Piotr Rybak Effigy of a Jew Irony Mirsky

Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (Jewish Lives), by Yehudah Mirsky. 2014

Litvaks. Anti-Christian Memes. Piotr Rybak Effigy Double Standard. Organized Draft Dodging

This work is much more than biography. It offers a pulse of the state of Judaism in the late 19th and early 20th century. It focuses on the life and the ideas of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, whom author Mirsky describes as “a colossal figure in the English-speaking world.” (p. ix). Kook was born in tsarist Russia, and then lived in Palestine and England.

The author portrays Rav Kook as an original thinker. Though Orthodox, he had positive responses to the secularist and the Zionist tendencies among many Jews of the time. For example, traditional Judaism’s relationship to modernizing tendencies should not be solely antagonistic, but dialectic. (e. g, p. 39). Instead of rejecting Zionism, Kook wanted to combine it with religion, as exemplified by the Mizrachi. (p. 233). Kook’s “softness” on heresy, and his accommodating spirit to modern trends, earned him the ire of other Orthodox Jews.

THE LITVAKS: BROAD-BASED SIGNIFICANCE

The author sagely notes that the Litvaks (Litwaks) were as much a marker of Jewish cultural orientation as they were of geography. (p. 16). [Author Mirsky’s reasoning has a parallel in Polish (notably Endek) thinking. In Polish eyes, “Litvak” had a typological, and not solely geographic, meaning. It referred to those Jews who were particularly hostile to Polish ways and/or Polish national aspirations, regardless of whether or not they had come from Russian-ruled Lithuania.]

ANTIGOYISM, AND OLD PEJORATIVE TERMS USED FOR CHRISTIANS

Rav Kook was antagonistic towards Christianity, particularly its otherworldly aspects, as described by Mirsky, (quote).…(Kook) saw the Christian abandonment of the world as downright demonic, and the gravest heresy of all. “MINUT [the Talmudic term for Christianity] abandoned the law, planted itself in the imagined attribute of mercy and kindness, which destabilizes the world and destroys it…” (unquote). (p. 130). (The content in brackets is the author Mirsky’s).

Many Orthodox Jews of 20th-century Eretz Israel (Palestine) dealt with Rav Kook in the harshest terms for his deviations from Orthodoxy, even juxtaposing him with Christians, and doing so in a venomous manner. Mirsky comments, (quote) But the vilification of Rav Kook never let up, especially among members of the Agudat Yisrael youth movement, who heckled him, attacked him in posters, and at times threw buckets of water in his face as he walked down the street…On March 23, 1932, the eve of the holiday of Purim, the Jerusalem chapter of the Agudah youth staged a mock trial in which Rav Kook was tried for heresy. Next, they mutilated him in effigy as the youngsters danced around and sang…the billboard rhetoric against him reached a new pitch, “That man, the MIN (that is, Christian), hypocritical, flattering, like a pig rummaging in trash and raising a stink…” (unquote). (pp. 203-204). I will not complete the quoted sentence because it has pornographic connotations. The explicit definition of MIN as Christian, in the parentheses in the quoted statement above, is in the text of Mirsky’s book, and not something that I had added.

Let us examine the implications. Many commentators would have us believe that the references in the Talmud, to idolaters and heretics, do not apply to Christians, at least to modern Christians. From the above quoted statements, it is obvious that they most certainly do—even in the 20th century. Clearly, Polish scholar Feliks Koneczny, in his JEWISH CIVILIZATION, had been correct in identifying MIN as one of the derogatory Talmudic terms that are in fact applied, by Jews, to Christians.

PIOTR RYBAK: DOUBLE STANDARDS ON “HATEFUL” EFFIGIES

There is another irony. Note, from the quotation above, that the Jewish antagonists of Rav Kook mutilated him in effigy, all the while calling him a Christian as a term of hate speech. That was perfectly fine. But when the Pole Piotr Rybak recently burned an effigy of George Soros (or even a generic Jew), he was accused of (what else?) hate speech and anti-Semitism, and given jail time.

HELPING JEWS EVADE MILITARY SERVICE

Rav Kook lived in London during WWI. Here is what he did, (quote) On arrival, he [Rav Kook] became the leading rabbinic figure of England’s eastern European Orthodox community. A stranger to established Anglo Jewry, he found himself bumping up against settled ways. After signing one rabbinic ordination after another to save young men from conscription, he was called in for questioning by Scotland Yard; police investigators had noticed that many of his “rabbis” were in fact not religiously observant. He was let off with a stern warning but kept on, unimpressed by invocations of the moral significance of the British war effort. (unquote). (pp. 140-141).

The informed reader may realize that the Jews of Poland frequently attempted to avoid military service in the Polish Army. The reason (or exculpation) was the unwillingness to serve in the army of a state that had “major” anti-Semitism, and which failed to give Jews the rights that they were entitled to (or that they thought that they were entitled to). However, whatever could be said of Poland, this could hardly be said of philo-Semitic England, yet draft dodging by Jews took place just the same.

WHAT ABOUT POLAND?

There is more. The objections of many Poles (notably the Endeks) to the so-called Minorities Treaty included the concern that Jews would be emboldened to evade service in the Polish Army on putative religious grounds. The actions of Rav Kook demonstrate that there certainly was an impetus for such conduct.