Letters 393065

MARCH 5, 2015 18:08

Envelope (photo credit: ING IMAGE/ASAP) — Envelope

(photo credit: ING IMAGE/ASAP)

‘The Almighty was there, but the Holocaust was perpetrated by mankind. The passages quoted from Leviticus and Deuteronomy were warnings for all generations, and not prophecies’ Naïve or too kind Sir, – The otherwise excellent and on-target piece by Efraim Inbar (“Obama’s Iran policy and Israel’s elections,” Opinion, February 20) was off-target three times.

1. Prof. Inbar thinks US President Barack Obama wants to claim he prevented Tehran from building the bomb. I don’t think he wants that at all.

2. He thinks Obama wants to bring stability to a region beleaguered by chaos. He doesn’t care about that either.

3. He calls Obama’s behavior foolish. I disagree – he is arguably the most successful president in history if the calculus is getting what he wants – which is an Iran with a bomb that it can either drop on Israel, God forbid, or just keep threatening to use in order to drive away foreign investment and tourists, and destroy Jewish independence and rule over time.

Obama is arguably the greatest enemy agent in the history of enemy agents, a dissembling Muslim agent who literally sweet-talked his way into seizing the helm of the enemy’s ship of state in order to drive it onto the rocks. Prof. Inbar is either naïve or much too kind.

SHA’I BEN-TEKOA Efrat Problematic letter Sir, – Regarding a statement made by reader Amnon Goldberg claiming that “the Holocaust was one of the most potent revelations of God in action in history” (“Potent revelation, Letters, February 20), I am incensed whenever I hear or read similar statements.

The writer S.Y. Agnon wrote as follows in his story “Friendship”: “In essence, the test of Job was harder on the Almighty than on Job, because He gave his loyal and truthful servant Job into the hands of the Satan” (my free translation).

The Almighty was there, but the Holocaust was perpetrated by mankind. The passages quoted from Leviticus and Deuteronomy were warnings for all generations – not prophecies.

To make a statement that having high regard for prewar European Jewry is of great benefit for the evil inclination is presumptuous, and borders on slander.

AVRAHAM REMENY Modi’in Sir, – The kabbalists of Safed will not be happy with Amnon Goldberg’s letter.

Goldberg’s approach has been rejected by leading Jewish thinkers, among them Prof. Eliezer Berkovitz and the Lubavitcher Rebbe. One powerful paragraph by the rebbe says it all: “The destruction of 6 million Jews with such frightening brutality and cruelty, the terrible Shoah – nothing like it ever happened (and will never again be) – cannot be a punishment for sins, because even Satan himself would not be able to find sins that would justify such severe punishment.”

The rebbe continues: “All those who were killed in the Shoah are kedoshim, holy ones, as all of Israel calls them, because they were killed al kiddush Hashem [for sanctifying God’s name] only because they were Jews. May God avenge their blood [as every Jew adds when mentioning the victims of the Shoah].”

Goldberg’s approach is the ultimate desecration of six million kedoshim, including 1.5 million children.

God says: Crushed be the mouths of those who speak ill of my people.

SHOLOM GOLD Jerusalem The writer is a rabbi.