Jewish unity is not more important than Jewish survival

This is a fundamental question that we in the pro-Israel community must face — should ever be critical of fellow Jews.
Let’s frame the question like this: What is more important? Jewish unity, or fighting antisemitism? Jewish oneness, even if it comes at the expense of allowing antisemitism to metastasize and spread?

Should the Jewish community be silent about George Soros’ decades of funding anti-Israel groups just because he’s Jewish? Last week President Biden awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I didn’t see many pro-Israel groups offering him a mazel tov.

Should we be silent about Norman Finkelstein, the foremost Jewish antisemite in America, just because he’s a member of the tribe? Should we be silent on Ben Shapiro — himself a passionate defender of Israel — when he continued to platform and make millions of dollars off Candace Owens for years, after she said she had no fundamental problem with Hitler as long as he had stayed within his borders? Staying in his borders meant massacring all the Jews of Germany. Shapiro took no action, and not only maintained his silence about his employee Candace Owens’ stomach-turning comments about Jews — like when she praised Hitler-lover Kanye West — but actually publicly defended Candace, until, under my relentless criticism of his continued money-making employment of her, he finally had no choice but to fire her?

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Pray tell me, where did this rule start that we can’t criticize fellow Jews when their actions actually hurt Israel and the Jewish people, just because they’re Jewish? And if we do embrace this bizarre and irrational policy, how are we different to our Arab brothers who employ the same damaging policy? Saudi Arabia and the UAE will never publicly criticize Hamas, even when they secretly call them monsters, because there is an unspoken rule that Arabs never criticize fellow Arabs. Is that healthy?

Now let me be clear: In criticizing fellow Jews, there definitely are lines that should never be crossed.

Arguably the famous example was Hannah Arendt’s controversial assertion in “Eichmann in Jerusalem” that Jewish leaders collaborated with the Nazis. That’s a disgusting assertion, as they had zero choice. They and their families would all have been murdered. Arendt’s suggestion that Judenräte (Jewish councils) played a role in facilitating the Holocaust by cooperating with Nazi directives, even under duress, has been interpreted by some as a harsh judgment on Jewish leadership during the Holocaust. Rejecting this theory involves understanding both the unprecedented nature of the Holocaust and the impossible decisions faced by Jewish leaders, as well as addressing how Arendt’s conclusions oversimplify the reality of those times.

In 2018 I published a lengthy demolition of Arendt’s horrible accusations by explaining the Nazi strategy of deception and coercion, forcing Jewish leaders and communities into a collaboration that was far from voluntary. Instead, this so-called collaboration was a calculated manipulation of the Jewish will to live and protect their families.

Hannah Arendt’s book, written as a report on Adolf Eichmann’s trial, focuses on the concept of the “banality of evil” and offers a critique of Jewish leadership under the Judenräte system. She argued that Jewish councils inadvertently facilitated Nazi policies by organizing deportations and obeying orders, reasoning that this was done to avoid worse outcomes.

However, Arendt’s conclusions have been widely criticized for a lack of sensitivity to the historical realities. The Judenräte did not collaborate in the sense of willingly aligning with Nazi goals. Rather, they were trapped in a moral labyrinth, making decisions under extreme duress with the hope — however faint — of saving lives. Judging them with hindsight and moral clarity ignores the immediate threats and impossible choices they faced.

The Nazis excelled in two things, murder and deception, forcing Jews into decisions that seemed rational in the moment but were ultimately part of their annihilation. From ghettos to concentration camps, the Nazis promised survival in exchange for compliance.

For example, the Judenräte believed that by organizing communities and ensuring order, they might delay or minimize the harm done to their people. They could not have known the full extent of Nazi plans, which were cloaked in lies. Leaders like Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, notorious head of the Lodz Ghetto, who was later torn limb by limb by fellow Jews when he reached Auschwitz, faced unimaginable choices. His memory lives in ignominy to this day. But as a Jew who was not alive during the Holocaust, I refuse to judge even him. He was ordered to provide quotas for deportation and had to choose between compliance and risking the slaughter of entire communities.

Rumkowski’s infamous plea of September 4, 1942 (delivered in a speech whose exact location I found Lodz), “Give me your children,” pleading with parents to willingly deliver their own kids for the murderous transports, which immediately led to a whole spate of parental suicides, represents a haunting example of someone attempting to negotiate with a regime that had no intention of keeping its promises.

Far from collaboration, these actions reflect the cruel calculus imposed by the Nazis. The choices Jewish leaders made were dictated by immediate survival, not alignment with Nazi ideology.

To label his or any other leader’s actions as collaboration unfairly imposes a modern, post-Holocaust understanding onto individuals who were navigating a genocide unprecedented in scope and deception. My book “Holocaust Holiday: One Family’s Descent into Genocide Memory Hell” highlights the pervasive sense of disbelief among Jews in the face of Nazi hatred. The idea of an entire nation’s systematic extermination was beyond comprehension. Jewish leaders operated in this fog of uncertainty, grasping at any possibility to save lives. Blaming them for outcomes they could neither control nor foresee is unjust.

But what about our generation and Jewish leaders in our time? Should we not judge the whole gang of right-wing pro-Israel leaders who accepted all-expense-paid vacations to meet with, and whitewash, the execrable emir of Qatar? The visits were organized by Orthodox Jewish lobbyists — paid tens of millions by the emir — to bring right-wing Jewish communal heads who became useful idiots in essentially legitimizing and cleansing the emir of Qatar as he continued to fund Hamas with a billion dollars a year, which ultimately funded October 7. Is anyone seriously telling me that those leaders are inured from criticism because they are Jews? Does whitewashing a terrorist not invite opprobrium?

Unlike during the Holocaust, where Jewish leaders had no choice but to treat with the Nazis, here there was no coercion to break bread with the Qatari emir, who, even as Jewish leaders accepted his hospitality and, in some cases, actual payments, was granting asylum to the terror leaders of Hamas.

When all this happened, in 2017, I was excoriated for criticizing those leaders by name and taking out full-page ads in the New York Times to stop the whitewash, which we eventually did. Obviously, the subsequent slaughter of October 7 provided no comforting vindication but only shock at Jewish stupidity of legitimizing the terror-funders of Qatar.

Today, Jews and their allies, and especially Jewish leaders, must remain united in opposing antisemitism, whether it comes in the form of extremist rhetoric, state-sponsored hate, or insidious cultural prejudice.

While Hannah Arendt’s characterization of Jewish leaders during the Holocaust as collaborators fails to account for the context of coercion, deception, and unimaginable moral dilemmas they faced, Jewish leaders who whitewash terrorism in our time, or fail to prosecute would-be terrorists who threaten Jews with murder, have no excuse. Unlike the Holocaust, we live in a free time and in free countries. Refusing to fight antisemitism, or worse, whitewashing it, is unforgivable.

If anything, Arendt’s misguided theory allows us to focus on the lessons of the Holocaust that are most relevant today: the need to resist antisemitism and genocidal rhetoric with unyielding strength, ensuring that “Never Again” is not merely a slogan, but a sacred promise.

Early and decisive action against antisemitic ideologies and actions is crucial to prevent their escalation into widespread violence. That’s why the failure of Mayor Meiner and the Miami Beach Police is not just disappointing but dangerous. Complacency or passive responses to initial signs of antisemitism will lead to dire consequences, as history has tragically demonstrated.

The Holocaust has forced us to not just reconsider but repudiate three fundamental Jewish beliefs.

The first is martyrdom as resistance. A deeply rooted belief that spiritual defiance and martyrdom were forms of resistance, reflecting a 2,000-year-old tradition of dying al kiddush Hashem, valuing the preservation of faith and identity over physical confrontation. I don’t want dead Jews who died faithfully. I want living Jews who live observantly.

The second is reliance on external protection. We Jews have learned that we can rely only on ourselves. Centuries of displacement and persecution had conditioned Jewish communities to seek protection from external authorities — the popes, the kings of France, the dukes of Milan — rather than through self-defense, fostering a dependence that hindered autonomous resistance efforts. The IDF has so heroically shown us a new way.

And the third is a shift from solely scholarly to include military traditions. The Jews of the Second Temple battled the Romans, as did Bar Kochva 60 years later. But their catastrophic losses led largely to a repudiation of a Jewish military tradition when, in fact, both were and remain essential. The evolution of Jewish culture toward scholarly and religious pursuits over millennia led to the erosion of a martial tradition, leaving communities ill-prepared for armed resistance when confronted with genocidal threats.

We see this today as well, as so many charedim refuse to serve in the IDF. How dare they, when saving Jewish life is, according to the Torah itself, the highest religious imperative!

These historical predispositions must be reevaluated. We need a paradigm shift wherein Jewish communities adopt a proactive stance against antisemitism, emphasizing the necessity of early intervention. By confronting antisemitic ideologies at their inception, the potential for such hatred to metastasize into systemic violence can be significantly if not entirely mitigated.

The lessons of the Holocaust underscore the perils of underestimating the progression of antisemitic sentiment. Vigilance, self-reliance, and early resistance are essential in combating the scourge of antisemitism. By learning from the past and challenging antisemitic ideologies before they take root, future atrocities can be prevented, ensuring that the horrors of history are not repeated.

And if that means, at times, putting Jewish self-defense even before Jewish unity, if it means criticizing fellow Jews when they knowingly or unwittingly betray their people, then so be it.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach of Englewood is the author of 36 books, including his most recent, “The Israel Warrior.” Follow him on Instagram and X @RabbiShmuley.