Political Commentaries
Excerpts from the Pope’s Speech at Yad Vashem
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009Pope Benedict XVI visits Yad Vashem Memorial, Jerusalem
“I will give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name … I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off” (Is 56:5).
This passage from the Book of the prophet Isaiah furnishes the two simple [...]
Journey through the Looking-glass: Pope Benedict XVI’s Interfaith Encounter in the Holy Land
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009One of the most interesting aspects of the Pope’s recent visit to Israel was the interfaith group that met with the Pope to discuss important issues and challenges that Jews, Christians and Muslims face as a faith community. Despite the good intentions of the forum’s organizers, the Pope’s desire to act as a facilitator for religious tolerance found some explosive road-blocks along the way, as they met at the holy site Norte Dame.
Following the pope’s visit to Yad Vashem, Palestinian leader Sheik Taysir Tamimi forced his way to the pulpit at an inter-religious event demanding that the pope to fight for “a just peace for a Palestinian state and for Israel to stop killing women and children and destroying mosques as she did in Gaza”; he asked the pope to “pressure the Israeli government to stop its aggression against the Palestinian people.”
Of course not a word was said about how these mosques were being used as military bases to attack Israeli citizens. Evidently, Tamimi doesn’t get what “Never Again” really means. Context is everything. But let us return back to our discussion.
Rather than confronting Sheik Taysir Tamimi, the Pope quietly listened and left the room. As one friend of mine wrote in his blog, “The biggest shame of it all is that the entire Muslim community he represented was not even embarrassed by or ashamed of this verbal explosion.”
Yet, this was not the only place where Pope Benedict XVI found some difficulties. After he spoke at the Yad Vashem, the Pope proclaimed that he had come: “to stand in silence before this monument, erected to honor the memory of the millions of Jews killed in the horrific tragedy of the Shoah … ‘May the names of these victims never perish! May their suffering never be denied, belittled or forgotten!”
Chabad’s Reaction to Pope Benedict XVI’s Visit to Israel
Monday, May 11th, 2009Rabbi Sholom DovBer Wolpe, leader of Chabad’s messianist faction in Israel, condemns the Church and Pope. As Israel prepares for Benedict XVI’s historic visit, head of SOS Israel believes ‘rabbis must not meet with the pope because the Catholic Church tortured and murdered Jews and helped the Nazis annihilate the Jewish people’ (Efrat Weiss, Ynet).
Question: What is your opinion about this reaction?
Answer: Rabbi Wolpe is an outspoken Habad rabbi who believes that the deceased Rebbe of Lubavitch is going to come back from the dead and redeem the Jewish people. His perspectives on a variety of Jewish and political issues are regarded by many Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews as provocative-even fanatical.
Personally, I think you need to look back at the eulogies Jewish leaders gave in honor of Pope Pius XII.
Numerous Jewish leaders, including Albert Einstein, Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Moshe Sharett, and Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog (who was a brilliant rabbinic scholar), expressed their public gratitude to Pius XII, praising him as a “righteous gentile,” who had saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.
In his meticulously researched and comprehensive 1967 book, Three Popes and the Jews, the Israeli historian and diplomat Pinchas Lapide, who had served as the Israeli Counsel General in Milan, and had spoken with many Italian Jewish Holocaust survivors who owed their life to Pius, provided the empirical basis for their gratitude, concluding that Pius XII “was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.” To this day, the Lapide volume remains the definitive work, by a Jewish scholar, on the subject.
“December of 1940, in an article published in Time magazine, the renowned Nobel Prize winning physicist Albert Einstein, himself a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, paid tribute to the moral “courage” of Pope Pius and the Catholic Church in opposing “the Hitlerian onslaught” on liberty:
“Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom: but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the Catholic Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly.”
Why don’t the Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox) in Israel honor Memorial Day?
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009Rarely do we have a chance in the American Jewish communities to hear a Jewish point of view that many of us would frankly find offensive. Yet, in the interest of communication, it is imperative we understand the words of the ultra-Orthodox critic-if for no other reason-because he forces us to think about what he is really saying. Oftentimes, it is the hidden and unspoken message that speaks louder than the audible one. Let me tell you about a story that happened this past week in Israel ….
In an interesting article that appeared in the YNET News from Israel, a Haredi rabbi attempts to explain the perennial question people in Israel always ask around this time of the year, when Israelis and Jews all around the world remember Israel’s fallen soldiers and victims of terror: Why don’t the Haredim (the Ultra-Orthnodox and Hassidic) communities observe Israeli Memorial Day or Independence holiday? Why don’t they stand up during the siren?” “Why are they so indifferent towards Independence Day?” And so on. Without missing a beat, the writer explains, “The Haredim simply don’t care … this day symbolizes nothing to them.” Unlike the Neturei Karta of Jerusalem, who mourn on this day much like many Palestinians do-howbeit for altogether reasons. In their eyes, all Jews must wait for the Messiah and not place their trust in a secular Jewish State.
The Religious Politics of Swine Flu
Tuesday, April 28th, 2009Government discussions come and go; often people seldom care what is being discussed; political channels like C-Span are not known for their high ratings. However, in Israel, government discussions at the Knesset are often the kind of material that a Jay Leno or a Saturday Night Live or Mad T.V. comedy writing team would definitely consider using as a part of their programming. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?
The defacto Health Minister, MK Rabbi Yakov Litzman, went on public record to say that the “Swine Flu” would be from here on in referred to as “Mexico Flu,” as pork is non-kosher and considered unclean under Jewish law. Was he being serious? Of course! We need not look at Saudi Arabia or Iran for religious pontifical statements—all we need to do is look in our very own backyard!
The Sins of Swiss Neutrality
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009During the week of Yom HaShoah, while Holocaust services were being observed all over the world, the United Nations reconvened its Durban Conference to discuss human rights issues and violations that are taking place throughout the world. Traditionally, the onus of blame has always been directed at Israel, as if all the other human rights issues of the world seem to pale, in comparison e.g., the genocide in Darfur, Jihadist terrorism, or the recent Russian invasion of Georgia and the theft of their land does not seem to matter.
Curiously, on Sunday April 19th, on the day that Adolf Hitler was born, the Swiss President Hans Rudolf-Merz decided to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran.
As all of you probably know, the Iranian leader is an avowed Holocaust denier; he was slated to give the keynote address before the United Nations forum known as “Durban II”, which was being held in Geneva.
A poet’s endorsement of the new Genesis commentary
Sunday, August 17th, 2008Reading Michael’s book, Birth and Rebirth in Genesis, A Timeless Theological Conversation, I am delighted to find that the heart-thoughts of our past conversations have made it to the Rabbi’s tongue. In these pages, he has uncovered the pulse in the book of Genesis; to feel it is to renew the longing which is the precondition for psychological growth; to hear it is to revive the memory of an origin and destination buried in each of us.
The book is a profound exploration of metaphors, symbols and structures in Genesis that embody the design of divine mind projected as source and destination, that through the unfolding of this ever increasing complexity we move toward the recovery of wholeness. Rabbi Samuel does this through an inter-disciplinary approach that calls upon the Biblical scholar’s command of history, tradition and philology, the humanist’s grasp of literary narrative, the application of anthropological/sociological resources of the social scientist, and the analytical psychologist’s understanding of developmental and archetypal patterns. His ability to synthesize the intelligence from these disciplines allows him to distinguish the Jungian archetype of The Shadow, that part of the dark material in the individual and collective psyches that must be integrated rather than projected, from the objective existence of Evil, “which has an ontology all of its own” derived from primordial chaos. He discusses The Fall not as the grand betrayal of God by man, but the true awakening of consciousness that can only proceed from the painful separation from the unconsciousness of Eden.
What is Wrong with Gaza?
Sunday, June 15th, 2008About ten days or so, the Middle East scholar Micah Halpern (micahhalpern.com) spoke at an Israel Bonds Dinner we had; he was articulate and most impressive! Later that week, I share some of the comments he made at our synagogue:
Natorei Karta in Tehran
Thursday, June 12th, 2008The subjects of Zionism , Messianism and the Holocaust have always fascinated me since my days as a student in the Lubavitch Seminary stretching back several decades. As many of you probably know, nearly all of the Hassidic rabbis (including Chabad) condemned Zionism because only the Messiah could bring back the Jews to their homeland. [...]
In God we trust. . . .
Thursday, June 12th, 2008Re: IN GOD WE TRUST
I have often wondered about the “In God we trust” issue. On the one hand it may refer to God, in which case, “In God we trust” is a pious motto and affirmation of faith. Some say, “In God we trust” implies that “all others pay cash!” But what if the [...]