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Moshe Ronen  Letter 12  08-Jun-2000  Please upgrade the CJC web site
"If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him?" — Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh

June 08, 2000
Moshe Ronen
National President
Canadian Jewish Congress
100 Sparks Street, Suite 650
Ottawa, Ontario
K1P 5B7

Telephone: (613) 233-8703
Fax:       (613) 233-8748


Moshe Ronen:

When any Canadian has some fundamental question concerning Jews, one place he might expect to find an answer would be the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) web site.  However, I find the CJC web site to be most uninformative precisely on those issues that are most pressing, and wonder whether you would not be well advised to upgrade it.

For example, perhaps the most fundamental question of all that a non-Jew might ask is what attitude Judaism adopts toward him.  On this question, non-Jews might appreciate seeing a discussion of what appears to be a predilection within Judaism to view non-Jews as sub-human, as exemplified by the teachings of at least the following three rabbis:

Rabbi Kook the Elder explains the relationship between Jews, non-Jews, and cattle

Rabbi Kook the Elder, the revered father of the messianic tendency of Jewish fundamentalism, said, “The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews — all of them in all different levels — is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”
Excerpt from Allan C. Brownfeld's review of Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Pluto Press, London, 1999.  Brownfeld's complete review is available online on the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs web site.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson explains why non-Jews are allowed to exist

The late, highly revered Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the "Lubovitcher Rebbe" who headed the Chabad movement and wielded great influence in Israel as well as in the U.S., explained that, "[...] the body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of [members] of all nations of the world....  A non-Jew’s entire reality is only vanity.  It is written, ‘And the strangers shall guard and feed your flocks’ (Isaiah 61:5).  The entire creation [of a non-Jew] exists only for the sake of the Jews....”
Excerpt from Allan C. Brownfeld's review of Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Pluto Press, London, 1999.  Brownfeld's complete review is available online on the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs web site.

Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh comments on the ethics of liver transplants

Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh is another member of this group.  An immigrant to Israel from the U.S., Rabbi Ginsburgh speaks freely of Jews’ genetic-based, spiritual superiority over non-Jews.  [...]  “If every simple cell in a Jewish body entails divinity, is a part of God, then every strand of DNA is part of God.  Therefore, something is special about Jewish DNA....  If a Jew needs a liver, can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him?  The Torah would probably permit that.  Jewish life has an infinite value.”
Excerpt from Allan C. Brownfeld's review of Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Pluto Press, London, 1999.  Brownfeld's complete review is available online on the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs web site.

Permit me to suggest that the Canadian Jewish Congress would be contributing greatly to the elevation of sagging Jewish prestige if it devoted less time to continuing its series of cash-raising publicity stunts (the latest of which was Jack Silverstone's lengthy and echolalic repetition on the pages of the National Post of the charge of thousands of Nazi war criminals in Canada), and if instead it began to address fundamental issues such as that raised by a reading of the three rabbis above.

Particularly helpful would be to learn CJC's reaction to any group that argued that Jews were equivalent to cattle, that Jews were placed on this earth to serve non-Jews, and that it was legitimate to kill a Jew when his liver was needed to save the life of a non-Jew.

Also of interest would be a CJC discussion of whether the best place to begin any attack on hate propaganda might not be the teachings of Judaism.  And the CJC should not omit to at least touch on the topic of the effect that such rabbinical teachings as the above might have had on encouraging a Jewish arendar in 1648 Ukraine to ruthlessness and cruelty.



Lubomyr Prytulak
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