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| Rav Mosheh Lichtenstein (TOI) |
On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein dressed in an Israeli military uniform, entered a mosque in the Cave of the Patriarchs, and opened fire on approximately 800 Palestinian Muslim worshippers praying there during the month of Ramadan, killing 29 and wounding 125 before he was beaten to death by survivors.
Sadly, Goldstein was sympathetically eulogized by several
Religious Zionist Roshei Yeshiva in Kiryat Arba, where he had lived. Rav
Lichtenstein was not prone to expressions of anger, but reading his letters, I
could almost hear the outrage in his voice as he rebuked those Roshei Yeshiva
for the Chilul HaShem involved in eulogizing a mass murderer.
When they responded apologetically, attempting to justify their actions by
claiming they were praising “the man” rather than his deed, Rav Lichtenstein
doubled down in a subsequent letter.
His response did not surprise me. It reflected the moral
outlook of his father-in-law, Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik. What did surprise me
was that these eulogies were delivered in the first place. Although I have
encountered admirers of Baruch Goldstein over the years, I never imagined that
respected rabbinic leaders could find kind words for a mass murderer. No matter
how devoted he may have been to the State of Israel and its people, the
deliberate murder of innocent human beings strips away any claim to moral
stature.
It is now more than three decades later. Rav Mosheh
Lichtenstein now co-heads the yeshiva his father once led together with its
founder, Rav Yehudah Amital. Like his father, he has spoken forcefully against
the extremist settlers who have increasingly terrorized innocent Palestinian
civilians—a position with which I obviously agree.
What makes his position especially noteworthy is that he
does not stop at condemning the perpetrators themselves. As reported in an
interview with The
Times of Israel:
Addressing a recent uptick in settler violence (as of last month, the IDF had recorded over 752 incidents of nationalist crime and extremist settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the year), he insisted that ultimately, the mainstream Religious Zionist community and its leaders bear responsibility for stopping it.
“The violence that is going on is horrible and is morally and ethically wrong,” he said.
“The perpetrators do these things because, to a large extent, society will tolerate it,” he charged. “The degree to which members of the community will believe that this violence is a desecration of God’s name or merely unfortunate behavior is a function of what mainstream Religious Zionist communities hear on Friday night in their rabbis’ sermons. If they hear harsh condemnation, it will create a certain dynamic.”
How true.
Indeed, it is the absence of this kind of broad-based rebuke
by Religious Zionist leaders that allows such behavior to continue. It is not
only a Chilul HaShem but, as I have argued many times, it
causes enormous reputational damage to Israel. It provides antisemites around
the world with additional ammunition for their already vicious accusations that
the Jewish state is guilty of genocide.
When Religious Zionist leaders are reluctant to criticize
these extremists forcefully and publicly, they unintentionally lend credibility
to the false claim that Religious Zionism itself undermines the moral character
of the State of Israel. That accusation is categorically untrue. Yet without
clear and unequivocal condemnation from across the Religious Zionist spectrum,
they contribute to the problem rather than helping solve it.
Lest anyone think that Rav Mosheh Lichtenstein is some sort
of leftist or pacifist regarding the wars Israel has been forced to fight,
nothing could be further from the truth. Such an assumption would be a profound
misunderstanding of both him and the ideology of the yeshiva he now heads…
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