Many people accuse YU being a close-minded and intolerant institution. But here the YU student paper opens its pages to an advocate of racial separation, one who makes common cause with white supremacist groups. I find Orthodox life far more tolerant of such racial thinking as that blacks are less intelligent, on average, than whites. Other sectors of Jewish life tend to be intolerant of these views.
I suppose that racism is one of those sweet delights that the Almighty allows those who follow his Torah as a partial recompense for the harshness of the Oral law.
I remember when a class from the liberal temple Ohr HaTorah took a class at YULA (Yeshiva University Los Angeles) with a Frum From Birth Monsey-raised rabbi. The rabbi brought up as the most natural analogy to something in the sacred text that some people believe that blacks are less intelligent because of genetics while others believe that they are less intelligent because of the way society has treated them.
Needless to say, at least one of these Reform Jews was offended and never came back. The next week the rabbi apologized for his remark. If he had made it in an Orthodox environment, and I am sure he had, then it would've gone unnoticed.
Different Jewish groups are tolerant and intolerant of different things.
Paul Shaviv on rabbi Schiller:
Most fascinating - and beautifully written - is the article by Mayer Schiller, one of the more interesting and individual characters on the landscape, about his long relationship with YU.
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From my interview with Dave Deutsch, who teaches at the same high school as rabbi Mayer Schiller:
"There's this one rabbi I know - rabbi Mayer Schiller. You'll find some of his stuff posted on The Third Way page. He reviewed a biography of Strom Thurmond where he mourns the cowardice of Strom Thurmond for giving up segregation. For the loathsomeness of his ideas, at least he can laugh at himself. We get along. I have a high threshold for things so long as the person does not always take himself seriously. Go forth and sin no more.
"The best about Rabbi Schiller is that he sets the standards for misbehavior so high, I feel like nothing I can do will get me into trouble. If I have made some comments about Israel that have got me in trouble, well, Rabbi Schiller is a fellow traveler with the Neturei Karta (anti-Israel ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect)."
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From the Forward 4/13/01 on Schiller: A Chasidic Spokesman Espouses Modernity — and Race Separation
Rabbi Schiller, 49, has made common cause with and spoken before a cast of characters and organizations that would send most American Jews running to the Anti- Defamation League: American white supremacists, anti-abortion extremists, Conrad Muhammad of the Nation of Islam and right-wing European nationalists.
In a series of interviews with the Forward, Rabbi Schiller declined to discuss for the record his published views on race. Officials at Yeshiva University High School, also known as MTA, said Rabbi Schiller's silence stems from an agreement that he made with school administrators five years ago, prohibiting Rabbi Schiller from discussing racial issues with students or in any public forum.
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Me writes: I believe this is yet another example of a story Gary Rosenblatt of The Jewish Week suppressed.
Pulling My Punches?
3/16/01
Several years ago, for example, when we were looking into the fact that a high school rebbe had published deeply racist views in white supremacist journals, the top administrator at the school where he teaches called to tell me that he knew about the rebbe’s views, but if we published such a story, I would be responsible for the firing of this highly talented and effective rebbe. Why me? I asked. Because, the administrator said, the resulting publicity and outcry would force him to terminate the rebbe, and it would be on my head.
In the end, we held off because we found no proof that the rebbe discussed his views with his students. But I found the phone call, and its logic, deeply disturbing.
I recently went to hear a prominent rabbi give a talk on Torah perspectives on sexual abuse, and he was adamant in asserting that Jewish law was “unequivocal in its condemnation” of various forms of “this terrible crime.” He was insistent that victims be supported and protected, and that perpetrators be held responsible for their crimes because there is “zero tolerance in Jewish law.”
An important message from an important leader. The problem was that he was a key and controversial figure in the Rabbi Lanner story, criticized for not only defending him over the years but for being dismissive of and accusatory toward those victims brave enough to speak out.
The Forward published the story about Schiller a month after this Rosenblatt column. Schiller did not get fired.
The hypocritical rabbi on sexual abuse is rabbi Mordechai Willig, writes Me. "It would be almost another two years before Rosenblatt wrote the story, naming him."
Me writes:
Why would I be suprised that a Rabbi with published racist views is tolerated as a speaker by the Young Israel movement.
This is the same movement that allows a Bukharian Youth organization to bring a known pedophile [R. Ephraim Bryks] into it's synagogues.
Is it against the Torah to advocate racial separation? Certainly the Torah calls on Jews to be a separate people. Separate but equal got a bad rap because of the 1950s US Supreme Court ruling that separate inherently means unequal. But separate does not have to mean unequal. We have separate bathrooms for men and women. I don't think you can make a strong argument from Jewish text that racial separation is against Torah.
Yes, I understand that Jews are not a race. That Jews are composed of all races from black to brown to yellow. But Jewish laws against Jews bathing with non-Jews and all such laws that Kahane advocated for Israel are deeply rooted in Jewish text, which would seem to have some sympathy for rabbi Schiller's views.
