Holocaust was punishment for the Reform Movement..?

Motek

Fri, May 25 2007, 2:07 pm

I read an editorial by R' Grylak in which he explains that R' Eliyahu wasn't saying anything different than what it says in Devarim chapter 30, Haazinu, and the navi Yechezkel, that when the Jewish people decide to become like the other nations, Hashem will respond severely.

He writes that in the memoirs of Moscow's former chief rabbi Yaakov Mazeh, he describes how 50 years before the rise of the Nazi party, the Maggid of Kelm said that due to the sin of the Reform movement, 'the German will not merely engage in ordinary persecution of Jewry, and will not simply be there to check that the Jewish people don't raise their heads too high, but they will turn hatred of the Jews into a kind of Code of Law, ch'v. Take my words to heart: for the sin of Geiger's new "Shulchan Aruch," the Germans will issue their own version of the Shulchan Aruch against the Jewish people, where it will be written: "The only good Jew is a dead Jew," r'l."

R' Meir Simcha of Dvinsk wrote in his Meshech Chochma many years before the rise of Nazism, "When they start thinking that Berlin is Jerusalem, then a stormy wind will come to scatter them."

In response to the passing of the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the rav of Nitra, R' Shmuel Dovid Unger is quoted as saying, "Woe unto us! Have we sunk to such a level that the Germans must teach us that Jews may not take German wives, or become wives of Germans?"

And R' Mordechai Yaakov Breisch of Zurich said, "This has come about because of the Reform leaders, and we're seeing with our own eyes Hashem's answer ... if you don't want to be Jews ... you'll be labeled Jews forcibly."

Ruchel

Fri, May 25 2007, 2:18 pm

Motek wrote:

"Woe unto us! Have we sunk to such a level that the Germans must teach us that Jews may not take German wives, or become wives of Germans?"

"if you don't want to be Jews ... you'll be labeled Jews forcibly."

Actually I agree with these two sentences. But I don't see that the Shoah made things better after the war. Actually many families who were either frum or non frum but not assimilated became so BECAUSE of the war, either out of hatred for G-d or to hide their Jewishness in case of another Shoah. An effective punishment is a "convincing" one, why would G-d make a non effective punishment, especially if the price is so high and if it makes things 100 times worse?? That's why I still don't think the Shoah came because of assimilation.

Motek

Fri, May 25 2007, 3:08 pm

It's a good question ruchel, but for some reason, which I don't understand, G-d operates that way. The same question can be asked regarding what it says in Devarim 30 - that if the Jews don't serve G-d with joy, when everything is going well for them, G-d will punish them severely. But when Jews are exiled from their land and suffer under gentile rule, many abandon mitzva observance, so how does exile help?

Ruchel

Fri, May 25 2007, 3:15 pm

Maybe some would become closer to religion as the only thing left from their life in Israel, but yeah... after many generations the exile isn't positive at all about the observance. Maybe in hard times some people escape their problems in religion, but it is not a majority especially when your whole lifestyle is destroyed.