And furthermore, the one asking is a Levite, who has no share or inheritance in the Land, as stated in last week’s Torah portion.

Your astonishment seems a bit fake… What percentage of Poles and Australians are involved in crime, unemployment, violence, poverty? Is there any doubt about their Jewishness, as there is about the Ethiopians’ Jewishness? Have they carried out pogroms in our streets like the Ethiopians?

Maybe we should send back the Ashkenazim; they brought secularism.

I assume you’re not one of those people who talks in the fake discourse of “weakened populations”…

Levi

Now seriously: if I understood correctly, someone who thinks that because of a few rioters (and I think it’s nowhere near that) an entire community should be thrown out of the country is probably a Nazi; collective punishment is definitely Nazi.

Apparently no one is going to think of throwing you out of the country despite your being a Nazi, and I’m in favor of that.

Levi, are you serious? Until now I’ve been wondering whether to respond at all.
The question whether it is legitimate to expel an ethnic group of citizens from the country is a principled one. It has nothing to do with their actions. Why not deport every Polish criminal, thief, or murderer? He’s much worse than Ethiopian car-smashers. I don’t like the cheap use of the label “racism,” but what you’re saying is truly appalling racism. Turn back.

With Heaven’s help, 1 Tammuz 5779

Every Jew who causes trouble should go back to his country—and his country is the Land of Israel. In the loving embrace of the mother, the problems that clung to us through thousands of years of exile and persecution will be solved.

You don’t immediately get used again to living together, appreciating one another, and understanding one another, but that is the process we are in the midst of, and time, love, and patience will open all the blockages in which all of us have gotten stuck.

With blessings for a good month,
S.Tz.

Nothing beats S.Tz., the right person in the right place,

S.Tz., I, like most of the great Torah authorities (who are not Religious Zionists), do not accept that they are Jews.

Sorry, all the great Torah authorities (not most). I’m correcting the wording so it won’t sound like there are great authorities among the Religious Zionists.

To Levi

Could you list for us, in your count, whose view this is among most of the great Torah authorities? In my opinion, most of the great authorities who prohibited did so because of doubt, and many of them are of the type of halakhic decisors for whom every new discussion belongs on the side of prohibition, as they say: “the new is forbidden by the Torah.”

It’s a shame that you are casting aspersions on the great authorities who did prohibit, making people think they had Nazi thinking (and on this point you’ve stumbled even if we agree that they are not Jews).

And to Levi he said—
Since we are, God forbid, not Religious Zionists, we must zealously uphold the oath by which we were adjured not to rebel against the nations; and even in the case of doubtful gentiles, after all “in a doubtful oath one is stringent,” and Heaven forbid that we should anger them. We must appease and placate them to the best of our ability, until they convert properly, and then we can treat them with full firmness.

With blessings,
The humble Hershel Halevi
(father-in-law of Rabbi Erez Aitgab, son of Bavel and Dejtenu, and grandfather of Eliya Tamar, Moshe, and David),

S.Tz.—
What does “Dejtenu” mean?

To H.Z.B.—Greetings,

Bavel and Dejtenu Aitgab are my in-laws. I do not know the meaning of their first names in Amharic. The family name “Aitgab” means “gentle, pleasant in manner,” and it suits them well.

With blessings,
S.Tz.

To H.Z.B.—Greetings,

Following your question, I turned to Rabbi Google, may he live long, and reached the information database of Beit Hatfutsot, which says that “Dejtenu” means “arousing warmth of heart.”

With blessings,
S.Tz.

To Levi
In your ignorance/arrogance you fell into a trap that every high-school student studying psychology learns to recognize. One of the causes of prejudice is called “illusory correlation,” in which people mistakenly create a connection between two variables that seem similar: for example, crime rates and the percentage of immigrants in the population—the numbers look similar so they link them together. You’re welcome to check the statistics.

A few comments:
A. Where were the Shas people and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef omitted? Have they too been annexed to the Religious Zionists?
B. Is the claim that Religious Zionists have no great Torah authorities a factual determination or an a priori assumption (that Religious Zionists cannot be great Torah authorities)?
C. Let’s assume they were not Jews to begin with—this still does not require deporting them. Moses our teacher also brought up from Egypt a mixed multitude and a rabble. Was he mistaken?
I recently read a claim that Moses our teacher did this intentionally in order to contend with the spiritual hollowness of groups within the people of Israel. Precisely because the rabble was undisciplined and included all kinds of fringe elements such as sorcerers and the like, the spiritual power and superiority of Moses our teacher was revealed over all kinds of people who thought they could set themselves up against the Jewish people and so on. One could say that the rabble in our own day likewise exposes the spiritual hollowness of various self-styled great Torah authorities who are unable to cope with the teeming reality outside.

Friends, I see no point in responding to a troll’s provocations.

With Heaven’s help, 2 Tammuz 5779

To Y.D.—Greetings,

What’s interesting is that precisely the great Torah authorities of Religious Zionism who dealt with this issue were more stringent than Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Rabbi Yitzhak Herzog, who had great leaning toward leniency and was very fond of the Beta Israel community and encouraged the emissary (Moshe Bar-Yuda) who was sent to them, ruled that they require a “conversion out of stringency,” with immersion and symbolic drawing of covenantal blood, and did not rely completely on the words of the Radbaz that they are from the tribe of Dan.

Rabbi Avraham Shapira and Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli as well, who were more lenient than Rabbi Yitzhak Herzog and did not require symbolic drawing of covenantal blood since they were circumcised on the eighth day, still required at least immersion out of stringency for purposes of permitting marriage. Although they accepted in principle the Radbaz’s ruling regarding the community as a whole, they were concerned for individuals who had mixed in over the generations, and therefore, even while accepting them as Jews in every respect, they required immersion out of stringency before marriage.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef ruled to permit them to marry even without “immersion out of stringency,” because of the strong opposition among members of the community to this immersion, and held that in pressing circumstances such as this one we should rely on the primary law that they are from the tribe of Dan, as ruled by the Radbaz. The concern raised by halakhic decisors because of bills of divorce not performed according to Jewish law was resolved by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef by clarifying that the marriages conducted among the Beta Israel were also not done according to Jewish law, and therefore there is no concern for mamzerut.

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein too, who was hesitant to rely on the words of the Radbaz that they are from the tribe of Dan and required conversion because of doubt, wrote that they should be drawn close since they see themselves as Jews, except that they need to undergo conversion because of doubt. Perhaps precisely his independent approach in many cases vis-à-vis the rulings of later authorities, which often led to leniency, was here a reason for stringency.

In short: like any halakhic issue, the considerations of halakhic decisors are case-specific, and it makes no sense to classify them according to artificial camps.

With blessings,
S.Tz.

To our rabbi and the other friends,
I learned a few things in the exchange here, so I’ll try to write an updated version:
1. There is no racism here because I didn’t judge them by their race or skin color but by their inferior culture.
2. The Torah, the Sages, medieval authorities, and later authorities themselves did not see a problem with racism (many times traits are attached according to race or skin color, and there are even halakhic ramifications).
3. Even if they are Jews, there is no obligation to bring them up. Whoever wants to can come on foot or buy a plane ticket and prove his Jewishness to a religious court (a real one, not a Zionist one).
4. Even though it was a mistake to bring them up, an Ethiopian who has already been absorbed has been absorbed. I am updating the proposal to deport those who, instead of accepting the rules of the game in a Western state, bring here the jungle of Africa.
5. I do indeed doubt the stature of Religious Zionist rabbis. Something in their operating system is corrupted.
6. Rabbi Michael, regarding you too there are those who would say there’s no point responding to trolls instead of responding to the substance of your wise words. What goes around comes around…

It seems you’re making an effort (though unsuccessfully—but it’s hard to blame you; something in the operating system is defective), and so it’s hard for me not to answer:
1. The term racism in its moral sense is not connected specifically to generalization by race, but to any generalization whatsoever. There are several columns on the site where I tried to define this.
2. Indeed, that happened sometimes. Very grave. In the meantime the world has advanced in certain respects, and it’s a shame for you to remain stuck behind.
3. I understand that the “real” religious court (= the men in black who do whatever they please) is now in charge of the state. It will decide who may immigrate and who may not. Nice. It’s not enough that Haredi society is a parasite on everything that happens here; now they will also manage the treasury that they want to loot. I understand that you don’t want anyone interfering with the public purse so that it funds only you. Really lovely.
4. In my opinion Haredi society is in a much more problematic cultural state (your remarks are a fine and clear expression of that). If anything, I would start by exiling them. The problem with them is that beyond the severe primitiveness they also have detached self-confidence (and, in my opinion, an artificial one. It covers up insecurity and envy) that does not allow them to learn and improve.
5. See the previous section. Your condition is so bleak that you are not even capable of recognizing greatness in Torah. So if in your eyes none of them are great, I’d say that is actually a good sign of their greatness. (The opinion of householders…)
6. Every troll can tell anyone that he too can be perceived as a troll.
It seems to me we’ve exhausted this stupid parade of nonsense.

From the words of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein:

“As for their Jewishness, we regard it as doubtful, and they should be required to undergo a genuine conversion before we permit them to enter the congregation. But even before their conversion there is a commandment to save them from apostasy and from danger, like any Jew, for ‘in cases of danger to life, we are lenient’; and here too the doubt concerns their actual lineage as Jews. Also, one should know that even if according to the law they are not Jews, nevertheless since they believe that they are Jews, and they risk their lives for their Judaism, we are obligated to save them.”

“And I was very distressed by what I heard, that there are those who prevent drawing them close in spiritual matters, and thus, God forbid, cause them to be lost from the Jewish religion. It seems to me that they behave this way only because their skin color is black. For it is obvious that they should be drawn close—not only because they are no worse than the rest of the Jews, and legally there is no distinction due to their being black, but also because there is the argument that perhaps they are converts, and they are included in the commandment ‘and you shall love the convert.’”