In response to this ruling, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, Yossi Beilin, said that for three reasons, this ruling was not to be accepted. The reasons were that none of the rabbis live in Israel, that they were all anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox ideologues, and that "the words of the rabbis are not the Torah way". So speaketh the Sage, Yossi Beilin.
In fact, one of the leading rabbis, Rabbi Avraham Shapira, is a former Chief Rabbi of Israel, a member of the Knesset, and does, in fact, live and work in Jerusalem. The other two leaders of this group were Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik, perhaps best known as a teacher at New York's Yeshiva University, and the Chief Rabbi of Australia -- neither of which can be called anti-Zionist, and both of which are among the world leaders of the Modern Orthodox movement.
But Beilin's ignorance of fact is not so bothersome to me. This tendency of his to prefer his own world to that in which most of us live, has lost him my respect a long time ago. What is most instructive to me in this, his latest pronouncement, his the chutzpah with which he feels he knows better than 3000 Orthodox rabbis what is "The Torah Way". How can anyone say that so many rabbis do not represent the Torah way? All the more so, Yossi Beilin, who is allied politically, and ideologically with the pork-eating, sabbath-desecrating, Jerusalem-shaming, godless Shulamit Aloni.
The job of rabbis down through the centuries has been to interpret Halacha, meaning the teachings of the Torah, and the guidance with which it provides us, and to apply these teachings and this guidance to our daily lives in whatever situations we may find ourselves. It has become quite apparent over the past few months, that the job of Yossi Beilin is to remove all which is Holy from the midst of the Jewish world. Thirty-three hundred years of history is at stake. The home of all Jewish people is at stake. The city of our dreams and prayers is at stake. I won't even begin to go into specific transgressions made by Beilin and others in public. But that someone whose hands are so filthy with the grime of self-hate can have the nerve to tell the world's rabbis that they are wrong when they pass an halachic ruling is beyond revulsion. It is dangerous to the entire Jewish existence, both physically, and spiritually.
Of course, Yossi Beilin is not the only one who is guilty in this regard, or even in this specific matter. He represents a government of Israel led by a disgraced army general, and which includes an incompetent foreign minister whose greatest joy is to represent the goals of his state's enemies. This government includes cabinet ministers who eat pork in public, and who demand that right for all Israelis, even though it is explicitly against all Jewish law. To make this point clear, Aloni recently hosted an international pork farmers conference in the heart of Jerusalem over shabbat.
It is said that some people do not permit facts to blemish their rhetoric. This has never been truer of an Israeli government, or even of a member thereof. It has long been the policy of Rabin and his collection of bumbling sycophants to reject anything said or represented by three groups of people. The Orthodox, the Jewish residents of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Golan, and Jews who live outside of Israel. I have the fortune to belong to two of these groups, and in an effort to put myself fully outside of Rabin's reach, I will be moving to Israel to work on behalf of Jewish rights to all of Israel -- specifically Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Golan.
What Yossi Beilin had to say last week only illustrates just how active this policy is. Beilin's remarks were directed at precisely those elements for whom Rabin and his advisors have no element of respect or concern. But of course, the facts speak otherwise. I think we can let the facts speak for themselves. They are surely more meaningful than Beilin's rantings.
Copyright 1995. Reproduction in electronic or print format by permission only.
