Last week, Israel's former Diaspora Minister Omer Yankelevitch proposed a plan for reconnecting Israel to Diaspora Jews in the wake of Corona, in order to strengthen the next generation of Diaspora Jewry and its relationship with Israel.
I am sure the former Diaspora Minister is a sincere individual with a great love for the Jewish People. It is not my intention to criticize her in any personal fashion, but rather to point out the shallowness and hopelessness of the philosophy behind the plan – the same faulty philosophy which the Diaspora Ministry and Jewish Agency have fostered unsuccessfully for the past two decades. Readers can examine the details of the plan on their own. As well-meaning as they are, at this point of time, they are as irrelevant to the solution as giving a vaccination to a person already dying of Corona.
Before the Holocaust, Zeev Jabotinsky traveled throughout Europe warning the Jews of the horror to come. “If you don’t liquidate the Diaspora, the Diaspora will liquidate you,” he told them. This means that the Diaspora itself is a losing proposition. Either Jewish communities will be destroyed by assimilation or by the sword.
Tragically, this scenario has been repeated again and again throughout Jewish history. This shouldn’t be a surprise. The Diaspora was never meant to last forever. The Torah defines it as a curse – a long, painful, but temporary curse until the Jews return to their Homeland. Strengthening Jewish communities in the Diaspora is the very opposite of what needs to be done. To save the Jewish People, the Diaspora must be abandoned before it destroys the Jews who remain there.
Rabbi Kook voiced the very same alarm. In speeches and public proclamations, he warned of the approaching Holocaust and urged the Jews of the Diaspora to hurry home to Israel. Long before him, the Gaon of Vilna warned the flourishing Torah community of Vilna that the Diaspora would turn into a graveyard of dry scattered bones and that only Jerusalem would remain as a refuge. Encouraging his students to make Aliyah and to begin the resettlement of Eretz Yisrael, he stated:
“Exile to outside of the Land of Israel is a grave. Worms surround us there, and we do not have the power to save ourselves from the idol worshippers who devour our flesh. In every place, there were great Jewish communities and yeshivot, until the body decayed and the bones were scattered, again and again. Yet, always, some bones still existed, the Talmidei Chachamin of the Israelite Nation, the pillars of the nation’s body – until even these bones rotted, and there only remained a rancid waste which disintegrated into dust – our life turned into dust.”
If in generations past the Diaspora could boast of great Torah Gedolim to preserve the spirit of the exiled Jews, that time has ended. In America today intermarriage has reached 70%. No amount of Jewish education or Chabad outreach can prevent the tsunami of assimilation from increasing. It is impossible. The attractions of the surrounding Gentile culture are too enormous. And the present social chaos in Western countries, coupled with Corona and increasing economic instability, will only give fuel to greater anti-Semitism and acts of violence.
Tzahal won’t be in Boro Park or Antwerp to save the Jews when the smoldering fury explodes. The fact is – there is no future for the Jews of America and the rest of the Diaspora. Today, fostering proposals to strengthen Jewish Identity and Jewish communities in Gentiles lands is a waste of time and money. Instead of saving the Diaspora we need to save the Jews. Sure, a hundred Jews may be enlightened by a new campaign of Jewish Education, but the vast majority will continue to be swallowed up by the darkness of today’s Mitrayims.
To save as many Jews as we can, a MASS NATIONAL EMERGENCY PROJECT OF ALIYAH AND ABSORPTION must be undertaken by the Government of Israel, including the construction of new cities for Western olim, with job opportunities, and the surrounding infrastructure needed to help them make a successful landing in the Promised Land. The details can be formulated. First the decision must be made. Worthless plans for increased Jewish education can be thrown in the wastebasket of history.
Instead of giving 50 billion shekels to the Arabs in Israel to strengthen their communities and struggle against the Jewish State, the money should be diverted to the planeloads of Jewish olim who will be coming if they are insured that the Jews in Israel are behind them. If we will it, the ultimate ingathering of the Jews still in exile need not remain a dream.