A RABBI’S “WISDOM” AND RABBI WISE

Metro D.C. Rabbi is Repeating Mistakes Made a Generation Ago

ALEXANDRIA, VA—Once considered a reputable leader, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise failed American and world Jewry when his leadership and action were most desperately needed. Faced with the enormity of the Shoah, Wise concerned himself with sabotaging the efforts of others to save the Jews of occupied Europe, jealously guarding his position as a man who had Franklin Roosevelt’s attention while he waited in vain for the great icon of American reform to act to save the fellows and relatives of a constituency that gave Roosevelt 90% of their vote.

Currently a high-profile figure, Rabbi Jack Moline is a man with the ear of Washington power brokers and an eye on a career beyond his pulpit at Congregation Agudas Achim of Northern Virginia. A staunch Obama supporter, he is known as a politically active go-to man in the Metro Jewish community dedicated to interfaith dialog, as well as Rahm Emanuel’s rabbi. But much like Rabbi Wise before him, Rabbi Moline is on a path to fail his community at a crucial hour.

It is important to consider the overlap of circumstances framing this issue. Rabbi Wise, a maverick of the Reform movement, was eager to recast the image of the American Jewish community within the context of the reform-minded Roosevelt administration as the country and the world struggled through economic and political chaos that fed anti-Semitism. Viewing Roosevelt as a protector of the Jews, Wise—who began the 1930s as one of Nazism’s earliest and most vocal opponents—began to stifle his protests for European Jewry at the request of Roosevelt himself, lest his actions upset the applecart for American Jews and draw “unnecessary” criticism to the administration even as its functionaries worked to prevent any salvation from reaching the Jews of Europe. By 1943, Wise was actively working against efforts by groups not aligned with his own, recommending that the president not meet with the over 400 rabbis who marched to the White House to protest Allied inaction, and going to great lengths to prevent one group’s efforts at raising public awareness of the ongoing massacres.

Nearly 70 years later, and the economic upheaval has been repeated in an age when hate crimes against Jews are on the rise at home and abroad. As the Jewish homeland, Israel, becomes more and more the focus of tangentially relevant (at best) moral questions of “right” and “wrong”, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is allowed to threaten the Middle East and Europe with nuclear attack, it appears that Jack Moline is stepping into the role Rabbi Wise played in jeopardizing the safety of Jews in his efforts to reshape our image at a time when we can least afford it.

Should a man who casts himself as both a Zionist and a champion of the American Jewish voice engage in dialog with avowed opponents of Israel’s very existence and, by extension, the Jews’ validity as a people, even under the banner of “interfaith cooperation”? This is exactly what Rabbi Moline has done with Mahdi Bray and Dr. Esam Omeish. Moline has consistently dismissed Bray’s inflammatory actions and statements on Jews and Israel as the product of his “poorly informed” status while painting Bray as a champion of interfaith dialog. In the case of Omeish, Moline gave his endorsement to Omeish’s 2009 candidacy for Virginia State Assembly several years after Omeish’s fulmination for jihad against Israel and as a tool to make the Muslim voice heard in America, “the land of Allah” became news. Rabbi Moline continues to meet with these individuals and others as he pursues “dialog” with the Islamic Society of North America, Council on American-Islamic Relations and Muslim American Society, all of which have been linked to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood jihadist organization.

Concerning Moline’s relationship with President Obama, he has replicated Wise’s efforts to deflect any criticism from his perceived patron. When invited to participate in a teleconference with the president and1000 rabbis on the healthcare fracas, he expressed his satisfaction that no one took the opportunity to challenge Obama on his choice of Mary Robinson to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom after her checkered record as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Rabbi Moline continues to back President Obama’s efforts to, if necessary, unilaterally pressure Israel to achieve progress in their conflict with the Arab world, despite Israel’s track record of compromise in pursuit of peace.

There is, however, one crucial difference between Rabbis Wise and Moline. Rabbi Wise had the sense to speak out against the Nazis at the first opportunity. Jack Moline, meanwhile, tends to dismiss the threat of a nuclear, ideologically motivated Iran as something that will somehow be handled, no doubt by his own imagined benefactor.

Rather than further the strides Jews have made in America and around the world, Rabbi Jack Moline’s actions are the leftist counterpart to those of the Neturei Karta, the misguided Orthodox group that believes any show of Jewish self-determination outside the model of the shtetl is somehow “ungodly.” At a time when the situation seems to deteriorate more each day, we can no longer afford to let Moline continue unchallenged.