Torah law, George Soros, and who is a Jew
Being Jewish is a birthright privilege. Jews have existed for nearly 6,000 years. Those who tried to eliminate the Jews have repeatedly been relegated to history’s ash heap. They are dust. We Jews remain.
While we have so far defeated our external threats, internal threats persist. Jews have a 52% intermarriage rate. A frightening Aish Hatorah graph shows that for each 100 unaffiliated Jews, two generations down the line will produce only four affiliated Jews. A 96% elimination rate is deadly.
Yet according to our holy Torah, every Jew is, was, and will always be a Jew.
Parsha Emor confronts this issue. Emor means “to speak.”
To celebrate Sukkos, Torah commands us to take a beautiful fruit of a tree, date palm fronds, the branch of a dense-leaved tree, and a willow of the brook.
With full credit to Chabad of North Hollywood, this parsha’s Midrash delves deeper.
A beautiful fruit of a tree, date palm fronds, a dense-leaved tree, and a willow of the brook all refer to Israel.
A beautiful fruit of a tree has taste and smell, comparable to Jews who study Torah and do good deeds.
Date palm fronds have taste but no smell. They compare to Jews who study Torah but do not do good deeds.
A branch of a dense-leaved tree has smell and no taste. These Jews do good deeds but do not study Torah.
Willows of the brook have no taste or smell. These Jews do not study Torah or do good deeds.
This last group of Jews are unaffiliated. Yet unaffiliated Jews still have the spark of Judaism. They were born with Jewish potential. That potential is a flame that cannot be extinguished during their lifetime.
Yet unaffiliated Jews are not nearly the most complex case. A lack of good deeds can be neutral. Far below that rung is the Jew committing evil deeds. What is to make of the Jew who not only forsakes Judaism, but spends their life fighting against Jews and Judaism?
Take the organization “Jews against Zionism.” They dress like Chassids and travel to Iran to stand in solidarity with the mullahs. Observe Jewish college students marching for Gaza and embracing the vile “From the river, to the sea, Palestine will be free” chants.
Judaism forbids excommunication. Jews who hate Jews are still Jews.
Chabad tells a tale of Jewish medical students facing budget cuts. Told to supply their own cadavers, the students asked their rabbi if they could use bodies of Jewish criminals. The shocked rabbi said he needed to know what God thought of these people.
Torah commands us to love and cherish every Jew. Every Jew is responsible for every other Jew. This is Ahavos Yisroel. A Jew is a Jew because they were born a Jew, regardless of mitzvahs.
So what do proud Jews do about George Soros? Forget momentarily his destructive leftist politics. Briefly look past his financing anti-Jewish college campus riots. Mr. Soros bragged in a videotaped CBS interview that his happiest days were as a teenager sending Jews to the gas chambers.
My father is a Holocaust survivor. Must I accept Soros as a Jew when he tried to murder my family? How does one reconcile a man as a Jew when his crowning joy was actively working to permanently exterminate Jews?
The Torah says you can love Soros as a Jew while hating him for what he does. Those things are not in conflict.
As long as Soros lives, we can pray he sincerely renounces his evil past.
Many Jews will insist this is not good enough. While this reaction is understandable, it puts them at odds with our Jewish God Hashem.
Torah is binding codified law. Torah says a person born of a Jewish mother is legally irrevocably Jewish. God’s word ends the discussion.
We can hate this. I do. When Soros dies, I will not mourn or help form a minyan to say Kaddish. To me, he represents anti-Jewish evil.
Yet it’s not my call. It’s Hashem’s call.
Soros may have lost his sense of humanity, but he remains forever a Jew. Thus saith the lord.
eric