I also plan to begin a series of essay to address specific issues relating to the OCCULT and the NEW AGE MOVEMENT. Both of these very real phenomena are breeding pools for the most vicious of anti-Semitism. I feel I must address many of the specific issues and make these truths more accessible to the public.

We proudly proclaim that we live in a secular society and that our secular heritage protects our religious freedoms. We proclaim that we are each free to choose our religious beliefs and to lively by them freely and openly. No one should be so na�ve to believe that this is true. We can point to the U.S. Constitution and proclaim our freedom of religion, whereas at the same time, all we need do is turn on the television, radio or see any of the many expressions in the popular media and what we see is an all out onslaught, attack and attempted massacre of everything that traditional religions have always believed.

These attacks started decades ago with the attacks on the validity and historicity of religious texts. Faith in the Bible was frowned upon and became to be viewed as ancient, antiquated, primitive and most definitely unscientific. Introducing Darwin's theory of evolution into the public schools was one thing, and I for one do not believe it to be a bad thing. Yet, what Darwin taught and what is now taught in his name are two almost entirely different things. Darwin never challenged religion or the creeds of faith.

What we find today is that on almost every college campus and certainly in every public school, Darwin is proclaimed as having proved the Bible wrong, proving evolution true over the myth of creationism and thus proving that everything else the Bible says is both wrong and stupid. Although these words may not be the ones used to describe public sentiment, nevertheless do not deceive yourselves into believing that public sentiment is any less arrogant, scornful and resentful of the Bible and everything it teaches.

Secularism is now being used as a cover for all kinds of immoral and unrighteous agendas that undermine the fabric of sane and stable societies. Any attempts to challenge these new world views are condemned as being primitive and foolish antiquated religionisms. Secularism, it is claimed, is obviously is more enlightened. Therefore, the secular agenda is certainly superior to the primitive beliefs of the old mythologies of religion. Secularists believe with an almost religious zeal that they must impose their new world view on everyone because it is so obviously the right thing to do, in their own eyes.

So much for religious tolerance. At one time the secular were asking the religious to be tolerant of their secularism and their rights not to believe. Now, with the shoe on the other foot, the secular show no such sympathy or compassion. For the secular, the religious are antiquated, uneducated pumpkins deserving of absolutely no respect. Rather the religious deserve the scorn and disregard heaped upon them by the more enlightened and liberated secularist.

Western secularism is quickly becoming as intolerant, radical and intolerant as the worse of fascist societies that had dominated the 20th century. The will of the religious majority is being whittled away. The rights of the religious are slipping away little by little under the guise of civil rights. Granted, while there are true civil rights issues to correct societal wrongs, nevertheless this justification is now being used to vindicate all types of perverse, immoral and unnatural behaviors, even in open disregard to the expressed majority of the voting publics. And nothing can be done about it.

We in the Torah religious world desire to isolate ourselves from the world's travails so that we can focus our attentions and our lives upon our Torah. Little do many in the Torah world realize that the entire Torah religious community alongside the religious communities of others are already the targets for nefarious secularist groups and regulators who are intentionally seeking to make life for the religious to be more difficult. Their attacks are disguised as pursuits of civil rights or the equal applications of the law and so many more excuses. Still, in the end, religious people and the religious ideas they embrace are under serious governmental and societal attack.

I feel very sorry for those so-called religious Jews who cannot see this and worse, deny its reality. All they want is to maintain the illusion of a happy and peaceful coexistence in the west. Yet, such coexistence between the religious and secular of all communities is certainly not happy and peaceful. One can look for example at the relationship between the religious Orthodox Jewish communities and the secular Reform and Conservative Jewish communities. The two communities exist as independent and completely separate entities. Most have accepted the lie that it is the Orthodox who have created this division and maintain it by denying the legitimacy of these secular groups. Yet, how can Torah faithful communities embrace other Jewish communities that have fundamentally rejected the foundations of Torah? How can the religious Orthodox embrace the secular Reform when the secular Reform have openly rejected what the Torah teaches?

I have learned from personal experience that it is the Reform movement that reject both the religion of Torah and the religious communities that embrace it. The arrogant chauvinism of inflated superiority certainly lies with the secular and not with the religious. This is true in this one example and unfortunately in many others as well.

For the religious Jew, the Shavuot holiday celebrates the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. This is a reality that the secular, both Jewish and Gentile reject as having any validity and historicity. While some may, to our faces, respect our rights to believe and observe our faith, behind our backs the majority of them laugh and mock us for believing what in their eyes is such a stupid and antiquated myth.

So, as we celebrate we must thank G-d that we have not abandoned the faith of our fathers. We have to rejoice that we have an experience, a knowledge and an awareness that the secular simply cannot have. We have Torah and they do not. This is by their own choice. And because they cannot see and have what we do, many of them hate us for it. Torah has referred to these types of people as the "Erev Rav."

Today we are fighting a truly unholy war. We have done so in the past and I pray that this time might be the last. I do not condemn the secular for what they choose to believe or disbelieve. I also do not mock them or attack them with all kinds of humor and jokes focused on deriding their beliefs. The secular do not act in kind with the religious. For them verbal attacks and mocking jokes about religion and religious beliefs are all the rave.

Unfortunate and sad, but as spiritual minded human beings, we must view our fellow human beings who have chosen to act like animals instead of like men with a sense of caution. They have been fed a pack of lies through every medium of education, be they the schools or the media. The secular are like the blind leading the blind. And as we know the blind cannot see and worse, they never see what hits them until it is too late. For those of us with eyes, we must continue to see and to accept the truth of what is, as opposed to the secular lies of what is not.

On Shavuot let us embrace our Torah with added fervor and commitment. The secular want to shove their secularism down our thoughts. Let us rejoice that the mitzvot of the Torah have taught us how to behave as moral human beings and not as animals. Let us rejoice on Torah's birthday, for just as a Bar Mitzvah celebrates the day he becomes a man; so too on Shavuot we all become men. Torah has taught us how to be human and to act humanely. Let us reinforce this even in the face of hostile secular attacks.