From Skinhead to Haredi Jew: A Tale of Personal Transformation

In the previous posts, we touched upon the dynamics of the shadow archetype that hides the inner person that exists inside us. The key to a optimum psychological state of health requires that we get understand the hidden depths of our souls and psyches. Here is a remarkable story about coming to terms with one’s shadow, compliments of  NY Times and the Failedmessiah–two excellent websites.

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From Skinhead to Orthodox Jew

Adam Lach for The New York Times

Pawel in the Warsaw synagogue. A former truck driver and neo-Nazi skinhead, Pawel, 33, has since become an Orthodox Jew, covering his shaved head with a yarmulke and shedding his fascist ideology for the Torah.

By DAN BILEFSKY
Published: February 24, 2010

WARSAW — When Pawel looks into the mirror, he can still sometimes see a neo-Nazi skinhead staring back, the man he once was before he covered his shaved head with a yarmulke, shed his fascist ideology for the Torah and renounced violence and hatred in favor of God.

Adam Lach for The New York Times

Pawel in the Warsaw synagogue. A former truck driver and neo-Nazi skinhead, Pawel, 33, has since become an Orthodox Jew, covering his shaved head with a yarmulke and shedding his fascist ideology for the Torah.

“I still struggle every day to discard my past ideas,” said Pawel, a 33-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jew and former truck driver, noting with little irony that he had to stop hating Jews in order to become one.

“When I look at an old picture of myself as a skinhead, I feel ashamed. Every day I try and do teshuvah,” he said, using the Hebrew word for repentance. “Every minute of every day. There is a lot to make up for.”

Pawel, who also uses his Hebrew name Pinchas, asked not to use his last name for fear that his old neo-Nazi friends could target him or his family.

Pawel is perhaps the most unlikely example of a Jewish revival under way in Poland in which hundreds of Poles, a majority of them raised as Catholics, are either converting to Judaism or discovering Jewish roots submerged for decades in the aftermath of World War II.

Before 1939, Poland was home to more than three million Jews; over 90 percent of them were killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. A majority of those who survived emigrated. Of the fewer than 50,000 who remained in Poland, many either abandoned or hid their Judaism during decades of Communist oppression in which political pogroms against Jews persisted.

But Rabbi Michael Schudrich, the chief rabbi of Poland, noted that 20 years after the fall of Communism, a historical reckoning was finally taking place. He said Pawel’s metamorphosis illustrated just how far the country had come.

“Before 1989 there was a feeling that it was not safe to say ‘I am a Jew,”’ he said. “But today, there is a growing feeling that Jews are a missing limb in Poland.”

Five years ago, the rabbi noted, there were about 250 families in the Jewish community in Warsaw; today there are 600. During that period, the number of rabbis serving the country has grown from one to eight. The cafes and bars of the old Jewish quarter in Krakow brim with young Jewish converts listening to Israeli hip hop music. Even several priests have decided to become Jewish.

Pawel’s transformation from baptized Catholic skinhead to Jew began in a bleak neighborhood of concrete tower blocks in Warsaw in the 1980s. Pawel said he and his friends reacted to the gnawing uniformity of socialism by embracing anti-Semitism and an extreme right-wing ideology. They shaved their heads, carried knives, and greeted each other with the raised right arm gesture of the Nazi salute.

“Oi Vey, I hate to admit it, but we would beat up local Jewish and Arab kids and homeless people,” Pawel said on a recent day in the Nozyk Synagogue here. “We sang about stupid stuff like Satan and killing people. We believed that Poland should only be for Poles.”

One day, he recalled, he and his friends skipped school and took a train to Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp, near Krakow. “We made jokes that we wished the exhibition had been bigger and that the Nazis had killed even more Jews,” he said.

He says his staunch Catholic parents, a teacher and a businessman, suspected he was a skinhead, but hoped it was just a phase.

“I never got caught for what I did or got arrested, so my parents didn’t realize things were so bad,” he said. “But they would get stressed out when I would come home in the morning wounded and covered in blood.”

Even as Pawel embraced the life of a neo-Nazi, he said, he had pangs that his identity was built on a lie. His churchgoing father seemed overly fond of quoting the Old Testament. His grandfather hinted about past family secrets.

“One time when I told my grandfather that Jews were bad, he exploded and screamed at me, ‘If I ever hear you say such a thing again under my roof, you will never come back!”’

Pawel joined the army and married a fellow skinhead at age 18. But his sense of self changed irrevocably at the age of 22, when his wife, Paulina, suspecting she had Jewish roots, went to a genealogical institute and discovered Pawel’s maternal grandparents on a register of Warsaw Jews, along with her own grandparents.

When Pawel confronted his parents, he said, they broke down and told him the truth: that his maternal grandmother was Jewish and had survived the war by being hidden in a monastery by a group of nuns. His paternal grandfather, also a Jew, had seven brother and sisters, most of whom had perished in the Holocaust.

“I went to my parents and said, ‘What the hell?’ Imagine, I was a neo-Nazi and heard this news. I couldn’t look in the mirror for weeks. It was a shock and it still is a shock to me,” he said. “My parents were the typical offspring of Jewish survivors of the war, who decided to conceal their Jewish identity to try and protect their family.” Continue reading “From Skinhead to Haredi Jew: A Tale of Personal Transformation”

The Hasidic origin of “Simcha Monica” formerly known as, “Santa Monica”

Some time ago,  I had a friendly discussion with Rabbi Yisrael Goldberg, a young Chabadnik who lives in Israel. In the course of our talk, he mentioned that in California, the late Rabbi Avraymo Levitanski   (a former teacher of mine) had recently died. Avraymo was a great man; he was a brilliant scholar as well and an exceptional human being. He was definitely one of the finest Chabadniks I have ever known. On a light note,  Yisrael told me how Avraymo always referred to Santa Monica as “Simcha Monica,” and San Diego, or, San Francisco as “S. Diego and S. Fransisco.” The name, “Simcha Monica” was a new designation I hadn’t heard before; Avraymo’s designation actually made me chuckle. Where did these ideas originate in the first place? If my memory serves me well, I believe the late Rebbe was fond of using these unusual designations.

By the way, “Simcha Monica” roughly means, “Monica is happy.” I am not sure whether this name was given during the time of the Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, I suspect Monica Lewinsky is not too happy about that chapter of her life.  Actually, the real reason Monica is happy has nothing to do with Bill Clinton. Historically, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the ORIGINAL  Monica  (331 – 387 CE ), Monica was both the Algerian Christian saint and  mother of Augustine of Hippo, the greatest Christian theologian of Late Antiquity. Augustine, ex-lover and whore-monger extraordinaire, loved extolling his mother’s virtues in his Confessions.

No, I don’t think the Chabad rabbis are referring to St. Monica either.

If my sense of humor seems off-colored, it’s because God speaks to me in the language of humor and irony.  Let us return to our topic at hand. At first blush, it seemed there might be some scriptural support for this unusual practice among the Chabad rabbis. Consider two verses: “Give heed to all that I have told you. Never mention the name of any other god; it shall not be heard from your lips” (Exod. 23:13) and “There must be no foreign god among you; you must not worship an alien god” (Psa. 81:10).

Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

But then I started thinking; it seems that the Chabad rabbis are rather inconsistent because the names found in the Gregorian calendar are actually based on the names of pagan deities of antiquity. If  no other gods or goddesses are to be  mentioned, how can Chabad rabbis refer to the name of actual deities whenever they use a secular calendar or at least refer to it in their daily conversation? The inconsistencies ought to create some cognitive dissonance among the steadfast among the Chabad rabbis; maybe they will say in the privacy of their homes: Could it be that we are wrong?

Here are some examples:

May derives from the Roman fertility goddess named Maia.

April is traditionally identified with Venus. April  may possibly derive from Aprilis, the Etruscan Apru, which is also a diminutive of Aphrodite–the Greek goddess of beauty and fertility. The Latin verb aperire, “to open,”  and is related to the Greek name for spring  ἁνοιξις (opening),  the time of the year when spring begins bloom with flowers and trees.

June alludes to Juno, the Roman goddess who served as protector and special counselor of the state.

Indeed, several other examples can be mentioned, but I believe we have made our point perfectly clear. If the Chabad rabbis used Hebrew names for the months, that would make a lot more sense. Then again, even the Hebrew calendar refers to the Sumerian and Babylonian deity known as Tammuz, who is mentioned in biblical times (cf. Eze. 8:14).

Who exactly was Tammuz? He was the chief Sumerian deity, also known as Dumazi–the god of fertility, of vegetation and agriculture, of death and resurrection, and the patron of shepherds. Dumzai was both the son and consort of Ashtar (Inanna). In the Sumerian mythic pantheon, Tammuz represented the annual vegetation cycle of death during the heat of summer and the rebirth of life with the coming of the fall and spring rains, as mythically recounted in the Akkadian poem, “Inanna’s Descent into the Netherworld.”

When our ancestors went to Babylon, they adopted the Babylonian names of the months during the 70 year exile in Babylon, which also  included Tammuz!  The 17th of Tammuz is a special fast day in Jewish tradition. I suspect that the ancient Jews either viewed Tammuz much like we now view the days of the week.  If it didn’t historically bother our people in times of antiquity, then why should it bother us whether S. Monica is Santa Monica?

Continue reading “The Hasidic origin of “Simcha Monica” formerly known as, “Santa Monica””

A Buddhist Version of the Edenic Fall?

While there are several versions of the Fall narrative in ancient Semitic literature, it is not widely known that a mythic memory of a primordial Fall is also recorded in the Oriental world and this phenomenon is especially interesting when examined from the perspective of Jung’s theory of the archetype; i.e., the common and universal patterns of thought that spontaneously appear in the stories and myths gathered from all around the world.

Although the Buddhist tradition does not speak of a Fall in the Western theological sense, it does speak of a state of Original Ignorance that occurred at the dawn of human creation. From ignorance came greed, anger, jealousy, and pride; and from these emotional energies come misdeeds that lead to suffering. The first sin among the ancients that perpetuated the Fall was the prejudice of appearance—those of brighter skin began to look down on those with darker skin. Ignorance led to the formation of gender, which eventually gave rise to desire and passion. Continue reading “A Buddhist Version of the Edenic Fall?”

Life is a Series of Rebirths

As I have written on other occasions, life is a series of rebirths. What we start out in life is often different from what we ultimately become. Let me tell you a well-known story that illustrates this point about the life of Moses. The origin of this story is unknown, but I have seen it mentioned in many books containing medieval rabbinic tales about the famous personalities of the Bible.

Here is how it begins . . .

The whole world was shaken and enthralled by the miracle of the Exodus. The name of Moses was on everyone’s lips. Tidings of the great miracle reached also the wise king of Arabistan. The king summoned to him his best painter and bade him go to Moses, to paint his portrait and bring it back to him. When the painter returned, the king gathered together all his sages, wise in physiognomy (the art of judging human character from facial features), and asked them to define by the portrait the character of Moses, his qualities, inclinations, habits, and the source of his miraculous power.

“King,” answered the sages, “this is the portrait of a man cruel, haughty, greedy of gain, possessed by desire for power, and by all the vices which exist in the world.” These words roused the king’s indignation. “How can it be possible,” he exclaimed, “that a man whose marvelous deeds ring through the whole world should be of such a kind?”

A dispute began between the painter and the sages. The painter affirmed that the portrait of Moses had been painted by him quite accurately, while the sages maintained that Moses’ character had been unerringly determined by them according to the portrait.

The wise king of Arabistan decided to verify which of the disputing parties was right, and he himself set off for the camp of Israel. At the first glance the king became convinced that the face of Moses had been faultlessly portrayed by the painter. On entering the tent of the man of God he knelt down, bowed to the ground, and told Moses of the dispute between the artist and the sages.

“At first, until I saw thy face,” said the king, “I thought it must be that the artist had painted thy image badly, for my sages are men very much experienced in the science of physiognomy. Now I am convinced that they are quite worthless men and that their wisdom is vain and worthless.”

“No,” answered Moses, “it is not so; both the painter and the physiognomists are men highly skilled, and both parties are right. Be it known to thee that all the vices of which the sages spoke have indeed been assigned to me by nature and perhaps to an even higher degree than was found by them from my portrait. But I struggled with my vices by long and intense efforts of the will and gradually overcame and transcended them within myself until all opposed to them became my second nature. And in this lies my greatest pride.” Continue reading “Life is a Series of Rebirths”

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and the Rescue of Ethiopian Jewry (Part 1)

When I was looking at the numbers of Ethiopian Jews living in Israel, I felt very proud of those rabbis and Jewish leaders that knew how to respond in times of great crisis. Jewish ethics teaches that anyone who saves one life is considered as though he saves an entire world.

The collaborative effort of Jewish leaders across denominational lines accomplished one of the great feats of Exodus in our day. Rarely has the Jewish community of Israel and the Diaspora shown such unity–I only wish we could replicate the experience in other areas of Jewish life today.

One particular American rabbinic leader, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (1885-1986, Lithuania), acted as a catalyst  in mobilizing other rabbinic leaders to come to aid. This Lithuanian  rabbi proved to be the real Moses of his day. Here is a little bit of background information for readers who may not have heard about this great man. Widely regarded as America Orthodoxy’s greatest Halachic scholar, Rav Feinstein’s  humanity exceeded his vast encyclopedic grasp of Jewish law. When he died, over 300,000 people in Israel attended his funeral–the largest number seen since the Mishnaic era. He will long  be remembered as one of Haredi Judaism’s greatest leaders.

Rav Feinstein also distinguished himself as an expert in Jewish medical ethics; in addition, he was famous for knowing how to resolve labor and business disputes; he was the first Haredi rabbi to accept brain death as a viable definition of death at a time when no other rabbi did. Although he was not a religious pluralist, Rav Moshe (as he was affectionately called by many of his students) knew how to respond to the endangered Ethiopian Jewish community and added his voice to those participating in their rescue. Thinking ahead, Rav Moshe also worked with other leading Israeli rabbis in  laying out a practical Halachic plan that would accelerate their reintegration within the Jewish people. [1]

Perhaps Rav Moshe’s best legacy is his multi-volume exposition dealing with the thousands of questions people asked concerning Jewish law  that rabbinic and historical scholars refer to as “Responsa.”

What exactly is Responsa? Here is a brief explanation.

Without the aid of an Internet,  rabbis managed to develop a literary  phenomenon, viz. the rabbinical correspondence that is better known today as “Responsa.” About 1700 years ago, the great rabbinic scholars known as the “Geonim” (savants) of Persia corresponded with the rabbis of North Africa and Spain, and exchanged ideas and thoughts on a variety of topics affecting their communities. This genre of literature constitutes one of the most fertile sources of information for Jewish life in the middle ages. Maimonides, Rav Hai Gaon, Ramban and countless other luminaries sustained an ongoing relationship with other Jewish communities that were across the ancient world. Continue reading “Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and the Rescue of Ethiopian Jewry (Part 1)”

A Remarkable Story About Napoleon’s Horse

Byline: Jan 29th, 3:30 PM

Let me tell you an anecdote about Napoleon Bonaparte’s narrow escape from the Suez. His adversary was not an army, but Mother Nature herself! At eight 8:00 AM, when the tide was low, Napoleon went to visit the legendary “Fountains of Moses.” After visiting the springs and speaking with some Arab sheiks, he started to return. Darkness had fallen; the tide was rapidly rising.

Local chiefs told him that it would be wise to camp along the shore until the morning, but Napoleon refused to listen to their practical advice. Gallantly, he called his Arab guide to lead the way. Nervously, the guide took the wrong road down the shore, wasting 15 minutes of  precious time. When they were no more than half-way down the shore, the fast moving tide rushed forward with what seemed to be lightning speed. The little troop fell into disarray, as the riders scattered in different directions. Only Napoleon and his guide were left alone. As the waters began to rise, Napoleon’s horse panicked and refused to move.

One of Napoleon’s tall escorts rushed into the waters, and carried Napoleon upon his shoulders while holding on the tail of the Arab’s horse.  In Dumas’ own words, the destiny of the world might have been altered by the death of a single man carried like a baby in the arms of a big fellow who happened to be his guard. Finally, the escort reached the other shore and gave a cry of relief. Only Napoleon’s  horse had drowned.  Napoleon was deeply shaken, he realized that he might have perished the same way Pharaoh did, in days of old.

At one point Napoleon remarked, “If the ministers of France would have seen this, they would have given one dandy sermon!”

After Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena some seventeen years, he told the story to Count Emanual De Las Cases, the French historian best known as the recorder of Napoleon’s last conversations on St. Helena, and wrote it in his Mémorial de Sainte-Hélene. The story suggests that if an experienced general like Napoleon could have had such trouble and barely escape with his life, all much more so it must have been for so many thousands of Israelites to cross the Sea of Reeds unharmed.

Of course this raises a much more serious question: How many Israelites actually crossed the Sea of Reeds? Inquiring minds want to know … stay tuned for more!

A Midrashic Deconstruction of the Miracle at the Sea

There is a well-known Midrash that tells of God’s reluctance to perform the miracle until He saw Israel make a move itself to deal with the prodigious problem.

All the tribes of Israel were afraid to jump into the water. Each tribe competed with the other in vacillation and retreat from the joint destiny of the nation.  Finally Nahshon ben Aminadav, a prince of the tribe of Judah, fearlessly, he jumped in, and then the members of his tribe followed, and soon all the people joined in.

An early but lesser-known Halachic Midrash tells the story differently: All the tribes competed with each other to be the first to plunge into the Red Sea, to show the way to the others.  In the heat of the competition, the tribe of Benjamin reached the water first. [1] But the message of this Midrash emphasizes the joint courage manifested by a combined effort of all of Israel helped make the miracle a reality.

Rather than passively relying on faith alone, the community stood together. When a faith community work toward a common purpose, great and unexpected things can occur for contrary to Euclid, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. Moderns refer to this concept as “synergy.”

It is unfortunate that of the two Midrashim, the first is better known.  Yet, the first Midrash is, after all, a tragic commentary on the lack of faith within Israel, which in turn prevented them from  working together in finding solutions to the nation’s immediate problems.

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Notes:

[1]For a complete compendium of this material, see R. Menachem Kasher’s Torah Shelmah, Vol. 4 pp. 67-68.

The Human Face commands: Save Haiti!

We had a class Shabbat program last night at the synagogue, followed by a dinner. All the classes participated in the service. Here is a short talk I gave to the  children and their parents.

In Judaism, there are many blessings that are said over many different kinds of mitzvot. One might ask, why isn’t a blessing said before giving tzedakah? The simplest answer that comes in mind is because the poor person might die by the time a giver gets around to saying the blessing. In other words, when people are in need of dire help, one must act–and not pray!

As we read this week’s Torah portion, the idea of getting involved in the rescue of others is a recurring theme throughout much of Exodus. For those of us reading the beginning chapters of the book of Exodus, this anecdote has an important message–especially as we honor the memory of the great civil rights leader, Martin Luther King. King–who perhaps more so than anyone else–inspired me to choose the rabbinate as my life vocation.

Judaism teaches us that we have a duty to assist those in need. Our response has ultimate consequences on those around us. We can choose to be part of a solution, or by not acting, we become part of the problem.  As Jews we know this very well, for this is the way we have been treated by civilizations since the dawn of our history beginning in Egypt over 3000 years ago.

Yes, this point is the scarlet thread that permeates every chapter of the Exodus story. Last week, we read about  the young prince of Egypt, who saw an Egyptian taskmaster whipping the Hebrew slaves; at that moment, Moses made a decision. He decided to get involved and so he killed the Egyptian assailant.

As the descendants of those who preserve the memory of the Exodus, how can we do anything less? Memory of the Exodus is never something that is passive; it is active. To preserve and continue the message of Exodus, we honor our tradition’s values by living an ethical life when it comes to helping others. The Torah beckons us to be liberators whenever it comes to the aid of those living on the ragged edge of life. Granted, the story of the Exodus deals with human oppression, but its spiritual and ethical message applies no less to the victims of a natural catastrophe as well. When you take a look at the world today, we witness the devastating earthquake that has killed over 50,000 people in Haiti a couple of days ago. For these poor people, the ten plagues came all at once.

As soon as Israel heard about the tragedy, it sent its best workers and scores of doctors to help provide relief, just like it has in other catastrophes.  Sure enough the Israeli newspapers reported the story: “Israel sends aid as Haiti braces for massive death toll in quake. The Israeli Foreign Ministry on Wednesday prepared a rescue team for departure to the disaster-stricken country. The rescue team includes elite army corps engineers and medical corps ready to deploy field hospital, the Israeli consulate in New York reported.”

Israel has always helped out whenever a catastrophe occurs—it does so because its ethics demands that it live by the principles of the Torah; indeed, one of the most important Hebrew words we find in the Bible is hineni– “here I am,” I am ready to help; I am ready to respond. In the face of so much death, our tradition also teaches us to “choose life,” whenever possible.  Lastly, we also have an imperative never to stand by the blood of our fellow human beings that is being threatened by danger—whether human or natural evils like the one we are witnessing today. Saving one life is like saving an entire world.

As a people of the Exodus, we are commanded no less. We are all a part of the human family and God expects us to follow His example in rescuing innocents. According to philosopher and theologian Emmanuel Lévinas, the human face commands us to respond ethically without words; God’s voice can be heard from the survivors of the Haiti disaster, calling us for help and participation. As with every story of Divine redemption of the Bible, God requires human participants to do their part. For there to be an Exodus, God needs a Moses, an Aaron, and a Miriam. For the millions of people living in the earthquake ravaged country of Haiti, God needs us to help…

Here is contact information for some of the better known organizations involved in the relief effort.

American Red Cross National Headquarters
2025 E Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006
www.Redcross.org

AmeriCares
88 Hamilton Ave.
Stamford, CT USA 06902
www.Americares.org

American Jewish World Service
45 West 36th Street, 11th floor
New York, NY 10018-7904
www.AJWS.org

Aspects of Holocaust Theology: The Theology of Retribution–Part II

Byline: Feb. 15, 2010 4:00 PM

In the previous section we examined a selection of texts from the Likuttei Diburim literature; like his father-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn wrote that the Holocaust in essence was a “necessary surgery” in order to save the Jewish people.  Here is an article that appeared in the Israeli paper, HaAretz, which bears this out.

“God as Surgeon”

By Yehuda Bauer

The panel discussion on “Haredim and the Holocaust” recently aired on Channel 1 should have included the views of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Chabad’s so-called “King Messiah”), Rabbi Menachem Schneersohn. On the subject of the Holocaust, the Rebbe wrote as follows: “It is clear that ‘no evil descends from Above,’ and buried within torment and suffering is a core of exalted spiritual good. Not all human beings are able to perceive it, but it is very much there. So it is not impossible for the physical destruction of the Holocaust to be spiritually beneficial. On the contrary, it is quite possible that physical affliction is good for the spirit.”[4]

Schneersohn goes on to compare God to a surgeon who amputates a patient’s limb in order to save his life. The limb “is incurably diseased … The Holy One Blessed Be He, like the professor-surgeon…seeks the good of Israel, and indeed, all He does is done for the good…. In the spiritual sense, no harm was done, because the everlasting spirit of the Jewish people was not destroyed.”

The Rebbe’s stance, therefore, is clear: The Holocaust was a good thing because it lopped off a disease-ravaged limb of the Jewish people – in other words, the millions who perished in the Holocaust – in order to cleanse the Jewish people of its sins. There is logic in this theology: If God is indeed omnipotent, knows everything and controls the world (“God presides over the trials of 4 billion people all day long, every day without a moment’s rest”), which implies divine supervision on an individual and collective basis, then the Holocaust took place not only with his knowledge, but also with his approval.

Schneersohn does not accept the idea of  “hester panim,” or God’s face being turned away, to explain why He was not present when 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered. According to some religious Jews, this hester panim was a consequence of man’s sins, and, above all, the sins of the Jewish people. Schneersohn says that God was there, and that he wanted to Holocaust to happen. But because it is inconceivable, in his view, for God to commit evil, he portrays the Holocaust as a positive event, all the more so for the Jews.

After this text was published in the summer of 1980, kicking up a storm, Chabad claimed it was based on an inaccurate Hebrew translation of talks that the Rebbe delivered in Yiddish. The Rebbe, they said, had no idea his remarks were being published. It seems hard to believe Schneersohn would not go over every word published in his name, let alone a text put out in Hebrew by Machon Lubavitch in Kfar Chabad.

In fact, there is a document written by the Rebbe himself, in Hebrew, which bears his statements about the Holocaust. The late Chaika Grossman, a leader of the underground in the Bialystok ghetto, who survived the war and served as a Knesset member for several terms, published an article in Hamishmar newspaper on August 22, 1980, quoting Schneersohn and expressing her profound shock at his words. On August 28, 1980, the Rebbe sent her a reply on his personal stationary. The letter, apparently typewritten, contains a number of corrections in his own handwriting, and is signed by him. In it, the Rebbe confirms everything in the published text.

His remarks, Schneersohn explained, were based on the Torah. Hitler was a messenger of God in the same sense that Nebuchadnezzar is called “God’s servant” in the Book of Jeremiah (chapter 25). The “surgery” he spoke of was such a massive corrective procedure that the suffering (i.e., the murder of the Jews) was minor compared to its curative effect.

I was invited to take part in this television debate, but my appearance was canceled at the last moment, perhaps because of my opinions on the subject. The truth is, there are no “Haredim.” There are Haredi groups and Haredi individuals, and their conduct during and after the Holocaust took different forms. Since the Holocaust, Jews have wrestled with this issue and continue to do so. Rabbi Schneersohn’s views are one of many.

But Chabad is a large and influential Hasidic dynasty. It has a messiah who lived and died, and many look forward to his resurrection. In this respect, Chabad is a kind of semi-Christian movement. Therefore it is important to know what its leader said. The “King Messiah” did not deny the Holocaust. He justified it.

(More to follow)

Aspects of Holocaust Theology: The Theology of Retribution–Part I

Despite being saved by Zionists and secular Jews, Satmar leader Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum pinpoints the chief cause of the Holocaust–on the Zionists!

Because of our sinfulness we have suffered greatly, suffering as bitter as wormwood, worse than any Israel has know since it became a people…In former times, whenever troubles befell Jacob, the matter was pondered and reasons sought–which sin had brought the troubles about–so that we could make amends and return to the Lord, may He be blessed…But in our generation one need not look far for the sin responsible for our calamity…The heretics have made all kinds of efforts to violate these oaths, to go up by force and to seize sovereignty and freedom by themselves, before the appointed time…[They] have lured the majority of the Jewish people into awful heresy, the like of which as not been seen since the world was created…And so it is no wonder that the Lord has lashed out in anger…And there were also righteous people who perished because of the iniquity of the sinners and corrupters, so great was the [divine] wrath.[1]

Rabbis Chaim Ozer Grodzinsky, in 1939, also stated that the Nazi persecution of the Jews was the fault of non-Orthodox Jews.[2] Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn of Lubavitch also believed that God punished the Jews for embracing assimilation. According to Rabbi Y.Y., there were two causes why the Holocaust occurred: (1) assimilation, as seen in the wholesale abandonment of Jewish ritual observance (2) Zionism. For the Rebbe of Lubavitch, it was inconceivable that God would work something so miraculous as return to the Land of Israel through secular people who not only failed to observe the traditions, but also scoffed at those who did. Schneersohn writes in his Likutei Dibburim:

“Question: Who is punishing the Jewish people, and why? And every individual must himself arrive at the real answer: The current predicament is the same as it has always been, in every instance in which the Jewish people “did evil in the eyes of G-d.” Each such case was followed by a famine or an epidemic or a wartime crisis — until the people returned to G-d and were saved…

Is it conceivable that people who desecrate Shabbos and eat treifos and so on will overpower (so to speak) the Will of G-d, Who constantly desires that Eretz Yisrael should be a land of Torah and mitzvos, and that Jews in all other lands too should observe Torah and mitzvos? Realize that life and death are in your hands. And we must all keep in mind that “the hearts of kings and states¬ men are in the Hand of G-d.” The Jewish people will be saved not by statesmen nor by presidents nor by kings, but by G-d’s Will, which will act only when we return in teshuvah. It is commonly observed that when a freethinker or even a G-dless individual stands at the bedside of a desperately ill husband or wife or beloved only child, and the doctors say that G-d alone can help, the latent Jewish spark is wakened and this individual too turns to H im in prayer. Jewry is a desperately ill patient in need of great mercy. No Jew in any country can be certain of his life, and of course not certain of his property. American millionaires and bankers and prosperous businessmen would do well to draw a lesson from the current state of the migrants: they,too, were once millionaires and bankers and prosperous businessmen . . .

Fellow Jews! Things are grim. This is the dense and gloomy darkness that precedes the dawning of Jewry’s sun, with a complete Redemption through our righteous Mashiach. In the meantime it is dark. The one ray of hope is teshuvah — observing Shabbos and the laws of Family Purity and the other practical obligations, and bringing up one’s children in kosher Talmud Torah schools and yeshivos. Fellow Jews! Vigilantly observe the laws of Family Purity, and Family Purity  will vigilantly watch over your children.“[3]

Back to the Future

Today, Haredi Orthodox (ultra-Orthodox rabbis) warn that a failure to follow Orthodox interpretations of religious law will cause God to send another Holocaust. In past years, Rabbi Eliezer Menachem Schach, one of the most prestigious leaders of the Lithuanian yeshiva Orthodoxy in Israel until his death in 2001, also made this claim on the eve of the 1991 Gulf War. He stated that there would be a new Holocaust in punishment for the abandonment of religion and “desecration” of Shabbat in Israel.

Shach’s perspective is not at all unique either among today’s Haredi community. On Aug, 6th, 2000,  Rabbi Ovadia Yosef,  the leader of Israel’s biggest ultra-Orthodox political party, said the six million Jews who perished in the Nazi Holocaust died because they were reincarnations of sinners in previous generations. Yosef called the Nazis “evil” and the victims “poor people,” but he concluded that the six million “were reincarnations of the souls of sinners, people who transgressed and did all sorts of things which should not be done. They had been reincarnated in order to atone.”


[1] Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism (Chicago: UP Chicago, 1996), 124.

[2] See Responsa Achiezer, volume III, Vilna 1939, in the introduction. This is discussed in “Piety & Power: The World of Jewish Fundamentalism” by Orthodox author David Landau (1993, Hill & Wang).

[3] Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn and Uri Kaploun (trans.), Likkutei Dibburim Vol 5, (Brooklyn, NY: Kehot Publication Society, 2000), 317-325.

[4] Rabbi Menachem Mendel Scheneersohn, Mada Ve’emuna,  (Kfar Chabad: Machon Lubavitc, 1980).