Rav Nebenzahl on J-Street

OK, he really said it years ago about Israeli leftists. However, since we import everything else from the the more ethereal Torah provinces of Eretz Yisrael, I figured we could apply his classic one-liner to our own tzoros here. The rest of the year, i am far too despondant about the major damage that J-Street does to the cause of Israel’s future. On Purim at least I can joke about it:

J-Street is patur from the mitzvah of drinking on Purim. The entire year, they don’t know the difference between Arur Haman and Baruch Mordechai.

(Rav Nebenzahl, shlit”a, is the Rav of the Rova, and a former long-term chavrusa of R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, zt”l)

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5 Responses

  1. L. Oberstein says:

    Very wise and pithy. With all our anxiety, I am very happy that we have a strong State of Israel that is feared by its enemies. Unlike 1939, the world is not divided between countries that won’t let the Jews out and those that won’t let the Jews in. We no longer have to make jokes like “The elephant and the Jewish problem.”
    J Street is what it is and should be countered by the vast majority which sees the futility of compromise when the other side wants us dead. In the end, the Ribono Shel Olom runs the world . Happy Purim.

  2. mb says:

    Are they (J Street) any worse than Satmar?

    [YA: As different as night and day. Satmar doesn’t campaign in Congress not to sign legislation favorable to Israel. J Street does. Pro-Palestinian activists involved in a program of delegitimzing Israel to the American and world communities do not quote Satmar, which would get them nowhere. They do quote J Street and their ilk.]

  3. Actually, Rav Adlerstein, while our enemies don’t quote Satmar philosophy, they do use them. When our enemies want to “prove” that they’re not anti-Semitic, it’s not that hard for them to find a Satmar chassid to trot out. “See?” they’ll say. “This is a REAL Orthodox Jew and we don’t hate him!”

    [YA – I detest them as much as anyone. But I detest J-Street more. The only people who trot out these guys are obvious Jew haters. The dog and pony show doesn’t convince anyone but those who are already members of the hate choirs. J-Street eats away at our support in Congress, bolsters the academics who are poisoning the minds of a new generation, and supports the NGO’s whose hatred of Jews is more potent, because they disguise it in the niceties of civil society.]

  4. Mr. Cohen says:

    “…former HaAretz editor David Landau, who in 2007 told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the U.S. needed to rape Israel into a settlement with the Palestinians.”

    SOURCE: article by Seth J. Frantzman in The Jewish Herald 2010 March 5, page 11

    It seems to me that J Street has the same beliefs as David Landau.

  5. I wonder how many of the students in our traditional schools know what is J-Street, let alone have an opinion on it. We don’t understand the power of the new social media, and the power of organizations like J-Street to shape public opinion. Obama’s team understood this well, and his online social networking provided him with a lot of money and publicity. Why are we so uninformed?

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