Who Owns The Holocaust?

Twelve years ago, the British Union of Jewish Students launched a project called 50 Days For 50 Years, an effort to commemorate the Holocaust by having Jews learn something each day for 50 days in memory of a Jew murdered in the Holocaust. A book of 50 essays written by leading (Orthodox) rabbis and scholars was published and the program was launched. In 2005, TRIBE, a section of the British United Synagogue (Modern Orthodox, Jonathan Sacks is their chief rabbi) relaunched the program under a new name, 60 Days For 60 Years. It then changed the name to 60 Days For 6 Million and "syndicated" the program to communities around the world.

Fine. To a point. Now groups like Aish and Ohr Somayach have gotten on the bandwagon (please see the pictures above for an example), and use this program as a way to draw non-Orthodox Jews to Orthodoxy and Modern Orthodox Jews to haredism.

But the problem with this program is deeper than subterfuge from Orthodox outreach organizations. First of all, many of the Jews who died in the Holocaust were secular or non-Orthodox, and they were secular or non-Orthodox by choice. They were Jews who left the backwaters of shtetl Orthodoxy for the bright lights of the Enlightenment. Is the proper way to remember those Jews learning Orthodox theology and theodicy?

Some of you will argue it is, claiming that Orthodoxy has a monopoly on theological truth. I beg to differ. Leaving aside the overwhelming failure of Orthodox rabbinic leaders leading up to the Holocaust (please see our discussion here), I would still argue that an Orthodox monopoly on this endeavor is wrong. Why? To me, it is too much like the Mormon baptisms of long-dead non-Mormons.

The proper way to do this, I think, is to take a Jewish text we all accept and study it or sections of it. For example, take the Pentateuch. Use the text to show how traditional commentary (like Rashi and Ibn Ezra) work, show how halakha is derived, codified and implemented. Show how the Documentary Hypothesis works, how modern Biblical Criticism works, and how Orthodoxy (for the most part) rejects it.

Another possibility is to deal with the exact issues the 60 Days program does, but bring varied, pluralistic responses to each one.

Of course, when an Orthodox organization sponsors an event like this, one expects the viewpoints to be Orthodox. That is why I don’t have much of a problem when the OU sponsors 60 Days, or the British United Synagogue does. But when Orthodox outreach organizations get involved, especially when those organizations have a history of deception and when their involvement is partially masked by community organizations like the Jewish Community Relations Council (please see above pictures) or the non-Orthodox day school, I think a line has been crossed.

Should the Holocaust be used as a marketing tool to bring Jews to Orthodoxy? If you think it should, shouldn’t information like Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman’s letter (which I first read in the Aish HaTorah beis midrash) and the behavior of the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe be presented right along with it?

Haredim and the Holocaust, 2

UOJ quotes the infamous letter written by Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman telling a student not to go to YU or HTC (Skokie), even though it would get him safely out of Europe:

"I received your letter, but unfortunately there is nothing I can do. The yeshivos in America which can bring talmidim from overseas are the yeshivah of Dr. Revel (YU) and [HTC in Chicago]. However, both are places of spiritual danger because they are run in a spirit of disloyalty to the Torah. Therefore, of what benefit would it be to escape [Europe] from physical danger to spiritual danger."…

UOJ notes that later in the letter, Rabbi Wasserman suggests the student contact Rabbi Shlomo Hymen at Yeshiva Torah Vodas who, Rabbi Wasserman writes, will help him. But then UOJ continues:

Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman was urged [by Rabbi Henkin] to bring over all of his students to Yeshiva Torah Vodaath and Rabbi Shlomo Hyman had agreed to step aside as the Rosh Hayeshiva and gladly have R’ Elchonon take his place. Instead he went back to Europe where he was slaughtered along with his students . He is quoted in his "Kovetz Maamarim" as saying he intended himself and his students to be a "korbon" or a sacrifice, on behalf of American Jewry. So much for "daas Torah" and "gedolim infallibility".

Rabbis gave notoriously poor advice all during WW2; the above is only one example out of many rabbinic failures. From Hungarian hasidim to Chabad, from Litvaks to Galitzianers, rabbis failed. You can say this means God "hid" the truth from them, or you can say God never spoke to them in the first place. My money is on option number two.

Settlers At Play Again …

This video was taken in Hebron. The voices are of international observers there to protect Palestinian families from out of control settlers like this.

We need to make a choice. Behavior like this cannot be tolerated; neither can the atmosphere that causes it. Settlers teach their children hatred. It is true this is in part a reaction to the Intifada, but it is noxious, nonetheless. It is destroying Israel from within, and making Judaism not much different than the long line of fascist ideologies that oppressed us. If this type of behavior is the price of keeping Hebron, we must give it up. No piece of land, no matter how holy, is worth this.

[Hat Tip: Neo-Conservaguy.]

Schvartzes?

Rabbi Shmuely Boteach writes:

Last week I delivered a sermon based on the Torah portion of the week and which compared Moses, the great Jewish redeemer, with Abraham Lincoln, the martyred American emancipator. When I finished, I was approached by an acquaintance who happens to be an Orthodox Jewish engineer. He seemed, up until that time, to be devout, educated, and sophisticated. But what he told me was sacrilegious, ignorant, and primitive.

This gentleman maintained that Lincoln was no hero, seeing as he had freed a people who were the descendants of Ham, the son of Noah, who was cursed for humiliating his father. “Ham’s children are black, and are condemned by God to eternal slavery,” he said. “There was even a rebbe in Poland who predicted that Abraham Lincoln would be shot for liberating a people against God’s wishes.”

I looked this man in the eye and said to him, “I’m confused. Judaism believes that every man is judged according to his actions. Now you are telling me that every black person in the world is cursed for something an ancestor did millennia ago. We Jews don’t believe in Original Sin, and we don’t believe in vertical accountability. So how can you tell me something so abominably racist like the fact that blacks are cursed?”

He responded that I was denying scripture. I told him that his views were repugnant to everything Judaism stood for in terms of the equality of all mankind.…

I remember my shock at seeing a book written by Rabbi Ahron Soleveitchik that strongly stated that racism of any kind has no place in Judaism. Why was I shocked? Because every Chabad and haredi rabbi I then knew was profoundly racist.

I was once driving with a head shaliach (the senior rabbi sent by the Chabad Rebbe to a particular area). We passed a bus stop at which a black man was kissing a white woman. The rabbi reacted with disgust. "It’s unnatural!" he screamed. "What is?" I asked. "Schvartes and whites shouldn’t mix. Races shouldn’t mix," he answered. I asked him if that was true even if the "schvartze" had converted. He fumbled for an answer, finally settling on "that depends on the situation." He hastened to add that the black convert would be a full Jew, and really should be able to marry any Jew, regardless of color. "So," I asked him, "would you let your son marry a black convert or the daughter of black converts?" "No!," he said. "Why not?" I asked. "It just wouldn’t be right," he said.

I used to write off this insanity as the side effects of living in or frequenting Crown Heights, with its years of racial tension. But the truth cuts much deeper. Orthodoxy in general and haredim specifically demonize the Other. Nothing is more "Other" than a black man.

I remember another haredi rabbi teaching that tselem elokim, the idea that man is made in God’s image, only applies to Jews. And we have the assertion in the Tanya, the so-called bible of Chabad hasidut, that every kindness a non-Jew does for Jews is only done for selfish reasons; non-Jews are not capable of altruism.

Boteach is right. Racism, as Rabbi Ahron Soleveitchik said, has no place in Judaism. It’s just too bad so many haredim don’t realize this, and that they have not realized it for so long.

State Looks To Prosecute Rabbis Who Called For Murder Of Army Commander

We noted two weeks ago that the nut jobs from the new "Sanhedrin" had issued a fatwa against a senior army officer. The State has now decided to open a criminal investigation against these rabbis. Ha’aretz reports:

The State Prosecution on Wednesday decided to open a criminal investigation against a group of rabbis who issued a halakhic ruling against GOC Central Command Yair Naveh for authorizing restraining orders against West Bank settlers. The rabbis ruled that in signing such orders, Naveh was guilty of crimes punishable by death according to Jewish law.

About two weeks ago, a group of rabbis linked to the revived Sanhedrin movement – or high court of Jewish law – ruled that Naveh was guilty of three crimes: "Causing the masses to sin"; being a "moser" – someone who informs against fellow Jews or hands over Jews or Jewish land to gentiles; and terrifying the public in a blasphemous way."

In their decision, the rabbis referred to a ruling made by the 12th century Jewish philosopher Maimonides, according to which "it is permissible to kill a moser everywhere, even in this time when the courts do not rule on capital cases."…

The signatories to the halakhic ruling include Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, the head of the Jerusalem Temple Institute; Rabbi Yehuda Edrey, of the movement to rebuild the temple; Bar Ilan Literature Professor Hillel Weiss; Rabbi Rueven Hass and Rabbi Ido Alba.

New Edah Journal Online

The new Edah Journal, now published by Yeshiva Chovevei Torah and renamed Meorot, is online now.

Does Teshuva Work For Sex Offenders?

Rabbi Dov Linzer of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah addresses this issue. Rabbi Mark Dratch and Dr. Michelle Freidman offer responses. Download by clicking this link. Source sheet can be downloaded by clicking here.

More Chovevei shiurim here.

[Hat Tip: Ben Max.]

The Nuclear Holocaust To Come?

Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael Oren have written a comprehensive, frightening article on Iran.  In it they note that Yitzhak Rabin’s acceptance of Oslo was meant to remove the inner ring threat to Israel, to neutralize it, so Israel could prepare for and face the threat of a nuclear Iran. The US under President Clinton did not believe Iran had a military nuclear program. It did and still does. (The authors note that Israeli defense officials began calling George Tennant’s CIA – which insisted that Iran was peaceable and had no military nuclear program – the CPIA, the Central Politicized Intelligence Agency.)

The main message here besides the threat itself and the potential Israeli response is that Rabin tried to remove the Palestinians from Iran’s orbit. He may very well have succeeded in this if the Clinton Administration had forced the PLO to comply with the agreements signed. It did not do so. That led to increasing chaos, the eventual Israeli-enforced isolation of Arafat, and the anarchy we see now.

But Rabin’s goal was good and his attempt to achieve it understandable. One can only hope fringe elements of Israeli society – especially the settlers and their insane "sanhedrin," Chabad, haredim, and the extreme right – can stop focusing on their parochial concerns and instead focus on the real threat – a nuclear Holocaust launched by Iran.

For his part, leftist historian Benny Morris thinks the end is near. His terrifying take on Iran can be read here.

UPDATE — Bernard Lewis on Iran:

…The Cold War philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which prevented the former Soviet Union and the United States from using the nuclear weapons they had targeted at each other, would not apply to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran, said Lewis.

"For him, Mutual Assured Destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement," said Lewis of Ahmadinejad. "We know already that they [Iran’s ruling ayatollahs] do not give a damn about killing their own people in great numbers. We have seen it again and again. If they kill large numbers of their own people, they are doing them a favor. They are giving them a quick, free pass to heaven. I find all that very alarming," said Lewis.…

The Jewish Student Union That Isn’t — NCSY And Deceptive Outreach, Part 2

David Kelsey noted last week that NCSY has a front organiztion, the so-called Jewish Student Union, that it uses to bring non-Orthodox high school students into NCSY’s orbit. It is now clear why NCSY uses the JSU front to snare kids. In order to get into public schools, clubs and organizations need to be cultural or educational, but not religious in nature. NCSY uses the JSU to skirt the Constitution and push religion in the public schools. This is deceptive, both for the students recruited and their families, and for wider society.

Many of you are now clucking that I am wrong and that my "hatred" for Orthodoxy is driving this post. So, for all you Steve Brizels out there, let me help you with the logic and facts.

A group calls itself, say the Jewish Cultural Student Union. It forms clubs in public high schools and teaches kids about "cool Jewish  stuff" like the Prophets and the Messiah and Jewish history. They bake bagels and fry latkes. They knit kippot and weave talaysim. They play sports and visit neighborhood religious institutions to "observe" "davening." They study "Jewish culture" with "rabbis."

You Brizels out there have no problem with this, do you? You support this type of deception 100%, without reservation.

Now look at it this way. That Jewish Cultural Student Union is not a stealth project of NCSY and the OU. Instead, it’s a stealth project of Jews for Jesus.

Dishonesty and manipulation should have no role in legitimate public discourse. That means what is wrong for Jews for Jesus is also wrong for NCSY, Aish HaTorah and Ohr Somayach. The sad thing is, none of these groups believe they are doing anything wrong, morally or legally.

Censorship In The JBlogisphere

Rabbi Yakov Horowitz writes about his website, which he recently reconfigured to function as a blog:

…After giving it some thought, I decided not remove any of the negative comments. (For the record, I removed the posts that mentioned people’s names or names of institutions with regard to the abuse issue.) Why? Because I felt that once I decided to open my website to unedited comments, I felt that the honorable thing to do was to leave the negative ones on the site as well as the complimentary ones. Additionally, I felt that once I chose to solicit funds using the site, it was fair, if not unpleasant, for people to question my motives.

In the greater scheme of things, the flow of comments posted to my columns – positive and negative – in the past month has been eye opening for me, and I feel that my response ought to be to read them all carefully.

Let’s face it. Blogging is here to stay and people will respond to my columns in one way or another. On my website or on someone else’s. If anything, the exponential advances in technology will only add to this phenomenon of instant polling and interactive discussions in ways we cannot even imagine at this time.

I think that I am best off following the sage advice of Dovid Hamelech (Kind David), who, sadly, knew a thing or two about discord and adversity. “Be’komim alay me’reim tish’mana aznei (Tehilim 92:8)– When my adversaries rise against me, my ears should hear [their words].” There is a Chassidic interpretation that Dovid prayed to Hashem that he maintain the moral strength to carefully listen to the rebuke of the people who were criticizing him, rather than ignore their words as those of ‘enemies.’ I ought not get defensive or reactionary, but rather reflect on the criticism of those who took the time to post the comments – and hopefully grow from reviewing them.…

In other words, Rabbi Horowitz removed any specific reference to individuals, Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, say, and institutions, like Torah Temmimah and Agudah, but left in any attacks on himself. This is far more open than other haredi sites, which for the most part heavily filter all comments. It’s a step in the right direction – a step other haredim are unlikely to follow.

The Jewish Student Union That Isn’t

David Kelsey has uncovered a bit of subterfuge out of the bastion of Modern Orthodoxy. The OU’s NCSY has apparently started a front organization, the Jewish Student Union, to lure unsuspecting high school students into NCSY and Orthodoxy. DK notes that NCSY and the Jewish Student Union share some staff, and that nowhere on the JSU’s website is the relationship between the JSU and NCSY and the OU mentioned.

How’s this for the new NCSY slogan? Abusive and deceptive kiruv – it’s not just for the haredeim any more™.

[I would also add a bit of history. Traditionally, JSUs have been student run and governed. The NCSY version is top down, with programs and leadership coming from adults long past school age. For those of us involved in the JSU movement years ago, this NCSY innovation perverts what JSUs are and are meant to be. And it does so piggybacking on the selfless work done by many students over generations. It is, in fact, a form of geneivat da’at. Just another reason not to trust NCSY.]

Did Moses Exist?

The new Encyclopedia Judaica is not so sure, citing the work of historians, archeologists and others. YU’s Rabbi Shalom Carmy responds this way:

Orthodox Rabbi Shalom Carmy of New York’s Yeshiva University grants that historians have so far found no documentation on Moses apart from the biblical writings. He doesn’t find this gap surprising and says scholars who make that argument fail to acknowledge that evidence corroborating ancient texts is very spotty.

Summarizing the Jewish divide, Carmy observes that liberals hold the biblical text "doubted until independently proven true," while for fellow traditionalists "it is true unless conclusively disproved."

Really? A less-than-6000-year-old-universe has been conclusively disproven, yet most of Rabbi Carmy’s "fellow traditionalists" still posit a less-than-6000-year-old-universe. And, one should ask, what would Rabbi Carmy do if large parts of the Torah were proven false? You know the answer to that question. Rabbi Carmy will continue to believe, will continue to maintain even those parts of the Torah are true, and will continue living his Orthodox life.

In Rabbi Carmy’s mind, the Torah can never be wrong and can never be proven wrong. Therefore all proofs are not conclusive. Follow that reasoning? It should sound very familiar to you, especially if you were ever a Moonie or wore orange robes.

Gaza More Than One Year On

Ha’aretz reports on the evacuees from Gaza:

…The sequence of events at Givat Hazan amply illustrates the bureaucracy and official foot-dragging regarding the evacuees’ permanent residences. The families originally wanted to settle in Egoz, but the site was vetoed out of environmental protection considerations. Givat Hazan was proposed as an alternative, but it is next to a firing range that the Israel Defense Forces is loath to relinquish. The families have been waiting for months for an answer, and the issue has reached as far as the Prime Minister’s Bureau.…

The government was willing to settle these people in permanent homes; all the settlers needed to do was leave Gaza on schedule and without rioting. They did neither, because their rabbis told them not to. This does not excuse byzantine "bureaucracy and official foot-dragging," and it does not get the government off the hook. Those of you who supported the Gaza riots and who urged Jews to stay in Gaza, now need to find ways to financially help these people. They made their lives immeasurably worse by fighting Disengagement. You encouraged them to fight. It’s time for you – rabbis included – to pony up.

Barbarians In Jews Clothing

Tommy Lapid writes:

That woman, the one who it turns out is named Yifat Alkobi, the Jewish woman that confronted, cursed, spat on and threatened her Arab neighbor in Hebron, she who is imprisoned in her own home, seemed somehow familiar to me.

Gradually, from the cobwebs of my childhood memories, I dredged up the image of a Hungarian neighbor in Novi Sad, who used to stand at the entrance to her home and curse us every time we went into the street – just like Yifat Alkobi.

When we decide, and rightly so, to never under any circumstances compare the behavior of Jews to that of Nazis, we are forgetting that anti-Semitism only reached its height at Auschwitz. It had existed, was active, frightening, harmful and disgusting – exactly like Alkobi’s image – in the years that preceded Auschwitz too. And behind shuttered windows hid terrified Jewish women, exactly like the Arab woman of the Abu-Isha family in Hebron.

It is unthinkable that the memory of Auschwitz should serve as a pretext to ignore the fact that living here among us are Jews that behave toward Palestinians exactly the way that German, Hungarian, Polish and other anti-Semites behaved toward Jews.

I am not referring to crematoria or pogroms, but rather to the
persecution, hounding, stone-throwing, undermining of livelihood, scare
tactics, spitting and contempt.

It was all of these things that made our lives in the Diaspora so
bitter and harrowing, even before they began the wholesale killing of
Jews.…

Lapid goes on to say that:

…I reacted with silence to this when I was justice minister too. We left the task of protest to the extreme leftist groups, who provoke well-deserved loathing from us all other days of the year.

We are familiar with the excuse of "We didn’t know." So, for the record: We do know.

We will never be able to forgive ourselves – our consciences won’t let us – and neither will our children if we do not make our army and police put an end to the Jewish barbarism in Hebron.