The Zionist Plan for "Normalization" the Jewish Hospital Patient Rabbi
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ADAR 1-11, 5736 I JAN.-FEB. 1976 VOLUME XI, NUMBER S fHE SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS a dream and The Zionist Plan for "Normalization" its failure his needs and The Jewish Hospital Patient rights, our obligations the "Prince of Rabbi Yechiel Mordechai Gordon Roshei Hayeshiua" letters and The Israeli Agudath Israel: responses Movement, Party, or Both? two interviews Russian Conversations THE JEWISH OBSERVER in this issue Zionism: A Dream and its Failure I Nissan Wolpin 3 THE JEWISH OBSERVER is published Bikur Cholim - Visiting the Sick I Fred Rosner 9 monthly, except July and August, by the Agudath Israel of America, Thoughts of a Chronic Visitor I Faige Beer 12 5 Beekman St., New York, N.Y. 10038. Second class postage paid The Jewish Patient's Bill of Rights at New York, N.Y. Subscription: prepared by Bernard Fryshman $6.50 per year; Two years, $11.00; 13 Three years, $15.00; outside of the The Prince of Roshei Yeshiva: United States $7.50 per year. Single copy seventy-five cents. Rabbi Yechiel Mordechai Gordon I Chaim Shapiro 15 Printed in the U.S.A. Agudath Israel in Israel - A Political Party or a "Government in Exile"l Letters & Responses 20 RABB! N1ssoN WoLPJN Editor Russian Conversations I two interviews I Reb Shneur Zalman 31 Editorial Board II Shimon DR. ERNST L. BoDENHE!MER 32 Chairman Book in Review RABB! NATHAN BULMAN RABBI JOSEPH EUAS The Megillah (The Book of Esther) 35 JOSEPH FRJEDENSON RABBI MOSHE SHERER Letters to the Editor 36 THE JEWISH OBSERVER does not assume responsibility for the Kashrus of any product or service advertised in its pages. JAN.-FEB. 1976 VOL. XI, NO. 5 Typography by Compu-Scribe at ArtScroll Studios, Ltd. Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, 1898. The Unearned Defamation and its "racist" policy of only conferring automatic citizenship on Jewish immigrants, as Children Return FOR THE JEW, the world has many hazards, yet few ing to the Motherland, while excluding Palestinians. surprises. To be a Jew means ipso facto facing hostility from all sides. So one should not have been shocked If the Jew's right to Israel is spurious, and based on a when a majority of the United Nations General As racist doctrine, then Soviet Jews have no right to peti sembly voted to include Zionism in its condemnation of tion for visas to "repatriate" to Israel. Following the racism last fall. Nonetheless, the broad Jewish com same line of reasoning and projecting the mood of the munity reacted with deep pain for a number of reasons. UN into the future, an attack by Arab armies against Israel would hardly be met with condemnation. In the nebulous world of international affairs this condemnation had icy implications; and in the very So tremors of trepidation shocked Jews the world tangible world of national border guards, visa applica over at the United Nations' declaration. tions, and terrorist raids the overtones were even more ominous. Once Zionism was equated with racism, it The Limits of Togetherness follows that the policies of the State of Israel - the very WHILE A NUMBER OF RESPONSES suggested themselves' embodiment of Zionism - are racist; and anti-Israeli one of the most striking was the "I am a Zionist" lapel acts and sentiments can be justified as being anti-racist. button, which gave Jews a means of displaying their Terrorist raids against civilians are not to be con defiance of a condemning world. It was a fresh oppor demned, for they too are really aimed against the State tunity to flaunt the same pluck that had drained The Jewish Observer I January-February, 1976 3 swamps, irrigated deserts, and generally laughed at the from this station. It is this very loftiness that brings him oppression of the elements in Palestine a generation and suffering when his conduct falls short of its demands. two ago. And the remedy is invariably the same: teshuva - The Torah Jew certainly identifies with the return to your glorious past. .. Now, is it the Jewish beleaguered residents of Israel and cannot see his fate grip on the Holy Land that seems threatened? separate from theirs. "Their" crisis is "our" crisis. Diplomatic and military considerations have their Further, he knows well that in this case "Zionist" is a place, but do not count in the ultimate measure of code-word for Jew, and that the racist epithet tagged on security. We must but enhance our own holiness, and to the one is meant for the other, in spite of Arab then our grip on the Holy Land will be that much more protestations to the contrary. There is no trembling for tenacious. the security of the hundreds of thousands of the Torah As Rabbi Eliezer Menachem Schach, revered yishuv without worrying for all three million Israelis. Ponovezher Rosh Yeshiva, said in a recent public state There is no concern for the precarious situation of the ment: We must endeavor with all our might to secure burgeoning Torah institutions, girls schools, and com our control over our sacred land exclusively through munities that are redeeming the Holy Land without keeping Torah and mitzvos; and to declare ourselves embracing the entire countryside in this concern. simply as "Jews" with no borrowed labels tacked on . But identifying with someone's plight need not, by Then we will be secure, with no support other than the any means, call for a response identical to theirs. True, help of G-d, confident in the coming of Moshiach, as the attack against Zionism as stated was meant as a slur promised in the Torah and by the Prophets. against all Jews, but in our sense of community we The poor secularist, who fails to comprehend this must not confuse our spiritual attachment to the Holy key factor in the Jewish condition, will suffer without Land with the secularized Zionist dream that wreaked the comforting support of knowing who he is and why. havoc with Jewish identity. To the contrary, one of the All explanations he seeks will prove spurious, and all greatest services that could be done for the button remedies he concocts will prove short-lived at best. sporters and for the Jews in general, for that matter, is to question the possible responses to the mounting Yofis Yid" threat to Jewish survival, to determine which are to be The Prototype "Ma rejected, and to select the best one to subscribe to. For it RABBI ELIY AHU ELIEZER DESSLER 7"Yl was fond of is our contention that now, more than ever, the whole pointing to the proverbial "Ma Yofis Yid" as the constellation of dreams associated with "I Am A prototype of the Jew in golus: the manner in which one Zionist" is punctured. Worse - these very dreams may interprets this Yid' s condition serves as a test-case of well bear the major weight of responsibility for the cur sorts for how Jewish one's self-image is. rent spate of crises we are undergoing. In Poland, Jews lived under the rule of a poritz - a wealthy landowner. The poritz was a king in his own domain, and he looked upon the Jews How "Normal" is Go/us? who lived in his land as his chattle. THE JEW WHO UNDERSTANDS that both his national and On occasion, the poritz would make a party. He personal destiny revolve around Torah has always would become drunk and then call out: "Bring on viewed suffering and exile as directly related to his lack the Yidden." So the poor Yid would be sum of fidelity to Torah. Destruction, exile, the entire golus moned, and the poritz would command him to phenomenon is totally due to "Mipnei chato'einu - sing and dance for him. The musicians would play because of our sins," as we say in the festival Mussaf the melody of the Shabbos zemer "Ma Yofis prayers. Until that time when Jewry succeeds in raising (How Lovely)" to accompany the Jew in his per its spiritual status, golus is its normal condition. formance. On the one hand, no political, social, or economic How did this Yid view himself? Before he was measures can "normalize" the Jewish condition, and summoned, the Yid had been sitting at home, por any attempts to achieve "normalcy" by any means ing over a blatt Gemora. Because the poritz had other than spiritual improvement are only doomed to called him, he was forced to close his Gemora and failure. More, they· are even counter-productive, for amuse his lord and master. While dancing, he they deflect productive energy from the most vital tasks would contemplate the heathen at his relaxation, on the agenda. On the other hand, the Jew who under thinking, "The poor poritz there, in his drunken stands his suffering as a direct result of spiritual short stupor - he is barely even human!" Back home, comings even feels the hand of G-d in his imposed returned to his Gemora he would bask in the golus. He may be suffering deprivation to the point of pleasure of his identity - "Thank G-d I am a alienation, but he knows he has not lost his special Jew!" The humiliating "Ma Yofis" interval ac status as a member of "a Kingdom of Priests, a Holy tually heightened his awareness of the nobility of Nation." The worst of conditions do not remove him his station. His calling is to study the word of G-d. 4 The Jewish Observer /January-February, 1976 An insecure Jew could have hoped for Equality as a Frenchman, if not as a Jew. But then the celebrated Dreyfus case, culminating in the Captain's convic tion, proved this an impossible route.