Reply To: Modern Orthodox Judaism

From Rav Yitzchok Hutner ZTL, in the Jewish Observer, 10/77:

It will be our task this evening to untangle the web of distortions about recent Jewish history, which has already been woven, and uncover the Torah perspective which has been hidden from us.

To be sure, it will not be easy to regain this perspective. The thoughts that we will explore this evening will be difficult to digest because of our long subsistence upon the forced diet of public opinion. The creators of the powerful force of public opinion are beyond the realm of our control and the mind-numbing results of their influence are largely out of our hands. In order to achieve any hold on the truth, we will first have to free ourselves form the iron-clad grip of their puissance and open our minds and hearts to the sometimes bitter pill of truth…

An example of how public opinion can be molded – indeed warped – at the whim of powerful individuals can be taken from a study of Russian history textbooks published during the respective reigns of Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev … Undoubtedly, “public opinion” during each period, once the children’s minds had been suitably molded, reflected the thinking and the wishes of the state. While more subtle in form, this ability to direct public opinion exists in democratic countries as well. Thus, we already pointed out at the beginning that we must make every effort to free ourselves from the powerful grip of public opinion, and must be ever on our guard that our opinions of the true nature of world events be shaped only by Torah views seen through Torah eyes.

Sadly, even in our own circles, the mold for shaping public opinion lies in the hands of the State of Israel. And appropriate example of this dangerous process of selectively “rewriting” history may be found in the extraordinary purging from the public record of all evidence of the culpability of the forerunners of the [Jewish] State in the tragedy of European Jewry, and the substitution of factors inconsequential to the calamity that ultimately occurred.

To cover its own contribution to the final catastrophic events, those of the State in a position to influence public opinion circulated the notorious canard that Gedolei Yisroel were responsible for the destruction of many communities because they did not urge immigration. This charge is, of course, a gross distortion of the truth, and need not be granted more dignity than it deserves by issuing a formal refutation. However, at the same time as the State made certain to include this charge a historical fact in every account of the war years, it successfully sought to omit any mention of its own contribution to the impending tragedy. . . .

In 1923 Hitler wrote Mein Kampf . . . [which] was read by Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who found most significant alliances of modern times. . . Not only did the Mufti visit Hitler and his top aides on a number of occasions, but indeed with Adolph Eichmann, he visited the Auschwitz gas chamber incognito to check on its efficiency.

It should be manifest, however, that until the great public pressures for the establishment of a Jewish State, the Mufti had no interest in the Jews of Warsaw, Budapest or Vilna. Once the Jews of Europe became a threat to the Mufti because of their imminent influx into the Holy Land, the Mufti in turn became for them the incarnation of the Angel of Death. Years ago, it was still easy to find old residents of Yerushalayim who remembered the cordial relations they had maintained with the Mufti in the years before the impending creation of a Jewish State. Once the looming reality of a State of Israel was before him, the Mufti spared no effort in influencing Hitler to murder as many Jews as possible in the shortest amount of time. This shameful episode, where the founders and early leaders of the State were clearly a factor in the destruction of many Jews, has been completely suppressed and expunged from the record. Thus it is that our children who study the history of this turbulent era are taught that the Gedolei Yisroel share responsibility for the destruction of European Jewry and learn nothing of the guilt of others who are enshrined as heroes.