With regard to the impending visit by the head of the Catholic Church (and former Hilter Youth member), former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau should be commended and encouraged for having been publicly critical of the Pope, pointing out that...
1. The pope agreed to reinstate Bishop Richard Williamson, who denied the Holocaust, and who said there was no systematic murder of Jews, and...
2. that the pope announced that his representatives would attend [the Durban II Conference] and that he blesses the participants.
Rabbi Lau also made the following statement...
With all due respect to Rabbi Lau, the only and final solution for the problems he states is to help the Jews in question, as well as all Jews, to settle in Israel,..but legitimately so, not through the pussy-footing around of the un-Jewish Agency which cares more about the goyim in the Ukraine than the Jews.Despite the above, Rabbi Lau says, “We must not rebuff the visit. We need not bend over backwards or flatter him, but it should not be rejected. This is a visit initiated by the pope himself so that he can follow in the footsteps of his predecessors. We must welcome him, if only for the fact that millions of Jews still live in the Diaspora, and many of them in places where the Catholic Church is strong, such as Latin America, Poland, Ukraine and elsewhere. We must not give our enemies ammunition or pour fuel on the fire; we must not endanger even one Jew.”
This, of course, begs the question, what happens, when many of those Jews simply do not want to leave galuth (the diaspora)? We have already seen this with Jews in South Africa, Lebanon, and Syria, to name a few.
Unfortunately, they need some kind of kick in the pants. May HaShem not have to kick them too hard, and may it not be too late.
Furthermore, following Rabbi Lau's own logic, didn't he himself just endanger Jews with his "provocative" statements?
Go figure....
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(Source: Rabbi Lau: No Need to Flatter the Pope -- or to Rebuff Him by Hillel Fendel)
A thought on the pop's visit to Israel
ReplyDeleteB"H
I couldn't agree more with the "all due respect to Rabbi Lau" part of your post, only to find that, again, I couldn't agree more with you where you add your thoughts to his. So, what's going on? Is he right or you?
I think it may be worth while to point out that what we are in front of here is a pattern.
All too often we find fine minds making perfect analysis, only to end up using it to support a way out wrong conclusion. All too often we keep on supporting mitigated positions on our part, while our enemies carry on pushing with the full weight of their extremisms: in this way the balance always shifts to their part.
It is therefore the case to mention that the pop is first and foremost an idol worshipper, then he is a public idol worshipper, then he is a public instigator to idol worshipping and then he is a public coordinator to public idol worshipping, capital crimes according to halacha, our Jewish Law. What is worst is that by closing an eye, we render ourselves guilty of these very same crimes.
The good news is that the pop is not a guest of the Jews, but of the Democratic State of Israel, an entity hostile to Judaism's mitzvot and to Jewish values.