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The Chief Rabbi's empty rhetoric

21/9/2012

6 Comments

 
So, a Facebook friend posted a link to a tremendous address by the Chief Rabbi, his oratorical powers unleashed at full pelt.

And here's the comment I posted on his official website:

"That must be one of the most dispiriting things I have witnessed in a long time. Great oratory, of course, but the content. Oh, my. ‘God never deserts us.’ In four words, a complete denial of the significance, not to say fact, of the Holocaust.

The subtle conflation of the deeds of a great man with a morally-defunct injunction to be a better Jew, to leave our comfort zones, when the very examples suggested an ever-more deeply embedding into that comfort zone. Davan better? If it wasn’t so reprehensible, it would be laughable.

Where is the injunction to question, to challenge, to doubt – the inescapeable drivers of progress? Nowhere. It is all carefully calibrated to shore up the status quo, to reinforce conformity.

Is this not the man who called Hugo Gryn an heretic after he died? Where is the holiness there?

I admire his gall, envy his oratorical brilliance .. and pity his inability to reconcile genocide with worship."

Funnily enough, the comment is still being moderated. I do hope they don't put it up. It would be rather fun to be censored by the Chief Rabbi!


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