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This letter from a Rabbi Joel Timmerman, a Reformed Jew, was first
published six months ago and received little comment at the time. As tbrnews
has expanded its viwers, this letter has received considerable attentionand
the fury of much of the non-Reformed Jewish community.
The original letter is reprinted and followed by a second letter from the
Rabbi.
"I think the strongest anti-Semitism sometimes exists among Jews. To this
day a German Jew often hates Russian or Polish Jews.There are GermanJewish clubs around this country that did not allow Russian or Polish Jews
when they first started. Some have relented a little, but not all. I'm sure that
when Hitler started, many German Jews didn't mind what he did to other
Jews. They didn't expect him to turn on them. Isn't it ridiculous? But if antiSemitism can exist among Jews, why shouldn't it exist among others?"
--Kirk Douglas (n Issur Danielovitch, son of Russian-Jewish immigrants) as
quoted in The Ragman's Son. An Autobiography, Pocket Books: New York,
1989, p.23
The Silent Jew- An Open Letter
by Rabbi Joel Timmerman
Yesterday, I watched with sadness the Columbia tragedy unfold on
my television screen and my heart went out to the families of the dead. But
later in the day, I had a telephone call from a friend with a bitter comment.
He said that the first few hours of the media coverage of the tragedy
dealt with the background and career of an Israeli guest cosmonaut, Colonel
Ilan Ramon, and little mention was made of the backgrounds of the American
crew.
Another friend, a Jew, called me to say: Just look at that on the TV!
Why CNN is spending all their time talking about an Israeli war hero.
Werent there any Americans on board?
can also attack Saudi Arabia and thereby gain military control of two major
oil producing areas.
The American President is not an intelligent or reasonable man but
those who control him are and they, and the Israeli lobby can see that if both
America and Israel can wrest control of oil from the Arabs, both countries
will be better offfrom the Zionist world view. Jews can make money from
the captured oil fields and some of this can be stuffed into the pockets of
Americas notoriously corrupt legislatorsand bureaucrats.
This is a suicidal, very short-term policy. By catering to American
religious fundamentalists, Jewish groups and the oil industry, Bush is digging
the grave, not only of his own erratic and fanatic administration but also of
very loyal American Jews.
The President may be a stupid man but his handlers are not but they
are all so myopic that they cannot see that they are rushing in haste towards
the top of a very high cliff.
If only it were the guilty, the stupid and the vicious that would plunge
down to their deaths, nothing would be lost and much gained but they will
drag with them tens of thousands of completely innocent people.
Joel Timmerman
Director, Holocaust Survivors Association
New York
Fiction becomes fact: Comments on the Holocaust
by Rabbi Joel Timmerman
Every day I come face to face with Jewish survivors of the Holocaust.
I am not speaking here of thirty five year old librarians who had a
grandmother who died after WWII having spent the war years in Portugal.
Here I speak of Jews of Europe who had been rounded up by the
Germans, the French, the Italians, the Greeks, the Hungarians and on and on
and shipped to infamous concentration camps like Auschwitz.
Members of my extended family also were in such camps. I had a
total of thirteen relatives on both sides of my family in prison camps.
Of these, one died of a heart attack, eight of typhus and the rest were
released at the end of the war when the camps were overrun so I believe I can
say that I have some personal family experience with this terrible matter.