In 2020, in the land where the Rambam and Portugal's co-founder Yaish Ben Yahia once walked, the author of these lines wrote, under a pseudonym, the book "Interviewing a Regular Jew". It was then his intention to leave his children, in the form of simplified dialogue, a summary of political philosophy and religion that few in Portugal have the capacity to understand, let alone to debate.
In "Interviewing a Regular Jew" we can read that it was the author's objective to die anonymous. "He who did not know him, got to know him better," was the Hebrew inscription prepared for his tomb. The author then managed to cross the country and even the city where he lives without almost anyone recognizing him. He lived practically in an old library and absolutely despised any notoriety.
Only supervening circumstances forced him to put an end to his total description. The articles and opinions that, in recent years, he has expressed, with a preference for the PJN, as it is the official newspaper of the Jewish Community of Porto, aimed to make his philosophy known to the coming ones. It will not be armies of woke communists, with their clumsy lips and rotten teeth, defining a soul, a mind, or a life.
Providence wanted the author licked the wounds of what happened to the Portuguese Dreyfus. The central synagogue was a dark building, but it was rehabilitated in two months, and Jews from London arrived to pray, and young people were brought to study at a local university. There was no minyan, but today the organization is on its way to completing twelve years without interruption. There was no library, but today 10,000 high-quality books stretch gloriously across the shelves of the temple's first floor. There was no cemetery but today the Isaac Aboab Field of Equality shines among olive trees. There was no culture but the community that is the world leader in this fiefdom was created. Jewish human rights were in crisis, but today there is a museum of the Holocaust, a B'nai B'rith, and this same newspaper. Tzedakah was not given to anyone, but in the meantime communities from 14 countries were helped.
Everything was the work of those who serve the purposes of the uninterrupted work of Creation. Prosperity in all dimensions is not a mission for everyone. This mission belongs to the rich in goods, in books, in culture, and in good constellations. Nothing that was produced was the work of the poor, the stupid, or the mediocre.
One of the most striking characteristics of "woke communism" is that it hates significant Jewish realities and plunges blindly into suicidal persecutions. The Power that created the Portuguese Dreyfus case tried to do the same with someone born on the same date on the calendar. It was destined to fail. For the Kabbalah, the correspondence of birth dates and soul missions has a precise meaning that counts for a lot, in fact, it counts for everything.
Portugal made history again. This time, the persecutors were not kings in full regalia with swords at their sides; instead, they were ordinary individuals wearing jeans. This time the target was not part of a rising empire, nor of the Discoveries. There was no Inquisition, no Alcácer Quibir, no miguelist wars. This time there was only an attack by the woke communism against the only Portuguese Jewish community with synagogues and museums full of life.
Everything was invaded and questioned. However, there was a problem, the book. Was the community "nothing"? Very well, Amazon book. Was the author a non-believer? Very well, Amazon book. Had he made a law? Good, Amazon book. Synagogue invaded? Excellent, Amazon book. Old men with strokes? Okay, Amazon book. Aligned powers? Well done, Amazon book. The book. There is no advertising inside, neither from politicians, nor from their journalist friends, nor from ideologized officials or those eager to climb the career ladder.
It is a very old lesson that the Jews do not accept to fight with the enemy's weapons, nor to use the language he invented, nor to seek solutions with the rules he himself has imposed. They cannot fight in the noise of the stage, because they are and will always be an insignificant minority. They fight in history. When Mount Sinai experienced lightning and thunder, the first book in human history was born, and with it, the People of the Book. It is inevitable that books continue to record history, and especially Jewish history in all places and times.
A book is not an outdated old rag, it is not something anachronistic, but an irreplaceable technology of preservation. The time will come when a flying man, with a jetpack on his back, will land on top of a mountain to read a paper book. Books will continue to be fundamental pillars of humanity, playing an irreplaceable role even in the age of algorithms, short videos, and artificial intelligence. Their historical relevance has not disappeared; on the contrary, it has adapted to modern times.
One of the dramas of modern society is that it has raised to high positions in society, especially in politics and the press, individuals who do not belong to any family of long lineage, tradition and services. It is enough to look at the poverty of the library of each one of them to be terrified, when it exists, which is no small novelty. The result could be none other than the cultural and financial ruin of the nation. It is striking how those who build nothing specialize in trying to destroy everything. There is something even more impressive. They could never have been able to do worse, neither in less time, nor with a more appropriate system.
