Violence Among Orthodox Denounced

Rabbi Sol Roth, first vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America, denounced recent out breaks of violence and “rabid fanaticism” within the Orthodox Jewish community.

He told several hundred delegates attending the special Torah convocation of the Orthodox rabbinical organization that “we are shocked and ashamed by the recourse to physical violence, the meaning of swastikas and the vandalizing of synagogues within Orthodox ranks” which “defame the image of the entire Orthodox community and expose our faith to public ridicule and Hillul Ha Shem, the desecration of God’s holy name.”

Roth assailed the “irresponsible and misguided” Jews who, “while claiming to speak on behalf of Torah,” smeared the swastikas and epithets on a synagogue in the Bora Park section of Brooklyn. He issued an appeal to all Orthodox Jews to “repudiate violence” and to achieve a “state of mutual respect among Orthodox and Hasidic groups.”

While Roth did not identify the groups and the synagogues to which he referred, it was understood he meant the recent attacks against the Conservative Emanuel Synagogue in Boro Park and a Belzes synagogue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, reportedly by adherents of the Satmar movement.

Declaring that “fanaticism is not to be confused with zeal,” Roth said fanaticism “has no place in the Torah community” and that effort at imposition of an autocratic uniformity distorts the traditional pattern of Jewish life” where “disputes in religious low and practice have traditionally been settled through scholarly dialogue.”