The Jerusalem Post - The Jerusalem Post Magazine
The genuine article
Isi Leibler got into his share of controversies, but was widely respected
This book is about the life and times of Isi Leibler, a leader of Australian Jewry and a bare knuckle fighter for Jewish rights. Lone Voice: The Wars of Isi Leibler (Gefen Books) is also an account of the causes and concerns which have occupied Diaspora Jews during the last 70 years. The author, the distinguished Australian academic, Suzanne Rutland, has been meticulous in her research to paint a recognizable portrait of Leibler, a large-as-life maverick who followed his own political path.
Leibler was fortunate to escape the Nazi embrace and sailed on one of the last ships out of Antwerp. Leibler came of age in Bnei Akiva and adhered to the National Religious camp throughout his life. He operated as a Jewish diplomat within the parameters of traditional organizations.
Leibler originally favored a life in academia, but was forced into running his family’s diamond business at the age of 23 when his father suddenly passed away. His father’s influential contacts and his business acumen however were inherited by the son — and thus provided the foundation to develop not only his own independent diplomatic initiatives, but also to rebuff the powerful and the corrupt with moral conviction. For some, Isi Leibler is a right-wing member of the awkward squad, for others, a stalwart who stood on principle and refused to budge.
One example of this was his early involvement with the cause of Soviet Jewry and “the office with no name” (Nativ). This had been established by Mossad founder Shaul Avigur in 1952 and led by Nehemiah Levanon, Zvi Netzer and Yaka Yannai in the 1960s. Australia’s campaign for Soviet Jewry remarkably preceded that of both the US and the UK. Indeed Australia’s UN representative, Douglas White, first raised the question of human rights for Soviet Jews as early as November 1962.
Despite his affinity for conservative politics and his support for Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, Leibler astutely cultivated skeptics within the local Communist party. After the Doctors’ Plot, the Soviet revelation of Stalin’s crimes and the invasion of Hungary in 1956, Leibler understood that there was a deepening ideological unrest in many Communist parties - and acted upon his inclinations. He showed them Trofim Kichko’s Judaism without Embellishment, published by the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1963, which depicted crude images of hook-nosed Jews dipping their craw-like hands into pots of gold coins.
Leibler’s diplomatic initiatives on behalf of Soviet Jews took place in many unusual arenas rather than in the spotlight of grassroots activism. He conformed to the Nativ line and coordinated with Levanon and Netzer rather than with their critics in the Diaspora. This informed his public espousal in opposing the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics even though US president Jimmy Carter had called for it as did the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, albeit privately.
Leibler conducted meetings with Soviet officials at a time when there were no diplomatic relations between Israel and the USSR. He struck up a relationship with George Zoubkov, vice president of the Soviet travel agency Intourist, through his own business interests. Zoubkov spoke fluent Hebrew and had been stationed at the Soviet Embassy in Tel Aviv between 1948 and 1953.
Leibler’s close association with Australian prime minister Bob Hawke led to several well-intentioned, but ultimately failed, endeavors to help Soviet Jewry. Hawke met leading refuseniks in Moscow and later wrote that “their nobility of spirit overwhelmed me... they were pariahs in a squalid society.” Following Mikhail Gorbachev’s ascent to power and the proclamation of Glasnost and Perestroika, Leibler used his contacts and his philanthropy to nourish the green shoots of Jewish life that had begun to appear in the late 1980s.
Leibler found it difficult to maintain good relations with Hawke and Soviet Jewry activists such as the late June Jacobs in London because they were doves when it came to the policies of the Begin and Shamir governments in Israel. Like many of his generation who followed Yosef Burg and the National Religious Party, he also found the messianic fervor of the succeeding generation perplexing and spoke about “an evil cancer that has invaded the religious Zionist camp.” He was thereby hard-pushed to adapt to the shifting sands of Israeli politics.
Leibler was devastated by the killings of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla camps in 1982, but there is no mention of any endorsement of Israeli president Yitzhak Navon’s call for an inquiry — the Kahan Commission. Throughout the debacle of the Lebanon war, he reacted to the hostile media in Australia rather than to the issue itself.
For Leibler, this was a period of uncertain transition. He congratulated Yitzhak Rabin and welcomed the Oslo Accords, but then became disillusioned while Palestinian Islamists undermined it. On the one hand, he admired Amos Oz and brought him to Australia, on the other, he labeled Peace Now as “ratbags.” Meeting Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat in 2000 was paralleled by supporting Ariel Sharon in the 2001 election for Israeli prime minister.
There is an absorbing chapter about Leibler’s bitter confrontation with Edgar Bronfman and Israel Singer at the World Jewish Congress (WJC). The author, Suzanne Rutland, comments that “Singer had plenty to cover up — for instance, a secret Swiss bank account, millions of dollars in WJC funds which disappeared, hundreds of thousands of dollars in unauthorized credit card expenditures and unauthorized transactions, salaries, pensions and cash payments and withdrawals.”
Freedom of Information requests eventually discovered a vast misappropriation of funds. Leibler had been right all along and Bronfman eventually turned against his long term protégé, Singer, whom he had hitherto regarded as a valued colleague. Bronfman dismissed Singer while refusing to file a police case against him. Bronfman made up with Leibler shortly before his death.
Ostensibly, Rutland’s book is a biography of Isi Leibler. But it is far more — a documented recent history of the Jews of Australia, a history of the political struggles of immigrants and survivors.
Today’s world faces countless environmental issues - air, water and land pollution; climate change; global warming; deforestation; overpopulation; waste disposal; ozone layer depletion – and the list goes on. These serious issues affect our lives in diverse ways, yet many of us do not realize that our awareness of these environmental challenges and the small changes we can make in our day-to-day lives can have a positive effect on the environment.
The Bible is the world’s most well-read book; millions of people have studied it for generations searching for spiritual inspiration and guidance on how to live their lives. The Bible begins with Genesis, which tells us the story of God’s creation of the world. How does the Bible tell us we should relate to G-d’s creation? How should we care for the precious world that God has given us?
Eco Bible, by Rabbi Yonatan Neril and Rabbi Leo Dee (editors and lead contributors), brings together the insights of great thinkers, past and present, to show us that the Bible has a great deal to teach us about caring for our world and its precious resources. In this innovative discourse on the first two books of the Bible, Rabbis Neril and Dee gather Biblical commentaries focusing on ecology and the environment that were scattered throughout a wide range of books. With the publication of Eco Bible, students of the Bible can delve into the thoughts of rabbis and thinkers from ancient and modern times and learn what the Bible has to say about the important environmental issues of today. The commentators range from medieval giants like Rashi to later thinkers like Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, to modern authorities like Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, and many others – some well-known and some not.
Eco Bible is the first of a two-volume work (a second book, with commentaries on Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy will be published in the future).
Volume 1 of Eco Bible has two sections – one for the book of Genesis and one for the book of Exodus. Each Torah portion has its own chapter, which includes an eclectic mix of commentaries on various passages within the portion, and each chapter ends with “suggested action items” that bring the ideas in Eco Bible to life.
GENESIS 1:1 – In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth
“Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch makes the first verse in Genesis personal and proactive. He writes that the words teach us ‘to think of the world as God’s world and ourselves as creatures of God… We must not destroy the world, but preserve it – every single creature, every insect, every plant is part of God’s world. Woe to those that disturb His world! Hail to those that preserve His world!’”
Rabbi Hirsch’s words not only interpret the first verse in Genesis but they also introduce us to the core message of Eco Bible – we must appreciate and preserve the world God created. Action items at the end of each chapter include the following (Bereishit):
“For one week, walk outside daily and pay close attention to each element of our planet. On the first day, appreciate the warmth of the sun. On the second, feel the ground beneath your feet. On the third, examine rain clouds or bodies of water. On the fourth, count as many stars as you can. On the fifth, feed birds on a park bench. And on the sixth day, try to find as many animals in your neighborhood as possible – a bird or a squirrel can be fun to follow. Fostering appreciation and awareness for all of God’s creations will bring us closer to spiritual grounding on earth.”
The book emphasizes the significance of appreciating the beauty and diversity of the natural world while treating it with great respect. In today’s world, when so many of us spend most of our days indoors behind computer screens, making the time to be outdoors and enjoy nature is good for our bodies and our souls.
IN THE Torah portion of Vayeishev, Joseph tends the flocks with his brothers.
“Why did so many Israelite original leaders become shepherds? Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook explains that the advantage of shepherding may be found in the shepherd’s secluded lifestyle. While engaged with the flocks, ambling through the hills and valleys, the shepherd is removed from the noisy distractions of society, providing him or her with ample time for inner reflection... Rabbi Kook explains, “One must have extended solitude and self-reflective prayer, examining ideas, deepening thoughts, and expanding the mind, until finally the soul will truly reveal itself, unveiling some of the splendor of its brilliant inner light.”
Taking the time to be silent like the shepherds of the Bible can give us “soul-awareness” in a way that can “benefit the larger world, and not only to gain personal spiritual fulfillment.”
One of the strengths of Eco Bible is that it not only gives the reader interesting “food for thought” and introduces you to new ways of understanding the Bible, but it also suggests simple and easy ways to bring these messages into your life. In my opinion, this innovative book should be read a chapter each week according to the corresponding Torah portion and its ideas discussed with family or friends, perhaps on Shabbat around the dinner table.
Rabbi Yonatan Neril, who grew up in California, is the founder of the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, a unique nonprofit based in Jerusalem. Co-editor Rabbi Leo Dee was a community rabbi in England for six years, encouraging sustainable development in Israel within the field of responsible investment, and served as the ISCD’s director of programs.
Eco Bible is written in clear and easy-to-understand understand language and has a great deal to contribute both to people who regularly study the portion of the week and those who never did before. The first volume of Eco Bible offers an enlightening glimpse of what the first two books of the Bible have to say about the environmental issues we are facing in 2021. I am looking forward to Volume II.