Ra’anana Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Peretz was among the more outspoken voices opposing the mass aliyah from the former Soviet Union, which included hundreds of thousands of goyim according to most estimates. Rabbi Peretz served as a Shas minister in the 1980s, holding a number of cabinet posts including minister of the interior.
He told the Chareidim news agency that he warned the current situation would be the result of such an aliyah, a cause for “crying for generations”. He made his remarks with the lifting of the gag order on Monday on the arrest of a suspect in the murder of Eduard Ushrenko and his family, all over a head waiter being fired from his job by the victim.
“The goyim who came from Russia include murderers and anti-Semites, who harass the Jews”. He lamented that “there is no one to blame but ourselves”, explaining “this is the fruit of the light-handed decisions made by previous governments, and now, we are paying the price for those decisions”.
As interior minister, Peretz visited Russia in 1995 and announced one-third of the aliyah was non-Jews, a statement that was met with a harsh response. Rabbi Peretz reports that then Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir phoned him in Russia and spoke with him for 25 minutes, seeking to persuade him to retract the statement.
“Shamir suggested that I tell the media that my statements were taken out of context, but I told him that these are the facts and I cannot deny them. I urged Shamir to amend the Law of Return to prevent goyim from coming to Israel. We are taking about children who were totally non-Jewish, who were granted the right to come on aliyah because they had a Jewish grandparent… I am embarrassed to add that at the time, they waged a war against me and even the religious MKs did not really come to my defense”.
Rav Peretz stepped down from his senior cabinet post in 1986 after refusing to comply with a High Court order to declare Susie Miller as a Jew. He explained that she underwent a Reform conversion and therefore, he could not comply with the Supreme Court ruling, opting to step down instead.
On today’s standard Rabbi Peretz explained, Shas leader R’ Eli Yishai, who also serves as interior minister, is waging a similar war, seeking to oust the children of foreign workers, also non-Jews, stating he stands firmly behind Minister Yishai’s decision.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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5 Responses
If Eretz Yisroel would be Boston then you’re right; but Eretz Yisroel is our heiliger land. Should we beyudayim bring in thousands of goyim, because of mentchlichkeit? Maybe we open the doors to anyone who wants to come out of mentchlichkeit? The first mentchlichkeit we owe is to our wives and kids to make them as safe as possible, then if we have extra’s we can send a check to some gentiles in Russia, China or Uganda. The Rabbi is right, it is a “bechiya ledoirois”, and what tied his hands, is our mah yofis ideals of mentchlichkeit. We cannot forsake our family, people and country out of mentchlichkeit, if we do we become mentchlicha achzorim.
The last sentence wasn’t copied in completely, so here it goes: We cannot forsake our family, people and country out of mentchlichkeit, if we do we become mentchlicha achzorim, that is mentchlich to the whole world and achzorim to ourselves.
Perhaps, and that is a big perhaps, they could have allowed in those non-Jews who were “related” to a Jew either as a spouse or child. That would have kept them from breaking up families.
But they also let in people who came without families. When I was in a mercaz klitah in the early 90s, there were several Russians there who came on their own. And I’m sure many of them were not Jewish.
#5, a while ago I read about an anti-Semitic gang created by Ukrainian goyim living now in Israel. We had enough in the Ukraine (Petlura), should we bring them beyodayim to Israel?
The leftist wanted the russian goyim to combat the charedi. Do you know between 48 and 08 there has been over 2,000,000 Jewish abortions. If there were now there would be over 4,000,000 or more Jews today in Eretz Yisrael and they would not have to bring in the russian goyim to increase the population against the charedi and arabs