Referring To Assimilation of Jews
Orthodox rabbis can refer to assimilation (along with abortion within the Jewish community) as a type of "Holocaust". This is because assimilation is the leading cause for the shrinkage of almost all Jewish populations in Western countries. Since World War II, and it has been called the Silent Holocaust (in comparison to the genocide against Jews during World War II) by communal leaders such as Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald of the National Jewish Outreach Program, perhaps the best-known popularizer of the phrase.
Use of the term "silent holocaust" in reference to Jewish intermarriage:
- "More than 50% of the Jewish People today are intermarrying, in some places it is as high as 90%.....Intermarriage has created a silent holocaust in this generation..."
- "...Unlike the persecution that the Jewish people have endured by the hands of others for over 3,000 years, Jews on this continent now face a "silent holocaust" stemming from within their very own communities and their very own households..."
- "There have been many other arguments offered against intermarriage...Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, 12 million were left afterwards. Today there are only 13 million Jews in the world. Where are the rest that by natural increase should number close to 20 million? The answer is that the silent holocaust of assimilation has caused them to disappear as Jews."
- "There is a Holocaust taking place in America right now. We can't hear it, because there are no barking dogs; we can't see it because there are no goose-stepping Nazi soldiers and no concentration camps; we can't smell it because there are no gas chambers. But the net result is exactly the same. If we fail to act now, if we fail to share with our young Jews the beauty and meaningfulness of Jewish life and Jewish heritage, there will be few Jews left in the next generation who will even know that there ever was a Holocaust of European Jews. The "silent Holocaust" will have done its job. Hitler will have emerged victorious.
Intermarriage, assimilation and apostasy are all described in terms of a "silent holocaust".
Read more about this topic: Silent Holocaust
Famous quotes containing the words referring to, referring and/or jews:
“They were as fed horses in the morning: every one neighed after his neighbour’s wife.”
—Bible: Hebrew Jeremiah, 5:8.
Referring to the corruption of morals in Jerusalem.
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—June Jordan (b. 1936)