We all know about those rubber chicken dinners called banquets we 'must' attend because they are in support of organizations we ourselves support or are honoring a friend or family member. We hope that our efforts have been worthwhile and simply suck up the annoyance and the burden as it is an intimate part of our lives as people living in a community and more particularly, as Jews living all over the world and especially in Israel, our eternal homeland.
However, banquets have another purpose in life. I believe this use of the term banquets is the best I have seen and a message of warning to those who believe they are immune to the consequences of their actions. It originates from Robert Louis Stevenson.
"Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences."
We so often go blithely through life thinking we are free as a bird, no thoughts of consequences unpleasant - at least till we are on the other side of life wherein we are supposed to have a "din v'chesbon", an evaluation of our assets and liabilities of the soul. There it is expected to be the place where we pay the bills outstanding, the balances due, the consequences of and for what we have done or not done in our lives on this earth. Truthfully, the exact consequences are unknown, as no one has been there and come back to tell us.
However, there will be definite ones taking place on the physical world of our lives and we are warned not to be so arrogant as to think one is immune from the consequences of our actions. Literature and history are realms of consequences coming back to bite one in sensitive places, and so many of these effects are presented as warnings, or as lessons to be internalized within and for those in similar situation. Banquets are notoriously effective in relaying the truths to those who would deny it.
Queen Esther gathered her wits and knew there would be consequences, quite probably of great harm to her and her people, but still, she "screwed her courage to the sticking point" and went to the King's feast in a brave attempt to save her people. There indeed were consequences. Positive ones for our people and certainly negative ones for Haman and sons and his acolytes as they earned the permanent consequence of death.
One might have hoped that the message would be taken but unfortunately, its lesson was minimized and further banquets were required. That nothing is for nothing and something is always for something, is a precept of life we must understand. Shakespeare understood that as can be seen in the visit of the ghost of Banquo to Macbeth at a royal feast.
The lessons about banquets and feasts and feeding people, from Abraham and the three angels all the way through to Daniel when the warning was written on the wall (giving rise to the saying that the words are written on the wall), the consequences clearly resultant from that which came before. Even in our times, 2026, how many speeches are given which contain threats due to what came before or that which is now, and that which might come tomorrow. Yet the ties and the knots of common sense and wisdom often come undone and all that remains are the knots of anger and hate giving rise to more ugliness. So much of the time conveyed to us at times of 'feasting, rubber chicken dinners and the like. Too often with nothing good to eat, no good thoughts to think, and no path to positive achievement to be seen.
Why is it that only the wiser elements of society, and I am not talking about economic divisions, but rather of those with the willingness and capability to actually delve into matters deeper than the surface. To indeed find answers, to find questions that need to be asked and then find the answers to them. And why is it when those who raise the alarms, blow the whistles calling attention to the issues, are ignored. The ears of the rest of the world deaf to them. Their hearts locked tight even as their souls blacken daily and the ugly consequences, or the absence of good consequences, are glaringly in our faces.
The worst takes place when the momentum of the negativity speeds up and we actually buy into it. We accept the poisoned words spewed out. Hate served along with every course; the sour aromas inhaled along with the tainted air of the room dyed deeply with the hatred to be found in these words. The words and thoughts and actions of hate.
The consequences are clear. The negativity, the hatred, the bigotry, and all the harm incumbent upon their definition and activation, even unto violence and death are 'generously' shared with those who will walk along that path of hatred and bloodshed. Words are mouthed with nothing behind them but a vacuum of truth and honesty and a nest of welcome for the ugly of souls. Acts of violence are perpetrated mostly upon the chief target, in this case, and too often throughout history, the people of the nation of Jews. Pathetic words are mouthed concerning combating these types of hatreds, even perhaps going to the point of supposedly assigning some funds to combat it. Out of their split tongues at the very same moment come the very same words which have in truth incited, through the centuries, the very JewHatred they claim to be combating.
Mamdani and his accomplices along with those of the Jewish nation who cannot see past the nose on their face and join with the enemies. They think that they are immune to the Hatred wafting through the air, smacking the objects of the hatred. Falling for, agreeing with, the demand to be the "accepted” Jew. To amputate an integral part of their body and soul. To bear and even laugh with the snide Jewish jokes. To support stereotype characters of Jewish people. To deny the unity of the Jewish people. To deny vigorously their support of Israel as our indigenous homeland, from the first Jew, Abraham, to the newest newborn. To deny peoplehood when something good arises but to fall in with dirty claims of peoplehood when something negative happens. To do as they wish, when they wish, without consequence.
We all know that consequences are an immutable part of the human condition. Nothing done or undone goes unnoticed. There is no 'scott free' of consequences. Be it in this world or in the world to come. In life, or in life after death, to deny that is to deny a Truth never to be erased.
Yes, there will be a banquet for us all. Some of us will have sirloin steak while others will have undercooked chicken. Where would you rather be? What would you desire on your plate? And what will you say when beneath your dinner plate lies a list of the payments due, even overdue, And the deadline already passed.
Yesterday Today Tomorrow
It makes for a no, never mind outlook on life. We know that consequences and their respective feasts will always be there and hide as one might, those consequences will find the ones meant to be the recipients of them, good and bad, serious or inconsequential.
And we know always that as the Lord is our Protector we will never be defeated.
WE ARE AM.
AM YISROEL
THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL
LANETZACH
FOREVER
AM YISROEL CHAI.
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