The Chief Rabbi of South Africa Rabbi Warren Goldstein wrote an op-ed this week saying that a limited lifting of Israel’s travel ban isn’t enough. In the article, he called for the travel ban to be completely rescinded.
“The last two years have been traumatic for the whole world, obviously this pandemic has affected every dimension of life but hopefully these travel bans are going to come to an end very soon,” Rabbi Goldstein tells Israel National News. “What we really need to do is to learn from this experience in terms of the relationship between the State of Israel and Diaspora Jewry because these travel bans have done enormous damage to that relationship.”
He comments that the relationship “need to be repaired” going forward.
“The damage that has been done is something that I’ve always understood and I think so many others have. Even the founders of the State understood this very clearly in that the State of Israel is not just another country, another government that only has responsibility for its own citizens. It is the State of the Jewish people, and that's why the the founders of the State instituted the Law of Return. They understood this is the nation state of the Jewish people.”
Rabbi Goldstein notes that over the last two year the Israeli government has “on many occasions blocked the entry of Diaspora Jews into the State of Israel, treating us essentially like tourists” and that “if you're a tourist from Germany or Canada or America then you have the same restrictions applied to you with whether you're a Jew who's trying to get in and you're coming to visit family or attend a milestone event or have children who want to go and and study in yeshiva or in university.”
“All of this was just treated with the same approach and that has done enormous damage to the relationship and going forward now that relationship needs to be repaired,” he adds.
He describes the situation as “almost tearing a nation in two” where a way needs to be found to “heal this relationship.”
Explaining that the impact has been twofold, Rabbi Goldstein says that the “identity of Israel as a Jewish State responsible for the Jewish people” has been impacted and that there has been resulting “humanitarian suffering.”
“The Jewish people are one people and we are one family. You have members of of of the Jewish people in the Diaspora and in Israel and who are actually family members, so you’re almost tearing a nation in two. Our connection to Israel is so deep – spiritual, emotional, psychological, family, learning. It's like ripping the nation in two and that caused an enormous amount of human suffering.”
He continues: “You cannot believe the number of cases that that came across my desk over the last two years. People writing to me to say can I help their father not being able to attend the bar mitzvah of his own son, a divorced father whose ex-wife and his son are living in Israel. He wanted to attend his son’s bar mitzvah. He couldn't get in. So many so many stories like that. The family and friends of the Kay family coming to comfort the mourners in the week of shiva after Eliyahu Kay was murdered not being allowed in, being forced to travel on Shabbat. These were cases that caused so much personal suffering and emotional harm. We need to find a way to heal this relationship and to ensure that this doesn't happen again.”
Rabbi Goldstein also criticized the way that the Israeli government is lifting the travel bans.
“As these travel bans are coming to be lifted now, it's not that they're being lifted from the principle of saying well we're the Jewish people, we're one people,” he says. “It's talking from a point of view of of the numbers and the medical. But really this goes way beyond that and going forward the appeal that I would like to make is we need to begin a conversation and find ways of reaffirming and articulating this relationship between the State of Israel and Diaspora Jewry.”
In his article, he wrote that the policy must change in the future.
“What's going to be with with the next wave and another variant G-d forbid? Is all of a sudden the sky going to be closed again? We need to have a sense of certainty, a sense of knowing about the future for people who are making aliyah. They need to know that when they get on a plane to make aliyah it doesn't mean that they're going to be cut off from their own relatives who are left behind. Also it also means that the Jews of the Diaspora need to know that Israel is there because it's our home, it's part of who we are.”
He calls the issue a “debate that needs to begin in the same way that we have the right of the Law of Return which the founders of the State implemented to give the right of any Jew in the world to make aliyah to get Israeli citizenship.”
Calling for a “clause which we could call the ‘Law of Entry,’” Rabbi Goldstein says that while Diaspora Jews are not Israeli citizens, they nonetheless have a “birthright” to enter Israel as the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
“The the right of a Jew to enter the land of Israel is not a citizenship right,” he explains. “People have said, ‘Well, you're not you're not a citizen. Uou don't pay taxes, don't serve in the army.' Firstly, there are thousands of loan soldiers who come from outside Israel. But I understand that of course Jews of the Diaspora cannot have the rights of citizenship, of healthcare, education, of all that it means to be a citizen. Of course, that is for citizens.”
Rabbi Goldstein comments that “the right to enter the land of Israel is not a right of citizenship. It is the birthright of every Jew."
"We are the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That is our divine right to enter the land of Israel. That's not a right of citizenship. There is a fundamental distinction," he says.