Our Views
 

The Specter in the
by: Moshe Feiglin
Founder and President, Manhigut Yehudit
Sivan, 5766 (June, '06)

He had come for a visit in Israel, and we met in a Jerusalem hotel. We talked about Jewish identity, my analysis of today’s reality in Israel, about the need for belief-based leadership that can deal with the challenges facing our nation. We also talked about how hard it is to change the public’s perspective on reality – even when time and again the facts disprove the illusion. We talked and talked. The man had a remarkable grasp of the truth and I hardly noticed the time that had passed. Unexpectedly, he turned silent. He looked out the window and his eyes misted over. “I want to tell you something,” he said. 

“It was Shabbat, and I was in the synagogue with my father. Our seats were near the center. Mine was an aisle seat. It was the central synagogue. The congregation prayed fervently and a warm atmosphere of holiness enveloped us all. True, there were a lot of rumors that had reached the Jews of Hungary, but nobody took them seriously. We relied on our rabbis, our community leaders and politicians. Life seemed stable and reassuring. 

Suddenly, the door burst open. A black specter stood in the entrance. I was a young boy, and I thought that it was the angel of death. It was dressed in rags and looked like a skeleton that had re-emerged from its grave. The words of our prayers hung in mid air. Everybody gazed in horror at the figure in black. It ascended the synagogue platform and banged on the table. ‘I escaped from there,” rasped the specter. I escaped from Auschwitz to warn you. Your leaders do not want to meet with me, so I came to speak with you, dear Jews, directly.’ And then he began to scream, ‘Run away! They are burning all the Jews with gas!!!’ 

My entire body shook. I clutched my father’s hand, mesmerized by the ghastly scene just three steps away from me. The synagogue leaders hurriedly ascended the platform, gripped the hands of the poltergeist and dragged him, screaming, out of the synagogue. As they passed me, the specter touched me. Later, I, myself, was in Auschwitz. But the horrific smell of that man as he was being dragged away has remained etched in my memory forever.” 

This week, when I heard the political commentators convincing the public that there is nothing we can do about the missiles flying into Israel’s cities, and we’d best just relax and learn to live with it, I was reminded of this man’s story. These are the same commentators that shaped public opinion in the days of Oslo, convincing Israelis that we should bring Arafat and his henchmen to Israel and arm them. When my friends and I tried to explain what would happen, we were summarily dragged outside the confines of the consensus.  

These are the same leaders and shapers of public opinion that – despite the ever-worsening reality – cling to their original concept, endangering the public more every day. For some reason, nobody is very surprised that the disengagement brought nothing but terror. So what if the Orange public warned us? They had already been dragged outside the sphere of legitimacy! The method of dealing with anybody who presents a different take on reality always was and has remained to simply drag him outside the synagogue. 

The strategic danger to Hungary’s Jews was its leaders. 

The danger to Israel is not the Kassams and not the Iranian nuclear bomb. All of these are nothing more than reality that must be dealt with. But like in Hungary, the danger to Israel is its leaders who cling to their distorted perspective of reality and the opinion shapers who drag anybody who disagrees outside the synagogue.