Feb 1, 2015
Rabbi Gold's alternative editorial in Hamodia
Please enjoy the following correspondence between Rabbi Shalom Gold and the Hamodia newspaper.
Rabbi Gold wrote to the Hamodia newspaper after reading the following article.
before I post the letter from Rabbi Gold, I will just point out that on Shabbos when I read this editorial in Hamodia I was disgusted and felt it was very inappropriate.
Here is Rabbi Gold's letter to the editor:
To their credit, while Hamodia said they would not publish this letter, they did write back to Rabbi Gold with a response:
Rabbi Gold wrote to the Hamodia newspaper after reading the following article.
before I post the letter from Rabbi Gold, I will just point out that on Shabbos when I read this editorial in Hamodia I was disgusted and felt it was very inappropriate.
Here is Rabbi Gold's letter to the editor:
To the Editors of Hamodia
Your vicious and wholly unjustified editorial attack on Binyamin
Netanyahu (2 Shevat 5775 – 22 January 2015) sounded like something that would
be more appropriate for Haaretz or worse. I wonder if your rabbinic
board approved that transparent premeditated assault on the Prime Minister. How
can any religious Jew find fault with a call to French Jews to fulfill the
mitzvah of Yishuv Haaretz? You profaned the memories of the Kedoshim of Har Nof
by suggesting that Eretz Yisroel, France and any other place in the world are
identical.
In 1956 when I was learning in Ponovez, American citizens were
notified by the embassy that the Sixth Fleet would be arriving in Haifa to
evacuate anyone who wanted to leave. There were many terrorist attacks that
year by Fedayeen that infiltrated from Egyptian-held Gaza. This would later
culminate with the Sinai Campaign.
We asked the Mashgiach, Rav Yechezkel Levenstein what we should do.
He replied that he didn't know but stated unequivocally: "If the Chazon
Ish would be alive (he had passed away in 1953) he would definitely tell you to
stay in Eretz Yisroel." I'm quite certain he would not have said the same
about France.
The final paragraph of the editorial states:
Whether or not to leave France at
this time is a decision for each individual Jew in France to make. But for an
Israeli Prime Minister to issue such a call is wrong and highly
counterproductive. Netanyahu would do well by keeping his thoughts – and his
hands – to himself.
Fascinatingly enough, in the Jerusalem Post Magazine, page 37,
there is an article entitled "Aliya: A matter of choice" by Reuven
Hammer, who is not orthodox, that makes precisely the same points as your frum
editorial writer. Here are some Reuven Hammer selections:
It must also be admitted that there
is something ingenuous about telling people to come to Israel because they will
be safe here – when we have all seen that there is no less terror here than in
France. How many Jews have been killed in France over the past year or two by
Islamist terrorists, and how many were killed here?
We cannot ignore the recent
slaughter in a Jerusalem synagogue, the three yeshiva students who were
murdered and the various incidents involving Palestinian vehicles that ran over
residents in the capital this year. And it was not that long ago that so many
were killed by suicide bombers in buses and elsewhere; I did not feel very
secure then. Nor can we simply forget the rockets that rained down last summer.
Unfortunately, safety cannot be
guaranteed here, just as it cannot be guaranteed in Paris, London or New York.
Should Jews from France come here on
aliya? As a dedicated Zionist who left the comfort of the US to make aliya,
obviously I cannot be opposed to that. But on the other hand, I believe that
aliya should be a matter of personal choice – something done because one wishes
to be part of a Jewish state, to live where Jews are a majority and participate
in the renewal of Jewish sovereignty after 2,000 years.
On the page before in the Jerusalem Post, there is an article by
Rabbi Stewart Weiss, orthodox rabbi and good friend. Here are some selections.
He writes like a frummer Yid:
Perhaps most shocking of all – I
almost lost my lunch when I saw this, on international TV, yet! – was the
statement by certain European rabbinic "leaders" urging Jews not to
make any "rash" decisions. When asked by a CNN interviewer, "Are
you advising the Jewish population here to leave for Israel?" the rabbi
replied, with a straight face, "I am asking the Jews of France to remain
where they are and to build up our community.
Stewart Weiss
continues:
I close my eyes, the I hear the same
tragic statements being uttered in the Berlin of 1934, the Warsaw of 1941 and
the Budapest of 1943. "Just calm down, stay here and don't worry; it will
all be all right."
Have we learned nothing?!
Now no one suggests that life in
Israel is risk-free. We have our own unique set of problems, and face our own
dangers. But there is a major difference between Europe and Israel: We are
going in opposite directions.
Imagine two triangles: one standing
on its base; the other above it, inverted. The bottom triangle is Europe; if it
ever was a decent place for Jews to live, its hope and hospitality is rapidly
shrinking, and no amount of wishful thinking or misdirected Jewish money will
resurrect it. As Islam spreads its net over Europe, things will only get worse,
and Jews will be the first victims.
Israel, on the other hand, may have
begun as a tiny, beleaguered outpost in the desert, but it has grown
exponentially into a dynamic, thriving oasis of Jewish life and learning that
embodies the collective answer to billions of prayers over thousands of Years.
Our best years are still ahead of us.
Dear brothers and sisters of Europe:
Ignore the false prophets – Jewish a non – and gather up your courage, your
belongings and your families, and come to Israel. Granted, it will not be easy
leaving behind the grand sites of the continent.
But your return to your one, true
home, your native land, will be – for you and for us – the
greatest Arc de Triomphe.
Shame on you Hamodia. You sound precisely like Reuven Hammer but
really good Jews should write like Stewart Weiss.
One final point. The editorial left me with the distinct impression
that if Netanyahu had not gone to Paris the editorial would have sounded just
like this:
"World leaders gathered in
Paris to demonstrate against terrorism. The Prime Ministers of Mali, Bali,
Ruanda and Lower Slobovia marched hand in hand but there was no sighting of
Israel's Prime Minister. Doesn't he know that Paris' Jews were brutally killed
while buying challahs on Erev Shabbos? He is an embarrassment to Jews
worldwide. Abbas laid a wreath at the kosher grocery store, Holland spoke in
the Great Synagogue – yet not a sign of Netanyahu. He should have been there in
the front row. Well, he was most probably at home filming another infantile
video for his reelection campaign and had no time for the Jewish people."
End of imaginary editorial.
I suggest that Hamodia should apologize for that ugly editorial, or
was it maybe motivated by dirty politics?
Painfully,
Rabbi Sholom Gold,
Har Nof
To their credit, while Hamodia said they would not publish this letter, they did write back to Rabbi Gold with a response:
Dear Rabbi Gold,
Thank you for sharing your opinion on our editorial. The intention and purpose of the editorial was obviously to correct the exploitation of events by comments that may further inflame anti- Semitic sentiments. Prime Minister Netanyahu should have taken this in consideration. In fact, the people in the Bais Haknesses immediately reacted to Mr. Netanyahu comments by singing the Marseillaise - precisely for this reason.
Thank you again for giving attention to this important matter.
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Hamodia is right on the money....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.truetorahjews.org/issues/franceattack
& from Rav Avigdor Miller:
and the proponents of the State of Israel – attempt to kindle a fire under the Jews in all lands in order to make their position untenable so that they emigrate to augment the population of the new State. (For example, Ben Gurion's statement in the N.Y. Times 4/22/1963. "Jews are in truth a separate element in the midst of the peoples among whom they live an element that cannot be completely absorbed by any nation. for this reason no nation can calmly tolerate it in its midst").(Sing You Righteous, #48)
346. Let us see what they have accomplished.
They have succeeded in gaining for Jews the hostility of the entire Arab world and of most of the “Third World” nations. They have fomented bad relations with Russia and to some extent with France and Mexico. They have created animosity in the United States and elsewhere.
347. These achievements are of small benefit to Jews, but the Israelis and their Zionist proponents are persistent, because they hope to make all lands untenable for Jews (as they did in all Moslem countries) so that Jews be forced to settle in the State of Israel which is losing the population race against the local Arabs (one million Jewish babies have been slain by the abortion in the State of Israel from 1948 to 1976, equal to the number of Jewish children slain by Hitler). -Awake My Glory
I dont know if you were serious or being funny, but bringing a proof from True Torah Jews, which is a Neturei Karta website, kinda just strengthens my point
DeleteActually no the Arabs are not winning the population race - actually the Jews have taken the lead, and not just among the Haredi and religious. Don't just quote statistics from 30 years ago, do your homework.
DeleteThis Rabbi from Bayswater runs a site that is Satmar-oriented and anti anti anti -Israel/Jewish.
DeleteRabbis Gold and Weiss are way off base. The criticism of Netanyahu is not in his encouraging aliyah, but his exploiting of a tragedy and the nervousness of European Jews for the safety of their families to do so. That was wrong and should be condemned as such. Fact is, it is not safer in EY than in France. That is a statistical fact. If you want safety, the US is safer for Jews than either place.
ReplyDeleteAnd R. Weiss's invocation of the holocaust is utterly obnoxious. Here is something these Zionist rabbis all like to ignore. In 1942, it was widely believed that the Nazis, y"msh, were going to break through the British lines in Egypt, conquer what was then called Palestine, and wipe out the Jewish population. The Jewish agency had a plan that the Jewish population (some 500,000) would gather at Har Carmel in a Masada-like suicidal defiance. Be chasdei Hashem that did not happen, but no one has any guarantees that such cannot happen in EY (as the prior churbans have shown).
The notion that moving to EY is a guarantee of personal safety is utterly obnoxious, has no basis in our tradition, and is contrary to the simple facts we see today. Shame on these "rabbis" for arguing otherwise.
I agree. I have written in the past that "safety" is not a reason to be used when trying to convince people to make aliyah
DeleteI also agree. And I vehemently disagree with the notion that "really good Jews" - whatever that means - should think or write a certain way, should hold or not hold specific opinions, or should by definition disagree with people who are seemingly not worthy of the designation "really good Jews." This kind of criticism is just a frum or Zionist version of the obnoxious idea of political correctness that should have no place among thinking people.
DeleteI heard someone on the radio say that someone once asked Rav Kook why they should leave Poland where they feared anti-semitic attacks if Arabs in Israel might attack them. Supposedly he said, There are killings/attacks there and here, true. But there, the suffering is like the suffering of old people who are dying, the suffering is for nothing. In Israel the suffering is like birth pangs - we are suffering to build the land and welcome Moshiach.
ReplyDeleteWe haven't shaken the pre WW2 mentalities - if we could take what was holy but throw out the korbanos/sheep to the slaughter attitude we would be better off.
ReplyDeleteRafi, I agree with you and Rabbis Gold and Weiss. And I'm really disgusted but not all that surprised that Hamodia didn't publish Rabbi Gold's letter. They are firmly in the 1930's telling their followers to stay in Germany.
ReplyDeleteso a charedi publication criticizes a zionist for encouraging jews to leave europe for israel
ReplyDeleteare we meant to be surprised?
lets not forget that in the 1930's "they"discouraged people from leaving europe too
that ended well didnt it?
Dear Mrs. Lichtenstein,
ReplyDeleteI found your editorial re: Bibi attending the rally in France severely harsh.
1. Is the assumption that he attended only since it was close to election time?
2. Would it have been preferable for him to stay in Israel?
3. Pushing ahead is never proper protocol, yet waving and smiling to greet friends may be admirable.
4. I am in agreement when the French President is in attendance, stressing "aliyah & Israel is home" may be inappropriate YET perhaps that was a nechema for the Yidden of the shul to hear and gave them hope to continue. Would it have been proper to say that if the President was NOT there?
Was there an underlying message that you wanted to relay, Mrs. Caren V. May