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Posted on 12/05/2004 11:54:26 AM PST by yonif
Returning from an intensive two-month trip throughout Europe, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former chief rabbi of Israel and a Holocaust survivor, declared Sunday that European Jewry has no future.
"In the past months I've traveled to Austria, Britain, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands, and I'm telling you there is no future for European Jewry," said Lau in a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post.
"I see the end of the exile for European Jewry."
Lau said he received the impression from the European Jewish families he had met that they live in fear.
"I've met parents who tell me that when they send their children to Bnei Akiva (a religious-Zionist youth movement) for evening activities they are in constant fear that something terrible will happen, G-d forbid, until they return.
"Once Jews had no choice but to live with anti-Semitism. Now they do."
Lau said that outward signs of anti-Semitism are not a new phenomenon and since the resurgence of Palestinian violence four years ago there has been a sharp rise.
But the anti-Semitic violence has spread to include the burning of synagogues, the desecration of graves, attacks against Jewish schools, and anti-Semitic propaganda spread via the Internet and on university campuses.
"Israel has to prepare itself for European aliya by investing in housing, a chain of ulpans (Hebrew classes) and job training for those who need it. Everything should be done to encourage European Jews to make aliya."
He ruled out the possibility that a solution for coexistence between Jews in Europe and the communities amongst which they live in could be found.
"Here in Israel a Jew can proudly speak the Holy tongue in public places without being embarrassed. Why bother looking for a solution in Europe?"
Lau called on the government and the Jewish Agency to put more emphasis on encouraging aliya from Europe and less on the Former Soviet Union. He recommended concentrating activities in a special aliya taskforce that would find ways to attract European Jews to come to Israel.
"A large portion of those who arrive here from the FSU are not Jews, while there is a huge Jewish population in Europe suffering from anti-Semitism.
"The emigration from the FSU to Germany is entirely Jewish because the special aid packages provided by the German government are only available to those who can prove they are Jews according to halacha (Jewish law)," said Lau.
"What we need to do is attract those same Jews to Israel."
It's like 1932 all over again. They should get out now.
Just don't vote Rat!
But this time, there is a Jewish state awaiting them, and an army with a goal of protecting Jews available.
Now it is only a matter of time until Jews from Europe flee in large numbers.
Ping.
/john
Even though Israel is doing so, it is also leading the fight against anti-Semitism as well in the world, at the same time telling those Jews in anti-Semitic areas to come home.
Jewish presence in Europe, as little as it is, will do nothing to stop the current strenthening of militant Islamist ideology there.
Yonif,
Of course it is up to every single Jew to decide if he or she wants to move to Israel. Nevertheless, I don't want to see Jewish culture vanish from Europe, as it is an integral part of our Western heritage. Jews are leaving Europe, but Mohammedan barbarians are coming in. That is, frankly speaking, a horrendous demographic development for Europe.
Johnson is continuously on the receiving end of the most vile e-mails you can imagine, including, but not limited to, threats on his life.
And Charles Johnson is not Jewish. He merely chronicles what they're going through.
Which makes it even harder to understand why they aren't already leaving in large numbers. In the 30's the lack of places willing to accept Jews made it hard for many to leave. Now there is no such impediment. I understand the power of inertia and the ability of people to willfully disregard reality but still...
Any French, or Dutch or Scandinavian Jew who doesn't recognize the danger is being willfully blind. Look at recent history. The pessimistic Jews were the ones who survived.
No, I don't think so. I can remember in the late 1960's when Soviet Jewry was declared officially "extinct."
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I guess what I bring myself in agreement to is the fact Israel should attract and prepare to receive them, now more than ever.
I completely understand it... but should we take a defeatists approach or start to do something? And by "we" I mean Christian, Jews, Atheists, Agnostics, and everybody else that rejects Islam, pro-islamic multicultural Socialism and virulent Nationalism.
"It'll never happen here" killed many jews.
'swhy we should bid them welcome, if only for a generation or two...
I certainly hope that Europeans wake up to the danger they are in but I'm not optimistic. It's often said that Jews are like canaries in the coal mine but why should Jews be asked to die again in order to warn others?
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