COMMUNITY VIEWS

Luck, Flukes And Courage

Orthodox Jews, stating, in effect, that
e, who are the survivors
the reason one-and-a-half-million
of the Holocaust, find
infants and children had their lives
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's
snuffed out is because they were the
explanation of why so
reincarnation of evil past lives.
many of our fellow Jews were slaugh-
According to this logic,
tered both dangerous and
the few of us that survived
highly offensive ("Yosef's
were the only truly righteous
Vision," Aug. 11, page 28).
ones and, therefore, more
The Shas Party leader's
deserving than the others. We
suggestion that the victims
were besera mentshen (better
embodied the reincarnated
people) in God's eyes. Let me
souls of sinners desecrates the
tell you, Rabbi, nothing
memory of 86 members of
could be further from the
my family, including my
truth. If you only knew how
mother, not to mention the
we agonized over the years,
six million other innocent
ERNA
asking ourselves the unan-
souls that perished.
swerable question: Why we
GORMAN
It is incomprehensible to
survived and not our parents
Special
to
read the words of a learned
or brothers or sisters. My sis-
the
Jewish
News
man with the title of rabbi,
ter and I were no more right-
the spiritual leader of a very
eous than Anne Frank. We
significant number of Israeli
may have suffered differently than she,
but we survived. We survived by my
Erna Gorman is a West Bloomfield resi-
father's wits and cunning, and mostly by
dent who spent World War lI as a child
sheer
luck, flukes and the courage of a
hiding in the Ukraine with family
Christian
farmer.
members.

IV

Every day that passed, we felt we
were destined to die only because we
were Jews. Jews just like you, Rabbi,
Jews that were observant and non-
observant alike. The six million who
perished were pious and secular, good
and not so good, saintly and sinners.
Above all, they were God's children,
and all human beings that dearly loved
their families, and loved life itself.
Until now, with your odious sug-
gestion, only the Nazis dubbed us "life
unworthy of life."

Hurtful Words
The Holocaust was an attempt to sys-
tematically annihilate an entire people.
It was more barbaric than any mass
murder or genocide the world has ever
known. How you can, in good con-
science, find the victims responsible
for their own deaths, simply because
you speculate that they were corrupt
or unworthy in another life, or per-
haps were destined to be assimilated,
is to me the highest form of stupidity
and bigotry.

Your words, Rabbi, are hurtful to
those of us who have dedicated our
lives to Holocaust education and
teaching the ultimate consequence of
prejudice and bigotry. We cannot
remain silent and say to ourselves that
these words were the isolated ram-
blings of a senile or deranged person.
These words, unfortunately, were
broadcast all over the world and did
immeasurable damage.
If left unanswered, they will only
give strength to those who still claim
that what Adolf Hitler did was justi-
fied and his work is yet to be finished.
Less than 60 years ago, too many
good, well-meaning people listened to
dangerous rhetoric and passively stood
back and did nothing. They thought it
was harmless speech coming from an
isolated "crazy." We all bear witness to
what happened.
It is far easier to sit back and let this
slide, but we must respond and answer
all manner of misinformation and dan-
gerous rhetoric in order to prevent a rep-
etition of that terrible disaster. ❑

The Shofar's Call To Zionism

days" and the coming of the Mashiach.
ne does not have to be an
Our religious authorities were most
accomplished musician to
meticulous in defining the physical
conclude that as a musical
attributes of the shofar. Thus, a shofar
instrument, the
tarnished with gold is worth-
shofar (ram's horn) does not
less, a cracked shofar is unfit
rate very high. In Jewish
and a shofar within a shofar
liturgy, however, the shofar
is taboo.
has become indispensable to
While pundits (or musi-
evoke the somber mood of
cians) are not apt to draw far-
the Days of Awe.
reaching conclusions from
Through its various into-
the physical attributes of the
nations, the shofar was
shofar, those who are not
designed to summon and
bound by the rules of scien-
challenge the Israelites to
tific inquiry will find the sho-
EZEKIEL
"come clean" before the
far relevant to Jewish — par-
LEIKIN
Almighty.
ticularly Zionist — history.
Special to
Maimonides viewed sho-
the Jewish News
far blowing as a "wake-up
The Golden Attraction
call" to the sleepers to cast
Zionist history has known
off their lethargy and indifference and
periods when the message of Zion was
face up to their misdeeds. Thus, the
articulated through a shofar of gold.
tekiah sound called upon the Israelites
That was when the Rothschilds and
to accept and embrace the teachings of
the Hirshes rebuffed Dr. Theodor
the Torah, teruah signaled the birth of
Herzl's appeal for financial help to fur-
the nation of Israel, shevarim epito-
ther the objectives of Zionism.
mized the "brokenness" of Jewish life
At a later period, it was Dr. Chaim
in exile, while the tekiah gedolah res-
Weizmann who used the gold-tar-
onated with the theme of the "end of
nished shofar to entice the Warburgs,
the Schiffs and the Marshalls into a
partnership
with the World Zionist
Ezekiel Leikin of Southfield is execu-
Organization
to create the "mixed"
tive vice president of the Metro Detroit
Jewish Agency of Israel. By and large,
District of the Zionist Organization of
the Zionists received tons of advice
America.

0

9/29

2000

72

from the gevirim (notables), but
very little else.
The result was that the desired
partnership dissolved into thin air
. . . and the Zionist archives.
A starkly drawn illustration of a
shofar within a shofar emerged
with the birth of the Zionist
Socialist movement and its
various offshoots, which
made an indelible
imprint upon the social
and economic underpin-
nings of the Palestine
Yishuv (Jewish governing council) and
subsequently upon the embryonic
State of Israel.
One of the outstanding opponents
of blending Zionism with socialism
was Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky. The
Zionist leader argued that the intro-
duction of the socialist class struggle
into a country that is yet to develop a
middle class or other manifestations of
capitalism was counter-productive and
detrimental to a national task that
required harnessing Jews across all par-
tisan or ideological lines to achieve
maximum results.

All Encompassing
Throughout that period, Jabotins
argued that socialism was incompati-
ble with Zionism, invoking the tradi-

-

tional religious prohibition
known as shatnes, which ruled
out the blending of wool and
linen in garments worn by
Jews.
In newspapers and speeches,
Jabotinsky advocated the
' adoption of a concept he
called "Zionist-Monism," an
unadulterated, undiluted
Zionism rooted in
Judaic lore instead of
in Marxism. While
Jabotinsky did not live
to see the adoption of this concept
within Zionism, current events in
Israel indicate that his ideas about sep-
arating Zionism from socialism and,
indeed, other "isms" was not far-
fetched.
In Israel today, we see collective kib-
butzim (cooperative settlement in Israel)
casting off the dogmas of Marxism,
choosing instead principles associated
with private initiative and progressive
capitalism. The same applies to the pro-
grams charted by Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Barak, who distanced himself
from that socialist bastion, Histadrut,
Israel's labor federation.
Barak gave the party upon which
he was elected a new name, Israel
One, and a centrist political orienta-
tion.

❑

