Contrary to claims by the Jewish Agency that aliya is the “cure” for assimilation among Diaspora Jews, Yad L’Achim chairman Rav Shalom Dov Lifschitz has charged that, tragically, intermarriage has become a serious problem in Israel, as well.

“We are losing 500 Jews every day as a result of the difficult intermarriage problem in the Diaspora,” Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky said recently.

“We mustn’t allow Jewish education to come in place of aliya as a solution.”

These words, which evoked an outpouring of response, serve as the theme of a new campaign against assimilation.

In response, Rav Lifschitz wrote Sharansky congratulating him for putting assimilation on the agenda, but stressing that “whoever thinks the solution to assimilation is coming to Israel is mistaken and misleading others.

To our great shame, and pain, Israel has turned into fertile soil for intermarriage.”

To back his case, Rav Lifschitz cited indisputable figures:

“Some 25 percent of the citizens in the country are Arab and 20 percent represent other nationalities.

There are 80,600 non-Jewish children learning in the state school system together with Jews.

Many Jewish children in these schools don’t have a clue as to what makes them Jewish, what distinguished them from other peoples.

They are cut off from anything Jewish and don’t even know Shema Yisrael, the verse that was on the lips of millions of Jews who went to their deaths in the Holocaust and throughout the generations.”

As if this weren’t bad enough, a survey published recently reveals that most of the secular public sees nothing wrong with their children marrying non-Jews.

Some 53 percent responded that “in this day and age, what’s most important to me is that my children be happy.”

In response to this startling survey, Yad L’Achim distributed a proclamation under the heading “Racism or Rescue,” stating:

“It is incumbent upon us all to decide whether we want to remain Jews in our homeland or marry those of other nations and disappear from the map.

We’re not talking about racism, but about preserving ourselves as the Jewish people.

We’re not talking about hatred, but about a responsibility to remain Jewish.”

(YWN Israel Desk)