Sept. 2006)

Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived,
and you turn aside [from God's Law], and serve other
gods, and worship them.
Deuteronomy 11:16

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II. What's to learn when Jews succeed?

Yoshiyahu, our First Covenant Foundation fellow for 2009-2010, asks, regarding "How Odd of God. . .":  please explain, why is it that some very secular people who are Jewish can make such a significant impact? Is it the work ethic inherited from their forefathers? They still retain that mindset though they don't practice Judaism themselves? Or is it simply encoded in their genes, or because they have G'd's divine favour? So why should non-Jews turn to the Torah at all? This needs to be addressed.

How do we know that even a non-Jew, if he obeys the Law of God, will thereby attain the same spiritual communion with God as Israel's very High Priest? Scripture says, 'which if a man do, he shall live by them.' - not priest, Levite or Israelite, but manTalmud, Bava Kamma 38a

Non-observant Jews, particularly, tend to achieve more success in the world - in terms of fame, money, and tangible achievements - than the general population. It is statistically undeniable. (See Does History Point to God?) But. . . why?

You shall be holy; for I the Lord [HaShem]
your God am holy
.  Leviticus 19:2

Religiously observant Jews are restricted in ways that the non-observant aren't: one day in every seven is the sabbath, involving restrictions on work and travel; the other Jewish holidays are restricting and so are the kosher food laws, and observant Jews need time to worship God and study Torah. So, for instance, most of the Nobel Prizes and "genius-grants" won by Jews are won by the religiously less-observant.

Every morning, all over the world, observant Israel recites this passage from the Oral Torah from the siddur, the Jewish prayerbook:

These are the precepts [of the Torah] that have no prescribed measure [no fixed-quantity is set], peah/the corner of a field [which must be left for the poor to harvest], the first-fruit offering [a temple offering of the first fruits from every tree], the pilgrimage [going to Jerusalem for the three holidays of pesach (passover), shavuot (pentecost) and sukkot (tabernacles)], acts of kindness, and Torah study. [Mishnah, Peah 1:1]

These are the precepts whose fruits a person enjoys in this world, but whose principal remains intact for him in the World to Come [the Next World]. They are: the honor due to mother and father, acts of kindness, early attendance at the house of study [shul] morning and evening, hospitality to guests, visiting the sick, providing for a bride, escorting the dead [funerals], absorption in prayer, bringing peace between man and his fellow. And the study of Torah is equivalent to them all. [Talmud, Shabbat 127a]

How is the study of Torah equivalent to all these other acts of goodness? Because it's the one thing that teaches and includes all the others. Compare it to the baking of a cake. You need eggs, sugar, oil, baking powder, etc., but without flour it's impossible to bake a cake, even with all these other fine ingredients. It is the study of Torah that is the flour.

When Jews stop studying Torah, these other things go too - not all at once, not even all in one generation, but slowly, over one or two or three generations.

For you are a holy people to the Lord [HaShem] your God. Deuteronomy 7:6

These are all basic, foundational principles of the religion and worldview of Israel:

  • the absolute unity and holiness of God
  • the oneness of His Creation
  • the oneness of humanity
  • the sanctity of human life
  • the sacredness and dignity of the human personality and human free will
  • the uniform application of law, due process, and proportional justice
  • the Sabbath the and the seven-day week
  • the efficacy of prayer
  • the immortality of righteous souls, and
  • the promise of worldly redemption in the coming Messianic age

    For it is the principal object of the Law, and the axis around which it turns, to blot out these [idolatrous] opinions from man's heart, and make the existence of idolatry impossible.     Maimonides

    People make their bellies their gods, their fine clothes their law, and their household maintenance their ethics.   Ibn Yosef

We might include two more:

  • that the Jewish people have special obligations and responsibilities in the world; that, among other things, it is simply not enough for a Jewish person to go along in life to get along in life, and
  • that great and holy things can be discovered in the teachings of others, and particularly from reading

The Torah teaches that every person's "highest" soul - the neshama (See Soul of Fire) - comes from the woman who raises him or her from childhood. When a mother doesn't teach her children these principles of Israel's existence but other principles. . . when the mothers' own ideas come from foreign hopes and dreams and prayers and fables un-informed by Torah, from foreign words and a foreign god or gods, and on other non-Jewish ideas from her non-Jewish culture, why would the child grow up as worshipper of HaShem or any kind of Hebrew person at all?

When a Jewish woman renounces the God and the Torah of her ancestors and raises her children in a foreign communion, her children will remain Jewish for a generation, or more, but sooner or later her descendants will know nothing of HaShem or His Torah, and, even if their mothers and their mothers and their mothers were legally (based on Torah) Jewish,  the Torah connection and the connection to HaShem will have faded, and they won't serve God or man as Jews.

Fervently religious people who belong to other communions frequently try to convert Jews. What they don't seem to understand it that God says, again and again in the Torah, that all His righteous ordinances are "everlasting," and that Israel is to keep them and guard them and teach them and do them ad olam - forever, "to eternity," or "from here to eternity." But if a Jew can achieve "salvation" by ignoring those same righteous ordinances, by just adhering to the tenets of the other communion, why bother with the Torah? So the Jewish convert to the new religion becomes a Torah-violator, a Torah-ignorer - and that defies God's will.

Israel "inheritance" of God and Torah cannot be renounced or alienated (Deuteronomy 4:20).

See Ezekiel: "And that which comes into your mind shall not be at all; in that you say: 'We will be as the nations, as the families of the countries. . .' As I live, sayeth the Lord God, surely with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with fury poured out, will I be king over you." (Ezekiel 20:32-33)

What's the point here?That "[this Torah] is your [Israel's] wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, that, when they hear all these [Torah] statutes, shall say: 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.' For what great nation is there, that has God so near unto them,* as the Lord our God is whensoever we call upon Him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and ordinances so righteous as all this Torah?"

"The aggrandizement of Israel [is] to demonstrate to the children of men the Divine in Human History. [After the Exodus] the sudden rise to power of a horde of slaves, their well-government, prosperity and security, would attract attention. The peoples would ask, What is the secret of Israel's greatness? And, discovering that it rested upon fidelity to the Will of God, they might be induced to pay allegiance to the God of Israel." (J.H. Hertz, the Hertz Torah, Deuteronomy 4:6) . . .

* "So near unto them":  Israel's religion is unique because of the nearness of man to his Maker that it teaches. It proclaims, No intermediary of any sort is required for the worshipper to approach his God in prayer. 'The Lord [HaShem] is near unto all who call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth." (Psalms 145:18. See J.H. Hertz, ibid, Deuteronomy 4:7)

 

 

 

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