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August 29, 1995

Jewish Unity: The Underlying Concept (1995)

Jewish Unity
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The Global Jewish Community: One Family Indivisible (2005)

This essay will focus on the theme of "Global Jewish Community – One Nation Indivisible," or to use a shorter and more pregnant term, hallowed by centuries of usage and resonant with both sacred and national sentiment: Klal Yisrael – the indivisible global community of the Jewish people. Before such pious sentiments have a chance to act as sedatives and put you to sleep, dimly expecting the usual sermonic bromides about Jewish unity that are the clichés of our communal discourse, let me assure you that I will not dwell upon them. They are true, of course – the Talmud's teaching of Kol Yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh, that all Jews are responsible for each other; that we must learn the lessons of the Holocaust; and that the State of Israel needs us as its only friends. They are true, but I shall not elaborate on them. Let me ask you to bear in mind that what we take for granted does not necessarily enjoy universal acceptance amongst the Jewish people. We may advocate Jewish unity passionately, but it has not reached the level of a general consensus – far from it. A scene just forty-eight years ago, aboard a BMT train in Brooklyn: Poland had been invaded by Hitler in September of 1939. Five months earlier, a twelve-year-old youngster is shouting above the din and the rattle of the train, appealing for funds for Vaad Hatzalah to save Polish Jews. He approaches a middle-aged, obviously Jewish man who snarls at him and says, “I don't care about Polish Jews. I’m a Belgian Jew.” I was a youngster, and I shall never forget that rebuff – not because my request for funds had been turned down (I have since grown accustomed to that) – but because what I passionately believed in as a self-evident truth was cruelly shattered before my very eyes.The memory of that stupid man’s statement will always be an execration that I will never forget. It gave me no joy when three months later Hitler invaded Belgium. Hence, I have never thought of the concept of Klal Yisrael as something that is s…
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The Quest for Jewish Unity: Getting Beyond Buzz Words (1999)

1. J Unity → industrial size yawn. Everyone knows: tear'g selvs apart; must DO SOME'G! But... so: despair – boredm. T avoid tht, will tk advc לוי אשכל: "begn at end." There wll b n J-U, nt till משיח. 2. and evn thn... ST: Ad Feb Advoct: Hlp wantd – "Substitute Mashiach" 3. Moreovr – I'm not sure I'm in favor J-U! True, Talm Sanh 88; משרבו תלמידי שמאי והלל שלא שימשו כל צרכן רבו מחלוקת בישראל והלכה היא: (סנה ק"י): א"ר כל המחזיק במחלוקת עובר בלאו (רמבן ור' יונה – מד"א)
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Unity and Integrity (1986)

I come here this evening with a troubled heart to speak as an Orthodox Jew about a concern that unites all of us, namely, those issues that disunite all of us from each other. The predictions of an unbridgeable and cataclysmic rupture within the Jewish community leave all of us deeply distressed. They serve to agitate all of us who love and care for and worry about our Jewish people and its future. The twin issues of Jewish identity — the question of conversion — and of Jewish marital legitimacy — of proper gittin (divorce) and, in their absence, subsequent adultery and the blemish of mamzerut (bastardy) — should give us no rest. The non-marriageability of a significant portion of the Jewish people with the rest of am Yisrael is too horrendous to contemplate — and yet we are forced to do just that, lest our fragile unity, such as it is, be shattered beyond repair. At the same time, we have to retain a healthy skepticism about such projections. Samuel Goldwyn used to say, "Never make forecasts, especially about the future." Prophecy is a risky business, especially if it is based upon statistics. Moreover, while it is good to be alerted, it is not healthy to be panicked. Such excessive alarm sometimes leads to medicines which are worse than the disease. Disaster is not inevitable. Even if we are told that it is, then, as Justice Louis Brandeis once said about inevitability, "I am opposed to it." Hence, we have to try our very best, within the limits of our integrity, to promote unity and to oppose the seemingly inevitable disaster that looms before us. Now, let me repeat that phrase that I just used — "within the limits of our integrity." I am here, amongst fellow Jews, to do what I can as an advocate of enhanced Jewish unity. But, no honorable person can afford to dispense with his integrity. The issues are too critical to permit us to gather in a Jewish equivalent of the old "interfaith" meetings in which warmth substituted for light, and good fellowship for genui…
Jewish Unity