DÉJÀ VU: AMERICAN JEWISH LEADERSHIP

The irony of President Barack Obama summoning American Jewish leadership for a chit-chat in the Roosevelt Room at the White House recently was certainly not lost on students of Jewish history.

To American Jewry, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the beloved president of the community: they adored him, voted for him, and could see no wrong doing in his actions. The Jewish community today, or about 80% of it, has embraced Barack Obama with the same vigour as their predecessors embraced FDR. But there is a slight difference: I believe that in Obama’s case, there is also an element of fear present.

When President Obama summoned the Jewish leaders to the Roosevelt Room, he was quite clear about whom he wanted present, and whom he wanted excluded. Similarly, President Roosevelt had a Jewish invitation list made up of primarily one, Rabbi Stephen Wise. Rabbi Wise was, in the historical sense, a court Jew. He was the most famous Reform Rabbi in the United States during World War II and, at the same time, was considered the most influential Jewish and Zionist leader in the country. Historically, there were court Jews who put themselves on the line in order to advocate for issues which directly affected the security and safety of the Jewish community. These court Jews would plead with kings, bishops, and princes to rescind orders which negatively affected the Jewish community, to remove heavy burdens of over-taxation which became oppressive and unbearable, and would even intervene to try and stop edicts from being proclaimed which were detrimental to the very welfare and existence of the Jewish people. Rabbi Stephen Wise did not fall into the same category as these court Jews.

For as millions of Jews were being massacred in Europe, Rabbi Wise, during his meeting with FDR, had tea and chatted about the weather, sports, and other issues of American concern. He refused to press the President to act in order to try to save those Jews who were condemned to die in the Holocaust. A protest from the United States declaring that those responsible for the genocide of the Jewish people would suffer serious consequences when the war was over, might have given the Nazi killers some pause. But Stephen Wise did not ask and President Roosevelt kept silent.

Jumping to the recent meeting with President Obama, the attendees collectively reflected a Jewish communal leadership that was intent on supporting the President, no matter what he was pushing for. From the description provided by those in attendance, this is exactly what happened.

There was no strong voice present calling for a united Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel, or for the inalienable right of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland, including in Judea and Samaria. There were no voices that called the notion that Jews in Judea and Samaria should be forcibly removed from their homes so that certain areas become Judenrein by its true adjective: obscene. There was also no one to tell the President that such an exercise was recently tried in Gaza and resulted in massive failure and terrorist training camps where Jewish communities had once thrived.

At this point, it is interesting to note that just as Obama recently did, FDR denied many Jewish organizations access to his tea party with Rabbi Wise. The Bergson group, led by Hillel Kook, and a delegation of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, that was rousing American Jewry from their slumber and warning of the killing machine in Europe, were both denied entry by President Roosevelt. Nationalists from the Jabotinsky movement and the Orthodox Vaad Hatzalah, who were involved in various rescue efforts at the time, were also shut out of the meeting. These organizations were to march on the streets and fill Madison Square Gardens, but no tea with the President and Rabbi Wise.

Today, the organizations that were excluded from Obama’s private tea party have been thrust into the spotlight and given the responsibility to advance the opinions of what may appear, at first glance, a minority but, I believe, will rapidly become the majority among American Jews. It will be up to B’nai Brith International, the Young Israel Movement, and the Zionist Organization of America to lead the American community in the cause of proclaiming Jerusalem as the united capital of the Jewish people and, at the same time, to assert that Jews have a historical right to live throughout Eretz Yisrael. No dictate from the White House, Moscow, Tehran, or, for that matter, any other place in the world will change the Biblical Covenant that the Jewish people have that gives them the religious, historical, and legal rights to settle their own land. The Jewish Aboriginals have reclaimed and rebuilt their national home according to the road map laid out in the Old Testament, the foundation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Sadly, the one individual who, more than any other, failed in his moment of trial was Steven Savitsky, President of the Orthodox Union. It was his challenge to speak on behalf of the Orthodox Zionist world and to clearly articulate to President Obama the position of this significant component of the Jewish community. Rabbi Yaffi, the Reform leader, clearly had the time to make known the position of his movement which, not surprisingly, was in total support of President Obama’s policies. On the other hand, Mr. Savitsky apparently did not feel he had enough time to argue the case for Jerusalem and object to the edicts of the President. Mr. Savistsky would be well served to review Megillat Esther where Mordechai reminds Esther when she is afraid to intervene with the King that G-d will still save his people, but only Esther will lose her place in history. Sadly, Mr. Savitsky missed that message.

Rabbi Stephen Wise