ACUTE ANGLES Is it Time to Pack Our Bags?

Dear Rabbi.  Last week after a hate-fuelled demonstration outside the most prominent Synagogue in Sydney, we thought we’d seen it all. Then to top it off, we endured a terrorist firebombing of the Adass Synagogue in Melbourne. This evokes the 1930s in Germany, does it not? Is it time for Australian Jews to pack their bags en masse and move to Israel?  Jared P.

Dear Jared (and many others of similar mind),

I of course share your sense of deep shock, profound pain and almost disbelief that these hateful protests and atrocities can be happening in my adopted country of Australia.

However, my answer to your question has to be “no”. Not for this reason.

Let me elaborate.  I have advocated passionately for aliya throughout my rabbinate. Iapplaud those many who have made and are making right now the decision to move to Israel because they feel that Israel is the only place they can live a sufficiently fulfilling life as Jews or observe mitsvot that can only be observed in Erets Yisrael. (According to RaMBaN, living in Israel itself constitutes a Biblical mitsva even in our day.) These are positive motives for making aliya, and those who make aliya for these reasons will doubtless succeed as olim.

Additionally, were the situation in Australia today really like Germany in the 1930s, we should all be leaving.

However, while we cannot be oblivious to the possibility that life may one day be untenable for Jews in Australia – for example, should radical Islamist immigration increase,  should the Greens ever get to be in a position of real power while maintaining their present anti-Jewish hostility, or should “cancel culture”, wokeism and intersectionalist doctrine continue to seduce large swathes of Gen-Z and the upcoming Gen-Alpha – the present reality is that Australian Jewry continues to enjoy bipartisan protection (to a lesser visible extent by the present federal Government it is true, but still  significantly) and there is no indication presently that this will change. To the contrary, polls suggest that the far more pro-Israel LNP will regain power in the next election.

Making wild comparisons of Australia today to Germany in the 1930s is not only way off the mark; it is counter-productive and may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy,   G-D forbid.

I firmly believe, and this has been my experience not only in Bondi but also in the course of our frequent vacation sorties to parts of the country where visible Jews are a rare breed, that the vast majority of Australians harbour no anti-Jewish or anti-Israel sentiments and indeed are dismayed by the hostile acts of vocal minorities who seek our harm and Israel’s destruction. At very least they are open to hearing our side of the story!

In this connection, it is perhaps relevant to cite an interesting detail in last week’s sidra  and a novel message we can glean therefrom.

Jacob, on the point of fleeing from his increasingly-mendacious uncle Laban, summons his wives and outlines the reasons why they must leave. Three times, he says the word avikhen, “your father”, utilising the feminine possessive suffix – after all, he is addressing his wives! However the fourth time, the suffix changes suddenly to the masculine avikhem.

I would like to suggest a novel reason for this.  Perhaps his wives’ brothers, Laban’s loyal sons, hostile to Jacob, have unexpectedly joined the gathering, uninvited.  And Jacob, undeterred and fearless, declares to them: I stole nothing!  It was G-D who extricated the livestock of your father (avikhem) and gave them to me! (Gen 31:9)

The takeaway for us from this is plain. Jacob chose to speak to his hostile brothers-in-law about G-D; to earnestly impress upon them that only G-D runs the world!  It is high time that we do the same.

 The insidious campaign of misinformation and lies that the Palestinian Arabs have run to the effect that Israel “stole” the land from them has been successful beyond their wildest dreams. Of late, they have even succeeded in branding Israel a “colonialist” state. Their success stems largely from the fact that we as Jews have failed consistently to impress upon the world, in a united voice, that the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel does not date from 1948 or from the Balfour Declaration but is our 3,000-year-old G-D-given legacy.

Sadly in today’s world they that speak the loudest are believed even if what they speak is a pack of lies.

While the fires of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hatred won’t suddenly dissipate, we can prevent them from spreading by quelling the lies and hammering home the truth among our fellow-citizens – namely that Am Yisrael are historically and existentially the rightful aboriginal custodians of Erets Yisrael, bound to the land by an inseverable umbilical cord.

 Please G-D, Jews will continue to remain safe in Australia until Mashiakh comes to shlep us all to our true home.