Kol Nidre/Yom Kippur 5776
by Rabbi Arnold Saltzman
Vanitzʼak is a word found in several verses of the Torah. It means ʻand we cried out!ʼ
This is a year for crying out about the environment, about refugees, and political candidates, racism, and about anti-Semitism.
This past year, I sat in the congregation at Adas Israel as the Ambassador of France to the United States spoke from the pulpit, saying that France had failed. France had sinned against its Jewish citizens by failing to protect them from the crime of Anti-Semitism.
You will recall that a man entered a market and killed innocent customers, an act of targeted killing of Jews. Another Muslim man who worked there hid some of the customers in a freezer during the terror. One acted as a terrorist another was a hero.
Similarly, the Charlie Hebdo attack on the offices of a cartoon illustrator, a Muslim attacked, while a Muslim police officer was shot down.
Here in Washington, DC we had the representative of France offer a ʻmea culpaʼ in a synagogue, an apology for not doing enough to protect the Jews of France, and promising to do more.
France, in recent years has seen a number of attacks on the Jewish community, including the killing of a rabbi/principal and children in a school. Attacks on synagogues, and the kidnapping and brutal killing of a man in Paris, a rape of a Jewish woman, all with race and religion as elements of these crimes. Many hundreds of physical attacks, broken windows, verbal attacks are not even counted, yet there is no question that there has been a dangerous increase in these crimes.
The French government has been slow to react these past years, as have other European countries, including Belgium, and Germany where signs that the Jews must go, or back to the ovens, or finish the job, were part of anti-Jewish and anti Israel demonstrations by thousands of people, even in Great Britain.
France is the birthplace of Liberté, égalité, fraternité except for the Jews, except whenever they think they canʼt tolerate us. France has never owned up to the fact that its trains were used to transport French Jews, that Jews were gathered in Paris in horrendous conditions for deportation known as the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup, that Jewish property, including valuable art which was stolen has been impeded in being returned to the holocaust survivors’ heirs even after all these years.
The Vichy Government of France, which saw and even invited Nazi troops to march in Paris with weeping French citizens watching the event, that same government hunted Jews. The situation in France was the same as in the other countries of Europe. The SS was terrorizing Jews in the middle of the night, destroying and taking property, stealing residences with forced sales, arresting and beating Jews, before shipping Jews off to concentration camps for something worse.
If this sounds disturbing, imagine living through it. Mina and Neely Langmuir, two sisters, age 9 and 6, were sent away by their parents to escape into southern France. They went with an adult male they did not know, but who used children’s shoes to bribe his way past check points. They eventually were hidden with a French Catholic family, going to a Catholic school – and worrying every day that they would be caught. They survived.
Elsewhere, French police in the city of Nice arrested and took children into custody, not even for conversion as in the Inquisition, but to be eliminated. Weʼre talking about many children, and all of their names are documented in a huge book by Serge and Beate Klarsfeld who spent their lives uncovering these crimes exposing those who took part in the crime, bringing some of them to trial.
70 years following the end of the disastrous second world war, Jews are being targeted and attacked in Europe because they are Jews and because Israel is not willing to capitulate to ʻArabʼ terrorism, and Islamic anti-Semitism.
That seems to be a difficult thing to say, that anti-semitism is rampant in Muslim countries, and in the Arab world. This is true in their education of children, their media, television, and their political pronouncements. Yet little is being done to counter it. The Bʼnai Brith does not have offices in these countries, since they would be blown up.
So, rabbi, what does this have to do with Kol Nidre? Is it our sin? We can make the case that we are too complacent, that we have not spoken up enough or addressed this issue, and therefore it is a ʻbig sinʼ when we see these results. Complacency is a sin.
We need to remind and teach that the majority of Israelʼs Jews come from Arab countries whose governments were allies of the Nazis, and who attacked and drove out their Jewish populations. More Jews left those countries in modern times than are recorded to have left Egypt in the Exodus. Yet we almost never speak about it. There are some who even suggest that this mass migration of Jews was just a voluntary event.
Here are the painful but true figures:
Morocco: In 1948, 265,000 Jews, recent estimate of remaining Jews 2500. Algeria: 140,000, recently 0. Tunisia: 105,000, recently 1000.
Libya: 38,000, recently 0. Iraq: 140,000, recently 5.
Egypt: 80,000, recently 100. Yemen: 63,000, recently 350. Syria: 30,000, recently 100. Lebanon: 20,000, recently 40. Bahrain: 600, recently 50. Sudan: 350, recently 0. Approximately 900,000 immigrants to Israel in 1948 from Arab countries, now are only 4500 in Jewish population in those Arab countries. Afghanistan: 5,000, recently 1. Bangladesh unknown, recently 175. Iran in 1956: 65,000, recently 9,000. Pakistan: 2,500, recently 250. Turkey 80,000, recently 17,800.
Non-Arab Muslim countries total 282,000 down to 32,000.
How is it that the largest Muslim country, Indonesia with 250 million plus population has a 50% anti-semitism rating from ADL but only 2,000 Jews by descent, and only a small number practicing Judaism remain in the Jewish community?
This sermon is not about the disappearance of Jews, but the irrational and unchecked prejudice which exists in (are you ready?) 1 out of every 4 people on the planet according to ADL.
Circle the wagons! What are we to do?
In recent decades there was a conference on Racism in Durban, and others which preceded it in Geneva. Yet instead of addressing this issue regarding anti-semitism it was turned into a Zionism is Racism conference paid for in part by US tax dollars.
Lets get real. The challenge is for us to stop doing business with those who practice anti-semitism. We are too complacent about this issue. We travel to these countries and give them American support. Can we change the dynamic? Could we really have a conference where Muslim leaders, religious and political, addressed the results of their prejudice, attacks, scapegoating and support for terror against Israel, Jews and Christians?
What will it take to sit down together? I doubt they will do even that. Muslims in the United States, in this community have very good relations with Jews. I have been a guest speaker in the Mosque on Thanksgiving. I have been a guest in someoneʼs home and invited to break bread with them. I have been on a program at the National Cathedral together with Muslim Clerics, and in Calvert County on the World Peace Day.
Shall we cry out and say is there nothing which will make the religious communities of majority-Muslim countries look inward and say ʻwe have not been fair to the Jewish people!ʼ and add that they need a new set of laws which make it a crime to promote such views?
Why do I doubt that will happen? It could happen. Yet, when we see how these very same countries have a disregard for human life, especially by their governments, how can we think that anything except ʻa wallʼ of military might will keep out their hatred, and old prejudices, now being taught to new generations?
Where are the leaders who will say what needs to be said?
India has a billion people with almost no anti-semitism, yet someone from Pakistan felt they had to kill a rabbi and his wife in Mumbai, India, out of all the people in India. Why?
If we go to make peace with Iran, or Syria or anyone, well that is what we should be doing, as making peace can be a realistic alternative to endless war. Nevertheless, Mosesʼ instruction to Joshua and the people of ʻHazak, Vʼematz,ʼ Be strong and of good courage, needs to be taken to heart on this Yom Kippur.
Nothing we have done deserves the history we have experienced and are experiencing. The best we can do is to be fair, and use behavior training that if you mess with us it will be something you regret.
Complacency will not address these serious matters, nor will being complacent make a world where Judaism has a future. For the sake of the world, Judaism must have a future; it can have that future. For the sake of all of us, we need to call on the 1½ billion Muslims in the world to address this issue and to change course.
If one person, an Abraham, a Sarah, Hagar, Moses, Deborah, Ruth, Hillel, Rabbi Judah the Prince, a Jesus, a Buddha, a Mohammed, a Donna Gracia, a Golda Meir, a Ghandi, a Martin Luther King, Jr…
If one country – a Denmark, or the United States, or the Philippines can make a difference – then the leadership by one Muslim leader can change the terrible situation which reflects so poorly on these countries and their so-called guiding principles of living.
Tolerance, religious freedom, womenʼs rights, the right to an education… all of these are human rights. Can the world have another year like the last one without a serious challenge to this situation?
Will the Pope speak out, or is that too difficult even for a Pope?
Forgive us for the sin of complacency, dear God, and give us the wisdom to address these problems. We will be better for trying.
Gʼmar Tov!
May this Day of Atonement be acceptable, and may we be forgiven as we end complacency and act with renewed commitment to the urgency of our day.