BS”D

Ger is not going away. What good does it do to poison the minds of some fringe rabbis about Ger and about Katz and Clorfene and Kirk?

Right now, between the U.S. and Texas, Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina,  South Africa, the Philippines, Australia, Norway, England, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Romania, Poland, Russia, and India, there are an estimated 26,500 non-Jewish Ger, G-d fearing, mitzvah loving, companions of Israel, all of whom have come to the Torah and have been accepted by G-d as the fourth estate of Israel. And the number is growing every day. And it cannot be stopped. All attempts to give Ger and its proponents a bad name only build Ger.

A moshol, if I may. There is a great board game called Go. It originated in China and was perfected in Japan. As checkers is to chess, that is how chess is to Go. The game takes two players, a board, and two small pots, one filled with white stones and the other filled with black stones. The board has 19 horizontal lines and 19 bissecting vertical lines. The stones are smooth like M&M’s on steroids. They are beautiful and feel good between the fingers. The first player puts a white stone down on a hashmark, not in the box, but on the crisscross of lines (this makes Messianics wet their pants). When he puts the stone down, it should make a certain soft “thunk” sound. The thickness of the board and quality of the wood determines the sound. Some Go sets can cost upward of $10,000. The boards are nearly a cubit thick and made of rare and wonderful Japanese wood and the stones can be made out of marble and onyx and even jade and be worth a king’s ransom. And the round pots with removable tops that hold the stones can also be priceless, made from the black root of the jubjub tree.

After the first player puts down a white stone, the opponent puts a black stone down somewhere else on the board. The object is to keep putting stones down to build a wall around territory on the board. If you can completely surround the wall of your opponent, you take his pieces and take his territory. Whoever ends up with the most pieces and most territory on the board is the winner. Each completed board has its own unique design of black and white stones, fifty or more stones in the pattern, and the players, particularly the Japanese masters, sit and meditate on the board for twelve years or until they fall over from exhaustion. The game is extremely mystical.

What’s the point? There is a principle in Go that says two eyes are invincible. What does it mean, “two eyes”? When a player can string together his pieces so that at one end his row of pieces surrounds a square, and the other end of his row of pieces surrounds another square, that is called having two eyes, and he owns the territory and it cannot be taken away from him. Two eyes are unassailable. The Japanese say that life can be modeled after Go. If we control two eyes on the board of life, we have territory that cannot be taken away because we have made kelim, vessels, and the light is there. And that is Ger.

Ger has an opponent. Ger is the white stone and the opponent is the black stone. The stones are shaped alike, but are different in essence. Sefer Yetzirah teaches that two stones build two houses. Stones are letters. Alef Bet spells Av, father in Hebrew. If you reverse the letters, it spells Ba, the verb to come. Father comes. Those are the building blocks of creation. Whoever wants to stop or block the process, which means damage the growth of Ger is like one who jumps in between a lion and a lioness while they are mating. This is G-d and the Ger. If some fool wants to get between a Ger and his G-d or G-d and His Ger, he is going to get torn to shreds. Whoever tries to stop or diminish tikun ha-olam, is messing with his neshama and had better back off. What happened to Korach could also happen to him, chas v’sholom. The game of Go is a game of war. So it is with Ger. But Ger not only has “two eyes,” Ger it has 22 eyes. It owns the board.

What do the opponents of Ger hope to accomplish? Make it go away? Make it declared illegal by the Bet Din of North Aberdeen? No one would care. Maybe a few emasculated fools. It would only make Ger more intriguing and attractive for the vast majority of righteous people in the world. The rabbis do not get it. They have a small share of the Geulah. The Geulah is about G-d. It belongs to the king and the Cohen and the prophet and the Levite. The shofet, the judge, aka the rabbi, is of less importance because there is no Judgment in Geulah. In Geulah, the teacher and the judge is the Levite and there is only Rachamim and Chesed. It always was so, but now we see it. Isaiah’s Messianic “new heavens and new earth” reveal the Bet Raishit, the beginning of the beginning, which has never been revealed, not even at Mount Sinai. And Ger is G-d’s instrument to make it happen. The only problem with Ger is gaiva, which is untranslatable but sort of means pride and egocentricity. The avoda of the Ger is bittul, self-nullification. In bittul is his power, just like in bittul is a woman’s power. Any happily married man or woman knows this. It is how existence is structured.

Making Ger is like making wine. When you press grapes in a wine vat, you turn the ratchet to press the gizmo down on the mashed grapes to press out the juice. But after a few ratchets, it gets hard to press. So you have to stop and wait for the juice to run free, and then you can press some more. That is how it is with Ger. You have to press and press and then stop while the wine runs free. And then you can press some more. We published The Path of the Righteous Gentile in 1987. Dr. Vendyl Jones, alav hashalom, told me personally that he had either sold or given away 5000 copies of The Path of the Righteous Gentile and that was in 1989. That was 28 years ago. The book has gone through five printings and now is available with prime rate shipping on amazon.com It is still the only practical guide to the Seven Noahide Laws. If a person wants to observe the seven laws correctly and understand fully how to do it in a simple, straightforward telling, it is still the only book that exists. AskNoah’s highly touted The Divine Code is a fine research manual. To call it a Shulchan Arukh is a joke. Everyone should have a copy and never look at it. If you really get deep in the learning and are researching some matter in one of the laws and want to see a learned opinion on the subject, a person could use it. But one must be warned. The hashkafa of the Divine Code is the hashkafa of the Galut. The Divine Code sees the Gentile, who we will call the Ben Noach, as being connected to G-d only through the Name of Elohim, the Name indicating Strict Justice. Their Galutian view is that even the most righteous and pious Ben Noach has no connection with Shem Havaya, Yud-Hay-Vav-Hay, the Name associated with Mercy. But although the Zohar teaches like this, it always uses the term Acum – idol worshipper – when it refers to non-Jewish people. And that is how the Divine Code sees the Gentile, as an Acum. No matter how righteous, how pious, how firmly devoted to G-d, the Torah, and the Jewish people he is, he is still an Acum to the Divine Code and to AskNoah and the other self-styled Noahide organizations and their Galutian rabbinic advisors. They are Galut trying to stifle Geulah. And no matter how much they poison the minds of the gullible fools who listen to them, it has no effect on Ger other than to build it. In fact, every time they mention Ger in a negative way, they build Ger. They brand the name and they stimulate thought and discussion. Let’s face it, in the mainstream Jewish world, the most interesting thing that is happening today is Ger. And it has only begun to happen because it is only six years old. Wait till it is nine. It is going to kick tush. No organizational corruption. Look around at Ger, you will not find a single organization. The closest thing to an organization is too many Facebook pages and too many websites, which are really not organizations and probably would benefit Ger more if they were no longer online. Russell Kirk is the social media master. I Get Ger has built Ger in an astounding manner, more than any other factor, but I get Ger is not clean because the worldwideweb is not clean. It is the final expression of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. When making wine. it is essential to have only good grapes with no foreign bacteria or the wine will spoil. I once made wine when we lived in the Old City of Jerusalem and it spoiled. I gave it to a friend and he has used it as his wine vinegar for 25 years. I think I gave his five gallons of it. But what G-d wants from Ger is wine, not vinegar.

Galutians say that no Gentile can be holy. I would ask them, “How can someone be an aspect of the people of Israel without being holy?” They say, “You are right.” But then they say, “But they are not pure.” And I answer, “Not yet. But the prophet Zephaniah wrote (Zeph. 3:9), “For then I will bestow pure speech upon the peoples so that they may all call upon the Name of the L-rd.” The Name of G-d in that verse is Yud-Hay-Vav-Hay. The Divine Code teaches that the Gentile is connected to G-d only through the Name denoting Strict Justice, but THE PROPHETS WHOSE WORD IS GREATER THAN THE SAGES teach that the day will come when goyim are not Acum, but are people who call upon the Name of HaKodesh Baruch Hu, and are, therefore, His people. That is Ger. Who he is and what he means to the world is written in The World of the Ger. And so far, even the most rabid anti-Ger zealot has only been able to nitpick and find crumbs to criticize. Ger is the truth. It will not go away. It will not be diminished. One day the pope will take off his cross and make Kiddush Friday night, and the Dalai Lama will be yotzi the bracha and drink the wine.

And Yaakov holech l’darko, Jacob went on his way. This is what we say after Shemini Atzeret or, according to some, on Shabbat Beresheet, to indicate that Tishrei was the engine that carries us through the year.