Author Archives: Rabbi

The history of the Jewish people in Poland is tortured, complicated and, as recent events have demonstrated, the relationship is still unsettled. One can cherry pick the data that supports one’s prejudices but not be able to produce a full and complete picture. The issue is being revisited as the Polish Parliament passed a law last month (since suspended) that criminalized the mere utterance of the phrase “Polish death camps” or attributing any responsibility for the Holocaust to the Polish people.

It is not widely known but Poland produced more “righteous Gentiles,” (i.e., non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews) than any other country. Yad Vashem tallies 6,706 individual Poles who saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust; the next closest in number is the Netherlands, where 5,595 Gentiles saved Jews and were honored for it after the war. Five Americans were recognized – along with the entire nation of Denmark who eschewed individual honors because saving Danish Jews became their national priority.

The number of righteous Polish Gentiles speaks well of them from one perspective. Per capita, roughly one out of every 4650 Poles was deemed a “righteous Gentile,” a relatively high figure compared to other countries. (In the Netherlands, one of every 14,000 citizens was so designated.) And, to be sure, Poles suffered brutally under the Nazi regime, with approximately 3,000,000 Polish Gentiles killed by the Nazis in addition to 3,000,000 Polish Jews, so talk of Polish complicity with the Nazis always strikes a raw nerve with them. Added to that is the current reality in which Poland has emerged as a close ally and trading partner of Israel, and that Poland today welcomes many Jewish visitors, mostly without incident. Some Polish cities have even seen a Jewish revival.

Nevertheless, former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir’s statement thirty years ago – that “Poles imbibe Jew hatred with their mother’s milk” – might sound harsh, which is not to say unearned. Recent statements emanating from Polish authorities, about Jews’ propensity for lying (among other anti-Jewish canards), the denial of the Holocaust as a unique attempt to exterminate the Jewish people, the reference to “Jewish perpetrators” of the Holocaust and the caustic rejection of Jewish and Israeli objections to the proposed law, can be seen as Polish attempts to unwittingly prove Shamir (whose entire family was murdered in the Holocaust) correct.

If we even crunch the “righteous Gentile” numbers, Poland does not fare that well. There were 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands when the war broke out. Thus, there was one Dutch savior for every 25 Jews in the population. Poland had a pre-war population of 3,300,000 Jews, and thus there was one Polish savior for every 492 Jews in the population. The disparity is glaring. If non-Jewish Poles had saved Jews at the same rate as did non-Jewish Dutchmen there would have been more than 160,000 righteous Polish Gentiles. There weren’t. The Holocaust could not have unfolded as it did had Poles saved Jews at the same rate the Dutch did. And Polish Gentiles were not systematically exterminated, as were Jews, although, in truth, Hitler bore a special animus towards Poles also. The numbers reflect that the average Dutch civilian was more favorably disposed to his Jewish neighbors than was the average Pole.

Furthermore, Jewish views about Poland are shaped not only by the Holocaust but also by Jewish life in Poland for the millennium before the Holocaust and the years immediately following that saw violent pogroms perpetrated by Polish civilians (sometimes with the tacit approval of the authorities) against Jewish survivors. Some of these attacks were carried out by Poles who willfully, perhaps even gleefully, seized the property of their former Jewish neighbors when the Nazis forced the Jews into ghettos and then deported millions to their deaths. But we need not only look at the Holocaust and post-Holocaust era. Jews are a people with a long historical memory.

My grandparents and children (including my father) fled Poland in early 1939 not only because Hitler was looming but primarily because life in Poland had become unbearable for Jews.  Shechita (ritual slaughter of kosher animals for consumption) was banned by the Polish Parliament in the mid-1930’s, and my grandfather a”h, a shochet by profession, continued slaughtering in secret until he was briefly imprisoned and threatened with execution. Not coincidentally, the Polish Parliament banned shechita again (!) in 2014, only to have the ban – with its obvious anti-Jewish overtones – reversed by the Supreme Court. But such a bill is now pending again (!) before the Polish Parliament in the wake of the recent controversy.

Life in Poland had its charms, I suppose – but also its persistent persecution, pogroms, restrictive measures and constant harassment. There is no escaping that; it is not only recorded in history books but it is also inscribed on the Jewish heart and in our collective memory. Of course, the definition of “Poland” is drawn somewhat broadly; my father’s birthplace in Poland had been part of Lithuania until two decades earlier and became part of Belarus after World War II. But the point remains the same.

Without generalizing too much, official Poland has always had a blind spot when it comes to the Holocaust and to its treatment of Jews. In two visits our groups took to Auschwitz, our assigned Polish guide insisted on taking us to parts of the concentration camp where Polish political prisoners were held (and many executed) and held up as symbols of the Holocaust the Catholic priest Maximilian Kolbe and, after we asked about the Jews who were murdered there, Edith Stein, the Jew who became a nun and was murdered by the Nazis – as a Jew. To these guides, it was clear to us, the 3,000,000 Polish Jews were not murdered because they were Jews but because they were Poles. Such is an offensive and false account of history – and we let the guides know it (which quickly concluded that part of the tour). It is a bitter and unspeakable irony that for centuries Poles derided the Jews as “Jews” (and worse), and once the Nazis murdered them, claimed them as “Poles” just like any other Polish citizen. No wonder Jews are offended, as should be Poles for that intellectual dishonesty and distortion of history. Jews in pre-war Poland had Polish friends and acquaintances and sought co-existence – but I have yet to meet a Jew who grew up in that era who had only fond memories of the experience. Poland was always a graveyard that eventually overwhelmed the Jewish population – as Ze’ev Jabotinsky warned them in 1938 when he told them they are “living on the edge of a volcano.” Every Jew knew it, even if few Jews heeded his warning.

What the Polish elite today fails to consider or deliberately ignores is that the Nazi death camps were placed in Poland for a reason. The six extermination camps – Treblinka, Belzec, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Maidanek, Sobibor, and Chelmno – were situated in Poland purposely. Poles maintain that Poland had been conquered and its central location with a functioning rail system facilitated transport of Jews from across Europe. There is some truth to that.

The greater truth is that Germany was even more centrally located and possessed an even more sophisticated rail system – but the Nazis sensed that Poland would be a more hospitable venue for the death camps. What they perceived as the refined, cultured German nature would recoil at the notion of mass extermination of Jews while Poles, given their history, would be more amenable to looking the other way. That is hard to deny. Does this make these genocidal settings “Polish death camps”? Not really, and certainly not in the sense that Poles staffed the camps in large measure or were responsible for the genocide. Obviously, they are “Polish death camps” in that they were located – to be emphasized, they were all located – in Poland, and that was not an accident.

Poles should own up to that. The fact that so many Poles were killed by the Nazis and that Poles were also victims does not obscure the fact that they have sordid aspects of their history that they should acknowledge not just in the interest of historical accuracy but also to recognize the deep roots of Polish Jew hatred that existed for centuries and is part of Jewish history. That Polish civilians murdered Jews before, during and after the Holocaust is undeniable. That Polish partisan groups generally refused to cooperate with Jewish partisan groups is undeniable.

I don’t think re-litigating the Holocaust serves any productive role in 2018 except to the extent that truth always remains truth. I don’t hold today’s Poles responsible for the Holocaust any more than I hold today’s Germans. Guilt is transmitted from generation to generation only when, the Talmud (Masechet Berachot 7a) states, “the children cling to the ways of their fathers” but not if the children renounce the deeds of their fathers.

About a decade ago, I attend a conference in Nuremberg, in which young Germans articulated a standard that would serve modern Poles well. They said that they felt no guilt over the Holocaust (after all, they didn’t perpetrate it) but they did feel shame that such atrocities could have been committed by their countrymen. Such an approach makes a lot of sense and provides a way forward. Poles should not have guilt over what happened during the Holocaust – as long as they renounce Jew hatred in all its manifestations – but they should feel shame that the death camps were all located in their country intentionally and that most Jews murdered in the Holocaust were murdered on Polish soil.

If they live in denial, they will see that as an historical accident and the price they pay will be deserved ignominy. If they recognize that reality, they will be able to build on the warm relations they have cultivated in recent years with Israel and the Jewish people and move beyond this most recent tempest.

The American gun debate has been a dialogue of the deaf for decades and no end is in sight. That is for the simple reason that the two sides each reflect incompatible and irreconcilable views on the matter. To simplify a bit, when one side feels that society would be safer with more guns and the other side feels society would be safer with fewer or no guns, there is not much middle ground that can bridge the differences. One side blames the gun for the crime (as if guns fire themselves) and the other side blames the perpetrator for the crime (as if he could kill people if he didn’t have a gun). And so horrendous tragedies such as last week’s  school massacre in Florida will continue to occur, rachmana litzlan.

Each side retreats to its arguments whenever a horrendous school shooting occurs. One side blames the easy access to guns as so obvious that it brooks no discussion. The other side blames the failure to diagnose and treat mental illness or at least intervene and curb the anger and delusions of the disaffected. There are so many layers to the problem that it becomes difficult even to discuss them or analyze them dispassionately. No one is in favor of providing weapons to the mentally ill; by the same token, we pride ourselves in not stigmatizing mental illness, so how can their rights be restricted? And by whom shall they be restricted? Add to this the collapse of the American family since the moral breakdown of the 1960’s – the plethora of fatherless children, the aimlessness of many youth, the broken homes and the lack of any moral guidance from authority figures (schools, churches, etc.) and one big problem looms. Add to this a culture that glorifes violence spawned by movies , television and video games that make killing look like fun and conscience-free. And add to that the modern drug of “fame” – the yearning to be noticed, to matter, to be significant in the eyes of society – as if that has any enduring value. There are too many losers who act in anti-social ways to get attention; a small percentage of them will turn violent.

It has reached a point where the arguments no longer address the issue at hand and the proposals made by the politicians satisfy a core constituency but would not solve the problem at all. Trying to prevent a school shooting by tightening the terrorist watch list is a non sequitur. Blaming the NRA and their campaign contributions for the presence of gun violence ignores the reality of the Second Amendment and presupposes that politicians would be amenable to restricting gun ownership if only they had the will. But such is false; most politicians – and most Americans – support gun ownership because they believe in the right of self-defense, itself a cardinal Torah principle: “He who comes to slay you, rise up and slay him first” (Masechet Yoma 85b). There is no virtue to allowing yourself to be killed by a criminal.

Defending the Constitution is seemingly as American as apple pie but its sundry clauses – especially in the Bill of Rights – always vex one group or another and is often under assault by government. Just in the last few years, the First Amendment’s “free exercise” of religion clause was assaulted by a variety of Obama administration measures, particularly regarding the provision of health care; many perceive the Trump’s administration’s hostility and verbal assaults on the media as infringing on freedom of the press; and all of us are subjected, and not always legally, to intrusive surveillance, searches and occasionally seizures with little redress, despite the Fourth Amendment.  The Seventh Amendment’s right to a trial by jury sounds great but has not always served the cause of truth and justice.

For better or worse, guns are ingrained in American culture and it is foolhardy to think that the confiscation of 300,000,000 firearms (count ‘em) is feasible even if it were sensible. Some people, naturally horrified by school shootings and the deaths of innocent children, can rail against the prevalence of guns in society but usually will be unaware of the positive roles guns play in the society. The NRA magazine features a monthly column entitled “The Armed Citizen,” in which there are at least a dozen accounts drawn from local media of citizens who saved their own lives (and those of others) by employing a firearm against a hostile entity – intruder, burglar, assailant, rapist, etc. I sense that these accounts weigh more heavily on people’s minds that even the random shootings that, gun control advocates think, should shock people out of their lethargy. Obviously there is a hunting culture in America that uses weapons with much firepower, but since hunting doesn’t speak to me at all (Jews are not hunters) I downplay its role in this debate. Safety first.

If almost everyone is in agreement that someone like the Florida school shooter should not have been able to purchase a weapon, then why can’t laws be crafted that make it more difficult for such malefactors to be denied access and easier for the good citizens to acquire and carry firearms?

It also needs to be noted that, I suspect, most homicides in America are committed with illegal weapons, not ones that are legally purchased. Illegal weapons are easily attainable, even though the average citizen would never seek to acquire an illegal weapon. As such, gun control that is too restrictive leaves weapons primarily in the hands of the criminals and outside the reach of the innocent. That doesn’t seem fair. Nor does it make any sense to argue – as politicians do all the time – that this or that law would have made a difference. Last I checked, there are laws against homicide and yet, somehow, those laws don’t deter homicidal maniacs from killing people. It is not the law as much as it is the person and the person’s capacity and willingness to obey the law.

The most recent miscreant fell through the cracks and had all the indicia of trouble. Given up for adoption, adopted parents dead, expelled from school for violence, drifting, aimless, no future and no hope – a ticking time bomb ready to explode. In his own demented way, he was crying out for help. Someone who posts on the internet using his real name that “I want to grow up to be a professional school shooter” is begging to be noticed and stopped. That no follow up was done – that he was not found – is outrageous incompetence for which someone should be called to account. A cynic might speculate that had he said “I want to grow up to be a professional school shooter and I have evidence that Trump colluded with Russia before the election” the FBI would have found him within an hour. And the ongoing problem is that had he been found, there are no laws and there is no protocol that could have confined, stopped or deterred him.

There is no one law that will be a panacea, especially in the face of the great dysfunction of the American family. And it is not as simple as saying “we should not allow weapons in the hands of the mentally ill;” is a battered woman suffering from depression under the care of a psychiatrist and threatened by a violent ex-husband “mentally ill” and therefore not permitted to buy a gun to use to defend herself? And there are gradations of mental illness as well, from mild to severe.

What is needed in the long term is a cultural change – a moral renaissance reflected in the “bourgeois values” touted by Professor Amy Wax in an article whose thesis is so self-evident that in today’s climate was considered controversial and offensive – but even in the short term measures are necessary and mostly at hand. Schools are currently soft targets, accessible to one and all, student and psychopath alike. That has to change, and providing armed guards during school hours and searches, screening and profiling for all who enter the school building should be obvious. Such is done in Israel, as is the discreet arming of some teachers who rotate carrying concealed weapons on their persons. That secures the target, reasonably if not perfectly, and greatly enhances the chances of failure of the attacker to achieve his nefarious aims as to deter even the attempt.

As the school shooters have almost all been young males – from their teens to their 20’s – it is clear that males who have been expelled from school for violence, are under the care of a mental health professional, or have exhibited cruel and unusual behavior should be placed on a watch list that denies them access to legal weapons unless they are permitted to do so by a judge upon the testimony of doctors, parents, guardians and the like. Again, this is reasonable but not perfect. So is this: adults who store weapons in their homes and do not secure them sufficiently to prevent their use by murderers should be held criminally liable with a mandatory minimum prison sentence. Ah, isn’t this blaming the victim? Well, sometimes the victim deserves some of the blame. It is not sufficient to say “I trusted him,” “I didn’t know he had a duplicate key,” “I tried to turn him into a responsible adult,” etc. If it happens on your watch, you are liable. That should get the attention of law-abiding gun owners.

It is not fair to punish hundreds of millions of law-abiding citizens because of the despicable acts of a handful of people. Nor should we renounce constitutional rights that have safeguarded American liberties and provided an effective means of self-defense. Nor should we wash our hands and say that nothing can be done because there is no perfect solution. There is no perfect solution – the psychopaths can also acquire illegal weapons, psychologists will claim that putting their patients on a watch list would violate confidentiality and encourage reticence, the fantasy of a gun-free society will always animate some – but a sane society takes elementary measures to keep weapons out of the hands of the disaffected, a sane government focuses its efforts on defending its citizens, especially its children, and rational politicians – interested in more than retaining their seats and its access to the lucre of modern politics – know how to address complex issues with substance, sensitivity and efficacy.

The Jewish Press (February 16, 2018) asked a number of rabbis to address this interesting but rarely-discussed question: “Some of the most famous and important works of literature contain passages and themes that are immodest in nature. May a G-d-fearing Jew read these works for the good they contain, or must he forego reading them entirely?”

This is the link to the entire feature: http://www.jewishpress.com/sections/books/on-the-bookshelf-23/2018/02/16/

These were my thoughts on the matter:

     I don’t believe there is a definitive answer to this question, although it is certainly easier just to say “no.” Much depends on motivation, purpose, context, source, and especially the precise nature of the immorality, of which, of course, there are gradations. Perhaps the most important determinant is the message that is being delivered. Ancient and medieval works generally frowned on immorality and as such reinforce a Torah message while more modern and contemporary works often celebrate immorality. Usually, no good comes from the latter and prolonged exposure to values that are antithetical to Torah will eventually dilute the reader’s moral perspective and later his or her practice and commitment as well.
It’s important to note that Chazal (recorded in Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 307:16) banned the reading of “divrei cheshek” – loosely, books of romance – as a waste of time that could be spent on more godly pursuits and as a tool that could only increase illicit temptation. Books that might fall under that genre must therefore have some redeeming value. Its prurient aspects must be incidental to its primary message for it to be considered appropriate and worthwhile. Fiction generally, Rav Kook wrote, affords us the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of another person’s experiences and thus can broaden our horizons. But not every lifestyle or experience deserves to be investigated, studied or fantasized about and certainly not emulated. So caution must be applied.
That being said, there is one Book that exposes the vices and venality that can permeate human nature and is unsparing in its accounts of our failings.  It is superior to any work of fiction. That Book is the Tanach. And we can rest assured that its moral guidance is always spot on. Anyone who wants to learn about our potential for degradation as well great virtue is urged to study the relevant passages and not just skip over them. They provide a solid grounding in moral instruction and, nevertheless, occasionally put human dysfunction on display. One who is drawn to indulge in problematic works of literature would be well advised to study the works of Tanach instead, especially the chronicles of the early prophets. “Turn in it and turn in it, for everything is in it”( Avot 5:22).

  The great baseball player Rogers Hornsby, still holder of the single-season record batting of .424, once said: “People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

       He is not the only one, and this has nothing to do with baseball. It has been an unusually cold winter in much of the United States with temperatures even in New Jersey hovering for weeks near zero degrees. Let the scientists debate the global ramifications; each side offers definitive proof to its proponents of the correctness of its views and the errors of their dissidents. All I know is that it is cold outside, and then it gets colder. I am not even warmed by the realization that our ancestors in Eastern Europe – in Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine and elsewhere – lived through much colder winters although I am certain that added to the general melancholy of life in the Pale of Settlement and places further east.

      There are some people who enjoy the winter, with its beautiful vistas and the opportunity to ski some exotic mountain ranges. All I see is snow that has to be shoveled and ice that has to be avoided lest one encounter some unexpected peril. There are cities in the world that suffer during the winter with only seven hours of daylight, something which can only add to the desolation. Those who enjoy warm weather endure the winter and wait for spring, and those who spend the winter in temperate climes and complain when their thermometer hits sixty degrees find little sympathy in these parts.

     Adding to the gloominess is that we have no Biblical holidays in the winter. The holidays that are recorded in the Torah all occur during the spring and fall when the climate is temperate and the verdant beauties of nature are alive. In essence, the three regalim (Pesach, Shavuot and Succot) are all agricultural holidays, notwithstanding their historical connotations as well. The winter, therefore, should be the time of our discontent.

     And yet, that is the way G-d re-created His world when mankind was redeemed after the Great Flood. G-d promised never again to destroy the world and afforded our ancestors the variety of climatic conditions experienced today by much of the globe: “As long as the earth exists, there will be seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night; it will never cease” (Breishis 8:22). As there is a cycle to life, so too there are rhythms to the year, and in each new setting, we are challenged to be productive, serve our Creator and spread kindness among His creations.

     The winter, its chill and precipitation are all opportunities to praise G-d and marvel at His creation. “Praise Hashem from the earth…fire and hail, snow and vapor, the stormy winds fulfill His word” (Tehillim 148:7-8). Life is not all “mountains and hills, fruit trees and cedars” (ibid 148:9). G-d is the Master of nature in all its forms – and the Master of nations as well, “kings of the earth and all nations, princes and all judges on earth” (ibid 148:11).

     The earth lies dormant during winter. It conserves its strength, marshals its energies and finds renewal in the spring. Winter is the time for the earth to regroup. Indeed, the same could be said of the Jewish people. One reason that there are no Biblical holidays in winter is that it is a time for us to regroup as well. We survive the winter, both physically and spiritually. The holidays that we do celebrate during the cold season are Rabbinic holidays that commemorate our survival – Chanuka (our spiritual survival in exile) and Purim (our physical survival). As we marvel at the earth and its capacity to replenish itself and come back to life as the temperature warms, so too we should be astonished (and grateful) for our survival as a nation throughout the bitter harshness of exile. Against all odds, and only with the grace of G-d, have we been able to endure what no other nation has, and both survive and thrive, outlasting great empires that tried to eradicate us.

      During winter, we recoup, carry on, and reflect on our durability and eternity, but we are a people of the spring. We are duly commanded to “observe the month of spring, and bring the Pesach offering to the Lord, your G-d, because it was in the month of spring that the Lord, Your G-d, took you out of Egypt” (Devarim 14:1). The Jewish calendar is built around several propositions, the most important of which is that Pesach must always fall in the spring.

       The Jewish people have been given up for dead many times by our enemies, almost disappearing into the wintry frost of the ghettos and the Gulag. Yet, our national existence parallels that of the spring. The nations of the world have their moment in the sun of summer and then they disappear. We are eternally young, a people of spring. Even during the darkest and bleakest moments of winter, we still dream and remember. If the winter is the time when creativity and growth are stifled, it can nevertheless also be the springboard to even greater growth when it passes.

       Rav Kook wrote that the Exodus from Egypt will always be spring, not just for us, but the world’s spring as well. We are responsible for the blossoming of the national idea and charged with ensuring that the nations use their political formations for good and not evil. Like the seed of winter that disintegrates before it achieves new life, we must always have before our mind’s eye that the darkest times are only preludes to the fulfillment of our national destiny in the spring.

      As King Shlomo wrote: “Behold the winter has passed, the rains have come and gone, the blossoms have appeared on the land and the time of your song has arrived” (Shir Hashirim 2:11-12). May we soon merit the full blossoming of our redemption.