New York Rabbi Finds Friends in Iran and Enemies at Home

[ShockediSay]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/nyregion/15rabbi.html

What he and the Iranian president have in common, he explained, is their belief that the Holocaust has been exploited to justify the existence of Israel.

“We went to Iran because we had to let the world know, especially the Arab world and the Muslim world, that we are not their enemies,” he said in an interview, a Palestinian flag with the phrase “A Jew Not a Zionist,”... pinned to the lapel of his coat.

[PFunk]

1. Damn. In this time and age this guy has stones in spades. I salute him.

[sabbat hunter]

10. so you dont think

israel should exist?

[Douglas Carpenter]

2. I suppose if he did communicate the message to them that

YES! IT IS A FACT; the holocaust really did happen -- he might have made a positive contribution

[Behind the Aegis]

3. Simply mind-boggling.

I find it so interesting that people will find people like this Rabbi as some kind of "hero" yet, he is nothing more than a right-wing loon whose points on ANY other progressive issue would be torn to shreds here.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[barb162]

11. I see no right wing loons here or in the NYT article . Anything but!

Attending a Holocaust denial conference when Holocaust denial has been condemned by world leaders shows this man is way out of mainstream thinking within the Jewish and most other communities. Though I understand he doesn't deny the Holocaust himself, even attending the conference with the likes of such people as Ahmadinejad and neo- nazis like Mr. Duke showed he was in the company of known bigots (as Kofi Annan mentions below)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4653666.stm
Annan condemns Holocaust denial

The world must challenge those who deny the Holocaust happened, says United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.
In a statement released to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, Mr Annan described those who questioned whether the Holocaust took place as "bigots".

The German parliament's speaker also said the Nazis' mass murder of Jews should still be commemorated.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been widely criticised for claiming that the Holocaust was a "myth".
snip

[barb162]

8. Going to the Holocaust denial conference with other" notables"

such as neo-nazi D. Duke is more than enough to show he's an extrememly bizarre character

[nealmhughes]

6. Don't a lot of the Ultra-Orthodox not recognize Israel since it doesn't meet their

standards for a revived Kingdom under David's lineage (which is pretty hard to find these days, although Cohenim aren't...) and that is why they choose to live in NY, Paris, etc.?

In the early days of Zionism in the US, most Reform Jews also nixed the idea of a separate state, as their goal was that Judaism was a religion and not an ethnos. However, once the Hitlerzeit was underway, that changed... I wrote an article a couple of years ago on Rabbi Newhouse of Birmingham and had access to his papers at Hebrew U. in Cinn. which his longer biographer had never used! He eventually changed his mind on Zionism, as he was a Hungarian Jew by birth and his family was still there when he was a man and a success in America and saw what the Nazis were doing... There was a huge uproar in Reform Judaism in the 30s over Zionism.

[Igel]

7. Yes, they're to be gathered together by divine actions.

And, at the same time, rejecting the rule of the Gentiles over them is to reject the humiliation and punishment God has imposed on Jewry--the theory is there's an implicit contract with Gentiles, Jews won't seek rule and act up and Gentiles won't slaughter them ... very much like what Golden Age (and 'lead age') Islam required of non-Muslims.

Much of Jewry believes that the Holocaust disposed of that contract; Neturei ... does not.

[sabbat hunter]

9. very few

even ultra orthordox jews dont think israel should exist. some even live in israel, get all the benefits of citizenship but are against the state. but they are fairly small in number.