A Lesson for Rabbi Benny Lau from "A Divine Madness"

Prominent rabbi likens vote for Otzma Yehudit to backing Nuremberg Laws. “I suggest the public review the comparison [Likud] MK Michael Eitan made in the 1980s between the Nuremberg Laws and those that Kahane sought to enact,”  timesofIsrael

RABBI BENNY LAU REFUSES TO APOLOGIZE FOR COMPARING OTZMA'S VIEWS TO NAZISM: JPOST

In response to Rabbi “Benny” Lau’s suggestion, herewith is a “Public Review of said comparison”:

Poor Rabbi ‘Benny' Lau, his leftist thinking has led him into a quagmire. He links the Torah’s declarations (of Mount Sinai, the Mitzvos of Hashem / Halachos) as espoused by a certain political party, with the Decrees of the Nazi Era German WWII Laws of Nurenberg. His quagmire is that He does not realize that he is actually bringing to the fore that party’s aspirations of instituting those Mitzvos that are encumbent on ALL JEWS to the social fabric of Eretz Yisrael.

What he does not understand about the Shoah, and the Divine Madness Decree, is that the Mitzvos that are needed to be observed in Eretz Yisrael are the positive application of the decrees issued upon the Jews in Germany.

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Some background:

Everything that happens to the Jews is from Shamayim (from Hashem). The following are excerpts from A Divine Madness, Rabbi Avigdor Miller’s Defense of Hashem in the Matter of the Holocaust (Simchas HaChaim Foundation 2013). To these I affix footnotes, containing my commentary.

It is an error to consider the history of Israel in the aspect of the events of the nations among which Israel sojourns. The writers have spoken of the effects of World War I and of World War II upon the Jews. However we must realise that these great upheavals were caused by Hashem solely because of Israel. Whatever transpired to the nations was but the secondary effect of the primary purpose of these wars: to shape the history of the Jewish People. (Divine Madness, p 115)

Belief in Hashem’s conduct of history demands of us to study His deeds and to attempt to fathom their causes and purposes. “He who chastises nations, is He not [thereby] correcting [or rebuking]: Is He not teaching men knowledge?” (Tehilim 94:10) Especially when almost half of His people were destroyed, could a believer deceive himself into thinking that Hashem would act without obvious reason?” (Divine Madness pp125-126)

Testimony of the Chofetz Chaim (From Letters of the Chofetz Chaim, pgs 11-12):

“Now that the generations have unfortunately become weaker in their faith, and in many places there is  no cheder school, and many children are in treifah schools such as those of the Yiddishists and of Tarbuth that are full of apikorsus, and the child that attends there does not even know that there is a G-d in the world; Who created the Universe and Who chose us to be His people and Who came down upon Mount Sinai to give us a Torah and mitzvos … and in their school books they have omitted all of the miracles of the Torah … The children know nothing of this and they are reared without Torah and without belief.”   (Divine Madness pp127-128) 1/

The warnings from Heaven in the form of the terrible World War I went ignored. (Divine Madness p 151)

Germany had for 150 years been the most disciplined and civilised of nations. The transformation of a nation of law and order into a nation of thugs and murderers is one of the strangest events in the history of mankind. It was indeed a manifestation of the Hand of G-d.

The German Jew, down to Mendelssohn’s time, admired and loved his religion and his people, and therefore he needed for no prominence among the gentiles. The catch-words of “culture” and “progress” could not lure him after false gods… [the jews  passed the test of isolation in the ghettos and test of the Church] 

It was the influence of Moshe (Moses) Mendelssohn’s disciples that broke down the dykes and let in the waters of the fouled swamp that flooded the Jewish island…the Jews were taught by Mendelssohn’s disciples that the gentile possessed wisdom and virtue, and the Jew began to feel inferior. Now began the mad race to cast away the despised Judaism and to adopt the admired ways of the gentiles. Mendelssohn’s own daughters forsook Judaism, and all his grandchildren were meshumfdim. Soon half of Berlin Jewry would be baptised.  The era of “Light,” so greatly admired by the Graetz school of historians, now began… Now began the great test of the “Enlightenment”.  Hashem’s plan required that Israel be subjected to the test of the so-called Enlightenment and of Emancipation. (pp 37-38)… 

When liberty opened for German Jews the gates to education, wealth, and prestige, many became so intoxicated that they hastened into assimilation. Many accepted outright baptism, and others traveled toward the same objective by the roundabout route of Reform. The Reformers sought some justification for their new religion, which, like the Christians, they claimed to find in the ideals of the nevi'im  who spoke of “social justice” 2/ and righteousness. A comfortable period of transition was provided by the convenient religion that required only some noble-sounding phrases, and thus the wealthy could, without pangs of conscience, prepare the way for themselves or their children to complete assimilation. (pp 59-60)… 

Their Reform “temples” … empty words … Not only did they ignore the prophetic exhortation to keep the Sabbath (Yeshayahu 56:6; Yirmiyahu 17:21-27; Yechezkel 20:13 and 20, and 22:7) and to refrain from forbidden food (Yeshayahu 66:17), but the entire ideology of Reform was built on the most radical theories of Biblical criticism and their concept of Deity was so impersonal and diluted that it was tantamount to outright atheism [ceremonies copied from Lutherans] … their denial of the Giving of the Torah at Sinai … (pp 61-63) [me: the aggressiveness of the Reformers 3/ is dealt with in the many chapters of Divine Madness, for one and all to read. I cannot write it all here. Very sad indeed. And they continued their wrecking of authentic Judaism through WW1 and up to WW11]

[…] On January 30, 1933 the Nazi (National Socialist German Workers) Party seized power in Germany and began to issue decrees against the Jews.

The headlong race of German Jews into assimilation was now brought to a violent halt. […] Many Jews had already left the country, … Despite the collapse of the dream of German assimilation, most of the emigrants came to the free countries 4/ to renew the assimilation dream in their new habitats.

[Among the German Decrees were]

• Jews were entirely excluded from all German schools….
• They were allowed to dwell only in all-Jewish houses…
• Every Jew was required to carry a special identification card, and his passport and ration card bore the word “Jew.”
• Every man and woman was required to adopt a Jewish first name (unless he had one)
• Every Jew over 5 wore a six pointed star inscribed with the word “Jude.”

The deportation of Jews to the killing centers was carried out with ehe cooperation of the Jewish community organisations, under the Reform preacher Leo Baeck …it could have served as a lesson that the Reformers were the cause of the destruction of Germany Jewry.

• Prohibition of relations with Aryan women 
• Using exclusively German names

From Germany, the home of the Reform, which annihilated the souls of millions of Jews, came the physical destruction of millions of Jews (Divine Madness pp 161-166)

The thinking Jews could not fail to see the Hand of G-d. There was no reason for this madness of the hatred against the Jews. In the days of old, Israel recognised the plan of Hashem that aimed to stimulate repentance, and “In You our fathers trusted; they trusted in You and You rescued them…To You they cried out and were saved, in You they trusted and were not put to shame” (Tehillim 22:5-6) (Divine Madness p 182)

“The decrees of Nazi Germany6/ were aimed at separating Jews from gentiles in every possible manner. There would be no social contact; no business contact; no contact in schools, housing, travel, shopping. There would be no personal identity (insistence on Jewish names: a remarkable sign from Heaven against the use of gentile names).The badge on Jewish garments and similar decrees had the same purpose.”

The commandments of the Torah (and Sages) aim at 5/ separation. “I separated you from the nations” (Vayikra 20:26). “You shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a Holy Nation” (Shemos 20:6). “Behold a people that dwells alone” (Bamidbar 23:9).

Quagmire: "an awkward, complex, or hazardous situation"
1. “the children know nothing” – And today in the secular schools in Israel, the children are not taught about G-d, receiving the Torah at Sinai, the Mitzvos, and what it means to be a proud Jew.
2. Social Justice – The leftist socialists of Israel defend Palestinian murderers as social justice.
3. Today, the Reformers are still aggressive, wanting a part of our Kotel, recognition of the State of Israel, urging women to wear the traditional men’s Tallis, Tefillin, and Torah Reading in a religious context, all of their non-Jewish ideologies being imposed on the unknowing (uneducated) Israelis.
4. Immigrating to America, they set up their Reform ways and influenced the innocents (uneducated in authentic Judaism) that followed them to the shores of safety after the war.
5.- 6. Separation. The Decrees were aimed at separation (from the Germans/non-Jews).


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More Commentary:

Poor Rabbi “Benny” Lau, does not understand WHY the Shoah was visited upon the Jewish Nation; it is too much for him to believe that the Decrees of the Socialist Nazis were davka to impress on the Jewish world that Jews need to return to their Judaism and their G-d. What the followers of Rabbi Kahane want is to bring the Israelis back to Judaism and G-d. What they stand for, their principles, are the same as what the Torah asks of each and every Jew, and the same as what those Decrees were meant to teach.

The Nuremberg laws are many Nazi Nuremberg Laws