Another similarity
In response to Caroline B. Glick’s “American Jewry’s necessary moral reckoning” (Our World, October 24), I’d like to add to her very precise and insightful piece that there is yet another similarity between American-Jewish supporters of communism in the 1920s and today’s Jewish ultra-liberal tendencies regarding the Palestinians.
In both cases, the American Jewish community bent over backwards to reject traditional Jewish practices and observances. In both cases, the cause of “humanism” was their guiding principle.
Forget the fact that this humanism had – and still has – as many holes as a good Swiss cheese, and double standards from here to eternity. Equality of rights and freedom of expression, which are definitely Jewish values, are again being represented as central to Judaism while dumping every other value, specifically anything connected to God.
Today the Reform movement has the audacity to call for a Palestinian state clearly rooted in terror and violence as part of “tikkun olam” (repairing the world). In its attempt to paint the value of humanism as the most important Jewish value, it has completely whitewashed the Jewish indigenous and historical connection to the land of our fathers.
In a recent Torah class I attended, in which the rabbi spoke of the value of hesed (loving-kindness) as attributed to Abraham, a question was asked: Is it possible to have too much hesed? The answer was poignant and relevant to this discussion: Yes, there needs to be a limit. Loving-kindness is appropriate only in certain circumstances and only to a certain degree.
One of the examples the rabbi gave was the hesed Abraham showed in his attempt to bargain with God over the destruction of Sodom. God was adamant that a line must be drawn and the city destroyed. Abraham’s desire to save the city was, alas, decreed to be an inappropriate show of hesed when extended to those who acted abominably.
From this we learn that there is a limit, at which point an act of loving-kindness, or humanism, becomes a sin. I believe that this lesson is one that the ultra-liberal Jewish community has yet to learn, as its misinterpretation of a Jewish value has crossed the line. In order to do this, it will need to return to the Torah and to Judaism. MEIRA OVED Modi’in