FailedMessiah.com

Convicted Non-Hasidic Sex Offender Rabbi Mordechai Elon To Hold Public Hasidic Holiday Commemoration, Sparking Controversy

Israeli Orthodox singer Yonatan Razel has backed out of a Yud-Tet Kislev event meant to commemorate the release of the first Chabad Rebbe, Shneur Zalman of Liady, from Tzarist prison – and, apparently, Rabbi Mordechai Elon's no-prison sweetheart sentence for sex abuse.

Newly-Released Emails Show Now Ex-Brooklyn DA, Top Cronies Dissing Jewish Week

Email the Jewish Week's Hella Winston got though NY State's Freedom of Information Law show the now-former Brooklyn DA Charles J. Hynes and two of his top cronies, one an ex-con ex-judge, the other a top NY judge who was forced to resign after his role in Hynes' last campaign role became public, were dismissive of Winston's coverage in the extreme. But the facts now clearly prove Winston was right – and Hynes and his cronies were very, very wrong.

Moving Truck Scheduled For Alleged Voyeur Rabbi’s DC Home

A moving truck was scheduled for 7:00 am this morning at the Georgetown home of accused voyeur Rabbi Barry Freundel. 

Haredim In Ramapo: A Dishonest Account From A Dishonest Writer

The article was written by a very dishonest person, Batya Ungar-Sargon. Ungar-Sargon wrote inaccurate and misleading pieces for the Forward on the Nechemya Weberman sex abuse trial in which she initially identified herself as a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, without telling readers that her degree is in English and she taught what would be remedial-level English classes at NYU or another good school at John Jay. Pretty misleading. (And even more so because the Forward apparently knew about the deception and didn't correct it until it was outed elsewhere.)

Prosecutors Detail Fraud Allegations Against Rubashkin

Sholom Rubashkin gave employees orders to write fake invoices and cover the tracks through a school and a kosher grocery store. Two top financial officers were paid six-figure salaries under the table for their cooperation, the government alleges.

A Haredi 'History' Lesson

"We are not in the Middle Ages, when wearing pronounced Jewish symbols was prohibited…"

When Rebbes Fled and Followers were Slaughtered like Sheep

The Belz, Satmar and Gerrer Rebbes and the Holocaust.

Israel Faces Dire Shortage Of Gas Masks …

… and yet the cabinet voted yesterday to cut the defense budget, ignoring warnings from the defense establishment and new Defense Minister Ehud Barak that these cuts could cripple the IDF. How bad is the gas mask shortage? This Jerusalem Post, which broke the story, tells us:

…Acknowledging that the population's gas masks will not be renewed and effective for at least another two years, defense officials told the Post Sunday that the IDF Home Front Command was currently considering proposals, if the need arises, to make emergency purchases of gas masks from Israeli and American companies.

If war were to break out in the coming months, the Home Front Command would only have enough gas masks for 1.5 million adults and half-a-million children.

The shortage in gas masks stems from a 2003 Defense Ministry decision to collect the public's gas masks, a project that only began at the beginning of 2007. Due to a lack of funds, the project was recently suspended and is expected to be renewed - following Sunday's government decision - in the coming weeks.

"This situation could be interpreted as neglect," a senior official told the Post. "If war breaks out and non-conventional weapons are used then we could find ourselves in a major crisis."…

The Olmert government stays in power in part because haredim provide it with a enough votes to hold on. Haredim do this just as they have with other popular and unpopular governments, not based on the competency of the particular government but on the amount of cash stuffed into haredi pockets.

If, God forbid, a war breaks out and if, God forbid, those missing gas masks come into play, the first place blame and political retribution should be directed is to Olmert and his cronies – including haredim – and it should not be forgotten who those haredim are and what yeshivot it is they whore for.

Leading Israeli Rabbis: Do Not Help Darfur Refugees Who Reach Israeli Soil

Here is a piece by Matthew Wagner from today's Jerusalem Post. Wagner reports Rabbi Dov Lior, the rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba and a leader of the National Religious right wing has ruled that Israel should not aid Darfur refugees who have found their way to Israel. (Rabbi Lior earlier ruled that these poor people should be stopped at the borders and pushed back into the Sinai wilderness.)

His ruling was echoed by Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Ateret Yerushalayim yeshiva and another leader of National Religious Jews. Efraim Zuroff, also an Orthodox Jew, of the Simon Wiesenethal Center's Israel office also agrees.

First, Rabbi Lior:

Israel has no moral responsibility to aid Darfur refugees, and their plight must not be compared to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, Chief Rabbi of Hebron-Kiryat Arba Dov Lior said on Wednesday.

He was responding to a query on the "Yeshiva" Internet forum.

Lior's questioner said Israel was obligated to help Sudanese refugees who reached its borders just as the nations of the world were morally responsible to help Jews suffering under Nazi Germany.

But Lior disagreed: "The Holocaust is not a good example [of a general moral obligation that can be compared to Israel's obligation to Darfur refugees]," he said. "During the Holocaust, Jews were hunted. The Germans wanted to destroy all the Jews wherever they were. The Swiss who saved the Jews [sic] knew that someone was hunting them down and wanted to murder them.

"We have enough problems of our own with immigration absorption. We need to take care of our own 'Sderot refugees' and we do not have budget reserves. We have enough poor people in Israel. There are plenty of nations that can help those refugees besides us.

"The poor of one's own country take precedence over other peoples' poor."

Now Rabbi Aviner:

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Ateret Yerushalayim yeshiva, said Jewish law obliged Jews to treat all human beings with loving kindness.

"We have to do it not because of the Holocaust but because God commanded to treat all of His creations, especially those created in His image, with loving kindness.

"We don't do it for the publicity or to look good in the eyes of the goyim. Jews have done acts of loving kindness in the past even when they were paid back with hatred," Aviner said.

However, he also said our own poor and homeless, including Israelis "expelled" from the Gaza Strip, came first. "We are a country of refugees," said Aviner. "We simply do not have the resources."

Now Efraim Zuroff:

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Jerusalem office, agreed with Lior that comparing the plight of Jews during the Holocaust to that of Sudanese refugees was inaccurate.

"Sudanese who managed to reach Israel had already escaped ethnic cleansing by entering Egypt from Sudan," he said. "The move to Israel was an attempt to find a better haven.

"Obviously, as Jews who were victims of genocide, we have a special duty to help stop the ethnic cleansing inside Sudan. But at the same time, Israel has limited resources. We cannot possibly help all Sudanese refugees," he said.

The case being discussed here are refugees who walked across the the Sinai and illegally crossed into Israel seeking shelter. They are victims of genocide who fled to Egypt, were persecuted there, some were sent back to Darfur by Egyptian authorities, and others fled to Israel.

To say, as Rabbi Lior does, that the "poor of one's own country take precedence over other people's poor" is disingenuous. That halakha is talking about sending money or aid to another city or country. Then, all things being equal, the poor of your own town or family come first. But, if the poor in another country are starving to death, and yours merely skip one or two meals per week, or eat less choice foods for the Sabbath, the halakha mandates aiding the poor starving to death in that other country.

So what are Rabbis Lior and Aviner really saying? They are saying this – Darfur refugees are not Jews. The halakha quoted is talking about helping Jews. The implication here is clear. Darfur refugees do not deserve our help because they are not Jewish.

But the truth is, once these poor people get to us, they are our poor, and they must be aided just like any other poor person in Israel. That is the halakha. (Some of you may recall biblical verses about how to treat strangers, verses that also say, "…because you were once strangers in Egypt.")

So what we have here is two prominent right wing National Religious rabbis with huge followings. Both misrepresent the halakha, it seems for political reasons.

These rabbis are concerned about aiding settlers who refused to leave Gaza, lost much of their benefits as a result, and now suffer – all because they listened to these very same National Religious rabbis (and others, as well) who ordered them to remain in Gaza.

As for the Sederot refugees, aiding them is not a matter of a shortage in funds – it is a matter of s shortage in political will.

As for Zuroff, he is right and he is wrong. Yes, the parallel is not exact. But he raises a straw man rather than deal with the actual situation. No one is talking about taking in all or most of Darfur refugees. We are dealing with a few hundred people, not millions, and the state – and, just as importantly, the Israeli private sector – has more than enough money to help these people.

The saddest thing of all here is noting Rabbi Lior's background:

…During the Holocaust, Lior himself was a refugee. He and his family were expelled from Poland and wandered through the Soviet Union. Both his parents died of starvation.

Lior is one of the most respected and influential religious Zionist rabbis in more right-wing circles. Many of his students hold key positions in national religious high schools and he is the spiritual authority for the Ariel Youth Movement.…

What did God spare Rabbi Lior for? To repeat the mistakes and evil of his parent's oppressors?

I will say one very controversial thing about this sad affair. Scholars study the formation of the Hitler Youth. They seek to answer, in part, a fundamental question: How could an entire generation of children be, for want of a better term, brainwashed? How could Hitler, yemach shemo, have 'cloned' so many little Hitlers?

Perhaps we should study the Ariel Youth Movement and its members. By this I do not mean to equate Rabbi Lior with Hitler or his movement with Hitler youth. But I do see parallels between Rabbi Lior's history of racism, and his teaching of this racism to youth, and what happened in Germany.

This is a very sad day for Judaism, and an even sadder day, I'm afraid, for God.

And, yes, I do see parallels with the late Lubavitcher Rebbe's position on (not) aiding Ethiopian Jews, where he also cites din kadima (the poor of your own town come first) as a reason to not help save starving, tortured Ethiopian Jews.

The Lies of the Rebbe, cont.

In his infamous 1983 letter to me responding to my pleas to help Ethiopian Jews, the late Chabad-Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote:

Equally, your claims regarding scholarships and other projects you mention in your letter are not logical and they do not fit in with the activities and duties of Chabad-Lubavitch institutions or representatives.

Of course, this was complete bullshit. Chabad had long been involved in using these same methods to save Iranian Jews. (So, to be clear, had Satmar.) But Chabad's operation had come to a halt early in 1982. And it was no state secret. Iranian Jews saved this way were very evident in Crown Heights and LA, and they didn't hide how they were saved. Many had moved from the US to Israel, as well.

Many of you questioned me on this point, claiming Chabad had not used student visas to save Iraninan Jews. Well, just to keep the record clear, here is why you were so very wrong:

One late afternoon in October 1978, Hertzel Illulian, a Chabad student from Brooklyn, was silently praying mincha outside the Intercontinental Hotel in Tehran. He took three steps back after reciting the Amidah, the service's central prayer, and found himself surrounded by a wall of men, secret police dressed in street clothes.

They threatened to cart him off to jail, eventually dismissing him and taking a local Iranian Jew instead.

This was a period of massive unrest in Iran, as pro-Ayatollah Khomeini supporters engaged in often violent street demonstrations against the shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had imposed martial law and whose tanks and troops patrolled the streets. But Illulian, then 19, didn't feel scared.

"I was courageous," he said. "I had the purpose to save Jewish children."

He was an official Chabad student shaliach, or emissary, working on behalf of [Chabad's] Brooklyn-based National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education, and armed with the coveted blessing of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Schneersohn. This was the beginning of his now-legendary mission to help transport about 3,000 young Jewish Persians, most ranging in age from 12 to 19, using I-20 student visas, from an increasingly dangerous Iran to safety in the United States.…

Illulian, who was raised in Milan, Italy, by parents born in Tehran, has a bona fide track record in this area. It was his idea to bring almost 3,000 young people out of Iran, working tirelessly from 1978 to about 1982 to accomplish it.

Sholem Hecht, rabbi of the Sephardic Jewish Congregation and Center in Queens, N.Y., who accompanied Illulian on his first trip to Tehran and assisted in the rescue, said, "There's no question he played a very special role in the history of Iranian Jews in America."

The Rebbe lied. Ethiopian Jews died. Period. End of story.

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and Ethiopian Jews

Recently, I found Rabbi Moshe Feinstein's 1984 teshuva-letter on Ethiopian Jews stuck between two file folders. (You can click the thumbnail image for a larger, more readable image or download a PDF.) This letter was written in response to a question I asked through Rabbi Moshe Tendler, Rav Moshe's son-in-law. He referred the question to his son, Mordechai, who then served as Rav Moshe's secretary-assistant. What follows is a (rough) translation:

With the Help of HaShem

26 Sivan 5744

To the honored, my beloved grandson ha rav ha-gaon moreinu ha-rav Rabbi Mordechai Tendler, shlit"a, with blessings of peace and blessing and all good:

With my best regards,

Here as per your request, I reaffirm what you wrote in my name several years ago regarding the "Falashas," that it is known what is written in the responsa of the Radba"z, section seven, §9, that it is understood he considers them to be Jews; however for practical application of the law it is difficult to rely on this, for it is not clear if the Radba"z knew well the reality regarding them, nor is it clear whether up until our time their status has [remained the same and] not changed. But in regard to practical application of the law they are not mamzerim or the like, for the Radba"z mentions there that many many doubts apply to them. Review my responsa where I detail at length the qualifications of the rabbinical prohibitions regarding the legal status of 'an illegitimate child of unknown fatherhood' and 'a child found in the street whose parents are (both) unknown'.

Regarding their Judaism, we must consider it a safek [doubt], and one must require of them true conversion before we permit them to marry within the Jewish community. Yet even before their conversion it is an active precept to save them from being drawn into a non-Jewish creed and from danger as the law is for any Jew, for "safek nefashot l'hakel" ["a doubt involving saving lives is judged leniently"] even where here the doubt is in their very status as Jews.

One should also know that even if in practical application of the law they are not Jews, nevertheless since they think they are Jews and sacrifice their lives for their Judaism, we are obligated to save them.***

As you mentioned, they should not be brought to the Land of Israel* unless they have underdone a conversion**, in order to not increase the concern for assimilation [i.e., intermarriage with Jews who do not have a doubt regarding their Jewish status and also a weakening of the faith of Ethiopian Jews themselves]. But if they have legally converted, and as I have heard they are doing, we shall consider them like all Jews, and one must assist them and support them for all needs of livelihood, both physically and spiritually. And I suffered great anguish because I have heard there are those in Israel who are not drawing them close in spiritual matters and are causing, G-d forbid, that they might be lost from Judaism. And it seems to me these people are behaving so only because the color of the Falashas' skin is black. It is obvious that one must draw them close, not only because they are no worse than the rest of the Jews – and because there is no distinction in practical application of the law because they are black – but also because one can say perhaps they are gerim [converts], and are therefore included in the mitzva "and you shall love the convert."

And I will conclude with the hope that the situation will improve, and in the merit in observing all the mitzvot, we should all soon merit to the ingathering of the exiles by our righteous messiah.

Your grandfather who loves you in heart and soul,

Moshe Feinstein

[All emphasis added.]

* Suggestions were made to bring Ethiopian Jews to Cyprus or Italy (or even the US or Canada) first to fulfill this request, but it proved impossible to do so. I told R. Mordechai Tendler this would not work. His answer based on conversations with his grandfather was to try anyway, which we did, and to note "safek nefashot l'hakel" in the teshuva. In other words, you have to save them no matter what. Rav Moshe wanted to give Baruch Tegegne and I brachot (blessings) to do so and asked us to come to the mountains, where he was vacationing, so he could bless us in person. Illness on our parts prevented this.

** Rav Moshe would later specify a giur l'humra, a form of pro forma conversion that allows conversion without first pushing away the potential converts and without first teaching them Jewish law. He would also later note that the Israeli Chief Rabbis' decision on these matters should be respected.

*** Rav Moshe had long before signed a public letter with non-Orthodox rabbis calling for the immediate aid for Ethiopian Jews and for rescue. It is linked here. Rabbi J. B. Soleveitchik signed the same letter. This is the campaign the late Lubavitcher Rebbe refused to join.

Chabad And Ethiopian Jews – The Shame Grows

The Dirty Racist Underbelly Of The Haredi World – R. Moshe Sherer, Rav Moshe Feinstein, And The Rescue Of Ethiopian Jews

Chabad And The Holocaust, Part 3: "He was a moral failure at this time to condemn us and the Jewish people as a whole for the Holocaust when he in turn did hardly anything except rescue his books and few students' lives."

Chabad And The Holocaust, Part 2

Chabad And The Holocaust: A Legacy Of Shame

As Tanya Printed In Background, Chabad Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh Calls For Soldiers To Disobey Evacuation Orders – Chabad Books More Important Than Human Life

Stalin Back In Favor As New Putin-Approved Statue Goes Up In Moscow … And Chabad Rehabilitates Stalin

A NEW statue of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is to be erected in Moscow, returning his once-ubiquitous image to the streets after an absence of four decades, a top city official said yesterday.

Since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, a number of Soviet symbols - including the national anthem and an army flag - have been restored to use, reflecting widespread nostalgia for the communist era.

But the rehabilitation of Stalin - denounced by Soviet leaders after his death in 1953 for encouraging a cult of personality and killing millions of real and imagined opponents - had remained out of bounds. Statues of him were removed from Moscow in the 1960s.

Oleg Tolkachev, Moscow’s senator in the upper house of parliament, said a monument was to be erected to Stalin and others who led the war against Hitler. A statue will also be built in the Belgorod region, near the Ukrainian border.

In another sign of Stalin’s growing appeal, many prime-time television shows have recently depicted him in a positive light.

For the Chabad role in this sickening affair, please see the post below.

For a look at Chabad's actions in Ukraine, see here.

NEW BOOK ON CHABAD – Could Be Titled The Abandonment Of The Jews

A new book on the rescue of the Friediker Rebbe from Nazi-controlled Poland, Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler's Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe, has been published by Yale University Press. The NY Jewish Week writes:

"Rigg is quite critical of President Roosevelt and American authorities in not acting decisively to rescue Jews, and he’s also critical that the Lubavitch rebbe didn’t do more to try to get other Jews out of Europe once he arrived in the United States…"

The Documents

An English-language translation of the Rebbe's letter on the rescue of Ethiopian Jews can be read here.

Information on Chabad, Holocaust Rescue and Ethiopian Rescue can be viewed here.

A teshuva from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein can be viewed here.

Rabbi J. David Bleich's overview of the halakhot regarding Ethiopian Jews, excerpted from Contemporary Halakhic Problems (Vol. 1), can be read here.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Shlomo Aviner rule that a cohen can marry and Ethiopian Jewish woman.

A rabbinic 'protest' to this website can be downloaded as a PDF by clicking here. [It is also posted on the Adath.com website.]

[It is important to realize that I did not see the Rebbe's letter written to me twenty years ago until it was published (without my permission) nine months ago in Kfar Chabad Magazine. If I had received the Rebbe's letter then – in other words, if the Rebbe's office had not confiscated it, which is what seems to have happened – I would have publicized it immediately. Chabad bought twenty years of silence by confiscating that letter.]

Please click on the thumbnails to read the documents. Thank you.

1943 & 1983: A Comparison

In 1943, the Union of Grand Rabbis and Agudas HaRabbonim issued the following plea calling on all rabbis to attend the Rabbis March on Washington. In part, it reads:

The Union of Grand Rabbis, as well as the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, appeals to support the action of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe as a Redemption of Captives [pidyon sh'vuim]. It is important for the aim of rescuing the remnant of Israel in Europe that all Rabbis be present in Washington to add weight to the manifestation of the Rabbis, the Grand Rabbis and the leaders.

As mentioned in an earlier post, it seems that no senior Chabad rabbis from the Lubavitch community of Crown Heights attended.

The Rebbe and his brother-in-law the Rashag did not attend. The Freidiker Rebbe also did not attend. (While it must be assumed that the Freidiker Rebbe's illness prevented his attendance, it did not prevent him from sending representatives of note. Yet he did not do so.)

Now, let's look at the 1983 letter from the Ad Hoc Rabbinic Committee to Save Ethiopian Jews. It calls for support for House Resolution 107 (Senate Concurrent Resolution 55), asks that petitions that do so be circulated in synagogues, and includes an ad placed by the above-mentioned Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe in the New York Times on February 16, 1943.

The Ad Hoc Committee's letter is signed by Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis, including Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Yosef Ber Soleveitchick Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Norman Lamm, President of Yeshiva University, and Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

There were no Lubavitch signatories. Chabad did not support the House Resolution. In the Rebbe's letter on the rescue of Ethiopian Jews, he ridicules US Government involvement in rescue and refuses to support the House Resolution because such support is not in the job description of Lubavitch.

The 1943 Rabbis March led to the rescue of 250,000 Jews from the Nazis. The 1983 Letter led to US backing for and involvement in the rescues that saved more than 25,000 Ethiopian Jews.

The Rebbe's letter on the rescue of Ethiopian Jews can be read here. The letters he was responding to can be read here. Please click on the above thumbnails to read the other documents.

The Rebbe's Letter on the Rescue of Ethiopian Jews

Do Not Waste Energy On Any Work Which Is Not Connected With Fulfilling The Mission Of Lubavitch

By the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson
        – as published in Kfar Chabad Magazine, Volume 1079, 5 Shevat 5764 (January 28, 2004) Page 35.

[The letter the Rebbe was responding to can be read here: Part 1; Part 2. The USPS Certification.]  

Baruch HaShem
12 Shevat 5744 [Monday, January 16, 1984]
Brooklyn, NY

Mr. Shmarya Rosenberg1
S. Paul, MN 55116

Shalom u’Bracha! 2

Your special delivery registered letter with enclosures dated 7 Kislev [Sunday, November 13, 1983 -- two months before the Rebbe wrote this letter] was received in it’s proper time. You are raising several questions beginning with a question that is related to a complicated problem of Jewish law (“Halakha”). As is well-known and widely publicized, it is outside the scope of my duties to render Jewish legal decisions (“paskin shailot”). I can only suggest that your question be addressed to a qualified rabbinical body, like Agudat HaRabbonim. 3

Aside from this, I am surprised by the wording of your letter because I do not remember receiving any letter from you in the past. 4

Your attitude appears presumptuous and unbecoming. You demand to know why Chabad-Lubavitch representatives (“shluchim”) are not doing anything or are not doing enough, related to this problem that you are very concerned with. Not only this, but your letter is tasteless and illogical, because your questions would be no more logical if you asked a physician why he is not actively involved in a matter related to engineering.

You should know that Chabad-Lubavitch representatives (“shluchim”) have a specific mission assigned to them, which is to spread Judaism in the communities designated to them. Congressional resolutions and the like are not part of those duties that are planned for them.5, 6

Furthermore, there is very little -- if anything -- they can achieve in the area that interests you most. Therefore, to divert their minds and to turn their energies and their time to something not related to their mission will be wasteful and diversionary to the work that they already do superbly and with full devotion.

Equally, your claims regarding scholarships and other projects you mention in your letter are not logical and they do not fit in with the activities and duties of Chabad-Lubavitch institutions of representatives (“shluchim”).7

The impression received from your letter is that you are probably not familiar with the correct way to achieve success for the cause you are so eager to work for.

In light of the above mentioned, and because you have begun your letter with B”H [an abbreviation for Baruch HaShem, Blessed is God], it is absolutely correct for me to ask you two questions related to this matter:

1. Remember the law ("din kadima") that the needs of the poor of your own city come first. Did all the Jews in your city receive adequate necessities to cover their Jewish [i.e., spiritual] needs? If not, why not?

2. What have you done and what are you currently doing -- are you doing all you can? -- to convince and encourage the Jews in your community -- men, women and children -- to live their lives as truly devoted Jews, Jews devoted to the Torah and its laws, fulfilling the daily mitzvot and acting as Jews? If not, why not?

Of course, there are many differences between your questions and mine. In fact, an operation to benefit the Jews of your community (along with it having precedence in Jewish law, "din kadima") can be carried out without the necessity of assistance from the American Congress and without the approval of any foreign government. Furthermore, such an operation would undoubtedly be successful -- it depends only on you and your willingness and determination to carry out such an urgent action. 8 Surely there is no need to explain to you the conditions in America -- including in your state and in your city -- that so very many Jews -- men, women and young children -- are carried away on the stream of assimilation, influenced by foreign surroundings that leads to intermarriage, etc. So many of them are lost to our people day-after-day, and, according to our sages, even the soul of one Jew is regarded as an entire world, and certainly it is so with regard to the rescue of so many of our brothers [from assimilation].

I must say that the purpose of my letter to you is not to argue with you or even to give you mussar (“moral guidance”) because I do not know you. Your letter is one of very many letters I receive and your letter does not fit in with any of them. It occurs to me that perhaps it is providential (“hashgakha pratit”), and that this gives me the opportunity to bring to your attention the fact that the many Jews nearby you have important needs and that an effort must be made to reach and save them -- they have the priority, the first claim on Jews like you.

May G-d give you the correct answers to answer my questions, not for my self-indulgence but for the sake of our brethren (“acheynu b’nai yisrael”), especially the younger generation in your city, assuming that you are a resident there for at least a few years or perhaps were born there.

With The Respect That Is Fitting (“B’Kavod HaRoy”),

[Signed]
P.S. I would like to respectfully ask you as an additional question related to this matter: In what way can it be helpful to this issue (that you are so angry about) for you to be well-informed on what I do or do not do to benefit it?

Footnotes

1. The Rebbe was writing to a university student who at that time had already been very active in outreach efforts on his campus, in his city and, in fact, throughout North America for several years, including working with Chabad-Lubavitch representatives in his city and across the country, and would continue to do so for many years to come. His first contact with Lubavitch had come almost two years before this when he hand-delivered to Chabad-Lubavitch representative Rabbi Moshe Feller a letter smuggled out of Ethiopia from Ethiopian Jewish leaders to American rabbis desperately pleading for help and describing the horrible situation in Ethiopia. The student asked Rabbi Feller to send a copy of that letter to the Rebbe. It appears from the Rebbe's letter that this was not done. The student also had extensive contact with Chabad leadership in Brooklyn and repeatedly asked them to help Ethiopian Jews. They refused, and either did not pass along the student's requests to the Rebbe, or, if they did, the Rebbe simply ignored them.

As the Rebbe's letter soon makes clear, and as Chabad's subsequent actions demonstrate, Chabad's position is that a Jewish educational project in Minnesota is more important than saving the lives of starving tortured African Jews.

2. “Greetings and Blessings!”, a standard opening to a letter in rabbinic Hebrew discourse.

3. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the Dean of the Rabbinic Court of Agudat HaRabbonim, had already ruled that Ethiopian Jews must be saved and had widely publicized that ruling. Rabbi Feinstein and Agudat HaRabbonim would soon rule again, very publicly, that Ethiopian Jews must be saved and that one can certainly and must in fact violate all Sabbath restrictions in order to carry out the rescue if it be necessary to do so. The Rebbe did not listen to either decision, and continued to withhold help, both with rescue and with absorption and acclimation to Israeli society and modern Judaism.

4. Note the previous letter on Ethiopian Jews sent September 16, 1983 and published here for the first time. Also note that many requests for help and guidance had already been made verbally through representatives of Lubavitch in Minnesota, Crown Heights -- including Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, the Rebbe’s secretary and public relations person -- and other locations throughout North America, without any response from the Rebbe.

5. Getting Congress to pass resolutions declaring the Rebbe’s birthday as “Education Day, USA,” was part of their duties, however.

6. Here is a copy of the Congressional Resolution I asked Chabad-Lubavitch and the Rebbe to support.

7. The Rebbe was asked to send Chabad 'Mitzva Tanks' into absorption centers to visit Ethiopian Jews. That is what the Rebbe is referring to when he says the projects mentioned "are not logical and they do not fit in with the activities and duties of Chabad-Lubavitch institutions of representatives."

8. Chabad was unwilling to help with that, as well.