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Subscribe to Print Edition | Sun., June 01, 2008 Iyyar 27, 5768 | | Israel Time: 02:24 (EST+7) web haaretz.com   Back to Homepage Rosner's Domain Diplomacy Defense Jewish World Opinion National Print Edition Advertising Books Peres Conference Business Real Estate Easy Start Travel Week's End Anglo File

Where rabbis may tread By Anshel Pfeffer Tags: rabbis, nazis, argument I have a friend who loves a good argument, the kind of no-holds-barred debate in which nothing is sacred and everything and everyone can be skewered. There is only one ground rule: The first person who mentions Nazis or the Holocaust automatically loses. There are two sides to this rule. One is the belief that something about the Holocaust is so inherently terrible and unique in its depravity that nothing can be ever compared to it. But there is also an ironic side: that even in the post-politically-correct era, in which everything goes and all the sacred cows have been slaughtered, the specter of the Holocaust is so dominant, and the Jewish establishment has been so successful in enforcing the all-powerful image of the one and only Jewish tragedy, that it has become untouchable. Republican presidential candidate John McCain fell victim to this rule last week when he was forced to reject the endorsement of mega-televangelist Reverend John C. Hagee. McCain actively sought Hagee's support to bolster his credentials among the Christian right, which views him as not conservative enough for its taste. He was criticized for this, since Hagee is well known for his provocative statements: The pastor calls the Catholic church "the Whore of Babylon," and he saw Hurricane Katrina as a divine judgment on the gay community of New Orleans. But this did not seem to bother McCain overmuch. Advertisement The clip that surfaced on the web last week, however, was another matter. It showed a Hagee sermon in which he said that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were God's messengers, part of his plan to chase the Jews from Europe and back to the land of Israel. It did not matter that the sermon was given ten years ago: McCain swiftly disowned the troublesome priest and his endorsement. Poor McCain, and poor Hagee. If he had been a rabbi, instead of a pastor, he could have gotten away with it. Seeing the Holocaust as part of God's plan is hardly new. One of the most famous examples is the Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, who wrote 50 years ago in the introduction to his anti-Zionist screed, Ve'Yoel Moshe, that "it is no wonder that such terrible anger and wrath went out from the Lord." He then devoted the entire book to explaining how the heretical Zionists brought the Holocaust on the Jewish people through their impudent efforts to set up a Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah. Nor is the view of Hitler as God's tool unique to the anti-Zionist branch of Orthodoxy. As far back as 1933, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook, the spiritual father of religious Zionism, compared Hitler in a sermon to a shofar made from the horn of an unclean animal, which can be used on Rosh Hashanah only if there are no kosher horns available. If the people of Israel do not seek redemption themselves, he said, "the enemies of Israel blow in our ears for redemption. They force us to hear the sound of the shofar, they warn and make noise and do not allow us to rest in exile. The horn of an unclean animal becomes the shofar of the Messiah. Amalek, Petliura [who was allegedly responsible for many Ukrainian pogroms], Hitler - they wake us up to redemption." One could of course argue that Rabbi Kook said this six years before World War II broke out. But the analogy remains in the writings of his followers to this day: If the Jews had awoken and returned to the Promised Land in time, God would have had no need for the Holocaust. Another rabbi, this time a living one, who has been very free with Holocaust analogies is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who eight years ago said that Holocaust victims were "reincarnations of souls who committed sins." Yosef caused a minor public storm, but it quickly blew over. He is still the spiritual leader of a major coalition party, and the country's leaders regularly ask him to support their policies. All the same, it would not have been wise for McCain to have cited the rabbis' example and continued courting Hagee - if he did not want to offend Jewish sensibilities, that is. We Jews do not like other people being disrespectful of our Holocaust. Professor Yisrael Gutman, Yad Vashem's chief historian, said this week that he disapproves of the monument to homosexuals murdered by the Nazis that was dedicated in Berlin on Sunday because he felt that it put the Holocaust and the gay community's sufferings on the same plane. McCain certainly gets that message, but we cannot expect to get away with it forever. Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai learned that to his cost a couple of months ago, when he was pilloried by the foreign press for threatening the Palestinians with a "Shoah" if they did not stop firing at Israel. Of course, he meant the word in its Hebrew definition of "calamity" rather than "Holocaust," but no one was interested in hearing his belated explanation. This week's Haaretz Magazine includes an interview with American-French author Jonathan Littell, whose best-selling novel Les Bienveillantes ("The Kindly Ones") is coming out in Hebrew this month. Littell, himself of Jewish parentage (though he does not see himself as a Jew), believes that the Holocaust is not unique or essentially different from other genocides. He also compares the actions of Israeli soldiers in the territories to the way the Nazis treated Jews in the years before the Holocaust. As McCain proved last week, views like Littell's are still in the minority. However, they are gradually gaining acceptance. They may be wrong, but if the Jewish and Israeli establishments hope to counter such views, then a good place to begin might be by relinquishing their proprietary attitude toward the Holocaust. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Bad immigrant Hezbollah spy said he acted as a 'Lebanese patriot and a Muslim.' When (he's) in Rome Israel to launch PR campaign against Ahmadinejad visit to UN summit in Rome.   1.   relinquishing their proprietary attitude toward the Holocaust. relinquishing their proprietary attitude toward the Holocaust. 20:27  |  JC 31/05/08   2.   Similarities and differences Similarities and differences 23:09  |  Ilan 31/05/08

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