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n response to my column “To the Boy with the Yellow Star” (Issue 709), I received a thoughtful letter from a member of New York’s Satmar community:

Dear Rabbi Grylak,

Thank you for offering to daven for my child. His name is Yehoshua Heshel ben Chana Rivka. No, he isn’t the child in the picture, but he was also there, and like any mother in Klal Yisrael, I am grateful to anyone who is mispallel for our children.

I hope I can alleviate some of your worries on a few charges, as well as the concerns you might have passed on to your readers.

Please rest assured that we are not pulling the proverbial wool over our children’s eyes. Our children, and our siblings, and our parents, grew up intimately familiar with Nazi horrors and miracles of survival, which have been retold and well documented in the family. Our family Yizkor list contains hundreds of names of direct family members who perished.

Our children also know, that “sheb’chol dor va’dor omdim aleinu l’chaloseinu” can mean two things: physical and spiritual destruction.

Let me share with you the story of one of my son’s great-grandmothers. In 1942, her father managed to get three of his children on a boat to Israel, where they were promptly separated and placed in secular kibbutzim. We grew up hearing of my grandmother’s heartbreak over her treatment at the hands of the “tziyoinim,” hearing her lament on how many enticing and forceful methods they used to make her be mechallel Shabbos, eat treif, and forget everything her parents taught her. She and her sister were miraculously rescued from the kibbutz, but her brother didn’t make it out of the spiritual death camp. His children and grandchildren do not carry the names of our holy kedoshim. They are named after celebrities and generals. And they roamed India, Scandinavia, and South America to “find” themselves after their army service.

So, according to the psak of our rebbes, we are mekayem the mitzvah of mecha’ah. Because millions of Yiddishe neshamos are lost and being lost. And you might disapprove and disagree with that shitah, but there’s no need to pity our children, especially on the count that during the protest most passersby ignore them. How unimpressed the man on the street is with our peaceful protest doesn’t free us from the chov of doing our part, in the manner we were advised and encouraged to do generations ago.

As to your fear that we are dangerously confusing our children, and what will happen when our “untruths” are exposed, please allow me to reassure you and clarify. We already travel to Eretz Yisrael, learn there, and have family living there who join our simchahs here. No, our children don’t think the “tziyoinim” are starving and gassing Uncle Zalmen behind barbed wire. They understand the difference between spiritual and physical death — their grandparents clearly explained both.

Would you like to know what does sadden and confuse them? When they encounter some of the thousands of Israeli-Americans who understand, read, and write Lashon Kodesh, but are derisive of Torah and mitzvos. When they sit on the plane with Yidden who choose treif food when kosher is available. You and I have chosen different paths in addressing this tragedy. Yes, we also do kiruv. Our tzedakah and chesed for all Yidden, even “tziyoinim,” is legendary. Our children are inculcated with love and mesirus nefesh for all Yidden, but the flavor might be different from yours.

Of course there are exceptions to every “normal,” and there are people who sell their children falsehood and hypocrisy. And that is tragic and dangerous. We aren’t doing that. This is the way we have been doing things for 70 years. We vehemently condemn attacking individuals — over Shabbos, the draft, or any issue, and we likewise condemn the burning or destroying of municipal property. Those are clear aveiros.

Of course, you have every right to condemn our protests, but may I suggest you reserve most of your pity and fear for the children who are being raised without Torah and mitzvos. Because they really need your tefillos.

Sincerely,

A mother, grandmother, wife, daughter,

and granddaughter of “protestors”

Thank you for your letter, and the gracious manner in which you presented your thoughts. Please permit me to address them. First, I would like to stress that I am a Holocaust survivor myself. I was just six years old when I led my younger sister, unaccompanied, across the border from Nazi-occupied France to neutral Switzerland.

I still remember the treatment my mother a”h received at the hands of the Nazis yemach shemam, although b’chasdei Hashem both my parents managed to reach Switzerland two years later. All the rest of my family perished in Auschwitz and Majdanek. Naturally, the Holocaust has always weighed heavily on my mind, and I have lectured on the subject extensively.

And that’s why it shocks me when I hear people at demonstrations shouting “Nazi” at Jewish policemen or see them wearing concentration camp uniforms with yellow stars. Anyone who was saved from the Nazis is disgusted and angered by this use of images and concepts from the greatest of catastrophes, as an attention-getting device for a demonstration, no matter how justified the demonstration itself may be.

If little children are to believe that the young Jewish men and women charged with keeping the public order are Nazis, then Auschwitz must not have been so very horrific. With all due respect, the whole concept of gadol hamachtio yoser min hahorgo (he who causes a person to sin is worse than one who kills him) is not really comprehensible to a child. I have done my own informal research on this matter. I’ve asked young adults who, as children, took part in such demonstrations with their fathers, and they admitted that they felt ashamed of themselves several years later when they read about what actually happened at Auschwitz. The damage such a thing does to young, impressionable minds is no simple matter.

Next, let’s look at the effect of these yellow stars and striped prisoners’ costumes on the people observing the demonstration. When demonstrators pin yellow stars to their children’s shirts, they are expressing their own anger, but passersby don’t share the feelings of the demonstrators, and the symbol does nothing to evoke their sympathy. We know the famous rule laid down in the Gemara (Yevamos 65b), that just as it is a mitzvah to say that which will be heeded, so is it a mitzvah not to say that which will not be heeded. This is certainly applicable to the case of someone who puts on a yellow star for its shock value, or who shouts “Nazi” at Jewish policemen. And often the terrible insult only enrages the police and provokes them to violence.

I once asked a young demonstrator, “If you were really in Auschwitz, and a German soldier was hitting you, would you dare to shout ‘Nazi’ at him?” The young man admitted that he wouldn’t. “If you wouldn’t dare shout insults at Nazis,” I pointed out to him, “that means that those policemen, whom you’re not afraid to shout at, aren’t Nazis.”

However righteous their cause, demonstrations that employ terms and symbols from the Holocaust trivializes the unfathomable tragedy and is extremely offensive to survivors. (I was glad to read in your letter of your vehement opposition to rioting, destroying public property, and attacks on individuals, and I wish that some people in Jerusalem would pay attention to your words and understand that these acts are aveiros.)

We share the pain you feel at the sight of Jews who speak Lashon Kodesh while trampling on the mitzvos of the Torah. And we, too, have seen the tragedy of family members who survived the Holocaust only to fall into the hands of devout secularists and thus ruined generations of Jews. But that tragedy took place half a century ago. Now we are witnessing a time of tikkun.

Today, all the old secular ideologies have gone bankrupt, and the average Israeli is seeking a way back to authenticity. The door to tikkun has opened and there is a rush toward that open door. Baruch Hashem, HaKadosh Baruch Hu granted me the privilege of being among the first kiruv lecturers at the outset of the teshuvah movement in Eretz Yisrael, and I can testify that it is still picking up momentum. Indeed, a large segment of the population calls itself secular, but the avowed, militant secularists of yesteryear are a minority today, found chiefly in the ranks of the media and the higher courts. Surveys show that a majority of Israelis identify as traditional, and that’s why our main task today is to bring the word of Hashem to the masses who lack knowledge of Judaism but still feel connected, deep in their hearts, to the Torah.

Unfortunately, the form of protest your community has chosen creates antagonism. Rather than drawing ignorant Jews closer, the use of Holocaust symbols and charges of religious persecution in Israel pushes them away. Religion is not persecuted in Eretz Yisrael, and no yeshivah bochur who sits and learns Torah is arrested by the police. True, there have been arrests, but they didn’t take place in the beis medrash, rather in various other venues, and only after the individuals concerned failed to appear at the draft board as the law requires. These boys tried all sorts of evasive tactics, and in the end they were caught. This is not a new phenomenon; it has always been this way — and it’s to be expected that individuals who try to beat the system can get into trouble. But to talk about a sweeping “gezeiras giyus” is a distortion of the facts and arouses unnecessary hostility (not to mention hours of traffic delays, angering thousands of people to no purpose, bringing no positive results and provoking hatred toward chareidim).

The Satmar community, as you very rightly point out, is known for its chesed, tzedakah, and concern for every Jew in need. These are the values inculcated by the Rebbe zy”a, and it is precisely because you espouse these values, that you certainly agree with me about the prime importance of saving Jewish souls — and why you can understand how the form of protest demonstration chosen by your community has the opposite of the desired effect. What is achieved by a demonstration of this sort? What happened 70 years ago cannot be changed, but now, when a spirit of tikkun has awakened among the Jews of Eretz Yisrael, so much can be achieved.

May Yehoshua Heshel ben Chana Rivka be blessed with brachah v’hatzlachah in both gashmiyus and ruchniyus, and may he, and all the children of Klal Yisrael, flourish in the glory of the Jewish People.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 712)

2) An Appropriately Abject Apology

Yonoson Rosenblum