The Gaza Synagogues and Hurricane Katrina

It is often difficult enough to be Jewish under optimal circumstances.

The recent pronouncements and activities of Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef and other rabbis and religious leaders have made things even more difficult and more complicated in this regard.

After a decision to permit the IDF to complete the Gaza withdrawal by destroying the buildings used there for Synagogues, the Sharon government was lobbied by many rabbis not to destroy them.  After a Supreme Court decision in favor of the demolitions, a series of pleas from rabbis including Ovadiah Yosef stopped the demolitions.

We are now all too well aware of what came of these decisions.

Upon reading news reports and anticipating the many problems that would arise if and when Palestinians would desecrate these sites, I e-mailed Zvi Zohar with a request to find out what the position of Middle Eastern rabbis was on this issue.  He referred me to the following Halakhic citation:

In his volume of responsa Na’eh Meshiv Rabbi Nissim Benjamin Ohanna, then (1943) vice-chief rabbi of Cairo and subsequently chief rabbi of Haifa, was asked by the Cairo community leadership about the synagogue of Beni-Sueif (a town south of Cairo). The Jewish community had dwindled, and the synagogue was unused and being desecrated by vandals. The holy books etc. had been removed to Cairo. Could the synagogue be sold, rather than abandoned only to be mistreated by the Goyim? He answered, that given the alternatives, it was permitted to sell the building to Gentiles for secular use.  (Naeh Meshiv, page 11 = question 28)

As the sad scene of Jewish Synagogues being set ablaze hit our television screens, I thought about how this could have been avoided.

This does not mean that setting the Synagogues ablaze was a smart thing to do, or that it provided ethical points for the Palestinian side.  Taking the law into their own hands, the Palestinian looters have made some serious mistakes which reflect poorly on the PA leadership.  Of this there is little question.

But the Israeli government knew the possible outcome of its decision and was oblivious to taking any responsibility for what happened.  The former Synagogues should have been demolished by the IDF � that is now clear.  But, in addition, a larger issue has been raised of a religious war between Jews and Muslims with the idea that, if the situations were reversed, the burning down of Mosques would have caused an uproar in the Arab world.

On this point the historical record is clear.  Jews did indeed destroy Mosques.  As we read in Meron Benvenisti�s book Sacred Landscape:

According to data culled from Palestinian sources, the number of mosques in villages abandoned during the 1948 war approached 140; that is, there were no mosques in at least half of the villages.  Of those mosques, about 100 were completely demolished when the villages themselves were leveled.  According to findings in the field, some 40 mosques have not been torn down but currently in an advanced stage of deterioration and neglect, or are being used by Jewish residents for purposes other than those for which they had been erected.  It is worth stressing once again that we are dealing here with rural communities only and not with the Arab towns that were abandoned - where there were many places of worship, both Muslim and Christian that will not be described here.

Again, two wrongs never make a right.  But it is crucial to understand that one does not accuse someone else of doing something that you have already done.

Thus the errors compounded one on top of the other.

In yet another series of pronouncements, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef made a speech which connected the Gaza withdrawal to Hurricane Katrina; an argument that was then repeated all over the Orthodox Jewish community.  The argument was that just as Jews were removed from Gaza, so too were Americans exiled from their homes in the South as a �punishment� from God for the �sins� of George W. Bush�s support for the Sharon Gaza Disengagement Plan.

Aside from the spurious logic of this argument what Rabbi Yosef did was to call the African-Americans of the American South �Cushim� � a Biblical term � who �did not study Torah.�  I am not sure what the purpose of insulting people was but I do know that the speech was picked up by every newspaper and media organization in the world and made Jewish people look like idiots.

Here we had a Jewish analog to the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells who blamed the 9/11 attacks on homosexuals and women who got abortions.

The combination of the Hurricane Katrina comments and the mistake of forbidding the IDF to destroy the Gaza Synagogues � permitted by Jewish law as we have shown and as was affirmed by the rabbis who spoke to Sharon last year about this � were blunders that reflect badly on Jews and Judaism.

We must continue to redouble our efforts to present both to ourselves and to the world a Judaism that is rational and compassionate.

Feelings right now in many sectors of the Jewish community � mostly in the Orthodox wing � are corrosive and as hateful as I have ever seen them.

Rather than blaming everyone else for our perceived problems, perhaps it would be worthwhile in this time of repentance for us to look inward and see what we have done to cause the problems we are dealing with.

( See the article A Mosque Once Stood Here, By: Meron Rapoport at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/625854.html for more information on this subject)