Answering Arun Gandhi's attack in the Washington Post

By Seth Mandel
Jan. 18, 2007

On Jan. 7, the grandson of "Mahatma" Gandhi, Arun Gandhi, participated in a Washington Post roundtable of essays on the future of Jewish identity.

Gandhi's essay belittled the pain caused to the Jewish people by the Holocaust, accused the Jewish people of trying to exploit the world's guilt, and declared that "Israel and the Jews" are the foremost propagators of a culture of violence that will eventually destroy the world.

The Jewish State asked Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg, an author and educator on the Holocaust, as well as the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth-El in Edison, to set the record straight on Jewish identity and the Holocaust.

Arun Gandhi: "Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust experience -- a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of [how] a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends. The holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful."

Rabbi Rosenberg: "I find his remark both ignorant and disingenuous -- ignorant because he has no concept of Jewish history.

"The Jewish heritage, primarily, is not based upon wars, but rather on our ethical as well as book learning, primarily the Torah. The festival of Hanukkah is a great example of that. Even though we won the military victory, the holiday stresses the miracle itself, which is ethical, spiritual, and religious.

"My parents of blessed memory were survivors of Auschwitz. And growing up with them, I did not experience the complete nonsense that he's sharing. My father would show the Auschwitz numbers on his arm, but never asked for pity, never blamed America or any other country, and he became successful on his own, without pleading for help because of the Holocaust. So I grew up in that environment and did not see what [Gandhi] is talking about."

Gandhi: "[I]t seems to me the Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty but the whole world must regret what happened to the Jews. The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger."

Rabbi Rosenberg: "I disagree with his premise, that the world felt sorry for the Jews. The establishment of the state of Israel had nothing to do with the Holocaust. It had to do primarily with the fact that Russia agreed to vote for Israel's establishment because they thought that those coming from Russia, settling in Israel, would be communist, and perhaps help turn that country into another communist satellite.

"Russia did not vote because it felt sorry for the Jews.

"During the Holocaust, immigration quotas (in the United States) were very small with regard to allowing the Jews in. They did not allow boatloads of Jews to come into the United States, and kept the Jews out. So where was the pity, and where was the feeling sorry for the Jewish people?"

Gandhi: "[W]ith your superior weapons and armaments and your attitude towards your neighbors would it not be right to say that you are creating a snake pit [in Israel and the Middle East]? How can anyone live peacefully in such an atmosphere? Would it not be better to befriend those who hate you? Can you not reach out and share your technological advancement with your neighbors and build a relationship?"

Rabbi Rosenberg: "There's been no country in the history of the world who militarily won land and has been asked by the rest of the world to give it back. We're the only ones. And in fact we're the only ones that have the premise of peace for land. That also had never been done. So for him to put the burden on the state of Israel when there's no such burden on other countries, is rather strange."

Gandhi: "You don't befriend anyone, you dominate them. We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity."

Rabbi Rosenberg: "We dominate them (in the territories) because we won the land in a war. It's our land. And in fact any land we've ever taken from the Arabs pre-wartime, we bought from them. It wasn't stolen from them. The Israelites, the Jewish people, have been in Israel from the get-go.

"I'm sure if there was peace between the Arab states and Israel, that Israel would be more than happy to share technology and create trade."

Gandhi: "The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak. Any nation that remains anchored to the past is unable to move ahead and, especially a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs."

Rabbi Rosenberg: "My concern about Jewish identity is intermarriage. My concern about Jewish identity is the fact that most people, outside of Orthodoxy, are not regular attendees at religious services, nor do they belong to a synagogue. In fact, all of these national Jewish studies prove that.

"As rabbis, we need to reach out to the intermarried, encouraging them to explore Judaism. We also need to attempt to convert those who seriously wish to join the Jewish faith. The basic fact is, we cannot give up on them.

"Throughout history, there have been people who thought they could destroy the Jewish people. It has not happened, it will not happen. There's a covenant that we believe with God, from the spiritual point of view. From the realistic point of view, we've lived in eras of complete anti-Semitism, we lived through the Holocaust, where six million were slaughtered, and we're still here. And we will still be here."