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What does a swastika mean?
Jews may not agree on much these days, but we all know that a swastika is shorthand for celebrating the Nazi regime, white supremacy and the mass murder of Jews. At least when the intent is clear.
Vandals who sprayed swastikas on a Jewish school in Brooklyn last fall made a clear statement, as did two teens who added antisemitic slogans to the swastika drawn outside a home in suburban Detroit in April, as did those who appended “Heil Hitler” to their graffiti on a Jewish community center in Queens earlier this month.
Other cases are murkier. Sometimes swastikas appear without explanation scrawled in public bathrooms or bus stops. Hikers in Seattle have grown frustrated with recurrent swastika graffiti on a popular trail that in one instance was paired with an ominous, if confusing, message: “He’s waching [sic].”
And then there are the swastikas displayed to condemn fascism. A man in my San Francisco neighborhood liked to wear a shirt featuring an enormous red swastika, which startled me every time I saw it, even though it also said “F— Nazis” and featured a boot stomping on the symbol.
Some Hindu groups have also sought to reclaim the swastika, which originally held meaning for various eastern religions, and argue that the Nazi version of the symbol is better called a Hakenkreuz.
But the most contested contemporary uses of the swastika are those that seek to brand Israel and its supporters as Nazis. Israeli flags featuring blue swastikas in place of the Star of David are not unusual at large pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and a similar but rather odd version of this flag — purple and featuring two swastikas alongside a Jewish star atop the New York University logo — flew over a building on campus last week.
“We are shocked and deeply troubled that this hateful symbol expressing antisemitism was raised on a flagpole overlooking Washington Square Park,” Wiley Norvell, a school spokesperson, told the student newspaper.
That equating Israel with Nazi Germany should be considered be antisemitic is an axiomatic truth for many Jews, and a prohibition on such comparisons is enshrined in the controversial, but widely used, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.
“It invokes painful collective memories for Jews,” wrote Paul Iganski, a British hate crimes scholar. “Those who play the Nazi-card know exactly what it means.”
***
Beyond the emotional gut punch that displaying a swastika can pack — there have also been incidents of demonstrators taunting Jews with swastikas displayed on their phone screen — many Jewish scholars argue that the comparison is antisemitic because it is meant to diminish the reality of the Holocaust.
Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department’s antisemitism envoy during the Biden administration, has said that people who compare Israeli policy to the Nazis are engaged in “soft-core denial” of the Holocaust.
“They are making a false comparison which elevates by a factor of a zillion any wrongdoings Israel might have done, and lessens by a factor of a zillion what the Germans did,” she told JTA. “That’s not to defend everything Israel does, but you can’t call it a Holocaust unless you want to distort what the Holocaust is.”
A similar strain of argument contends that comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is intended to demonize Israel and is therefore part of the “new antisemitism” that projects longstanding animosity toward Jews onto the Jewish state. “When Israel’s actions are blown out of all sensible proportion; when comparisons are made between Israelis and Nazis and between Palestinian refugee camps and Auschwitz — this is antisemitism, not legitimate criticism of Israel,” Natan Sharansky wrote as part of his “3D Test.”
There is, of course, a tautology at play in the arguments from both Lipstadt and Sharansky: Comparing Israel to the Nazis is antisemitic because it is an outrageous exaggeration. But many of those who make these comparisons argue that there are legitimate parallels to draw between the two governments.
Jean Améry, a Jewish writer from Austria who survived the Holocaust, wrote about his great dismay with the European left’s turn against Israel and Zionism — including Nazi comparisons — but acknowledged disturbing similarities between rumors of Israeli soldiers torturing Palestinian prisoners and his own experience at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust, which he said tested his allegiance to the state. “In my value system, for all that I have experienced the full horror of its concretization, the abstract category ‘human being’ outranks the concept ‘Jew,’” Améry wrote in 1977. “When barbarism begins, even existential commitments must end.”
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, the brilliant Israeli scientist and public intellectual who escaped Europe for Mandate Palestine shortly before the Holocaust, called Israeli judges who allowed Arab prisoners to be tortured “Judeo-Nazis” and warned that the entrenched occupation of the West Bank and Gaza coupled with rising ethno-nationalism among Israeli Jews was sending the country down the same road as Germany.
Then there’s the genocide claim, which is distinct from direct Nazi analogies — the Holocaust was not history’s only case of genocide, though it remains by far the most famous — and has been accepted by many Jewish scholars and political leaders, including Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of dovish but nonetheless Zionist advocacy group J Street.
Norman J.W. Goda, a professor of Holocaust studies at the University of Florida, has spoken out forcefully against the genocide claim, which he argues “encourages what historians call ‘Holocaust inversion’ — the mischaracterization of Israel’s self-defense efforts as genocide.”
The argument that Israel’s opponents are using the Holocaust in offensive ways to score cheap political points is weakened, somewhat, by the kneejerk insistence by many of the country’s supporters that Iran and Hamas are equivalent to the Nazis and that its Oct. 7 attack was an act of genocide. It seems that both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remain stuck in a framework where the Holocaust seems like the most potent point of reference.
Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm has lamented that the Israeli government is “using the memory of the Holocaust to fight human rights” while, at the same time, the global left is dismissing Holocaust remembrance.
“It’s become almost impossible to talk and think about it,” Boehm said.
And this only captures aspects of the Jewish debate. Many Palestinians feel, at a minimum, as though they have been forced to pay the price for the crimes of Nazi Germany through displacement and occupation.
***
I should end on a point of caution. The swastika is at once inflammatory and inscrutable — it can be used to promote fascism and white supremacy, and to condemn it — and is rarely received well, even when it is used by opponents of Nazism.
A few years ago, Kurosh ValaNejad pasted “kinetic art” on the fence of a Los Angeles museum that was meant to look like the Iranian flag from one angle and the Nazi swastika from another. ValaNejad was trying to compare the Iranian government to the Nazis, but most passersby only saw a huge Nazi banner and police announced plans to charge ValaNejad with a hate crime.
And in my reporting on George Washington University, I repeatedly heard a story about a swastika being drawn on a Jewish student’s dorm room. It was true. The vandal had drawn the swastika, along with a Hitler mustache, on photos of Donald Trump and Mike Pence that were taped to the door. But the headline version made it sound like unadulterated antisemitism.
The most famous spate of swastika vandalism also turned out to be far stranger than it initially appeared: The so-called swastika epidemic that began with vandalism at a synagogue in Cologne, West Germany, in 1959 and rapidly spread across the globe — stretching from Rhodesia to the United States and even Israel — was revealed in the past few years to be part of a Soviet propaganda campaign that sought to paint capitalist countries as antisemitic.
Who knows what the perpetrators of the swastika stunt at NYU were trying to communicate. The flag was hoisted over the Steinhardt School, named for Jewish philanthropist and Birthright booster Michael Steinhardt. Was he the target? Was it a Nazi message suggesting that NYU itself was controlled by Jews? Was it an anti-Nazi message equating Israel with the Third Reich? Was it something even more convoluted or strange than either of those options?
The lesson here — in case it needs to be spelled out — is that, while I don’t believe in limiting the parallels or lessons that we can draw from history, anyone who wants their political message to be read in good faith should avoid relying on swastikas to make their point.
The post What does a swastika mean? appeared first on The Forward.
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What does DSA actually want? Its national co-chair can’t say.
It’s been a heady couple of months for the Democratic Socialists of America. Candidates the organization rallied behind ousted establishment Democrats in New York, Michigan, Colorado and Wisconsin state primaries. Pundits who doubted the movement last year are now eating crow.
With the DSA having forced its way into the spotlight, national co-chair Megan Romer went on The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast to share what the movement is all about. But the interview has elicited an online backlash — and some ridicule — after Romer said she would have attended an Oct. 8 protest and that she would have sought to stop Russia’s advance in Ukraine through diplomacy.
Just as damning to some viewers was Romer’s reluctance to provide specifics on a number of DSA policy positions when pressed for them by New Yorker editor David Remnick.
The backlash to the interview put Romer on the defensive. The day after its publication the national co-chair called Remnick a “debate bro” who had tried to make her look and feel stupid during the conversation. Remnick, a Pulitzer Prize–winner and former Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post, has edited The New Yorker since 1998.
“Luckily lots of practice keeping my temper in check when debate bros are well-actually’ing me, tho it still flusters me,” Romer wrote Saturday on X. “I am def particularly sensitive when people are actively trying to make me look/feel stupid and it can throw me off my game.”
The interview highlighted a challenge that faces the organization as it gains members and breaks through on the Democratic stage: Translating its rallying cries into the gritty work of partisan politics — or, for the candidates DSA champions, getting things done while remaining true to the movement’s ideals.
Nowhere was that clearer than Romer’s talking points on Israel. Romer said the organization’s position was “a free Palestine with a capital in Jerusalem, and so I think that can safely be read as a one-state solution.” When Remnick asked her if DSA would have supported the proposed terms of the Camp David summit in 2000, had the Palestinians accepted it, Romer said: “Good question — I’d have to actually look at what the specifics there were.”
(The exact terms discussed at the summit are in dispute, but most agree it would have involved a separate Palestinian state with a capital comprising several Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem.)
A testy exchange followed around Romer’s stance on the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.
Asked whether she supported New York congressional primary winner Darializa Avila Chevalier in attending a “pro-Hamas” rally on Oct. 8, Romer said yes — she would have gone herself.
“If you put people in an open air concentration camp, and you deprive people of rights, of dignity, of food, of the ability to live in safety,” Romer said, “you have to expect that they are going to not take that for that long. And that is not defending any harm of civilians or of non-combatants.”
Remnick replied, “Well, sure it is — you said you’re supporting it.”
Romer said, “I’m saying that I think it was inevitable.”
On issue after issue, Remnick pressed Romer for details and found few.
- Romer said DSA wanted to “tax the hell out of millionaires” but demurred on what that would mean in practice.
- Romer said she believed in open borders, but not in “throwing the gates open.” When Remnick asked if that wasn’t just immigration reform — which is to say the Democratic policy platform — Romer replied, “It means reforming the system we have while we rethink the system, while we build this new one from the ground up, and then hopefully eventually flipping the switch.”
- Romer said she did not believe in sending arms to support Ukraine in its war against Russia. She asked Remnick, “Why aren’t we doing any amount of actual diplomacy? Why aren’t we doing any amount of actual sending actual human beings to talk to human beings?” Remnick pointed out that there had been many attempts of diplomacy, “however failed,” since the beginning of the war.
- Remnick asked Romer what she meant when she said she believed in prison abolition. She answered that the safest communities were not ones with cops on every corner, but ones with “good schools, good jobs, good park systems, good recreation for their teenagers, things like that. Those are the safe communities.”
- As for her support for defunding the police, Romer said she was “not in favor of getting rid of police entirely tomorrow” but that she supported decreasing their budgets until a point where social services were sufficiently funded.
For the most part, Remnick — trying to fit Romer into a 30-minute podcast slot — let Romer’s answers speak for themselves whether they answered his question or not. But he did hint at a broader argument in one of his final questions, about the DSA’s position in favor of abolishing the U.S. Senate.
Given the scant likelihood of such a measure passing, Remnick asked, didn’t it distract from policy goals that were more likely to succeed?
“I don’t think so,” Romer replied. “I think taking principled positions tells people that you’re principled, and I think we see voters really responding to that, and we see people saying, ‘Oh, you’re actually thinking about the systems.’”
The post What does DSA actually want? Its national co-chair can’t say. appeared first on The Forward.
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Why Trump’s new ‘Red Scare’ tactics could spell trouble for Jews
If a time traveler from late Weimar Germany materialized in America today, they would instantly recognize the spiteful rhetoric pouring from Donald Trump and his lieutenants — language that echoes what Adolf Hitler and the Nazis deployed a century ago.
“The radical left is actively trying to destroy our children’s future with the disaster known as (dramatic pause) communism,” according to Trump. “This isn’t a social democrat. These are communists by another name.”
Facing a possible fiasco in the November midterms, Trump and his allies have reached for one of the oldest scare tactics in the book: trying to persuade Americans that communists — perfidiously disguised as progressive Democrats — are plotting to destroy the country.
“This new fixation on the word communist is an effort to save himself in the mid-terms by creating an emergency. Basically he’s trying to revive the old red scare tactics of the 1950s,” author Gil Duran said on a recent episode of NPR’s On The Media titled “The Red Scare, but Dumber.”
“It’s not clear that it’ll work. But they’re certainly trying,” said Duran, founder of the newsletter The Nerd Reich.
It is a dangerous strategy — one that figuratively paints targets on the backs of Democrats, especially those belonging to the Democratic Socialists of America. It also has the potential to imperil Jews by rebooting what historian Paul Hanebrink calls the Judeo-Bolshevism myth.
“Nationalist extremists and far-right movements on both sides of the Atlantic have made the idea of Judeo-Bolshevism — the belief that Communism was a Jewish plot — a prominent element in their worldview,” Hanebrink wrote in his 2018 book A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism.
The seeds of this are visible in Trump’s America — in the alarming rise of antisemitism, in attacks on synagogues and individuals, in killings, and in fascist manifestos like Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them).
Hanebrink’s book chillingly documents how the Judeo-Bolshevism myth fueled mass deportations, pogroms, and massacres from World War I through the interwar period — from Tsarist Russia’s expulsions to the White Army’s slaughter of Ukrainian Jews.
Rhetoric and propaganda from those times can sound remarkably like slogans in use by today’s extremists, including in the U.S.
“Bolshevism is striding toward conquest of the world. Bolshevism is truly the living embodiment and manifestation of the Antichrist on earth,” Poland’s Catholic bishops wrote in a globally distributed letter in 1920.
Hanebrink tells of the Judeo-Bolshevism myth being carried west by White Army soldiers fleeing the Red Army, and its influence on Adolf Hitler. “Judeo-Bolshevism made Adolf Hitler,” Hanebrink writes. “Hitler believed it was the German people’s historic calling to protect the world from Judeo-Bolshevik evil.”
Another historian, Omar Bartov, has pointed out the pivotal role of Hitler’s genocidal hatred of Jews in the Nazi leader’s decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941.
“Popular memory tends to separate the Holocaust and the German war against the Soviet Union, but for the Nazi regime they were two faces of the same undertaking,” Bartov writes in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books. “It was a few weeks after the invasion of the USSR in late June that the mass murder of Jews began” with Einsatzgruppen “murdering entire communities from the Baltic states to Ukraine,” according to Bartov.
The myth didn’t die with the Nazis. It resurfaced in postwar America during the Red Scare, when Sen. Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee pursued communists — and, not incidentally, Jews. Of the 10 Hollywood screenwriters and directors who were jailed after refusing to answer questioning before HUAC, six were Jews.
“The hearings that took place in Los Angeles and in Washington between 1947 and the mid-’50s were as much (some would say more) antisemitic as anti-Communist,” Michael Freedland wrote for The Jewish Chronicle in 2009.
“Hollywood was chosen for the attack because of the great publicity value the movie capital offered. It was also a great opportunity to get at the Jews of Hollywood,” wrote Freedland, author of Witch Hunt in Hollywood.
So where does Donald Trump’s efforts to foment a new red scare in America fit into this long and heinous tradition?
Trump insists he is not antisemitic — and points to his Jewish family members — yet he has repeatedly shown little willingness to confront the frightening rise in antisemitic violence. He has pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, including known white supremacists. He dined with Hitler admirer Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, later claiming he didn’t know who Fuentes was. In 2017, after the violence in Charlottesville, Va., he declined to condemn the white supremacists responsible and instead spoke of violence “on many sides.” He has tolerated officials accused of antisemitism, and he has used antisemitic terminology, including invoking the centuries-old trope of Jews as greedy moneylenders.
The greater danger to American Jews likely comes not from Trump, but from the vast, fetid cesspool of extremists whose growing influence imperils Jews not just in the United States but around the globe.
An example of this is the aforementioned book Unhumans, in which the authors, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, essentially argue that leftists are plotting a communist takeover and do not deserve to be treated like human beings.
It should be noted that the word “unhuman” is close to the word “subhuman,” a Nazi epithet for Jews and Slavs.
“The unhumans want you dead,” Posobiec told his far-right fans on Real America’s Voice two years ago. “They want your way of life dead. They want to see your children lobotomized and converted to their mindless, lawless and godless ways. “
The words could have come from another century, another continent — and they are just as dangerous now as they were then.
The post Why Trump’s new ‘Red Scare’ tactics could spell trouble for Jews appeared first on The Forward.
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Here I’m the boss
צווישן די סיבות פֿאַר וואָס אַ מענטש פֿילט אַנגסט און דעפּרעסיע זענען אָפֿט מאָל אָבסעסיווע מחשבֿות. ווער עס לײַדט דערפֿון, אָדער קען עמעצן וואָס לײַדט דערפֿון, דאַרף נישט קיין סך דערקלערונגען כּדי צו פֿאַרשטיין וויפֿל דאָס קען פֿאַרקריפּלען אַ מענטשן. ווי אַזוי קען מען זיך באַפֿרײַען פֿון אָבסעסיווע מחשבֿות וואָס פּאַראַליזירן דעם מענטש?
פֿאַרשטייט זיך, אויב עס האַנדלט זיך וועגן ערנסטע פּראָבלעמען אינעם לעבן דאַרף מען זיי נישט איגנאָרירן; מע דאַרף זיך טאַקע אָפּגעבן מיט זיי. דאָ רעדן מיר וועגן אַזעלכע מחשבֿות וואָס פֿירן נישט צו קיין שום לייזונג, וואָס פֿארדרייען דעם קאָפּ און לאָזן נישט לעבן.
מען דערציילט וועגן אַ געוויסן חסיד וואָס האָט זיך געמוטשעט מיט אַזוינע אײַנדרינגלעכע נעגאַטיווע מחשבֿות. ער איז געגאַנגען זיך באַראַטן מיטן אַלטן רבי׳ן, דעם גרינדער פֿון חב״ד. דער רבי האָט אים געשיקט זיך באַראַטן מיט אַן עלטערן, דערפֿאַרענעם האָלצהעקער וואָס האָט געוווינט אין אַ נאָענטן וואַלד.
„ער וועט דיר קענען העלפֿן פֿאַרשטיין ווי אַזוי מען קען קאָנטראָלירן אומגעוווּנטשענע מחשבֿות,“ האָט דער רבי געזאָגט.
דער חסיד, אָנגעפֿילט מיט האָפֿענונג, איז גלײַך אַרויסגעגאַנגען צום הויז פֿון דעם אַלטן האָלצהעקער. ווען ער איז אָנגעקומען, איז די טיר געווען פֿאַרשלאָסן, כאָטש ער האָט געזען אַז אינעווייניק ברענט אַ ליכט.
האָט ער אָנגעהויבן קלאַפּן אין דער טיר, אָבער קיינער האָט נישט געעפֿנט. האָט ער געקלאַפּט נאָך שטאַרקער. גאָרנישט. האָט ער גענומען שרײַען: „עפֿנט מיר די טיר! איך פֿאַרפֿריר דאָ!“
גאָרנישט.
נישט האָבנדיק קיין אַנדער ברירה, האָט ער זיך אַוועקגעלייגט אין אַ ווינקל צו שלאָפֿן.
אין דער פֿרי האָט דער בעל־הבית געעפֿנט די טיר און באַגריסט דעם חסיד.
„וואָס ברענגט אײַך צו מײַן הויז?“ האָט ער געפֿרעגט.
„איך בין געקומען אײַך עפּעס פֿרעגן,“ האָט דער חסיד געענטפֿערט. „אָבער איידער איך שטעל מײַן שאלה, וויל איך וויסן פֿאַרוואָס איר האָט מיר נעכטן בײַ נאַכט נישט געעפֿנט די טיר. איך האָב לאַנג געקלאַפּט און געשריגן. וווּ איז אײַער מיטגעפֿיל און הכנסת־אורחים?“
„זעט,“ האָט דער האָלצהעקער געענטפֿערט, „דאָס איז מײַן הויז, און אין מײַן הויז בין איך דער בעל־הבית. איך באַשליס וועמען אַרײַנצולאָזן און ווען. עס אינטערעסירט מיר נישט וויפֿל מען שרײַט, קלאַפּט אָדער מאַכט אַ גאַנצן טומל. אין מײַן הויז באַפֿעל איך. נו, וואָס איז אײַער שאלה?“
„אַ דאַנק. איר האָט מיר שוין געגעבן דעם ענטפֿער וואָס איך האָב געזוכט,“ האָט דער חסיד געזאָגט, בשעת דער האָלצהעקער האָט אים אָנגעקוקט מיט פֿאַרוווּנדערונג.
די סדרה פֿון דער וואָך, שופטים, הייבט זיך אָן מיטן ג־טלעכן באַפֿעל:
„שופטים ושוטרים תתן לך בכל שעריך“ — „ריכטער און פּאָליציאַנטן זאָלסטו שטעלן אין אַלע דײַנע טויערן.“
לויטן פּשוטן באַדײַט רעדט זיך וועגן דעם אַחריות פֿון דער קהילה צו שטעלן ריכטער בײַ די טויערן פֿון די שטעט, כּדי צו באַשטימען וואָס איז דער ריכטיקער אויפֿפֿירונגס־וועג, און פּאָליציאַנטן, וועמענס אויפֿגאַבע איז צו פֿאַרזיכערן אַז מע פֿאָלגט די פּסקים פֿונעם בית־דין.
אונדזערע חכמים דערקלערן אַז דער באַפֿעל האָט אויך אַ פּערזענלעכן באַדײַט און אַן אָנווענדונג אין יעדנס לעבן. דער מענטש איז ווי אַ קליינע שטאָט. די זיבן „טויערן“, דורך וועלכע זאַכן קומען אַרײַן אין דער פּערזענלעכער „שטאָט“ און גייען אַרויס פֿון איר, זענען די צוויי אויגן, צוויי אויערן, צוויי נאָזלעכער און דאָס מויל.
עס איז אונדזער אַחריות צו שטעלן „ריכטער און פּאָליציאַנטן“ בײַ די דאָזיקע טויערן. מיר דאַרפֿן באַשטימען וואָס מיר וועלן דערלויבן אַרײַנצוקומען אין אונדזער „שטאָט“ און וואָס מיר וועלן דערלויבן אַרויסצוגיין פֿון איר.
דערפֿאַר דאַרף מען צוויי זאַכן: „ריכטער“, כּדי צו באַשטימען וואָס מען טאָר און וואָס מען טאָר נישט זען, הערן און עסן, און וואָס מען זאָל אָדער זאָל נישט אַרויסלאָזן פֿונעם מויל; און „פּאָליציאַנטן“, כּדי צו פֿאַרזיכערן אַז די באַשלוסן פֿון די ריכטער ווערן טאַקע דורכגעפֿירט.
עס איז נישט אַזוי שווער צו באַשטימען וואָס איז ריכטיק אין יעדער סיטואַציע. דערפֿאַר דאַרף מען פּשוט אַרײַנקוקן אין שולחן־ערוך אָדער זיך באַראַטן מיט אַ קאָמפּעטענטן רב. די שוועריקייט איז דורכצופֿירן דאָס וואָס מיר ווייסן אַז מיר דאַרפֿן טאָן. יעדער איינער וואָס האָט אַמאָל אָנגעהויבן אַ נײַע דיעטע ווייסט גוט דעם מרחק צווישן וויסן און טאָן.
ווי אַזוי ברענגען מיר אין דער פּראַקטיק די מסקנות פֿון אונדזערע „ריכטער“?
מיר דאַרפֿן פּאָליציי.
בשעת אַ „ריכטער“ שטעלט פֿאָר שׂכל, טענות און לאָגיק, שטעלט דער „פּאָליציאַנט“ פֿאָר פּונקט דאָס פאַרקערטע: אַ צווינגענדיקע דורכפֿירונג, אָן טענות. אין דעם פּערזענלעכן לעבן מיינט דאָס דיסציפּלין: זיך מחייבֿ צו זײַן זיך אויפֿצופֿירן לויט דעם וועג וואָס מען פֿאַרשטייט ווי ריכטיק — לויט דער אָביעקטיווקייט פֿון דער הלכה — אַפֿילו ווען די אינסטינקטן און געפֿילן, די אייגענע סוביעקטיוויטעט, שטעלן זיך אַנטקעגן.
„איך בין דער בעל־הבית פֿון מײַן הויז, און איך באַשליס ווער און וואָס מעג אַרײַנקומען.“
עס בלײַבט נאָך צו דערקלערן ווי אַזוי מיר אידענטיפֿיצירן דעם „איך“, דעם בעל־הבית, און זײַן אמתן ווילן. אָבער דאָס איז שוין אַן אַנדער טעמע…
צום סוף וויל איך מיטטיילן דעם בליק פֿונעם ליובאַוויטשער רבי׳ן — זכותו יגן עלינו — וועגן נעגאַטיווע מחשבֿות.
אין אַ סך פֿאַלן, ווען מענטשן האָבן זיך געווענדט צום רבי׳ן וועגן דעם ענין, האָט דער רבי געראָטן אַז דער בעסטער אופֿן זיך אַן עצה צו געבן מיט די מחשבֿות איז דורך אַריבערפֿירן דעם געדאַנק צו אַן אַנדער זאַך און זיי נישט אַרײַנלאָזן. דער אופֿן הייסט „היסח הדעת“, דאָס הייסט אָפּצולענקען דעם באַוווּסטזײַן אין אַן אַנדער ריכטונג.
דאָס איז אַ גאָר אַנדער צוגאַנג ווי אַרײַנצוקריכן אָן אַ סוף אין די נעגאַטיווע געדאַנקען און אין זייערע מעגלעכע סיבות — אַ זאַך וואָס זייער אָפֿט פֿאַרשטאַרקט זיי נאָר און גיט זיי נאָך מער שעדלעכע באַטײַטונג אין אונדזער לעבן.
תכלית גערעדט:
ווען אָבסעסיווע מחשבֿות קלאַפּן אין דער טיר, דאַרף מען געדענקען אַז דער מענטש איז דער בעל־הבית און קען „אַרײַנלאָזן“ וועמען ער וויל. ווען מע קלײַבט אויס אָנצופֿילן דעם קאָפּ מיט אַ פּאָזיטיוון געדאַנק, בלײַבט במילא נישט קיין אָרט פֿאַרן נעגאַטיוון.
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