Jewish World Review August 15 , 2000 / 14 Menachem-Av, 5760
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
IT'S NOT OFTEN I agree with Yasser Arafat's chief
spokesman. But when the Palestinian information minister
condemned recent remarks by Israeli Rabbi Ovadia Yosef as
"racist and idiotic," I had to concur --- sadly and
angrily.
Yosef is the spiritual boss of Shas,
the extremist Israeli religious party. Sermonizing to his
faithful in Jerusalem last Sabbath, the 79-year-old Yosef
characterized Palestinians as "snakes" and condemned
Prime Minister Ehud Barak as "brainless" for trying to
make peace with them.
Yosef went on to describe the 6 million
Jews slaughtered by the Nazis as "reincarnations of the
souls of sinners who transgressed and did all sorts of
things which should not be done." These Holocaust victims
- men, women and children - had been "incarnated in order
to atone," he declared. They had been murdered, he
concluded in a shocking statement, "to make amends."
We could write off the rabbi's
outrageous remarks as the mumbo jumbo of an extremist
religious loony, or just the sad ramblings of a senile
old man. But Yosef, whom one irreverent Israeli
journalist once dubbed "Captain Marvel" because of his
penchant for theatrically embroidered robes, is the most
politically powerful religious figure in Israel. And it
is Yosef's Shas Party that Barak is trying to seduce back
into his shaky coalition government.
The rabbi's remarks unleashed a
predictable storm of protest, and Yosef began back
pedaling faster than a biker going down the
Mount of Olives. But in a nation where religious passions
can ignite the sort of fires of hate that led to the
murder of Yitzhak Rabin and provoke terrorism on both
sides, this sort of talk from a "holy man" is outrageous
and unforgivable.
Ominously enough, Yosef's 20-year-old
grandson was arrested earlier this year on charges of
stockpiling weapons for an anti-Arab organization.
Of course, Yosef is not the only
religious kook in our midst. The Muslim mufti of
Jerusalem told us the Holocaust "never took place," and
the Gaza Strip leader of Hamas considers Jews "children
of dogs and monkeys." In India, Hindu and Moslem "holy
men" are exhorting the faithful to murder. And on any
given day, leaders of the extreme Christian right in
America are preaching racial and religious hatred.
Does that mean that all religious
leaders have to be extremist? The answer is clearly NO!
We have our own examples of great and tolerant religious
leaders - the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi
Abraham Heschel, just to name two. Clearly, individuals
can lead deeply religious lives without trashing others.
Just this week we've seen the Democrats nominate one such
man as a vice presidential candidate: Sen. Joseph
Lieberman.
Maybe, like me, you don't agree with
all his policies all the time. But one thing is clear,
Lieberman, a fervently Orthodox Jew, has found a way to
successfully coordinate the age-old traditions of his
people with modern life and to invoke Judaism's basic
tenets of justice and compassion for the benefit of all
people.
Maybe when Yosef gets out from under
the flood of protests that have come his way, he could
take a few lessons in Torah ethics from Lieberman. Two
other things should happen: Shas should send Captain
Marvel out to pasture, and Barak should announce that
until it does, he won't include the party in his
By Richard Z. Chesnoff
JWR contributor and veteran journalist
Richard Z. Chesnoff is a senior correspondent at US News
And World Report and a columnist at the NY Daily News. His latest book is Pack of Thieves: How Hitler & Europe
Plundered the Jews and Committed the Greatest Theft in History.
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