Popular Rabbi’s Comments On Treatment Of Arabs Show A Different Side Of Chabad
Expanded coverage on Chabad, Rabbi Manis Friedman, and the call for destruction of Muslim holy sites and the killing of non-Jewish civilians in war.
Popular Rabbi’s Comments on Treatment of Arabs Show a Different Side of Chabad
Nathaniel Popper • The Forward
Like the best Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis, Manis Friedman has won the hearts of many unaffiliated Jews with his charismatic talks about love and God; it was Friedman who helped lead Bob Dylan into a relationship with Chabad.
But Friedman, who today travels the country as a Chabad speaker, showed a less warm and cuddly side when he was asked how he thinks Jews should treat their Arab neighbors.
“The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle),” Friedman wrote in response to the question posed by Moment Magazine for its “Ask the Rabbis” feature.
Friedman argued that if Israel followed this wisdom, there would be “no civilian casualties, no children in the line of fire, no false sense of righteousness, in fact, no war.”
“I don’t believe in Western morality,” he wrote. “Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention.”
Friedman’s use of phrasing that might seem more familiar coming from an Islamic extremist has generated a swift backlash. The editor of Moment, Nadine Epstein, said that since the piece was printed in the current issue they “have received many letters and e-mails in response to Rabbi Friedman’s comments — and almost none of them have been positive.”
Friedman quickly went into damage control. He released a statement to the Forward, through a Chabad spokesman, saying that his answer in Moment was “misleading” and that he does believe that “any neighbor of the Jewish people should be treated, as the Torah commands us, with respect and compassion.”
But Friedman’s words have generated a debate about whether there is a darker side to the cheery face that the Chabad-Lubavitch movement shows to the world in its friendly outreach to unaffiliated Jews. Mordecai Specktor, editor of the Jewish community newspaper in Friedman’s hometown, St. Paul. Minn., said: “The public face of Lubavitch is educational programs and promoting Yiddishkeit. But I do often hear this hard line that Friedman expresses here.”
“He sets things out in pretty stark terms, but I think this is what Lubavitchers believe, more or less,” said Specktor, who is also the publisher of the American Jewish World. “They are not about loving the Arabs or a two-state solution or any of that stuff. They are fundamentalists. They are our fundamentalists.”
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a regular critic of Arab extremists, said that in the Jewish community, “We are not immune to having these views. There are people in our community who have these bigoted, racist views.”
But, Foxman warned, Friedman’s views are not reflective of the Chabad rabbis he knows.
“I am not shocked that there would be a rabbi who would have these views,” Foxman said, “but I am shocked that Moment would give up all editorial discretion and good sense to publish this as representative of Chabad.”
In Moment, Friedman’s comment is listed as the Chabad response to the question “How Should Jews Treat Their Arab Neighbors?” after a number of answers from rabbis representing other Jewish streams, most of which state a conciliatory attitude toward Arabs.
Epstein said that Friedman was “brave” for stating his views so clearly.
“The American Jewish community doesn’t have the chance to hear opinions like this,” Epstein said, “not because they are rare, but because we don’t often ask Chabad and other similar groups what they think.”
A Chabad spokesman declined a request for comment.
The Chabad movement is generally known for its hawkish policies toward the Palestinians; the Chabad Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, rejected peace accords with the Palestinians. Rabbi Moshe Feller, the top Chabad rabbi in Minnesota, said that the rebbe taught that it is not a mitvah to kill, but that Jews do have an obligation to act in self-defense.
“Jews as a whole, they try to save the lives of others,” Feller told the Forward, “but if it’s to save our lives, then we have to do what we have to do. It’s a last resort.”
Friedman is not a fringe rabbi within the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. He was the English translator for the Chabad Rebbe, and at the rebbe’s urging, he founded Beis Chana, a network of camps and schools for Jewish women. Friedman is also a popular speaker and writer on issues of love and relationships. His first book, “Doesn’t Anyone Blush Anymore?” was promoted with a quote from Bob Dylan, who Friedman brought to meet the rebbe.
On his blog and Facebook page, Friedman’s emphasis is on his sympathetic, caring side. It was this reputation that made the comment in Moment so surprising to Steve Hunegs, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council: Minnesota and the Dakotas.
“Rabbi Friedman is a best-selling author who addresses some of the most sensitive issues of the time,” Hunegs said. “I intend to call him and talk to him about this.”
But Shmarya Rosenberg, a blogger and critic of Chabad who lives a few blocks from Friedman in Minnesota, says that the comment in Moment is not an aberration from his experiences with Friedman and many other Chabad rabbis.
“What he’s saying is the standard normal view of a Chabadnik,” Rosenberg said. “They just don’t say it in public.”
For his part, Friedman was quick to modify the statement that he wrote in Moment. He told the Forward that the line about killing women and children should have been in quotes; he said it is a line from the Torah, though he declined to specify from which part.
Friedman also said that he was not advocating for Israel to actually kill women and children. Instead, he said, he believed that Israel should publicly say that it is willing to do these things in order to scare Palestinians and prevent war.
“If we took this policy, no one would be killed — because there would be no war,” Friedman said. “The same is true of the United States.”
Friedman did acknowledge, however, that in self-defense, the behavior he talked about would be permissible.
“If your children are threatened, you do whatever it takes — and you don’t have to apologize,” he said.
Friedman argued that he is different from Arab terrorists who have used similar language about killing Jewish civilians.
“When they say it, it’s genocide, not self-defense,” Friedman said. “With them, it’s a religious belief — they need to rid the area of us. We’re not saying that.”
Feller, the Chabad leader in Minnesota, said that the way Friedman had chosen to express himself was “radical.”
Nathaniel Popper • The Forward
Like the best Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis, Manis Friedman has won the hearts of many unaffiliated Jews with his charismatic talks about love and God; it was Friedman who helped lead Bob Dylan into a relationship with Chabad.
But Friedman, who today travels the country as a Chabad speaker, showed a less warm and cuddly side when he was asked how he thinks Jews should treat their Arab neighbors.
“The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle),” Friedman wrote in response to the question posed by Moment Magazine for its “Ask the Rabbis” feature.
Friedman argued that if Israel followed this wisdom, there would be “no civilian casualties, no children in the line of fire, no false sense of righteousness, in fact, no war.”
“I don’t believe in Western morality,” he wrote. “Living by Torah values will make us a light unto the nations who suffer defeat because of a disastrous morality of human invention.”
Friedman’s use of phrasing that might seem more familiar coming from an Islamic extremist has generated a swift backlash. The editor of Moment, Nadine Epstein, said that since the piece was printed in the current issue they “have received many letters and e-mails in response to Rabbi Friedman’s comments — and almost none of them have been positive.”
Friedman quickly went into damage control. He released a statement to the Forward, through a Chabad spokesman, saying that his answer in Moment was “misleading” and that he does believe that “any neighbor of the Jewish people should be treated, as the Torah commands us, with respect and compassion.”
But Friedman’s words have generated a debate about whether there is a darker side to the cheery face that the Chabad-Lubavitch movement shows to the world in its friendly outreach to unaffiliated Jews. Mordecai Specktor, editor of the Jewish community newspaper in Friedman’s hometown, St. Paul. Minn., said: “The public face of Lubavitch is educational programs and promoting Yiddishkeit. But I do often hear this hard line that Friedman expresses here.”
“He sets things out in pretty stark terms, but I think this is what Lubavitchers believe, more or less,” said Specktor, who is also the publisher of the American Jewish World. “They are not about loving the Arabs or a two-state solution or any of that stuff. They are fundamentalists. They are our fundamentalists.”
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a regular critic of Arab extremists, said that in the Jewish community, “We are not immune to having these views. There are people in our community who have these bigoted, racist views.”
But, Foxman warned, Friedman’s views are not reflective of the Chabad rabbis he knows.
“I am not shocked that there would be a rabbi who would have these views,” Foxman said, “but I am shocked that Moment would give up all editorial discretion and good sense to publish this as representative of Chabad.”
In Moment, Friedman’s comment is listed as the Chabad response to the question “How Should Jews Treat Their Arab Neighbors?” after a number of answers from rabbis representing other Jewish streams, most of which state a conciliatory attitude toward Arabs.
Epstein said that Friedman was “brave” for stating his views so clearly.
“The American Jewish community doesn’t have the chance to hear opinions like this,” Epstein said, “not because they are rare, but because we don’t often ask Chabad and other similar groups what they think.”
A Chabad spokesman declined a request for comment.
The Chabad movement is generally known for its hawkish policies toward the Palestinians; the Chabad Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, rejected peace accords with the Palestinians. Rabbi Moshe Feller, the top Chabad rabbi in Minnesota, said that the rebbe taught that it is not a mitvah to kill, but that Jews do have an obligation to act in self-defense.
“Jews as a whole, they try to save the lives of others,” Feller told the Forward, “but if it’s to save our lives, then we have to do what we have to do. It’s a last resort.”
Friedman is not a fringe rabbi within the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. He was the English translator for the Chabad Rebbe, and at the rebbe’s urging, he founded Beis Chana, a network of camps and schools for Jewish women. Friedman is also a popular speaker and writer on issues of love and relationships. His first book, “Doesn’t Anyone Blush Anymore?” was promoted with a quote from Bob Dylan, who Friedman brought to meet the rebbe.
On his blog and Facebook page, Friedman’s emphasis is on his sympathetic, caring side. It was this reputation that made the comment in Moment so surprising to Steve Hunegs, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council: Minnesota and the Dakotas.
“Rabbi Friedman is a best-selling author who addresses some of the most sensitive issues of the time,” Hunegs said. “I intend to call him and talk to him about this.”
But Shmarya Rosenberg, a blogger and critic of Chabad who lives a few blocks from Friedman in Minnesota, says that the comment in Moment is not an aberration from his experiences with Friedman and many other Chabad rabbis.
“What he’s saying is the standard normal view of a Chabadnik,” Rosenberg said. “They just don’t say it in public.”
For his part, Friedman was quick to modify the statement that he wrote in Moment. He told the Forward that the line about killing women and children should have been in quotes; he said it is a line from the Torah, though he declined to specify from which part.
Friedman also said that he was not advocating for Israel to actually kill women and children. Instead, he said, he believed that Israel should publicly say that it is willing to do these things in order to scare Palestinians and prevent war.
“If we took this policy, no one would be killed — because there would be no war,” Friedman said. “The same is true of the United States.”
Friedman did acknowledge, however, that in self-defense, the behavior he talked about would be permissible.
“If your children are threatened, you do whatever it takes — and you don’t have to apologize,” he said.
Friedman argued that he is different from Arab terrorists who have used similar language about killing Jewish civilians.
“When they say it, it’s genocide, not self-defense,” Friedman said. “With them, it’s a religious belief — they need to rid the area of us. We’re not saying that.”
Feller, the Chabad leader in Minnesota, said that the way Friedman had chosen to express himself was “radical.”
“I love him,” Feller said. “I brought him out here — he’s magnificent. He’s brought thousands back to Torah mitzvah. But he shoots from the hip sometimes.”
Please.
Rabbi Moshe Feller himself has said the same thing Manis said. The only thing radical about Manis's statement is that he wrote and released it to the public rather than saying to friends around the farbrengen table.
Genghis Khan said: "Rape their women, kill theor men, and steal their goods."
The Nazis pursued a scorched earth policy.
Yeah Friedman is a real light unto the nations.
Posted by: mordecai | June 03, 2009 at 05:54 PM
He should call his ideas "A Manis Proposal."
Posted by: Yochanan Lavie | June 03, 2009 at 05:56 PM
Yochanan, I thought that book was already written by Yonatan "Yechi" Swift, ha ha ha !
Posted by: Dave Marshall | June 03, 2009 at 06:02 PM
Friedman is expressing outrage similar to many other Lubavitchers after al Qaeda slaughtered the Holtzbergs in Mumbai. This is no different from extreme anti-Arab sentiment I and others heard from Irish & Italian Americans and even Blacks and Hispanics after their loved ones were killed on 9/11.
Speaking of shooting from the hip, Shmarya will not hesitate to twist words out of context that he supposedly knows from "private" situations to make Chabad and all orthodox Jews look bad, especially those of Manis Friedman who he knows intimately and has a special dislike for.
Shmarya attacks Gary Rosenblatt for not disclosing the arrangement he has with Marvin Schick and his backers, yet HE does not disclose exactly what the bad blood is that exists between himself and Manis Friedman.
How hypocritical.
Posted by: Robert W. Welch Jr. | June 03, 2009 at 06:15 PM
Nathaniel Popper,
So Moment presents Friedman as mainstream Chabad which you think is a problem.
Why do you then cite Shmarya as if he is a levelheaded critic of Chabad who only sticks to the facts?
Posted by: Robert W. Welch Jr. | June 03, 2009 at 06:18 PM
hmmmm. I occassionally find myself answering questions people didn't ask--its called a Freudian slip--not for sentences and sentences tho. And Israel does have enemies but is imitation actually then a form of self-defense or flattery--meanwhile on the Shas front new proposals to figure out what past, future, or potential hostiles are up to (remind me to avoid future entanglement with the Interior Ministry):
Shas seeks authority to strip Israelis of citizenship
By Mazal Mualem and Jack Khoury, Haaretz Correspondents
Interior Minister and Shas Chairman Eli Yishai is planning to submit an amendment to the basic citizenship law which would give him the authority to strip Israelis of their citizenship at his discretion, without the authorization of Attorney General Menachem Mazuz or the courts.
About a month ago, Yishai began the process of stripping the citizenship from four Israeli Arabs who left Israel decades ago.
Information provided to Yishai by National Immigration Authority head Yaakov Ganot suggested that the four in question were directly or indirectly involved in anti-Israel activity while residing in enemy states. Today, decades later, the four have asked to return to Israel.
A bill, to be submitted independently by Shas MK David Azoulay, would allow the state to strip former MK Azmi Bishara of his citizenship. Bishara is suspected of security violations, including providing assistance to the enemy in time of war, passing information to an enemy and contacts with a foreign agent.
The authority to strip Israelis of their citizenship has been granted to interior ministers in the past, but when the MK Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor) held the post, the authority was transferred to the hands of the attorney general and the justice system.
Bishara's former party Balad voiced outrage at Shas' planned legislation. Balad Chairman Jamal Zahalka said that the legislation was a "racist and anti-democratic" initiative. "The aim to strip the citizenship of Arabs, and there is no intention to strip Jews of their citizenship, not even [Yitzhak Rabin killer] Yigal Amir."
Posted by: Monkeysuncle | June 03, 2009 at 06:56 PM
Interesting that the Chabad morans would advocate killing their Arab neighbors when they (a) don't recognize the Jewish state and (b) don't serve in the military. They are beyond bigotry and hipocracy
Posted by: Malcolm Petrook | June 03, 2009 at 07:14 PM
Robert W. Welch Jr., the bad blood Shmarya has for Rabbi Friedman has to do with the fact that Shmarya was looking for a shidduch during his 25 year stint as a BT and nobody helped him find one. The fact that Rabbi Friedman runs a school for female BTs and didn't hook him up is especially hurtful.
Posted by: face | June 03, 2009 at 07:26 PM
Boy face, you do like the slander.
Got any evidence to back that up?
Posted by: A. Nuran | June 03, 2009 at 07:37 PM
Besides, even if it is true it has dick-all to do with the issue at hand.
Rabbi Friedman did say some things that put him on a par with the Nazis. Then he made a lame attempt to distance himself from his own remarks.
How does the (putative) fact that Shmarya doesn't like him affect any of that?
Posted by: A. Nuran | June 03, 2009 at 07:38 PM
Doesn't Anyone Blush Anymore? when they advocate genocide?
Posted by: Nigritude Ultramarine | June 03, 2009 at 07:52 PM
Nuran, there are several issues here, including that Shmarya purports to be a "journalist" while not adhering to the journalistic code of conduct, or at least that is until he 'fesses up about what history he has with Manis Friedman.
Posted by: Robert W. Welch Jr. | June 03, 2009 at 07:54 PM
Manis I were friends for more than 20 years.
There is no "history" beyond that.
As for you, "Welch," "Archie," etc., whatever alias you're currently using, here's the deal:
You cannot behave the way do. I've made that very clear.
You have been banned several times, and you keep coming back.
If you want to stay, you'll have to start using your real name, and you'll have to provide me with a working email address that you use and answer email from.
No more hiding behind anonymity while you smear everyone you disagree with.
Your game is up.
Posted by: Shmarya | June 03, 2009 at 08:15 PM
Please don't assume that one extreme hard-right politicized nationalist view of Chabad means that this is Chabad doctrine or that Chabad Corp is simply dissimulating when it walks the dog backwards--that this is a monolithic brain-dead cult 100% gamor:
from Crown Heights info (among other comments of the yesher koach go go go variety)
"A first time offense is excusable, I've been hearing and reading too many out of place, uneducated, and sometimes irresponsible remarks in Rabbi Friedman's broadcast talks, articles etc.
Someone that is known as such a prominent figure and scholar in Lubavitch should be careful with his words and shouldn't profess a knowledge in subjects about which he is unfamiliar or draw conclusions about major issues without foreseeing possible repercussions.
No apology can fix the damage done.
The only step that he can take is to stop making such statements. Not about Military strategies, not about the economy, not about assisted repreduction according to Torah, vedal"
Posted by: Paul Freedman | June 04, 2009 at 09:05 AM
Paul –
A comment on blog doesn't mean much.
Those of us who have been INSIDE Chabad and are honest know that what Manis wrote is the normative Chabad view – a view shared by the Rebbe.
Posted by: Shmarya | June 04, 2009 at 09:25 AM
Shmarya, I looked into in, you never were INSIDE Chabad.
Posted by: face | June 04, 2009 at 10:17 AM
Better have your eyes checked.
Posted by: Shmarya | June 04, 2009 at 10:18 AM
When they are stockpiling weapons and shooting at you from inside a mosque, yes you should shoot back at them and kill those enemies and/or blow up the "muslim holy site" commonly known as a mosque. That SHOULD be standard fare for any sane military unit being attacked by terrorists in battle. Isn't that what R Manis is referring to?
Posted by: really? | June 04, 2009 at 11:38 AM
Could you post a picture of yourself as a "Lubavitcher"?
Posted by: face | June 04, 2009 at 12:18 PM
"When they are stockpiling weapons and shooting at you from inside a mosque, yes you should shoot back at them and kill those enemies and/or blow up the "muslim holy site" commonly known as a mosque."
that is done by US forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan. If R Manis is looking for something different from the western way of war, presumably he means something different from that.
Posted by: justayid | June 04, 2009 at 12:43 PM
perhaps he assumed the ISRAELI policy to be equal to western warfare. And little does he realize that the Israeli "purity of arms" often prevents such sane actions that the US army routinely takes.
Posted by: really? | June 04, 2009 at 05:35 PM
Kill men, women, children (and cattle)? That's not defensive war. People who do not know or understand war talk big. And usually they get the wars started.
But other people are born to fight wars, it is their natural environment.
Remember the song, "Who let the dogs out..."?
Posted by: Not at all conservative | June 05, 2009 at 03:52 AM