Ping (compare to Rabbi ‘Eliyyahu’s comments).
Certainly can’t disagree with that. Most of the things Yoffe comments on are political in nature and shouldn’t be commented on at all in his capacity.
Rabbi 'Eliyyahu (`ad me'ah ve`esrim shanah) is far from the only Orthodox Jew to make this claim about the connection of Reform's German origins and Churban 'Europa'. Many, many Orthodox rabbis ('Ashkenazim as well as Sefaradim) have made the same point…I agree with Alouette that Reform doesn't practice what it preaches in the brotherhood department….How do you know it didn't? Do you think "things just happen," that there isn't a reason for everything?...Rabbi Yosef wasn't the only one to make that connection either. Don Feder mentioned a connection found in the Torah codes…The Orthodox Jews keep the Torah as given to Moses. Reform Jews not only don't do this, they promote deviancy and sin as the essence of Jewishness (G-d forbid!) and cause the name of G-d to be desecrated among non-Jews. This is an extremely serious sin. May all Jews be led back to the Torah speedily in our days.
Rabbi’s make all kinds of claims.
The burden of proof lies on the one making the statement.
Without proof, Gaza caused Katrina is simply humorous.
Neutra Karta’s contension that Jews shouldn’t live in Israel isn’t humorous, it’s harmful. It plays into the hands of antisemites worldwide.
I’d put Rabbi Eliyyahu’s in that category as well. Neonazis and Islamists everywhere tout the fact that if the Holocaust happened, the Jews brought in on themselves. Now there’s one authority they can rely on.
The Germany/observant issue is problematical as well.
While Reform Judaism was a German invention, by the 1930s the nexus was in the US.
European Jewry, which along with Israel was they heart of observant Judaism, was virtually wiped out, American Jewry unscathed.
If this was an act of Divine intervention in reaction to the Reform movement, it appears that on a relative basis, to be a rare occurrence where the Divine punished the observant and the less observant and secular were spared.
I’m not convinced, any more than I’ve convinced Jews shouldn’t return to Israel.
Prediction of Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, decades before the Holocaust.
Perceptive thouh it may have been, unless you’re suggesting that’s an actual act of prophecy, it’s irrelevant to Divine intent. Thoroughly secular Jews were saying the same thing, that’s how we got Zionism. Theodor Herzl wasn't a prophet, just politically astute.
No one can be blamed for the Holocaust but the people who did it...But there is a kernel of truth in this. I have not read the offending comments, but it is true that some prominent reformed Jews were in the forefront of leftist movements during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including Communism and its predecessors. They were active in the 1848 revolution, they were active in the 1917 revolution, they were responsible for the bloody Communist coup in Hungary in the 1930s, and they were among the Russian invaders who slaughtered assorted Poles and others during the Second World War…Middle Europe was a battleground between Nazis and Communists, and a lot of people were caught in the middle.
Communism is an anti-religious movement, as was national socialism. Personally I find the religion of participants irrelevant, since religious ideology plays no role in either movement, I’d view the pagan Deutche Cristi, a political movement, since religious concepts motivates them not at all.
I know Jewish Communists is a popular phrase, even here on FR, but for consistency using it requires you accept Christian Communists and Christian Nazis as valid descriptions as well.