This is also posted on http://Shemittahrediscovered.blogspot.com
16 Elul 5768
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
1. Rabbi Hollander of the Sanhedrin speaks out for Yesha and against Silence. Hareidi Rabbanim have their hands tied!
2. Rabbi Hollander advice to Moshe Feiglin
3, The Day the Rabbis Marched on Washington in 1943 did make a difference. This was also reported last week in Hamodia.
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1. Rabbi Hollander of the Sanhedrin speaks out for Yesha and against Silence!
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Rabbi Hollander writes:
In the laws of Sanhedrin it states that an very old man may not sit on the Sanhedrin [Sanhedrin 36b; Rambam Sanhedrin 2,3]. today the heads of the Hareidi world are very old men, in their 90's: Rav Eliashiv and Rav Steinman are in their 90's. They also know that the Great Rabbis in the not so distant past made grave mistakes in the first decades of the 20th century in opposing Aliya. Thus it is clear to them that being a great Torah Scholar is no guarantee that they have better political advice than a Torah ignoramus [Am Haaretz] like Zeev Jabotinsky.
2. Rabbi Hollander advice to Moshe Feiglin
Rabbi Hollander writes:
Now the analysis:
Netanyahu wants to "strengthen" the Likud by appealing to the "center". He is trying to buy back "leaders" who left the Likud for Kadima, and even Dan Meridor. He will have to promise them an important position, and he has not yet figured out how he can get carry this with his party. The renegades are highly unpopular. however, this is his purpose.
As part of this, he belittles Feiglin. Like last elections, he would like Feiglin off his slate. Certainly not in a position to make trouble. Netanyahu wants to be seen as a "Moderate" leader. That policy will only lead to catastrophe.
Netanyahu has to be forced.
Feiglin has to announce that he will NOT take a back seat. He must state that he, Feiglin, demands an influential seat on the Government - in the Cabinet - and at least one other seat for another member of Manhigut Yehudit. He should say that if this is not promised publicly, contractually, he will take his people out of the Likud and set up the NEW HERUTH party: all the people true to the values of Menahem Begin: Eretz Yisrael for Am Yisrael, Jewish education and Jewish values. He, Feiglin will unite all the "right wing" splinter parties. He will make a coalition woth the Haredim, and may come out stronger than what is left otf the Likud.
This threat has to be real, and Feiglin has to make it into a real threat: he must begin negotiations with all these splinter parties - OPENLY. He must become the leader of all those of the Likud who do not want Meridor and his ilk back in the Likud. He must accuse Netanyahu of being weak - first towards the renegades, and this softness indicates that he is likely to be weak in his negotiations as PM with the US, with the "Quartet", with the Arabs. Feiglin should say that Netanyahu needs Feiglin at his right hand - Otherwise Netanyahu is weak. Like Netanyahu signed the Wye accords, so he is likely to sign any "agreement" of Olmert with the Palestinians. Feiglin must make it clear that if he is not in a policy determining position from within the Likud - he will be in such a position as a result of leaving the Likud and organizing the disorganized pro-Jewish spliter parties.
Support should be offered with this advice - and dependent on Feiglin's doing this. A weak Feiglin is no asset.
3, The Day the Rabbis Marched on Washington in 1943 did make a difference. This was also reported last week in Hamodia.
The Day the Rabbis Marched on Washington
THE DAY THE RABBIS MARCHED ON WASHINGTON
"Clear the way for those rabbis!" It was probably the first time the station master at Washington, D.C.'s Union train station had shouted those words. But then, the crowd before him was unlike any that had ever been seen in the nation's capital. Four hundred rabbis converged on Washington just before Yom Kippur in 1943, in a stirring display of unity to rescue European Jewry from Nazi extermination.
The march was the brainchild of 33-year-old Hillel Kook, a Jerusalem-born nephew of Abraham Isaac Kook, former chief rabbi of Palestine. Kook arrived in the United States in 1940 brimming with ideas on how to aid the Jews trapped in Hitler's Europe. His first step was to change his name to Peter Bergson. Purchasing full-page advertisements in major U.S. newspapers calling for the creation of a Jewish army, criticizing British limits on Jewish immigration to Palestine and pleading for Allied action to rescue Jews from Hitler. It was quintessential American political activism: utilizing the mass media to arouse the public's interest and thereby influence the Roosevelt administration to act.
One of Bergson's most spectacular initiatives was the march of the rabbis. Although the scion of a prominent rabbinical family ? Palestine's Chief Rabbi, Abraham Isaac Kook, was his uncle ? Bergson himself was not observant, nor were most of the activists in his group. They understood, however, the visual impact of hundreds of Orthodox rabbis, with their beards, black frock coats and black hats converging on the U.S. Capitol.
Gaining access to America?s Orthodox rabbinical leadership was no simple task. The elders of the Orthodox community in America were mostly European-born scholars who still retained their European ways. Many spoke little or no English, were generally unfamiliar with the cultural and political ways of the new world and had limited contact with non-Orthodox segments of the Jewish community. Bergson and his aides Samuel Merlin and Eri Jabotinsky used their fluent Yiddish and a good dose of name-dropping --that is, the names of Bergson's prestigious relatives-- to gain entree to the leadership circles of the Orthodox rabbinate. Their proposal for a march on Washington found a surprisingly wide range of support from such disparate and sometimes conflicting groups as the largely-chasidic Union of Grand Rabbis to the misnagdim of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis.
So it was that on October 6, 1943, two days before Yom Kippur, more than 400 Orthodox rabbis, organized by the secular Bergson group and accompanied by marshals from another secular Jewish organization, the Jewish War Veterans of America, marched solemnly from Union Station to the Capitol building to plead for U.S. government action on behalf of the Jews being murdered by Hitler. As passersby gawked and newspapermen snapped photos, the rabbis recited prayers of mourning for the dead, sang the traditional prayer for the nation's leaders to the tune of the Star Spangled Banner and read aloud a petition urging the creation of a special governmental agency to rescue Jews from the Holocaust.
The delegation then marched to the gates of the White House. On the advice of his aides, President Roosevelt avoided the rabbis by leaving the White House through a rear exit to attend an Army ceremony, and from there Roosevelt left for a long weekend in the country. Disappointed by FDR's failure to meet with them, the rabbis refused to read their petition aloud. The perceived snub of the rabbis added a dramatic flair to press coverage of the event, transforming it from an exotic protest rally into a full-fledged clash between the Orthodox community and the administration over America's policy toward Hitler's victims.
The march helped set in motion a series of events that would change American policy. Capitalizing on the publicity from the rally, Bergson's friends in Congress introduced a formal resolution asking the president to create an agency to rescue the Jews. The Senate hearings on the resolution then ignited a new controversy when State Department official Breckinridge Long presented wildly inflated statistics regarding European Jewish immigration to the United States that were demonstrated by contrary testimony to be false. Galvanized by the escalating scandal, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and his aides drew up a stinging report to the President about the State Department's stonewalling on rescue possibilities. Within days, FDR announced the establishment of the War Refugee Board, which during the final year of the Holocaust was responsible for rescuing tens of thousands of Jews from Hitler. Among other things, the Board sponsored the heroic rescue efforts of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
Historians have noted the unfortunate religious and political conflicts within American Jewry that delayed a unified response to news of the Nazi atrocities. To the contrary, the collaboration between non-religious rescue activists and Orthodox rabbis in 1943, at least, offers a graphic example of how cooperation between different segments of the Jewish community helped advance a common, life-saving goal.
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