Aformer friend (just kidding J.J.) shared his surprise recently that Mishpacha publishes both Rabbi Eytan Kobre and me every week. After all he said we so frequently agree on everything from our evaluation of the presidential candidates to doctrines of American constitutional interpretation.
I hope he will be relieved to discover that there is something upon which Rabbi Kobre and I surely disagree. I refer to Reb Eytan’s criticism two weeks ago of a column by the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens on the refusal of an Egyptian judoka to shake hands with his victorious Israeli opponent at the Olympics.
What raised my friend Eytan’s ire was Stephens’ focus on the impact of anti-Semitism on the anti-Semite in this case the Egyptian wrestler and the larger Egyptian society. Bret quoted approvingly Paul Johnson’s observation: “[W]herever anti-Semitism took hold social and political decline almost inevitably followed.” Countries that expelled their Jews went into prolonged and often irreversible decline.
Rabbi Kobre does not challenge the accuracy of Johnson’s observation. Yet he charges that by writing about the impact on the anti-Semite Stephens has revealed his lack of “profound grounding in Torah.” And that lack of Torah knowledge has inevitably led him astray in his discussion of anti-Semitism his great talent and deep concern for the Jewish people notwithstanding.
