Dear Michael,
You and I have been friends for many years. I not only look up to you but have publicly championed you as one of global Judaism’s greatest heroes. What you have accomplished in Poland, rebuilding Jewish life out of the ashes of the Holocaust, is utterly unprecedented. We are all in your debt.
You have played a historic role in reviving Jewish life in one of Europe’s most tragic Jewish landscapes, ensuring that Poland—once the beating heart of the Jewish world and later the largest Jewish cemetery in history—still breathes with Jewish prayer, Torah study, and continuity. For this, you will always have my enduring respect.
It is precisely because of that deep respect that I must tell you, candidly and directly, that I found your recent comments in The New York Times—criticizing Israel and aligning with a public rabbinic letter against the Jewish state—out of character for a global Jewish leader of your caliber.
You said:
“Even in the midst of a horrific immoral war started by Hamas, it doesn’t take away from our responsibility to feed and to provide medical care for the civilian population.”
On the surface, few could disagree. Feeding civilians, providing humanitarian relief, and minimizing suffering is a Jewish obligation rooted in our Torah. It is embedded in our DNA as a people who know suffering and hunger ourselves. The problem is that your statement suggested—intentionally or not—that Israel is failing in this responsibility. Worse, by affixing your signature to such a letter, you lent your moral authority as a Chief Rabbi to the dangerous falsehood that Israel is conducting this war in a wantonly cruel fashion, starving civilians rather than defending itself against an annihilationist foe.
That implication, as we both know. is simply untrue.
Israel’s Humanitarian Record in Gaza
Israel has distributed more than 2,000,000 tons of humanitarian aid into Gaza since October 7th—an amount that equals the entirety of the Berlin Airlift under Harry Truman, which rescued a city of more than two million people from starvation after the Soviets tried to blockade them. Think about that: in the middle of a war against Hamas, Israel has matched the greatest humanitarian operation of the 20th century.
No country in history has every fed its enemy during a time of war except Israel.
America dropped not food parcels but atomic bombs on Japan. Churchill’s Lancaster bombers brought not bread but limitless destruction to Cologne, Dresden, Hamburg, and Berlin. William Tecumseh Sherman brought not grain or barley but fire and utter devastation to the city of Atlanta. Lyndon Johnston rained not cereals but hellfire on North Vietnam.
No army is dumb enough to feed its enemy. But Israel does it out of a profound moral obligation and is still condemned by false blood libels of starving Gazans whose food is stolen by the terrorists of Hamas.
And still, every single day, convoys of Israeli trucks carrying food, medicine, and essential supplies are coordinated and allowed into Gaza, despite Hamas’s constant theft and obstruction. Israel has also established field hospitals and medical evacuation corridors for Gazan civilians. Israel has facilitated air and sea drops of humanitarian aid, coordinated with the United States and other countries.
The numbers are not in dispute. According to Israel’s own Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), and confirmed by UN agencies themselves, the flow of aid into Gaza is historic and unprecedented for a country at war.
Yet, somehow, these facts are rarely acknowledged. Instead, Israel is slandered as deliberately starving civilians. And tragically, the Rabbis signed on the letter, who we are sure love and support Israel, have been taken in by Hamas lies.
The Real Culprit: Hamas
Michael, we both know that the true obstacle to humanitarian relief is not Israel—it is Hamas.
Hamas has built a labyrinth of tunnels beneath Gaza larger than the entire New York subway system, not to shelter civilians, but to stockpile rockets, hide its leaders, and store food and fuel for its fighters. It has hijacked convoys, stolen aid, and fired on humanitarian corridors to keep civilians trapped as human shields. Hamas has rejected every proposal for mass civilian evacuation, because the more Gazans suffer, the more international pressure mounts on Israel to stop defending itself.
To blame Israel for civilian suffering, while ignoring Hamas’s responsibility, is not only unfair—it perpetuates Hamas’s strategy of weaponizing civilian pain.
Why This Matters
When a country's Chief Rabbi, one of the few Jewish figures in Europe with institutional weight, makes statements that can be interpreted as echoing Hamas propaganda, it has consequences. It provides moral cover for those who want to demonize Israel as a war criminal rather than hold Hamas accountable for its atrocities.
I know you would never participate in this willingly God forbid. But that’s why Pirkei Avot warns us, “You scholars, be very careful with your words.”
We are not dealing here with a neutral political debate. We are dealing with an environment of rising antisemitism, where Jews are being attacked in Paris, New York, London, and Vienna, where I was physically assaulted this moth. In such an environment, when a group of rabbis appear to criticize Israel without context, their words are weaponized by those who already seek to delegitimize the Jewish state.
The Historical Irony
You, Michael, arguably more than any Rabbi on earth, understand the threat posed by Hamas and why Israel cannot leave them in power. Hamas are the Nazis incarnate, as they demonstrated on October 7th. Without the heroes of the IDF, the Jews of Israel would be exactly like the Jews of Poland.
Poland is where the Jews were starved, herded into ghettos, and condemned to extermination. And the world did almost nothing. Aid was not dropped into the Warsaw Ghetto. Trains carrying food did not break the Nazi blockade. No Berlin Airlift saved Polish Jewry.
Today, the Jewish state is in the reverse position. It is fighting an enemy that openly declares it wants to annihilate the Jews, while simultaneously straining every nerve to get aid to civilians who are caught in the crossfire. The irony is staggering: when Jews were victims, the world did nothing. Now that Jews are defending themselves, the world accuses them of doing too much.
The Moral Clarity We Need
We Rabbis, while human and highly imperfect, are shepherds of Jewish morality. We cannot afford ambiguity in moments when Jews are being demonized globally.
Yes, we must call for humanitarian compassion. But Israel is not compassionate to Jews or Palestinian Arabs if it leaves the monsters of Hamas in power to continue to burn Jewish babies alive and slaughter thousands of innocent Palestinian Arabs, who they use as human shields.
In the Second World War, the allies killed between 1.5 million and 3 million German civilians. They did so with indiscriminate nighttime bombing raids on the part of the RAF, and more targeted day time bombing raids by the American Army Air Corps which tried its best to focus specifically on industrial and military targets, but killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Israel would never even consider any kind of indiscriminate bombing of that nature. But even the allies were not at fault for the deaths of German civilians. It was all the fault of Hitler and the Nazis. Roosevelt was not a murderer. He was a liberator. Churchill was not a killer. He was a hero.
Compassion must be rooted in truth. The truth is:
-Israel has allowed in more humanitarian aid than any country at war has ever done.
-Hamas is the single greatest obstacle to relief.
-Civilian suffering is real—but it is a direct result of Hamas’s war crimes, not Israel’s intentions.
As rabbis, our role is to tell that truth, loudly and clearly. To do otherwise is to fail our people.
The Danger of “Balance”
I know that rabbis who signed that letter might defend their actions by saying they were simply affirming a universal Jewish obligation, not condemning Israel. But in today’s climate, “balance” itself becomes a weapon. To say, “Yes, Hamas is evil, but Israel must do more,” is not received as a nuanced moral stance. It is heard as: “Even rabbis think Israel is starving civilians.”
The Times, who’s record on Israel is absolutely disgusting, did not quote Orthodox Rabbis as condemning Hamas. It quoted them as criticizing Israel. That is how the world reads it. And that is how antisemites use it.
We cannot be naïve. The context of Jewish speech today matters. The amplification of our words in hostile media matters. That is why I am urging you, as a friend and true admirer, to reconsider lending your name and moral weight to statements that our enemies will use to distort reality.
A Call to Reconsider
Michael, you are the Jewish leader in Poland, where the Jewish people know better than anywhere else what happens when the world turns on the Jews. Today, the world is turning on Israel. Will we, as rabbis, add our voices to that tide—or will we stand firmly with our people?
Conclusion: My Friendship, My Plea
Michael, I write this not to criticize you - a man whose life work has truly inspired me - but to appeal to you. I love you as a brother and as a teacher. I will continue to respect and champion you publicly. But as a fellow rabbi, I believe that Israel has behaved more justly and righteously in this war, given the challenges it faces, than any comparable army fighting urban terrorists in world history.
History will judge how we rabbis spoke in this moment. Did we defend Israel’s moral record, or did we allow falsehoods to spread unchallenged? Did we give comfort to our people under siege, or did we echo accusations of their foes?
I believe you are a man of the highest integrity and humility. You have done wonders in Poland. You have pulled off miracles in a country that saw the murder of more Jews - three million - than any other in history. We need your voice to stand with Israel now more than ever.
With warmest regards, love, and blessing.