More On Renting To Arabs

30 of the Ninth Month-Hanukkah 5771

The following is a follow-up to Rabbi Okays Renting Apartments To Arabs. It is a guest post from a friend of mine, "Our Man In Qiriyath Sefer."

I'd make the point that it was clearly Hazal's intention that we try to get nochrim who are not "shayach" to Am Yisrael by way of accepting the Torah and the 7 Misswoth B'nei No'ah to leave the country. Why did the halacha permit renting houses? It's only sto...rage facilities, not homes mamash, and those are permitted because without fields back then a person had no permanent parnassa, so their stay would be temporary.

Clearly what Rabbi Sherlow is saying goes completely against this. Where on earth does this concept come from that "Jewish sovereignty cannot exist without caring for foreigners living among us?"??? Its certainly not a Jewish concept. The people we are obligated to care for, are clearly described in halacha, and even the most lenient opinion would not include the Arabs in Eretz Yisra'el today. I think this statement of his is some poor attempt at injecting modern statecraft into the halacha, but Sherlow is even more ignorant of the former as he is of the latter. I would point the esteemed rabbi to modern democratic countries like Japan, where citizenship is limited to those with a Japanese father and where sale and rental of property to non-Japanese citizens (ie, anyone without a Japanese father) is strictly limited.

What a wonderful model we could use!

Replace Japanese father with Jewish mother, and we have a wonderful citizenship law for Israel.