Recipients and Publicity comment {rest of post is in comments to "Subbotnik Jews of Ilyinka are Jews": ]
Mishpacha magazine for hire continues to promote agenda of Michael Freund and Shavei Israel proselytizing organization.
Mishpacha magazine for hire poses danger to Torah true hashkofas by not teaching about Kiddush Hashem when Jews are obligated to sacrifice their lives for Yiddishkeit and not become Christians, Catholics or Communists.
Shavei Israel digs for converts in Poland and elsewhere in the guise of "hidden Jews" who will in any case require GIUR KEHALACHA LECHUMRA.
As in the case of the Russian Subbotniks, the status of gentiles seeking to become Jews in Poland, as many as 150,000+, poses a threat to Israel as long as the Israeli Chief rabbinate does not affirm its position and leaves it up to Michael Freund to set the agenda.
Read the latest article first, with later comments and analysis starting with "RaP": [...]
Thank you. Out of fairness to the readers and because this is also a new topic the full post is re-posted here in full as well:
ReplyDeleteMishpacha magazine for hire continues to promote agenda of Michael Freund and Shavei Israel proselytizing organization.
Mishpacha magazine for hire poses danger to Torah true hashkofas by not teaching about Kiddush Hashem when Jews are obligated to sacrifice their lives for Yiddishkeit and not become Christians, Catholics or Communists.
Shavei Israel digs for converts in Poland and elsewhere in the guise of "hidden Jews" who will in any case require GIUR KEHALACHA LECHUMRA.
As in the case of the Russian Subbotniks, the status of gentiles seeking to become Jews in Poland, as many as 150,000+, poses a threat to Israel as long as the Israeli Chief rabbinate does not affirm its position and leaves it up to Michael Freund to set the agenda.
Read the latest article first, with later comments and analysis starting with "RaP":
[Note from “RaP”: First person narratives have been minimized for reasons of space using “…” to focus on historical events, activities of rabbis, Shavei Israel and its head Michael Freund.]
"Mishpacha
Jewish Family Weekly
Issue 248
1 Adar 5769 – 2.25.09
Pages: 32-35
[Cover photo of a man with yarmulka walking alongside railway tracks deep in thought seen through barbed wire]
[Cover headline: DEATHBED CONFESSIONS: Poland’s Jews Come Out Of hiding]
[Table of contents summary: OUT OF HIDING: Ruchama Paz and Rachel Ginzberg:
Deathbed confessions from guilt-ridden grandparents, combined with a reemergence of Jewish pride, have created a groundswell of self-discovery among Poland’s Jews – thousands of young people are reclaiming their Jewish roots.]
“Lost and Found in Poland
By Ruchama Paz and Rachel Ginsberg
[Bold: For Poland’s Jews, the collective memory of pogroms, concentration camps, and death marches convinced survivors that it was safer to blend into the Polish Catholic scenery than to identify as Jews. Today, death-bed confessions from guilt-ridden grandparents, combined with a re-emergence of Jewish pride, have created a groundswell of self-discovery – thousands of young people are reclaiming their Jewish roots]
[Photo: David, Adam, and Mordechai, visiting Israel last summer, each underwent a giur lechumra – conversion in case of doubt, after finding out that their grandparents were Jews. Photos: Ouria Tadmor and Michael Freund]
Long Memories: Jewish Poland is reemerging. Not since the end of World War II have so many Poles discovered their Jewishness – let alone dared publicize it.
…On July 4, 1946, a pogrom broke out in Kielce targeting 200 Holocaust survivors who’d returned to their homes in this town in central Poland. Thirty-seven Kielce residents were murdered, as were two Jews passing through by train.
The pogrom was a clear exit sign for the 250,000 Polish Jews who’d survived the Holocaust – 250,000 out of the 3.5 million who’d lived in Poland before the war…
Still, some 150,000 survivors remained on the shaky Polish fence awaiting better days. But not may years passed before a whole generation of Jewish survivors had gone underground.
The anti-Zionist campaign of high-ranking official Wladislaw Gomolka in 1968 impelled the rest to discard their Jewish identity – which they viewed as burdensome and life-threatening – and to live as mainstream Catholic Poles.
The Secret Revealed:…Now that communism’s influence is waning and it’s no longer a curse to be Jewish, Jews and their descendants are beginning to end their historic silence and return to Judaism. Sometimes these are children of a Jewish mother or grandmother, or sons and grandsons of a Jewish father and grandfather.
[Photo: Israel Chief rabbi Yona Metzger with newly-discovered Jews in Wroclaw, Poland: Every case is judged individually]
“It’s a tragic, yet fascinating phenomenon,” says Michael Freund, chairman of Shavei Israel, an organization dedicated to locating communities of “lost Jews.”
“First you have the Jews who survived the Holocaust but hid their Jewishness from the communist authorities. Then you have the many cases of Jewish children adopted by Catholic families and institutions during the Holocaust. We’re seeing more and more deathbed confessions, in which adoptive parents will, perhaps out of guilt or out of a need to put the record straight, finally tell their adoptive children, ‘Oh, by the way, you’re Jewish.’”
“The issue is very complex, because today many of these rediscovered Jews can’t prove their Jewish ancestry,” Freund continues. “There was a lost second generation, but now the third generation is rediscovering its Jewish roots. Grandparents are divulging the family secret before it’s too late. We’re not missionaries. Our organization is here to provide solutions. For those interested in halachic conversion, we send them to the proper rabbinic authorities. For those who just want to learn more, we try to provide them with positive Jewish experiences.”
Shavei Israel leaves the halachic aspect of each case to Israel’s Chief rabbinate. “Each case has its own set of evidence, its own level of proof or reliability,” Freund explains. “Is the Jewish line from the mother or the father? What kind of proof is there? These are things for a beis din to decide.”
Too Late for Change?: What happens when someone makes the astonishing discovery of his Jewishness after living the tranquil life of a Catholic Pole?
David, a resident of Lodz who visited Israel last summer with a group organized by Shavei Israel, had uncovered his Jewishness just months before.
…Mordechai, from Gdansk, knows for sure that his great-great-grandmother – his grandmother’s grandmother – became an apostate in Lvov, after suffering persecutions and rioting. She emigrated from Ukraine to Poland and settled in Gdansk, taking on a Christian identity.
“When I first arrived in Poland, I knew that this phenomenon existed,” says Poland’s Chief rabbi Michael Shudrich. “But I could never have imagined how widespread it was. In the seventies, when communist regime was at the height of its power, I came to Poland for short visits. That’s when I heard people saying that, along with the thousands of lone Jews who were known, many more were hidden. During the communist era, especially after 1968, it was hard to find a self-declared Jew…
“I’d be making a conservative estimate if I say that we’re talking about a widespread phenomenon, encompassing tens of thousands of people in Poland,” Rabbi Shudrich says. “As the years go by, that trickle is turning into a stream. As people feel more confident, they’re less afraid to present their identity.”
…[Bold: The Jewish survival instinct dictated that whoever wanted to live out his life in peace, on Polish soil, was better off not identifying himself as a Jew]
[Photo: When Pavel discovered he was Jewish, “no news could have been worse”]
…Who Am I?: In 1986, glasnost reached Poland, and the hidden Polish Jews began peeking out of the bunkers, fearfully at first, but later with increasing confidence.
…[Bold: “We’re seeing more and more deathbed confessions, in which adoptive parents finally tell their adoptive children, ‘Oh by the way, you’re Jewish’” – Michael Freund]
[Photo: David: “Until age eighteen, I didn’t know anything about the Jewish People”]
…Jewish Is “In”: In an interesting about-face, Jewish culture has become somewhat fashionable. In Krakow, where there are just 157 registered Jews, who are mostly old and infirm, “Jewish-style” is the height of chic. The brightly colored ”Jewish-style” restaurants dotting the city’s maze of streets and courtyards are about “as Jewish as a bacon sandwich at a Chassidic wedding,” Chris Shwartz, founder and director of the district’s Galicia Jewish Museum, told the UK Independent. Klezmer music festivals and cafes serving chopped liver, cholent, kishke, and a selection of sweet Kiddush wines are aimed at Jewish American and Israeli tourists, but they’ve charmed the Polish youth as well.
“Today in Poland there is a fascination with all things Jewish,” says Freund. “This makes it easier for the ‘hidden Jews’ to emerge.”
While official figures list only 4,000 Jews residing in Poland, another roughly 30,000 are just beginning to discover their true identity.
…Homegrown Talent: Rabbi Mati Pawlak, 29, is the first Polish-born rabbi in forty years. And for the first half of his life he had no idea he was Jewish.
When Pawlak was fourteen, his mother – who had always “inexplicably” kept him out of Catholicism classes at school – told him he was a Jew. She herself, born after the war, never received any form of Jewish education from her parents, survivors of the Holocaust determined to shield their daughter from a fate similar to theirs.
Like many Jews in communist Poland, Rabbi Pawlak’s family kept their heritage hidden for decades, acknowledging their Judaism only after the 1989 collapse of communism. Pawlak then began to explore Judaism at Jewish camps and at the synagogue in his home town of Szczecin, a search that culminated with his graduation from New York’s Yeshiva University.
Today, Pawlak is the principal of Warsaw’s only Jewish school. Lauder-Morasha, and officiates at Warsaw’s Nozyk synagogue.
Although twenty-first
century “hidden Jews” feel safer publicly acknowledging their Jewishness, the older generation retains the fear of postwar Poland. Maya Lashinsky, 80, was her family’s sole survivor of the death camps. After the war she returned to her hometown but felt that blending into the Polish landscape was her safest option. She married a Polish non-Jew and had three children, who are halachically Jewish but know nothing of even the basics of Judaism.
Today, Maya has begun attending synagogue and wears a big Magen David around her neck. But what about her children?
“You weren’t there,” she told a Shavei Israel delegation. “You don’t understand and you never will!”■ “
~~~~~
Comments starting with "RaP":
“[Cover photo of a man with yarmulka walking alongside railway tracks deep in thought seen through barbed wire]”
RaP: Notice all the hype. Barbed wire and rail tracks are presumably supposed to conjure up images of the Holocaust and connecting that with the Poles who are coming out of the woodwork and claiming to be Jews, counting on an emotional rather than a rational and HALACHIC and most importantly the CORRECT TORAH HASHKOFA in response to the entire matter.
“[Cover headline: DEATHBED CONFESSIONS: Poland’s Jews Come Out Of hiding]
[Table of contents summary: OUT OF HIDING: Ruchama Paz and Rachel Ginzberg: Deathbed confessions from guilt-ridden grandparents, combined with a reemergence of Jewish pride, have created a groundswell of self-discovery among Poland’s Jews – thousands of young people are reclaiming their Jewish roots.]”
“Lost and Found in Poland
By Ruchama Paz and Rachel Ginsberg”
RaP: Note how many ways the heading is spun. Can’t this story have one heading? In addition who are Ruchama Paz and Rachel Ginsberg, it’s time to know. In the Mishpacha article about the Subbotniks, “Rachel Ginsberg” was also involved but the name that time was spelled “Ginsburg” – at any rate, they need to be indentified because by the time this article is over they will have been responsible for writing and spinning a piece that is VERY controversial because of the proselytization and reaching out to people who are not Halachik Jews.
“[Bold: For Poland’s Jews, the collective memory of pogroms, concentration camps, and death marches convinced survivors that it was safer to blend into the Polish Catholic scenery than to identify as Jews. Today, death-bed confessions from guilt-ridden grandparents, combined with a re-emergence of Jewish pride, have created a groundswell of self-discovery – thousands of young people are reclaiming their Jewish roots]”
RaP: The statement that “…death marches convinced survivors that it was safer to blend into the Polish Catholic scenery than to identify as Jews” is an outright violation of what Halachah and Hashkafa teaches. Where does it say in either Halacha or Hashkafa that it is permitted for Jews to “blend into” any Christian or other religion? Would this be taught in a yeshiva or bais yaakov or by any Orthodox Jew? Mishpacha magazine has forgotten its responsibility here and has allowed two young ladies to formulate statements that are not what classical Judaism teaches, and that is that when Jews are confronted with the choice of taking on another religion, certainly if it is by force then they must rather give their lives and if not they have sinned and become meshumadim and cannot be allowed into Klal Yisroel without a bais din’s approval. Has Mishpacha magazine forgotten the din of yeherag ve’al ya’avor and what the Talmud and the Rambam have to say about this, that under conditions of shmad Jews must give their lives rather than submit to or choose the cross, yet this is exactly what Mishpacha and these writers are advocating. Have they forgotten what is taught to frum children about how Chana and her seven sons chose death rather than bow down to the Greek idols and how about those brave Jews who rather than converting to Christianity chose to walk out of Spain in 1492 at the risk of losing their lives not to mention how millions of Jews went to the gas chambers and sure death singing Ani Ma’amin, and never were meshumadim glorified at any time!
“[Photo: David, Adam, and Mordechai, visiting Israel last summer, each underwent a giur lechumra – conversion in case of doubt, after finding out that their grandparents were Jews. Photos: Ouria Tadmor and Michael Freund]”
RaP: Ok, so here we go. If these people need GIUR LECHUMRA it means that they are NOT Jews, period, no ifs ands or buts, no matter how emotional and sad their tale and yet again one must ask why Michael Freund has taken it upon himself to bring gentiles, with tangential and Halachically inconsequential connections to Jews and Judaism “back into the fold”? Let theme stay on the outside because there are enough problems on the inside with sure Jews from birth.
“Long Memories: Jewish Poland is reemerging. Not since the end of World War II have so many Poles discovered their Jewishness”
RaP: Note this word “Jewishness” what is it exactly. It’s being used as a new kind of word for “Jewish but not Jewish” because there is no such thing as “Jewishness” since one is either Jewish or nor Jewish, a Jew or a gentile, but there is no such animal as a person who has a status of “Jewishness” and this is just Mishpacha acting as Shavei Israel’s unwitting propagandist.
“– let alone dared publicize it.…On July 4, 1946, a pogrom broke out in Kielce targeting 200 Holocaust survivors who’d returned to their homes in this town in central Poland. Thirty-seven Kielce residents were murdered, as were two Jews passing through by train. The pogrom was a clear exit sign for the 250,000 Polish Jews who’d survived the Holocaust – 250,000 out of the 3.5 million who’d lived in Poland before the war…Still, some 150,000 survivors remained on the shaky Polish fence awaiting better days. But not many years passed before a whole generation of Jewish survivors had gone underground. The anti-Zionist campaign of high-ranking official Wladislaw Gomolka in 1968 impelled the rest to discard their Jewish identity – which they viewed as burdensome and life-threatening – and to live as mainstream Catholic Poles.”
RaP: Again, this makes it all sound very noble, that they “went underground” when it was not. And please note that JUDAISM FORBIDS ITS ADHERENTS FROM LIVING AS "MAINSTREAM CATHOLIC" anythings -- upon pain of excommunication when they should rather have chosen martyrdom. Many of these people were probably already very deeply assimilated into Polish society unlike the majority of Jews who were not and were killed in the Holocaust. Many were probably ardent Communists and hid their identity during the war by either fleeing or going into deep hiding and had no desire to be in touch with the Jewish people. With the fall of Communism many of the Polish gentiles have been blaming them for Poland’s fall into the hands of the Communist USSR and now they are seeking to escape. It’s not really as “romantic” as Mishpacha or Michael Freund make it out to be.
“The anti-Zionist campaign of high-ranking official Wladislaw Gomolka in 1968 impelled the rest to discard their Jewish identity – which they viewed as burdensome and life-threatening – and to live as mainstream Catholic Poles.”
RaP: Again these dangerous, anti-Halachic and 100% wrong Hashkafa lines as Mishpacha forgets that they have a responsibility to point out that from a Torah true perspective, these people were doing the absolute wrong thing that no Torah Jew would want to teach their own children. In a Torah classroom, a rebbe or a morah would never get up and say that “today we will learn that if communists or Christians pop up and make life hard for you, just go along with them and become a communist or Christian” or whatever flavor of the month heretic you like, and it’s ok, and you’ll be heroes one day as you will get articles about yourselves” chas vesholom – no the correct thing that Torah Jews are taught is that you MUST give your life when it is such a situation when you are being FORCED to become a communist or Christian, and if you don’t, just look at what becomes of you, you will become a meshumad or an apikores and you will be cut of from the Jewish People, r”l.
“The Secret Revealed:…Now that communism’s influence is waning and it’s no longer a curse to be Jewish, Jews and their descendants are beginning to end their historic silence and return to Judaism. Sometimes these are children of a Jewish mother or grandmother, or sons and grandsons of a Jewish father and grandfather.”
RaP: It’s a nightmare, but why must Shavei Israel and Michael Freund make it his business to go looking for these people, when from quite a few of the stories it’s clear that like all regular gerim, if they are motivated they will do the search on their own to become Halachic Jews?
“[Photo: Israel Chief rabbi Yona Metzger with newly-discovered Jews in Wroclaw, Poland: Every case is judged individually]”
RaP: How about getting an official statement of policy and guidelines from the Israeli Chief Rabbinate about all this rather than just posed photos that are neither here nor there.
“It’s a tragic, yet fascinating phenomenon,” says Michael Freund, chairman of Shavei Israel, an organization dedicated to locating communities of “lost Jews.” First you have the Jews who survived the Holocaust but hid their Jewishness from the communist authorities. Then you have the many cases of Jewish children adopted by Catholic families and institutions during the Holocaust. We’re seeing more and more deathbed confessions, in which adoptive parents will, perhaps out of guilt or out of a need to put the record straight, finally tell their adoptive children, ‘Oh, by the way, you’re Jewish.’”
“The issue is very complex, because today many of these rediscovered Jews can’t prove their Jewish ancestry,” Freund continues."
RaP: Freund is flooding us with lots of different scenarios, and as if he is the only one capable of digesting it. And why can’t he understand the significance of his own words, that if they “can’t prove” that they are Jews then they are GENTILES and no amount of bandying the word “Jewishness” about helps anything!
“There was a lost second generation, but now the third generation is rediscovering its Jewish roots. Grandparents are divulging the family secret before it’s too late. We’re not missionaries. Our organization is here to provide solutions. For those interested in halachic conversion, we send them to the proper rabbinic authorities. For those who just want to learn more, we try to provide them with positive Jewish experiences.”
RaP: Wrong! You are missionaries because you are proselytizing to gentiles. You are not providing solution but you ARE creating problems. If people do not want halachic conversions (what other kind are there?) then why are you busy enticing gentiles with your programs? And what is this business of giving “positive Jewish experiences” to gentiles who “want to learn more” because if that is not missionizing than nothing is!
“Shavei Israel leaves the halachic aspect of each case to Israel’s Chief rabbinate. “Each case has its own set of evidence, its own level of proof or reliability,” Freund explains. “Is the Jewish line from the mother or the father? What kind of proof is there? These are things for a beis din to decide.”
RaP: Sure, but have you asked any notable bais din for permission to do what you are doing or do you just go out there and do your thing and then throw all the hot potatoes into the laps of the dayanim?
“Too Late for Change?: What happens when someone makes the astonishing discovery of his Jewishness after living the tranquil life of a Catholic Pole? David, a resident of Lodz who visited Israel last summer with a group organized by Shavei Israel, had uncovered his Jewishness just months before.…Mordechai, from Gdansk, knows for sure that his great-great-grandmother – his grandmother’s grandmother – became an apostate in Lvov, after suffering persecutions and rioting. She emigrated from Ukraine to Poland and settled in Gdansk, taking on a Christian identity.”
RaP: Just take a close look at these cases and you will see that you are dealing with pure Christians who cannot even start out proving that they are Jews, yet Shavei Israel thinks it’s doing Klal Yisrael a great favor by digging up such cases of embedded Christians and Catholics and inviting them to become Jews. Just sheer lunacy.
“When I first arrived in Poland, I knew that this phenomenon existed,” says Poland’s Chief rabbi Michael Shudrich. “But I could never have imagined how widespread it was. In the seventies, when communist regime was at the height of its power, I came to Poland for short visits. That’s when I heard people saying that, along with the thousands of lone Jews who were known, many more were hidden. During the communist era, especially after 1968, it was hard to find a self-declared Jew…“I’d be making a conservative estimate if I say that we’re talking about a widespread phenomenon, encompassing tens of thousands of people in Poland,” Rabbi Shudrich says. “As the years go by, that trickle is turning into a stream. As people feel more confident, they’re less afraid to present their identity.”
…[Bold: The Jewish survival instinct dictated that whoever wanted to live out his life in peace, on Polish soil, was better off not identifying himself as a Jew]”
RaP: How could Mishpacha even publish such a statement that “The Jewish survival instinct dictated that whoever wanted to live out his life in peace, on Polish soil, was better off not identifying himself as a Jew” –when that is NOT the “Jewish survival instinct”! It may be the human or animal survival instinct to hide one’s identity but Jewish Law is more complex than that. The Rambam states that it depends on the circumstances when talking of Hilchos Kiddush Hashem, and when it’s a situation of Gezeiras Hashmad, as in the times of Nevuchadnezar, then Torah true Jews are OBLIGATED to give their lives rather than joining an alien religion or ideology. And this is precisely the lesson that Mishpacha and the writers of this articles are totally oblivious of in their haste to please their client Michale Freund and his Shavei Israel outfit in its rush to sift and search for vadai goyim whose parents and grandparents and even earlier had become outright meshumadim and/or apikorsim and were lost to the Jewish people.
“[Photo: When Pavel discovered he was Jewish, “no news could have been worse”]
…Who Am I?: In 1986, glasnost reached Poland, and the hidden Polish Jews began peeking out of the bunkers, fearfully at first, but later with increasing confidence.”
RaP: Spare us the heroism, they were not in “bunkers” as if they were in the throes of war in the Holocaust. They were leading good lives and were happy as gentiles, and most still are (to the obvious chagrin of Freund), and now here and there a few of these people are getting interested in Jews and Judaism that’s become a phenomenon with many trendy gentiles.
“…[Bold: “We’re seeing more and more deathbed confessions, in which adoptive parents finally tell their adoptive children, ‘Oh by the way, you’re Jewish’” – Michael Freund]
[Photo: David: “Until age eighteen, I didn’t know anything about the Jewish People”]
…Jewish Is “In”: In an interesting about-face, Jewish culture has become somewhat fashionable. In Krakow, where there are just 157 registered Jews, who are mostly old and infirm, “Jewish-style” is the height of chic. The brightly colored ”Jewish-style” restaurants dotting the city’s maze of streets and courtyards are about “as Jewish as a bacon sandwich at a Chassidic wedding,” Chris Shwartz, founder and director of the district’s Galicia Jewish Museum, told the UK Independent. Klezmer music festivals and cafes serving chopped liver, cholent, kishke, and a selection of sweet Kiddush wines are aimed at Jewish American and Israeli tourists, but they’ve charmed the Polish youth as well.”
RaP: "Chris Schwartz" a good hybrid name. Why can’t they be left eating their treif chollents and not be dragged into Yiddishkeit by Freund and Shavei Israel?
“Today in Poland there is a fascination with all things Jewish,” says Freund. “This makes it easier for the ‘hidden Jews’ to emerge.” While official figures list only 4,000 Jews residing in Poland, another roughly 30,000 are just beginning to discover their true identity.…”
RaP: Sure the numbers always keep growing. 4000, then 30000 then 150000 then all or at least half or a third of all Poles will be declared full of “Jewishness” the same way they talk about Spain being half or a third or quarter “Jewish” nowadays.
“Although twenty-first century “hidden Jews” feel safer publicly acknowledging their Jewishness, the older generation retains the fear of postwar Poland. Maya Lashinsky, 80, was her family’s sole survivor of the death camps. After the war she returned to her hometown but felt that blending into the Polish landscape was her safest option. She married a Polish non-Jew and had three children, who are halachically Jewish but know nothing of even the basics of Judaism. Today, Maya has begun attending synagogue and wears a big Magen David around her neck. But what about her children? “You weren’t there,” she told a Shavei Israel delegation. “You don’t understand and you never will!”
RaP: This lady needs to be respectfully put in her place. What is she saying and that she knows about “Shavei Israel”, wow? Woopiedoo, she is a walking and talking advert for shmad and this is the example that Mishpacha leaves the reader with, and it’s meant to be a kind of “launch line” for Fruend who may as well be saying here “…and fear not because Shavei Israel is here to fix all that’s wrong with being a meshumad and an apikores” without any other divergent or alternate Halachic of Torah voice anywhere in sight. How sad and what an indictment of Mishpacha and its lack of chochma as it pathetically sells its journalistic soul to the highest bidder yet again.
"If these people need GIUR LECHUMRA it means that they are NOT Jews, period, no ifs ands or buts"
ReplyDeleteWrong. That's NOT how the term "Giur Lechumra" is used. It means exactly the opposite, that a person undergoing the procedure is already Jewish me-ikar hadin. One clear illustration of this: the tevila is done w/o a bracha.
Otherwise, it would just be called "Giur" (stam).
I agree that many activities of Shavei Israel seems dubious, and sacrificing one's life al kiddush Hashem is certainly a core concept. However, it is totally inappropriate to judge these Jews, who survived the Holocaust only to face Communist oppression, as harshly as you do. Also, the ones who found out their Jewish heritage through their Polish-Catholic *adoptive* parents are under the status, quite literally, of tinok shenishbad.
Your angry dismissal of them is distasteful, to say the least.
"Tzurah said... "If these people need GIUR LECHUMRA it means that they are NOT Jews, period, no ifs ands or buts"
ReplyDelete"Wrong. That's NOT how the term "Giur Lechumra" is used. It means exactly the opposite, that a person undergoing the procedure is already Jewish me-ikar hadin. One clear illustration of this: the tevila is done w/o a bracha."
RaP: Thank you for your clarification. If they are Jewish me'ikar hadin then some poskim would hold that they don't even need tevila of any sort, so requiring full formal halachic geirus and tevila and whatever else the bais din may deem necessry and presumably if they were raised as Chatholic boys they will also need full brisim me'ikar hadin. However the point is that Shavei Israel propaganda likes to have it all ways, to tell stories about people who cannot prove their "Jewishness" so therefore they are gentiles (but Shavie Israel does not call them that), and then Shavei Israel tries to show how "halachic" they are being by skipping those episodes when full plain old giur is required and they only cite examples of "giur lechumra" in situations of great ambiguity. Can't you see through Shavei Israel's ruses? They conveniently showcase and use halachically reassuring or less threatening terms (as you choose) in the hope that noone will notice that most of the people they will be dredging up in Poland will so hopelessly assimilated, Christianized and "fargoyished" lost in so many generations of Polish society (this goes back a long time in Poland, in the days of the meshumad Frank the false messiah may Jews bapstised and crossed over into the Polish nobility) that no amount of sweet-talking in articles of doing conversions, be it any form of "giur lechumra" or "giur lekula" or "stam giur" or "giur kehalacha" and using the terms as they wish will justify their goals of mass proselytization. It is that you should find highly distasteful and not my critique of what they are doing.
"Otherwise, it would just be called "Giur" (stam)."
RaP: Thank you again for the clarification. Yet, notice how the article and Shavei Israel don't talk about that much, creating the false impression that they are not there to help gentiles with conversions because once they deem a gentile to have a high enough quotient of "Jewishness" then all's fair and their clients are then ready to become full-fledged Jews no matter which way they wish to present it.
"I agree that many activities of Shavei Israel seems dubious, and sacrificing one's life al kiddush Hashem is certainly a core concept."
RaP: Thank you for agreeing at least to this. But the problem is that neither the writers of the article nor the owners and editors of Mishpacha magazine realized that they have a higher responsibility to the Am HaTorah and the klal that buys and reads their magazine than to just glorify histories and cases of shmad without at the same time at least minimally noting what Jewish Law really requires of Jews who are first faced with these kinds of tragic dilemmas.
"However, it is totally inappropriate to judge these Jews, who survived the Holocaust only to face Communist oppression, as harshly as you do."
RaP: I am passing judgmenet on the article as any critical reader would. I am not in a vegatative state of intellectual numbness. I carefully read the article once. Then I did a double take and read it again, even more carefully. Then I started thinking about the article. I even discussed the article at my Shabbos table with some people and got their impressions and to clarify my thoughts. My mind was constantly asking questions, and finally I formulated a responses. If this was a Gemora you were learning or an essay you were required to critique in college you would do no different.
Your response is exactly the one that the Shavei Israel people and the writers for hire with an assist from Mishpacha cooked up and counted on, an emotional rather than a rational, response. Certainly they weren't thinking of trying to put the whole susbject together in a hashkafically and halachically correct framework and terms. Just tear-jerking and emotionalism. Sure the Holocaust is a painful topic. But these people made choices that are NOT glorified in any Torah educational system. This is a revisionism plain and simple, that whereas in mainstream Torah chinuch talmidim and talmidos are taught about the great Kiddush Hashem examples of the millions of KEDOSHIM and TEHORIM who chose death and martyrdom even though many could have chosen to hide in churches and monastries but they did not, yet now comes along Shavei Israel with a new curriculum to further its own agenda to cast a small minority "who went over to the spiritual enemy" as it were, and chose literal shmad and baptism becoming apostates (and true, these are tough choices that no Jew should ever face) but they did the wrong thing and then they paid for it and they do not deserve a free ride and easy ticket back into the ranks of klal Yisroel just because Michael Freund had a dream and pumps millions of dollars through Shavei Israel to get into this twilight zone.
As for those under Communism, many of them were indeed communists themselves and were not saints and it is today when they our outcasts and being blamed by Poles for the downfall of Poland under communism that they decide they must run to the Jews and Israel to save them and they count on unsuspecting suckers to welcome them back into the the Jewish fold when they long ago removed themselves from it.
"Also, the ones who found out their Jewish heritage through their Polish-Catholic *adoptive* parents are under the status, quite literally, of tinok shenishbad."
RaP: Tough call. Maybe yes and maybe no. The notion of "tinok shenishba" has been grossly over-used in recent times. Anyhow, this is not a new situation. From the most ancient of days, Jewish infants and children have been captured or fallen into gentile hands in various ways in times of strife and times of peace. Yet never have the rabbonim or any leaders of the Jewish people over the past 2000 years set up full-fledged organizations to go looking for these people. There are many reasons for this beyond the scope of this response. One is that if it was pursued with full vigor in an upfront in your face manner then it could result in a massive counter-response from the Churches and unleash a tidal wave of antisemitic anger and worse against all suviving viable Jewish communities.
But bottom line, if these people wish to rejoin the Jewish people they will do so and Shavei Israel is not needed for such a job since all Jewish organizations could deal with it if they had to.
"Your angry dismissal of them is distasteful, to say the least."
RaP: It took a lot of effort and time on my part to type up the original article and to formulate and type the response and I do wish that you would discuss specific points rather than you be judgmental and do the very thing you accuse me of doing.
I would like to respond to the spurious criticism and outright lashon hara contained in the March 19 post entitled, "RaP's criticism of proselytizing in Poland".
ReplyDeleteI find it simply incomprehensible that my organization, Shavei Israel, is being labeled as "missionary" and criticized for helping people in Poland to return to their Jewish roots. Had the person who posted this tirade bothered to read the article in Mishpacha magazine in question, they would have seen quite clearly that I am quoted as saying the following: "For those interested in halachic conversion, we send them to the proper rabbinic authorities. For those who just want to learn more, we try to provide them with positive Jewish experiences.” Shavei Israel leaves the halachic aspect of each case to Israel’s Chief rabbinate. “Each case has its own set of evidence, its own level of proof or reliability,” Freund explains. “Is the Jewish line from the mother or the father? What kind of proof is there? These are things for a beis din to decide.”
There it is - in black and white - we leave these matters for a beis din to decide, because as Torah-observant Jews our fidelity is to Halacha and nothing else. We simply refer the people in question to rabbonim, and it is up to them to make the determination. Since when is referring people to a beis din considered "missionary" activity? Since when is respecting Torah law and following it cause for being the target of lashon hara?
Michael Freund
Chairman, Shavei Israel
The above comment of Michael Freund was made into a post
ReplyDeletehttp://daattorah.blogspot.com/2009/03/michael-freund-of-shavei-israel.html