The American Rabbi Who Hunted Nazis

While a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in the 1960s, Barry Dov Schwartz learned of the work of Simon Wiesenthal and offered him his services. On Wiesenthal’s behalf, and alongside his career as a congregational rabbi, Schwartz interviewed numerous survivors and even suspected perpetrators—and, occasionally, went to still greater lengths, as Jordan Hiller writes:

In the spring of 1965, about 30 members of the 500-person-strong American Nazi party discreetly met in a cramped apartment on 114th Street and Broadway in New York City. It had been two decades since the liberation of death camps; . . . Nazis, their conspirators, sympathizers, and passive supporters were alive and well, either in hiding and trying to avoid punishment, or—more often than not—slithering seamlessly back into society.

While a handful of authentic former Nazis were gathered at the New York meeting along with like-minded individuals, so was a Jew. In fact, it was a rabbinical student . . . who moved inconspicuously among them. Naturally, Barry Dov Schwartz had delivered a false name at the door while dressed in the detective’s trench coat he had purchased expressly for the occasion. To avoid eating the sandwiches and drinks he was offered, Schwartz feigned a stomach ailment; [he then] lingered in the back and waited for his moment.

When all were deemed present and the group moved to the living room to discuss the evening’s agenda, Schwartz snuck into the coat closet and rifled through each and every pocket. Opening wallets and scanning identification cards, Schwartz took down names, addresses and any other bit of information that could later help identify and track Nazis. He slipped out of the apartment unnoticed, immediately typed up a letter, and mailed the data to the man who had initially tipped him off about the meeting: Simon Wiesenthal.

Read more at Moment

More about: American Jewish History, History & Ideas, Holocaust, Nazis, Simon Wiesenthal

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society