Rav Mordechai Eliyahu on the Holocaust

Rav Mordechai Eliyahu, as reported by the Jerusalem Post, recently stated that the blame for the Holocaust falls to the sins of the Reform Jews and their movement, which had begun some 200 years before the Holocaust ever took place.

This is akin to something Ovadia Yosef said several years, that the Jews who died in the Holocaust deserved to die because they were the reincarnated souls of sinners. Say what, now?! How can he POSSIBLY know something like this?! To say something like this is to trivialize one of the worst tragedies ever to befall the Jewish people.

I'm sorry, but I don't care how great a rabbi thinks he may be, and Ovadia Yosef is a great showperson for this, with his fancy sunglasses and his Mercedes (Nazi Car!!) limo, no human being can possible know Da'as Hashem, what God has in mind when he allows events to take place, especially ones as earth shattering as the Holocaust.

No one, I don't care who or how great, has a right to decide why the Holocaust happened and place blame on anyone, except the perpetrators. This was a tragedy of immense proportion the reason for which only God can know. Did Reb Moshe Feinstein ever decide God's reason for bringing on the Holocaust? The Lubavitcher Rebbe? Reb Yaakov Kaminetzky? Not that I've ever heard. They may have given comfort about this, but I don't believe they ever gave reasons for the Holocaust. And certainly, they never placed blame on anyone!

This blame game from the Chareidi/Right Wing/Yeshivish camp has got to stop! What would happen if someone said the Holocaust happened because all the Right Wingers of the day hated anyone to the left of them?! Certainly, from many comments of Right Wing Nut Jobs (RWNJs), this seems to be the case: They hate everyone to the left of them.

Chazal tell us the Bais Hamikdash, among other reasons, was destroyed because of Sin'as Chinam, senseless hatred, and will only be rebuilt because of Ahavas Chinam. Ahavas Chinam doesn't just mean to other people of your camp. It means to all Jews.

People cannot go around saying who or what was the cause for the Holocaust. We cannot possibly know such a thing. All these self-proclaimed "Gedolim" need to get off their pedestals, where their followers have placed them, and stop putting people in Cherem for no good reason, stop blaming one group or another for the Holocaust or any other tragedy that has befallen our bewildered nation.

Further, if one wants to play the blame game fairly, how about blaming the Chachamim who were sitting at the tish and watching Bar-Kamtza being humiliated and not saying a word. Oh, sure there are all sorts of excuses, like not wanting to upset their host because he was politically powerful, or that Bar-Kamtza was prolonging his own embarrassment because he should have just left when he realized there was a mistake. Yeah. End of the day: They allowed someone to be so humiliated that he decided, right or wrong aside, to take revenge. And he did.

Again, this blame game HAS GOT TO STOP!!! I've quoted this line many times before and probably will many times again: DIVREI CHACHAMIM B'NACHAS NISHMA'IM! When a "gadol" goes around blaming others for a terrible tragedy that encompassed the ENTIRE JEWISH NATION, all that's going to happen is the people he is blaming are going to hate him and worse, hate Orthodox Judaism even more than they already do.

There are enough people in the human race who already hate Jews. Do we have to hate each other as well?