And the Dead Do Not Praise the L-rd, Neither any that Go Down to Duma

Please forgive the shorthand brevity of this new post.  I will gladly explain the reason for my brevity in the Comments.

To be honest, I have noticed an uncharacteristic inconsistency in this second to last verse in Psalm 115 for as long as I have been saying Hallel (Psalms 113- 118) as a Baal Teshuvah in the early 1980s.  Every Chag except Purim and every Rosh Chodesh includes this verse whether full Hallel or Half Hallel is recited.  Something about it was unsettling, and early on I put my finger on it:  I am speaking about Psalm 115:17.   Psalm 115 is the third psalm in Hallel, and even when only half-Hallel is said, verse 17 is included.

  לֹא הַמֵּתִים, יְהַלְלוּ-יָהּ;    וְלֹא, כָּל-יֹרְדֵי דוּמָה. 17 The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence (Duma);

יח  וַאֲנַחְנוּ, נְבָרֵךְ יָהּ--    מֵעַתָּה וְעַד-עוֹלָם:

הַלְלוּ-יָהּ. 18 But we will bless the LORD from this time forth and for ever. {N}

Hallelujah.

We are told at the beginning of this verse that the Dead do not praise HaShem.  So If those who go down to Duma are those who need to have their souls cleansed for up to 11 months in Gehinnom after they die, why emphasize that they ALSO do not praise HaShem??  According to this peirush, Duma is the Angel that guards the Gate to the fires of Gehinnom.  Yes, we are talking about an unusual Fire that tries all Ten Sefirot of the Neshamah.  This is no ordinary fire, but if the Psalmist, David, is trying to emphasize the worst possible punishment against the Dead, Gehinnom does not hold a candle to eternal cancellation of the soul or Kaf HaKela, when the Angels fling one's soul across the Universe back and forth for 100 years or 1000 years or Eternity (a form of Angelic Chai ALai) mentioned in Shmuel Aleph 25:29.  Assuredly, those who are in Kaf HaKela do not praise HaShem either.  So we are stuck with the apparent redundant nature that the Dead do not praise Kah including those who do not go down to Gehinnom or those who go to Kaf HaKela or those who go down to She'ol or those who go directly into Gan Eden....  Take your pick.

Usually when the Psalms mention two things in parallel with each other, one sees a comparison between something more kal or light with something more chamur or stronger in order that the addition of the new aspect at the end of the pasuk adds a Chiddush.  For instance, 

ז  צַדִּיק יְהוָה, בְּכָל-דְּרָכָיו;    וְחָסִיד, בְּכָל-מַעֲשָׂיו. 17 The LORD is righteous in all His ways, and a Chassid in all His works.  from Psalm 145

From here we see that in all G-d's ways measured by His Laws, He is Just, but Beyond the Measure of His attribute of Justice, we see His Chessed in His Deeds (not just His Ways).   So we see here that the second half of the verse comes as a Chiddush on the first half of the verse.  There are no wasted words, and the second half of the verse is not a redundant expression of the first half.   This type of parallelism with a Chiddush in the second half is a regular feature in Sefer Tehillim.  The words were given to the Psalmist (for the most part King David) through Ruach HaQodesh (Holy Spirit) channeling sanctity into the words and guaranteeing that none of the words would be either redundant or flippant.  So that leaves us with the APPARENT exception to this rule, Psalm 115:17.  Now I write apparent exception because deep down we know that none of David's words were redundant or flippant.  There has to be a different understanding of this verse than the oft-noted explanation which solves the problem of redundancy and flippancy,  G-d forbid.

The second point about Psalm 115 is something I noticed several years later after I learned of the deep structure of Redemption expressed through the Order of Service in the Pesach Seder.  We notice right away that the the 4 cups of wine are divided neatly two before the Main Meal and two after the main meal (Shulchan Orekh) because the first Redemption was done with the Yud and the first Hey in HaShem's Name while the Final Redemption will be done with the attaching of the Vav and the Final Hey in HaShem's Name to the Yud and the First Hey once Amaleq can be destroyed in the world.  This explains why ALL of the Maggid (Telling) of the Redemption from Mitzraim, followed by the 2nd cup of wine, must be completed BEFORE the HaMotzi and the Torah Mitzvah of Eating Matzah which begins the Meal.  Maggid must come after the Middle Matzah has been split during Yachatz with the Smaller piece of Matzah being the one over which we tell the story of the Exodus while the larger piece of Matzah is the piece of Matzah that symbolizes the Greater and Grander Final Redemption After the Meal.  The meal itself is reminiscent of eating the Qorban Pesach with Maror and Matzah and the Qorban Chagigah for Pesach when there was a Temple and of all of  of Jewish history since the Temple was destroyed when we had neither Qorban  Surviving this larger segment of Jewish history when there was no Temple required this annual spectacle called the Pesach Seder to ensure that we and our descendants would still be around almost 2000 years later.  So the Meal somehow represents the entire span of Jewish History from the Exodus from Egypt until the Simanim of the Arrival of the Era of Mashiach ben Yosef.  We have discussed on this blog how the simanim of Mashiach ben Yosef was the greening of the hills of Eretz Yisrael from the First Agricultural Aliyah of 1882 when 4 agricultural settlements were founded in the same year 1882 (Rosh HaPinah, Petach Tikvah, Rishon LeTzion, and Zikhron Ya'akov).  Two of these settlings were actually repeats.  Rosh HaPinah and Petach Tikvah had previously been established but had been wiped out either by Arab terrorists in Rosh HaPinah and a Malaria epidemic in Petach Tikvah.  Both Rosh HaPinah and Petach Tikvah had been unsuccessfully established in 1878.  Somehow the hidden Matzah is reminiscent of the world falling to the 50th level of Tumah before Mashiach ben Yosef, something that has recently occurred about 6 1/2 years ago.  The Run up from the founding of Zikhron Yaakov (when G-d remembers Ya'akov) until today is just over 140 years.  Alas after the ingathering of exiles and the 6th election of Bibi Netanyahu (the 5th Mashiach ben Yosef) and the Aliyah to Israel of Yehonatan Pollard (the 6th Mashiach ben Yosef), we arrive at the moment of the 3rd cup of wine (The Vav in HaShem's Name).  At this stage because Eliyahu HaNavi lost the mantle to herald the Coming of Mashiach ben Yosef, we arrive at the event of the coming of Eliyahu HaNavi to herald Mashiach ben David (the 4th cup of wine and the Final Hey in HaShem's Name).  So after drinking the 3rd cup of wine, we pour the cup of Eliyahu HaNavi and open the front door and proclaim with a loud voice for HaShem to pour out His Wrath on the Gentiles that do not know Him, specifically against those who have massacred the seed of Ya'akov with bloody pogroms throughout the Ages.  One of the ways that we will know that we have reached that moment in history is if the nation that spilled the most Jewish blood for the last 2000 years is itself having its blood spilled almost indiscriminately.  For that nation will be completely wiped out from being a nation under the Heavens!

If one does a quick study of the various nations of the world where Jews have lived in significant numbers and which nation has shed the most Jewish blood at least in the last thousand years (including the last 3 generations) invariably we will arrive at the Ukraine or Ukraine.  For hundreds of years The Ukraine was The Borderland for at least three empires (Russian, Lithuanian, and Polish and sometimes Polish-Lithuanian).  Until 1648 The Ukraine (The Borderland) was not Ukraine, an independent country.  The year 1648, that very year, that Ukraine finally became an independent country under its leader Bogdan Chielminitzky (whose statue is all over Kiev), Ukraine proceeded to slaughter anywhere between 200,000 and 700,000 Jews!  They did horrible tortures reminiscent of the future Shoah slightly less than 300 years later.  Sadly there was no census that had been done of the Jews that were murdered in the areas that the Ukrainian Cossacks conquered including large parts of Poland, BelaRus, and Galitcia.  So all we have are estimates of the numbers who were murdered.  In most of the estimates up to 1/3 of all Eastern European Jews may have been murdered between 1648 and 1649 on the very birthday of the founding of a the nation that slaughtered them, the Ukrainians.  If there be any place in Europe that might be called the Graveyard for World Jewry, that place would be the blood soaked land of Ukraine.  And it really did not stop.  From Tach veTat to willing accomplices with the Nazis to murder European Jewry almost 300 years later, the Ukraine topped the list in most categories of Blood and Gore.  Is it a wonder that when we say and pray to G-d:  

Pour out Your wrath upon the nations that do not acknowledge You, and upon the kingdoms that do not call upon Your Name. For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his habitation. Pour out Your indignation upon them, and let the wrath of Your anger overtake them. Pursue them with anger, and destroy them from beneath the heavens of the L‑rd.  

Is there any question that the number one nation that we should have in mind that has done these things in a consistent manner for the last 375 years since its inception as a nation to the descendants of Ya'akov is Ukraine?  Without even one Jew pushing any button, is it a wonder that the G-d's Revenge against the nations of the world that have tortured Jews throughout the centuries begins right there?   And have the Ukrainians EVER apologized for Tach veTat (1648 and 49) or all the massacres of Jews since?  Have they ever taken down their statues of Bogdan in the Kiev public square in shame for what he and their ancestors did?  Have they taught their kids in schools "Tach veTat studies", the same way that all German children today must know about the Holocaust?  No reflection on their wicked past, just crickets and the proclamation that their President is a Jewish comedian who renounced his Judaism by raising his children in the Ukrainian Church years ago cutting his descendants off from any Jewish destiny.  I have no personal animus against Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but if he is the monument to the new Ukrainian Jewry, then Bogdan Chielminitzky succeeded in his mission without slaying any more Jewish babies with his sword.  The point for this essay is we have arrived at this stirring statement in the Haggadah for the End of Days after pouring Eliyahu's cup, and we prepare ourselves for what comes immediately next:  Psalm 115, yes the above Psalm 115, one and the same.  

Let us take a step back.  First notice that in the Pesach Seder, we also say Hallel, albeit without a Brakhah specifically no Brakhah for Hallel.  But the first two psalms in Hallel are said with the Maggid step in the Hagaddah, at the end of Maggid, before the Meal!  This tells us immediately, that the first two prakim of Hallel are for the Redemption from Egypt and not for the Final Redemption!  So we arrive at the inevitable conclusion that since the first two chapters of Hallel are specifically for the Redemption from Egypt, then the last four Prakim (Psalms) of Hallel are for the Final Redemption specifically starting with Psalm 115.  It is why we start with Psalm 115 after praying for revenge against the nations that have murdered us and conclude with Psalm 118 before Hodu LaShem ki Tov and Nishmat Kal Chai followed by the 4th cup of wine.  So in this way, Psalm 115, not Psalm 113, is emblematic of the beginning of the Final Redemption (after the Revenge against those who have murdered us has already begun).  

So now I must return to the Winter and Spring of 2016.  Several young adult "Hilltop youth" had been implicated in an arson case in the Arab town of Duma where an entire Arab family may have been murdered in the Summer of 2015.  The question that has never been answered was Who Dunit?  Was it done by a group of Jewish arsonist extremists or another Arab family in the same village looking for revenge?  Apparently, only G-d knows because to be honest, the Jewish Division of the Shin Bet never proved a d-mn thing.  The leader of the youth who were implicated wrongfully without a body of evidence was the grandson of Rav Meir Kahane zt"l, Meir Ettinger.  That would be Meir Ettinger was the son of Rav Kahane's daughter, Tova Kahane- Ettinger.  Almost a dozen of these youths were put wrongfully in prison for months on end often tortured to extract a confession.  Shaba"k was able to extract one conviction from all this without any evidence to support this conviction.  Amiram ben Ulliel is still in prison for this conviction.  What was fascinating from the conviction from the beginning is that for months on end, these youths did not have regular discussions with a lawyer.  They could be held and potentially tortured inside a Shaba'k dungeon without Habeas Corpus or of what should be required, a Writ of Habeas Corpus.   No regular meeting with a lawyer.  Techniques to extract confessions that may be the equivalent of torture.  I always imagined that Shaba"k had a 500 year old Torqemada torture rack in a dungeon somewhere, and they were using it to extract confessions.  Since there was 0 oversight over what they were doing with these youths for months on end, it could be easily imagined that they tried almost everything.  And since their techniques for extracting confessions were done in complete secrecy, imagining what they were potentially doing is 100% justified.  Down in the dungeon of the Jewish Division of Shaba"k where no one can hear you scream where no one could praise HaShem.  Sometime near the end of Adar 5776 there was a Brit Milah for a boy, the son of Meir Ettinger, who by this time had been held for 7 months?  8 months?  But the Shaba"k authorities would not let Meir out of the dungeon to attend his own son's brit milah!  So thousands of us went.  I even saw Betzalel Smotrich at the event at the Breslov Shul in the Shaarei Chessed neighborhood.  Betzalel was in street clothes.  He was not there in any official capacity for Bayit Yehudi.  Yes, it was a fascinating and moving affair, a brit milah for a boy whose father was being tortured by Shaba'k to extract a confession that he never gave.  Eventually after 10 months in this dungeon he was let free.  What I remember most of all is that there was an organization for the Yordei Duma (those who had gone down into the Shaba"k dungeon to be questioned about the Duma arson case.)  The name of that organization was Choneinu.  And there was a young lawyer who took on the entire case of clients that he could not even talk to pro bono.  He did not expect a shekel for his services.  Perhaps he was paid a measly stipend by Choneinu.  It mattered not.  The Tzaddiq who took this case on was Itamar Ben Gvir, and I knew right then and there that somehow, someway this tzaddiq would be the lightning rod to introduce Mashiach ben David to the entire world, a man that 2/3rds of Mankind (the world's reprobate majority) would learn to hate for being that very tzaddiq!  Almost 7 years have passed since that fateful Brit Milah of Meir Ettinger's son, and Ben Gvir has burst on the scene almost precisely as I expected him to.  The Yordei Duma (those who went down because of Duma), well, they are the parallel construct, the Chiddush on the second half of that second to last verse in Psalm 115 that only makes sense after the fact with 20/20 hindsight  What happens, next, we shall see.

For anyone thinking of censoring, in no way do I approve of Rav Kahane's call to exile all Arabs from this Holy Land.  Every gentile who has the privilege to live here must keep 7 Laws of human decency.  Amongst the 7 are laws against Murder and laws to passionately be revolted of those who do murder to be a witness against murderers in Courts of Law.  A gentile does not have to put his life on the line to uphold the Courts of Justice clause, but if he celebrates in any way the murder of Jews, he has lost his right to be here, for he celebrates murder and would not be a witness against a murder suspect.  Those who take candy in public in the squares of Ramallah to celebrate the success of murder or who attend parties for a shahid suicide bomber, they have forfeited their residency in Eretz Yisrael because of a lack of human decency.  Sadly approximately 70 to 75% of Israel's Arabs with or without citizenship support the murderers who blow up pizza parlors or civilian busses.  So 70 to 75% of Israel's Arabs have forfeited their residency through their lack of human decency according to Noachide Law.  So as we hone in on the final exact figure, Meir Kahane was 70 to 75% correct..

-