Message from R’ Schonfeld: R’ Yoel Schonfeld

Late last week, a man came over to me in shul in Baltimore and said to me that he knew my father’s yahrzeit was approaching (27 Kislev). He then told me that he misses my father’s wisdom terribly. He said he wondered what my father would have said about the current situation with the Israel-Hamas War and the unfolding anti-Semitism in the American street and campuses. I asked the gentleman where he knew my father from, and he said that many years ago he lived in KGH, but I could not place him. He thinks of my father constantly, he said.

Last Thursday, the Queens Jewish Link received a letter from somebody with an assumed pseudonym in which he leveled one of the most absurd criticisms against me. He wondered why I support those rabbis from Lakewood and Brooklyn who condemned the Washington rally the day before it took place. He also wondered why I do not commend the established organizations that arranged for the rally. I believe the editor has decided not to print the letter, though I was fine with them doing so. Although likely the letter was written just to bait me, I will take the bait and run with it.

It was the summer of 2005, about 13 years after I left my shul in Staten Island to become the assistant rabbi of the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills. It was also about a month before the expulsion of about 10,000 Jews from Gush Katif in Gaza under the direction of Ariel Sharon. At that time, I was invited by my friend Rabbi Moshe Meir Weiss, rav of the Agudas Yisroel of Staten Island at the time, to address their annual dinner.

There is no way to make sense of the world today. A tiny state surrounded by enemies on all borders, composed of the most persecuted people on earth, who were victims of the greatest genocide in history, now stands accused of genocide itself. Why? Because it is fighting back against the most brutal terrorist organization in the world, which committed unspeakable horrors against the tiny country.

In the early 1980s, I was working for the Agudah in Manhattan when I attended a meeting in which we heard from Meir Hertz, an Israeli American askan (activist) in Lakewood. Reb Meir had just returned from Israel and related an amazing story.

Elsewhere in this paper, you will find a letter to the editor from my colleague Rabbi Judah Kerbel of the Queens Jewish Center. Rabbi Kerbel respectfully takes issue with my criticism of Anti-Semitism Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt and the ADL for not forcefully fighting anti-Semitism, especially during the current crisis.