Words From Rabbi White

This Shabbat is 5 iyyar. To avoid problems with hillul shabbat, Yom HaZikkaron and Yom Ha-Atsma`ut were pushed back to Thursday and Friday.

SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE JEWS

On campuses in Canada and the USA, many students and professors declare that when they chant “from the river…,” they are not antisemitic, just anti-zionist. My friend Rabbi Daniel Friedman, who teaches poli-sci at Touro University, has written an excellent essay in JNS (Jewish News Service) as to why anti-zionism is worse than antisemitism.

He explains that for millenia, Jews have been expelled from one country to the next, their property stolen and lives threatened. Eventually, after they would settle into their new country, they would face a new expulsion. [I remember well how my high school Jewish History teacher in Boston said there was a neo-midrash that Poland got its name from the Hebrew “poh-lin,” meaning “here we can spend the night.” My mother’s family had a tradition that we were among the Spanish exiles of 1492, who somehow eventually found their way to Lithuania, and from there to America. My father’s family was spurred on by antisemitic attacks at the end of 19th century Poland to find their way to America.]

Even in the worst of times, the Jews would find another place to go. Until the 20th century, when the philosophy of “none is too many” forced Jewish refugees to return to slaughter in Europe!!! In 1948, when the State of Israel was born, the Jews had not just a place to live, but a place to go when no other country would take them in.

As Dr. Friedman explains, that’s why anti-zionism is so sinister. When someone says they are only against Zionism, they are saying that they oppose the right of the Jewish people to a homeland. Zionism is not an ideology of conquest, but of refuge.

We thank HaShem for the State of Israel.

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This week, we read the haftarah of Metsora. The last verses show what can happen when people are unhappy with government officials.

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Shabbat shalom, shalom `al Yisrael,

Rabbi Menahem White, Chevra Shaas