Sitting down with Rabbi Lau

Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel, right, is interviewed at the Chabad Lubavitch’s National Jewish Retreat in Weston by Rabbi David Eliezrie, a member of the retreat’s organizing committee.

Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, former chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel, sat down with a Jewish Journal reporter for a post-Shabbat interview last week at the Chabad Lubavitch's National Jewish Retreat.

The six-day program at the Hyatt Bonaventure in Weston featured Jewish scholars and authors and was attended by more than 900 Jews from around the United States.

Lau and his two brothers were the only members of his family to survive the Holocaust. He was eight years old when he arrived inPalestine in 1945.

He attended a yeshiva and became an ordained rabbi. Lau was the chief rabbi of Netanya and then Israel's chief rabbi, a position he held from 1993 to 2003. He currently is chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.

Lau's new book, "Out of the Depths," recounts his experiences in the Holocaust, including his internment in Buchenwald, and his arrival in Palestine.

He tells how he became chief rabbi of Israel and discusses his meetings with world leaders including Pope John Paul II, U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Jewish Journal: You met with Pope John Paul II more than once. What sort of relationship did you have with him?

Lau: He was a pope who understood very well the situation of the Jewish people because he faced the Holocaust with his very eyes. He understood the tragedy.

He was the pope who brought a diplomatic relationship between the Vatican and the state of Israel. It happened in 1994.

I met the pope of today also, in Yad Vashem, Benedict XVI. But there is quite a great difference between them. The pope of today was a child in Hitler youth. As a young man, he was in the Wehrmacht, in the Nazi army. I don't blame him for that. He was born in Germany. In those years, everyone should join those movements but he was brought up on the other side of the barricade.

JJ: The other day [in an interview with Rabbi David Eliezrie, a member of the retreat's organizing committee,] you touched on compulsory military service for the haredim. How do you feel about that?

Lau: [The Tal Commission] made some conclusions how to behave, what to do. They know the needs of the army, everything. The government and the Knesset should adopt them. If there are some details you have to correct, okay.

One thing I can assure you, that enforcing service is not a way which is acceptable. It will not work. If it is in a dialogue with all the leaders involved, they understand very well the needs of the Israeli society, the needs of the state. And they want their students to be a positive and constructive part of Israeli society.

The centers of Torah learning mainly in Europe collapsed during World War II. We have to take care that this candle will not be extinguished.

JJ: There have been numerous conflicts between the haredi community and secular Jews in Israel. What do you think can be done to improve the relationship between the two?

Lau: It starts in the education, not in politics. The politicians, they come at the end of the story. But the issue starts from the very early childhood, to know one about the other, to speak one to the other. We have a lot of experiences how it can be done and it is being done.

[In] the most difficult and heroic units of the army, the majority of the officers are religious. They have a motive to defend the homeland taken from the bible and a devotion to the people of Israel. All these Jews have to be responsible, one for the other.

There are some places and fields that there is integration. They combine together Jews of all kinds, especially in times of strain with our neighbors. All of a sudden you forget all the differences, all the debates. You don't see the split, only the consensus. They have to teach themselves, if we can die together, why can't we live together?

JJ: Does this apply to recognizing other movements in Israel, like the Reform movement?

Lau: Look, there is no real Reform movement in Israel. It's more in the media than in reality. There is one Reform temple [in Tel Aviv]. In the same time, the number of the Orthodox shuls is 545.

What is the issue? Did we break a glass of the window in a Reform temple? Is there a fight? We want unity.

JJ: And how about the status of women in Israel?

Lau: There's no problem with women in Israel. In America there was never a lady president, not even a deputy president. We had already a prime minister and a president of the Supreme Court, ladies. And a speaker of the Knesset, a lady. Candidate for another presidency, a lady. Foreign office ministers, two ladies, Golda Meir andTzipi Livni. We have a problem? Seven members of the cabinet are ladies. Don't worry.

College students learn Israel advocacy

Rabbi David Eliezri uses a video of a Muslim student protest to teach college students from around the country to stand up for Israel.

The video shows Muslim students on the University of California's Irvine campus in February 2010 shouting anti-Israel epithets at guest speaker Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States.

Produced by the international pro-Israel organization StandWithUs.com, the video is a vehicle for Rabbi David Eliezrie to engage students from college campuses throughout the United States in an Israel advocacy exercise during Chabad's National Jewish Retreat at the Hyatt Regency Bonaventure in Weston.

Eliezrie, director of the North County Chabad Center in Yorba Linda, Calif., said he was at the Irvine campus event and spoke with Oren several times throughout the evening.

Oren continued to try to talk until the students, many of whom were from the university's Muslim Student Union, were taken out of the room and arrested or walked out in protest. He finally was able to speak to the audience.

"This event caused a convulsion in our Jewish community," Eliezrie said. "How should the Jewish community respond? Maybe they should do nothing. Maybe the Jewish community should do to them what they did to us. Maybe we should demand the university suspend or expel the students."

There was a big debate, he said. "The Jewish community was shocked in Orange County. They felt vulnerable."

The university suspended the Muslim Student Union for three months and the local district attorney indicted 11 student organizers on charges of disrupting the peace.

"How do we express our support for Israel on campus" Eliezrie said. "Are we afraid of being too outspoken about Israel? A lot of times we're too afraid to bring the true issues to the front."

Students need to "flip the conversation," he said, and become more assertive.

"Go on the offensive," someone in the audience said.

"I think it's time for us to be a little more outspoken and put them on the defensive," Eliezrie said. And we need to ask "What connects us to Israel? What is the connection between us and the homeland of the Jewish people?"

The 11 students who organized the vocal protest, dubbed the "Irvine 11," were found guilty and given a sentence of community service, Eliezrie said. "The Jewish community was tested," he said. "A lot of the Jewish establishment groups were afraid to do the right thing."

The lesson, Eliezrie said, is people will respect you if you stand up, are assertive and have the self-respect to not run away.

Michael Lebovitz, 22, a junior at the University of Kansas, said the Muslim organizations and the groups that support them are neither active nor vocal. "They might not like Israel but they are not interested in starting any fights," he said. "Once we get that one student….We have to be prepared," Lebovitz said, and know arguments and strategies.

"I think he's right on the ball," Rabbi Vidal Bekerman said of Eliezrie's presentation. Bekerman, 35, is the Chabad rabbi at York University in Toronto where in February 2009 Muslim students barricaded Jewish students inside the Hillel and "verbally assaulted" them. Police escorted the students from building.

"We should totally reverse the discussion," Bekerman said. "When we're defending, the whole conversation is in their control."