Sunday, December 2, 2007

An Authentic Jewish Response to an Orthodox Rabbi Who Wants to Divide Jerusalem

Question: How can an Orthodox Rabbi possibly reconcile advocating for the division of Jerusalem with Judaism?
-Loraine Meltz, Bakersfield CA

Answer: Thank you for that question Loraine, but unfortunately as Orthodox Jews we are unable to answer you so we are forwarding on the question to the Rabbi.

Shalom Rabbi,

This letter is being written with shivering hands and chattering teeth from a cold, wet tent on the border between Israel and Gaza. We have read and re-read your article published in the Jewish Journal “An Orthodox Rabbi’s plea: Consider dividing the Jerusalem.” As it is Jewish behavioral ethic to judge one’s fellow with the benefit of the doubt, we are trying to stifle our initial feelings of perfidious betrayal and thoughts that you are merely capitalizing on your status as an Orthodox Rabbi for opportunistic self-aggrandizement. With Israel’s fate being decided in Annapolis this week, we are trying to understand how you, an honest and sincere G-d fearing, Torah-observant Rabbi, could possibly advocate for the division of Jerusalem, the Capitol of the Jewish People.

In Israel today, there are hundreds of thousands of Arab Muslim citizens who proactively advocate for the destruction of Israel. Their elected Muslim Knesset members meet with terrorist leaders to conspire against us and consistently endorse policies that would lead to the eventual annulment of our Jewish State. We are surrounded by countries who have historically sought to destroy the State of Israel since before she was even created. Egypt, Syria, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and all the other countries in the Arab League have not given up the dream to put an end, once and for all, to the “Zionist Entity”. Honestly, these threats are nothing new and have simply become expected, but it is appalling for a self-described Orthodox Rabbi to advocate for the division of our sacred Capitol, and the undeniable moral and strategic weakening of the State of Israel that would follow.

Perhaps seeing the Middle East through the prism of CNN or the occasional solidarity mission to a five-star hotel would lead one to believe that simply relinquishing the Land liberated in 1967 would lead to peace. Please allow us to share a little bit of a different perspective. We are reservist soldiers who have left our lives and our families for up to a month every year to protect Israel and the Jewish people. For the past few years, we have been stationed in the Gaza region where we are located now. In 2005, the unilateral disengagement from Gaza evicted 8,000 Jews from their homes, and Gaza was ceded to the Palestinian Authority. Today, in place of the promised peace and calm that was to result from the disengagement, Gaza is now a war-torn territory controlled by the Hamas, and there are more guns, missiles, and artillery than ever before in history. Multiple rockets and missiles fall daily onto the helpless citizens of Sderot, within the 1948 borders of Israel! We recently visited with the people of Sderot to show our support, and a local teacher informed us that her young students, when asked why they thought snails had shells, unanimously replied “to hide from the Kassam rockets.” Is this the fate you wish upon the Jewish children of Jerusalem Rabbi Kanefsky?

While we could continue expending energy and focus on exposing the moral ambivalence, erroneous and specious historical assertions in your article, that would not be an honest depiction of our true difficulty with your proposals. If you were a politician or a journalist, perhaps such a discussion would be in order. But you, Rabbi Kanefsky, purport to be an Orthodox Rabbi. You know that Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Bible, while the Koran has not one reference to our holy city. You know that for more than 2,000 years our people have been praying daily for Jerusalem, solemnly breaking a glass in memorial of her Temple’s destruction, and leaving a portion of the walls in our homes unfinished because our cherished city lies in ruins. You know the words of King David who told us of the tears we shed “by the Rivers of Babylon… when we remembered Zion,” and both promised and warned of what would happen if we should ever forget our beloved Jerusalem. You know of our murdered ancestors who whispered Jerusalem with their last breath.

Rabbi Kanefsky, you call for honesty. You claim to believe in the Torah as the word of G-d, yet when composing an argument as critical as the division of our national and spiritual Capitol, you do not even quote one Jewish source! Rather than determining your stance based on Torah, Jewish Law, or the word of G-d, you quote “International Law” composed by many of the same nations who assisted or looked away as six million members of our family were slaughtered.

Intellectual Honesty, Rabbi Kanefsky. G-d demands it and your congregants, students, and followers deserve it. Please retract your article and stand with Jerusalem and the Nation of Israel. If you do not, accept our challenge to a debate and we will let the truth speak for itself. In these times of isolation and unparalleled danger, it is vital for us as a nation to unite with courage, clarity, and faith in G-d.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.
B’Ahavat Yisrael (With love of Israel),

Ari Abramowitz and Jeremy Gimpel

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