A Jewish perspective on immigration reform

“Rabbi Morris Allen serves the Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights. Vic Rosenthal is executive director of Jewish Community Action.”

Our work includes persuading those who harbor suspicions of those wishing to be in America.

…We must engage with those who continue to harbor suspicions of immigrants, hear them and help them to understand a different story. We must help them appreciate that, rather than being “illegal,” these people have provided this country with work that would otherwise not have been done. We must seek reconciliation with those who fail to understand that the greatness of America and indeed of humanity is our diversity and our own uniqueness.

We have reached the time to finally pass comprehensive immigration reform. Comprehensive reform must not be punitive; instead, it must reflect the truth that for too long business and corporate farmers have depended on immigrant workers but have assumed no real responsibility for their well-being. Real reform means that the industries that employed these workers should share in responsibility of advocating for a pathway to citizenship, share in any fines and work toward the restoration of human dignity.

In Minnesota, and across the country, business, labor and the faith community are working together to pass immigration reform. This must include worker protections and opportunities for workers to move from job to job and still stay on a path to citizenship.

Immigration reform must include a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants without punitive conditions. Comprehensive reform must unite families that have been separated for years, including parents, children, spouses, siblings and grandparents. We also believe that immigration reform should include LGBTQ family members as well.

Real reform means that children who were born here should never fear that they are less than American citizens, and that children who were brought here and who grew up here are able to secure the same promise of any child who sat next to them in school — for these children had the same dreams as any American child.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has passed legislation that has many of the most important components of real immigration reform. The Jewish community in Minnesota, led by Jewish Community Action, is working closely with other faith communities, organized labor and the business community to make sure that this time, this year, comprehensive reform will pass.

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From Stranger to Neighbor

Rabbi Jonathan Prosnit has a recipe for destroying America (but he leaves Israel out of his recipe for national collapse):

In every generation we are obligated to see ourselves as though we personally went out from Egypt. The call to this generation is now. Immigration Reform is one of the pressing issues of this time and our community has an obligation to be a part of conversation. It is the merging of both our Jewish tradition with the highest of American ideas that we espouse. The mitzvah of caring for the stranger is greater than most any other commandment. The Torah discusses protection of the stranger no less than 36 times. We know well the words of the Polish Jewish immigrant Emma Lazarus that welcome us to New York Harbor. At the foot of The Statue of Liberty – across from Ellis Island that welcomed hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants to America – her poem reads:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door

With these words in mind, it is imperative that Jewish Americans speak out with regard to the moral dimension of public immigration policy and lend an active hand to organizations committed to welcoming the stranger and aiding the immigrant. Modern day undocumented immigrants living in San Jose came to America for the same reason that our ancestors crossed the Atlantic 100 years ago. The stories of Haitians and Mexicans and Filipinos today are the stories of our Czech, German and Polish ancestors. Senator Lindsay Graham – a man I rarely agree with – spoke to our group in DC earlier this week and said: “America’s an idea nobody owns – let’s allow people to become part of it!”

I’m thrilled that this Sunday at 4:00 pm Beth Am is hosting a program on Immigration Reform. The program is called: “From Stranger to Neighbor” in which we will be exploring immigration reform locally, nationally and Jewishly. We’ll explore Jewish texts on immigration, we’ll hear from experts on statewide and national immigration reform policy, and we’ll hear Beth Am members sharing their personal immigration stories. We’ll also hear from some of our own neighbors – including the story of Jose Arreola, an immigration advocate, and an undocumented Immigrant who graduated a few years ago from Mountain View High School.

Not only our synagogue, but our movement is out front on the issue of Immigration Reform via a coalition of Jews called Reform CA. Reform CA is ensuring fair and comprehensive immigration reform through a public policy perspective. Reform CA, is talking with our representatives in Sacramento and organizing lobbying days – to ensure passage of the Trust Act – which will assist undocumented Immigrants during some of their most vulnerable periods. This is a movement each of us can be a part of – through lobbying, lettering writing, and joining Reform CA in Sacramento. We do this not only as concerned citizens – but deeply rooted in Jewish tradition – standing on the shoulders of the commandment – from Leviticus Chapter 19 which reads: “When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall do them no wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love them as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

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Judaism and Immigration Reform

Rabbi Jason Rosenberg has a recipe for destroying America:

Judaism has something to say about Immigration Reform. And, it starts with Welcoming the Stranger, and Protecting the Weak.

Immigration Reform has been a hot issue, these past few months. A Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill has recently passed through the Senate, and the house is now debating what, if any, bill it might pass. What does Judaism have to offer this conversation?

Clearly, there isn’t a single “correct” Jewish position on Immigration Reform. That’s especially true when we’re talking about specific policies or legislation. Judaism doesn’t tell us precisely how long is too long for a path to citizenship to take. Judaism has little if anything to offer in helping us decide what percentage, precisely, of our money should we be spending on border security, as opposed to other aspects of Immigration policy.

But, Judaism does have quite a bit to say about values — which values should be important to us, and which values should undergird our society.

One of the values integral to Judaism is Hachnasot Orchim—welcoming the stranger. Welcoming the stranger has always been part of Judaism. In the Book of Genesis, we hear of Abraham, the first Jew, who was sitting in the entrance of his tent, when three strangers passed by. He immediately invited them in, and treated them like royalty — preparing a meal for them himself, not even letting his servants do it for him. That was probably fairly common and expected — we still see echoes of this kind of behavior in that part of the world. Our people inherited this tradition, and we built it into our theology.

We can’t welcome everyone equally, of course. No one is suggesting that we don’t have any Immigration policy — that we open our borders and make everyone and anyone a citizen. But, our starting place has to be one of care and welcoming. We have to work to figure out how we can bring the greatest number of people possible into our country, and into our lives, rather than starting from a place of rejection and isolationism.

It would be incredibly ironic for us, as Jews, to be less than welcoming when it comes to immigration policy. Because, we’ve often been the victim of it. We’ve been the victims of restrictions on our own migrations for centuries. We’ve fled persecution and been told, time and again, “you’re not welcome here.” Even when others were trying to wipe our people off the map, we’ve been told to go somewhere else. Just not here.

And, in less dramatic times, we still had to leave one home to seek a better life elsewhere. Very few of us in the Jewish community have an American heritage which goes back more than a few generations. We are a people of immigrants in a nation of immigrants. It is our repeated memory of being a stranger in a strange land which is supposed to drive our moral dedication to helping others to never feel like strangers themselves. Or, as it says in Leviticus (19:33-34), “When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall not do them wrong. The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Because we were strangers, we know how it feels. And so, we are commanded to help other strangers. We have an obligation to immigrants not in spite of the fact that they are strangers, but precisely because of it.

We also have to remember that many immigrants, whether legal or illegal, are among the most vulnerable in our society. And that’s another, perhaps even greater reason that we are obligated to help them. We are told over and over that we are obligated to protect the weak — the Bible commands us to protect the widow and the orphan, because those categories were the weakest, and the most vulnerable, in ancient society.

That, more than anything else, drives my support of Immigration Reform. It is a belief that, flawed, imperfect and incomplete as it will inevitably be, it is a step in the direction of justice, and of mercy. It is a step in the direction of forging a society which more closely holds to the ideals and values set out in our tradition.

Your conscience will tell you how to act, when it comes to laws and policies. Judaism can’t tell you, and neither can I, which candidate to support, or which bill to protest. but, I urge you to do something. Call your Senator, or call your representative. Urge them to act. Urge them to act in a way which will make our country, and our society, a place which welcomes the stranger, protects the weak, and strives to be a shining example of our greatest ideals.

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Frightened Rabbi Wants Her American Citizenship

I find it often helps to see a picture of someone before listening to his ideas.

RabbiRachelVanThyn-RS Link

Steve Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism: “The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter-looking.”

You can extend this law to understand that the most heartfelt articles by women, like their matings, are in the service of their personal advancement.

Feminism means restricting male choices as much as possible to increase female choices.

As soon as Reform and Conservative Judaism allowed women rabbis, it was the death knell for their movements.

From Tabletmag:

FOR ONE RABBI, THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL WHEN IT COMES TO IMMIGRATION
I must speak out against injustice—but if I speak up, will I be forced to leave the U.S.?

By Rachel Van Thyn
January 26, 2015

During the past year’s High Holidays, I, like many other rabbis around the world, wanted to speak about immigration. I shared with my community my belief that we have forgotten our story. We have forgotten the sheer terror of leaving everything behind, moving to an unknown place and starting over.

…I didn’t think I was offering anything earth-shattering. But truthfully, I was scared to speak. In fact, I had nightmares the weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah. Not your typical pre-High Holiday clergy nightmares. The one where you can’t find your sermon. The one where you sleep through your alarm. The one where you lose your voice the night before you have to chant Kol Nidre. The classics.

These nightmares were different, and their meaning was obvious: As a Canadian citizen living in the United States, I continued to be terrified that I would be forced to leave the life I’ve built over the past decade.

I was born in Canada, but my father and his family were not. After being liberated from Auschwitz, my grandparents Clara and Abraham found that when they returned home to Amsterdam, the same neighbors who had been entrusted with taking care of their valuables now denied having ever received anything. Impoverished, largely alone, and wary of their future in Europe, Clara and Abraham decided it was time to leave the Netherlands, to start over, and to make a new life for themselves and their children.

After that first year, I desperately wanted to stay in New York. I was lucky enough to find various jobs in the Jewish community, and it required a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to ensure I had proper work visas. There were moments when I didn’t think I would be allowed to stay in the country; where my application would be rejected. Then I entered rabbinical school, and with a student visa you might imagine the border crossings would be simpler. They weren’t, for a number of reasons my lawyer has suggested I not publicly articulate. But let’s say this: When you are standing there, waiting for a stamp on your documents, not knowing if this will be the time you will be forced to leave behind the roots you’ve put down, the life you’ve built—there is almost nothing scarier.

I had hoped that things would be easier in my current job. I had somehow been blessed with an immigration lawyer, a member of the congregation, who helped me each step of the way. But the months leading up to this year’s sermon were fraught with difficulty, from papers that were delayed. We had little information about what was happening. I could not leave the country, and I was terrified. I had panic attacks. Even in my sermon, I couldn’t speak entirely freely, because I was afraid it would affect my papers. And as I write these words, I still worry that speaking openly could affect my path to citizenship. As we do with the Torah, I hope you are able to read into the gaps in my text.

People often make jokes when I talk about my difficulties at border crossings. “But it’s Canada,” they exclaim, as if we are the 51st state, or as if it shouldn’t matter because I look the same as they do. By which I think they mean: I am white and upwardly mobile.

It’s so much more complicated than that.

I hope someday to become a dual citizen. I am privileged and grateful to have access to legal representation, and to have a partner who would move back to Canada with me if it came to that. As it happens, we recently got engaged, and marriage will make things easier. But what if I hadn’t found love here? Before I had a fiancé, I had a congregation I loved. I want to stay here, a place I call home.

As a rabbi and as a Jew, I feel a responsibility to speak out against the injustices I see in this world. I read articles about my mentors and teachers getting arrested at protests. I attended the Kol Nidre service during Occupy Wall Street, but it was not a spiritual experience for me. I was too busy looking over my shoulder. If I am arrested for speaking up, will that affect my own future dreams of one day being a citizen?

I felt trapped, unable to speak out and pray with my feet the way I wanted to. So, instead I spoke from my pulpit, but it felt weak in comparison. I choked on tears as I read aloud Emma Lazurus’ words on the Statue of Liberty. I worried about being judged as an armchair activist. I was afraid, for I knew that either path—speaking out or remaining silent—could cost me.

I watch the debates on immigration reform quietly from my living room; I wonder how this will all unfold. When people joke that the United States is getting so terrible they will move to Canada, I consider the truth that my residency is not guaranteed. It would not be a terrible fate to leave, but ultimately I want to be the one who makes that decision.

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Germany’s Role In Sparking The Refugee Crisis

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* Thilo Sarrazin’s recent book comprehensively and explicitly underlines the way the previous mass intake of third world labor into Germany happened to be a non-working, welfare chomping economic and fiscal disaster.

* In my younger days I would never have dreamt of finding a smidgen of hope in a middle-brow, populist, highly non-intellectual and decidedly uncool paper like the Express:

“The European Union was first established in the wake of the Second World War as a means of acting as a restraint on Germany, yet the EU has now turned into a malignant instrument for the German domination of Europe. It was Merkel’s self-righteous, bombastic declaration that Germany would take in almost a million refugees that sparked the current crisis. Yet now, having encouraged this colossal wave of migrants without any consultation, Germany has the cheek to demand that other countries take their “fair share.”

…We are at a turning point in our history. Either we can regain our sovereignty and restore control of our national destiny. Or we can maintain our subjugation to Brussels, down which road lies the certainty of our national demise.”

* Marine Le Pen has accused Germany of bringing in “slaves” for labour shortages and to lower wages.

“Germany probably thinks its population is moribund, and it is probably seeking to lower wages and continue to recruit slaves through mass immigration,” Marine Le Pen told supporters at a meeting in the southeastern city of Marseille, a key French destination for migrants from north Africa.

* The costs of mistakes, lost stock and merchandise, lawsuits, absenteeism, etc are all real costs. I find it hard to believe that German employers really think Syrians and Germans are interchangeable labor inputs.

Moreover, I find it very difficult to believe that German employers can’t make calculations about the kind of country their children will inherit.

* Peston’s long been one of those demanding that the UK (and Europe and the US and Canada and Australia and New Zealand, but not Africa, Asia, or Latin America) allow any Tom, Dick and Harry — or, preferably, Muhammed, Achmed and Abdullah — to freely enter and live in the country.

He’s a long time supporter of immigration, multiculturalism, the EU, and every other cancer now destroying the West.

He used to be a Guardian columnist for goodness sakes (for those unfamiliar with the UK Guardian, it makes the NY Times look positively middle-of-the-road).

* Population shrinkage accompanied by automation will improve the quality of life for everybody but how can you prove it with hard number when most of the benefits are in things like more time to spend with you family and not anything an economist would consider valuable. Less population means less pollution of the environment, more open space for wild life and on and on. Try to quantify that compared to the number of houses that have to be built to house the new immigrants that nobody but the real estate developer wants.

* In Great Britain only about 42% of Bengali and Afghan immigrants are employed (and that figure includes part-time employment). Barely 30% of Somali immigrants are employed, and just 10% of Somalis have full-time jobs.

Meanwhile 80% of Polish, Lithuanian, and Kiwi immigrants have jobs.

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Sociologist James Petras Hates Jews

Anybody who’s a socialist before any other identity is going to hate nationalism, particularly ethno-nationalisms such as Zionism, because socialism, almost universally, has historically denied the importance of race and religion in favor of social class.

Jews do best in individualist societies created by Protestants (such as England, Canada, Australia, and the United States). Collectivist states, such as Catholic and Muslim ones as well as East Asian countries such as China, Korea and Japan, are not as Jew friendly. In such states, the Jew is clearly an outsider.

When Jews such as Max Blumenthal put their left-wing outlook before their Jewish identity, they tend to despise ethno-states such as Israel. If a left-wing Jew loves Israel, it means he puts his Jewish identity before his leftist identity.

When a Jew puts his American identity before his Jewish identity, what does that mean? He’s less likely to be radical in his politics and less likely to push for American intervention abroad.

Reality, it seems to me, makes it pretty clear that most of human behavior and potential is genetically determined.

James Petras is a socialist and not a big fan of the Jews. You take a bunch of Japanese and plunk them down in Brazil and they will have life results similar to Japanese in Japan. Take Swedes and plunk them down in Minnesota and they will have life results similar to Swedes in Sweden. Take Nigerians and plunk them down in Minnesota and they will have similar life results to Nigerians in Nigeria.

When people talk about Jews, they tend to get unhinged in either direction of love or hate.

From Wikipedia:

In a 2006 article entitled “9/11 Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories Still Abound,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) criticized Petras’s assertion that there was evidence that Israelis may have known about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks but withheld the information from the United States government. The ADL also noted Petras’ assertion that “The lack of any public statement concerning Israel’s possible knowledge of 9/11 is indicative of the vast, ubiquitous and aggressive nature of its powerful diaspora supporters.”[11][12]

In a 2009 article, the ADL again criticized Petras, alleging that he blamed the ongoing economic crisis on “Zionist” control over the U.S. government and world events, and alleged that Petras argued that pro-Israel Americans had launched a massive campaign to push the U.S. into a war with Iran. The ADL also alleged that Petras’ allegations included the anti-Semitic accusation that the American Jewish community controls the mass media and is “bloodthirsty” in its appetite for war.[13] The previous year, Petras alleged that that “It was the massive infusion of financial contributions that allowed the [Zionist Power Configuration] (ZPC) to vastly expand the number of full-time functionaries, influence peddlers and electoral contributors that magnified their power – especially in promoting US Middle East wars, lopsided free trade agreements (in favor of Israel) and unquestioned backing of Israeli aggression against Lebanon, Syria and Palestine…No economic recovery is possible now or in the foreseeable future…while Zionist power brokers dictate US Mideast policies.[14][15]

The ADL also cited a 2008 interview in which Petras stated that [U.S.] presidents are at the disposal of “Jewish power” [16] and maintained, according to the ADL, that Jews represent “the greatest threat to world peace and humanity.”[17] In the same 2008 interview cited by the ADL, Petras stated that “it’s one of the great tragedies that we have a minority that represents less than 2% of North American’s population but has such power in the communications media” and that the reason “why the North American public doesn’t react against the manipulations of this minority…[is] because the Jews control the communications media.”[18] In an 2010 article published in the Arab American News, Petras stated that “For the U.S. mass media the problem is not Israeli state terror, but how to manipulate and disarm the outrage of the international community. To that end the entire Zionist power configuration has a reliable ally in the Zionized Obama White House and U.S. Congress.”[19]

Today on Unz.com, James Petras goes after “Jewish supremacism”:

The record provides no historical basis for the claims of Jewish Supremacists:

What has been cited as the disproportionate ‘Jewish genius’ turns out to be a two-edged sword – demonstrating the best and the worst.

Claiming a monopoly on high academic achievement must be expanded to owning up to the Jewish authors of the worst financial and foreign policy disasters – they too are ‘high achievers’.

Donations from financial billionaires, all ‘geniuses’, have financed the war crimes of the Israeli state and made possible the expansion of violent Jewish settlers throughout occupied Palestine – spreading misery and displacement for millions.

In fairness, the most notorious Jewish swindler in contemporary America was even-handed: ‘Bernie’ Madoff swindled Jews and Goys, Hollywood moguls and New York philanthropists – he wasn’t picky about who he fleeced.

The latest fashion among Jewish Supremacist ‘geneticists’ is to extoll the discovery of uniquely special ‘genes’ predisposing Jews to experience the ‘holocaust’ and even inherit the experience of suffering from long dead ancestors. Such ‘scientists’ should be careful. As Jazz artist and essayist, Gilad Altzmon wryly notes, ‘They will put the anti-Semites out of business’.

Ultimately, Jews, who have assimilated into the greater society or not, who inter-marry and who do not, are all products of the social system in which they live and (like everyone else) they are the makers of the roles they decide to play within it.

In the past, a uniquely disproportional percentage of Jews chose to fight for universal humanist values – rejecting the notion of a chosen people.

Today a disproportionate percentage of educated Jews have chosen to embrace an ‘ethno-religious’ Supremacist dogma, which binds them to an apartheid, militarist state and ideology ready to drag the world into a global war.

Never forget! Racialist supremacist doctrines led Germany down the blind ally of totalitarianism and world war, in which scores of millions perished.

Jews, especially young Jews, are increasingly repelled by Israel’s crimes against humanity. The next step for them (and for us) is to criticize, demystify and stand up to the toxic supremacist ideology linking the powerful domestic Zionist power configuration and its political clones with Israel.

The root problem is not genetic, it is collective political dementia: a demented ideology that claims a chosen elite can forever dominate and exploit the majority of American people. The time will come when the accumulated disasters will force the Americans people to push back, unmasking the elite and rejecting its supremacist doctrines. Let us hope that they will act with passion guided by reason.

I think this is a ridiculous line of attack. Every group, from blacks to Chinese to Jews, thinks it is superior.

In a 2006 lecture, Tom Wolfe said: “Each individual adopts a set of values which, if truly absolute in the world – so ordained by some almighty force – would make not that individual but his group…the best of all possible groups, the best of all inner circles.”

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More Concern Trolling From The MSM

New York Times:

Republicans Fear Donald Trump Is Hardening Party’s Tone on Race
By JONATHAN MARTINSEPT. 7, 2015

WASHINGTON — Republicans are growing increasingly concerned that Donald J. Trump’s inflammatory language is damaging the party, fearing that his remarks are hardening the tone of other candidates on racial issues in ways that could repel the voters they need to take back the White House.

Some party leaders worry that the favorable response Mr. Trump has received from the Republican electorate is luring other candidates to adopt or echo his remarks. It is a pattern, they say, that could tarnish the party’s image among minority voters.

Daniel Antinora: “Republican Base Thrilled by Donald Trump Hardening Party Stance on Race”

David: “If only Rudy had worked harder to appeal to blacks and hispanics, he might have become mayor of NYC.”

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Muslim Flight Attendant Says She Was Suspended for Refusing to Serve Alcohol

Are Muslims a good fit for the West?

If any minority, including Jews, want to live in Western lands, they have to adapt to Western mores. No healthy country should bend to its minorities.

Chaim Amalek writes: “Wonderful! Now we need to find a Muslim clerk who refuses to issue a marriage license to a gay couple, and a Muslim baker who refuses to bake a wedding case for two men.”

REPORT: A Muslim flight attendant says she was suspended from her job because she refused to serve alcohol to a passenger due to her religious beliefs.

Charee Stanley, a flight attendant with ExpressJet, filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Detroit last week, CNN reports. Stanley said the airline’s management was aware of her religious beliefs and that she had arranged with another flight attendant to handle passenger requests for alcohol. (Muslims are barred from consuming alcohol.)

But Stanley said in the complaint that she was placed on a 12-month unpaid leave on Aug. 2 after another flight attendant complained that Stanley wasn’t fulfilling her duties. The complaint also mentioned that Stanley possessed a book of “foreign writings” and wore a headscarf.

Lena Masri, an attorney representing Stanley on behalf of the Detroit chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the complaint had anti-Islamic overtones and that Stanley had received approval from airline management to not serve alcohol.

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EUROPEAN REFUGEE CRISIS AS BLOWBACK

Gilad Atzmon writes:

Yesterday Germany turned on Britain over the migrant crisis. Germany expects to accept 800,000 asylum seekers by the end of the year. Britain is also preparing for the growing refugee disaster — It closed its gates. The German call makes some sense I must admit. After all, it was Tony Blair and his Labour Government that launched the criminal war that led to this global humanitarian crisis. But Blair wasn’t alone. In fact he was merely a Sabbos Goy.

When Blair took Britain into Iraq his chief fundraises were Lord cash point Levy of the Labour Friends Of Israel. Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen were the prime advocates for the immoral interventionist wars in the British media and beyond.  Since then, we have seen the Jewish lobby openly pushing for more and more wars (Syria, Iran, Libya  etc.). In France it was the Bernard Henri Levy that pushed for the intervention in Libya that has turned the Mediterranean Sea into a death trap.

I don’t know how many refugees Lord Levy, Bernard Henri Levy and David Aaronovitch can fit into their spare rooms. But I do believe that the Jewish community should immediately place itself at the forefront of any humanitarian effort for the refugees.  First because Jews claim to know more than anyone else about suffering.  But mainly because it was Jewish aggressive politics and Zionist global lobbying that brought this colossal refugee crisis about.

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Jews of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea

Rabbi Yossi Serebryanski writes: As a young child growing up in Australia I heard of an Israeli who had a hotel in Port Moresby, New Guinea. Prior to that I had never heard of any Jewish presence there. That’s not surprising because the history of Jews in Papua, New Guinea and Indonesia has been relatively unrecognized until recently. Their existence has come to light as a result of local people in those islands who wish to return to their Jewish roots.

Indonesia is a Muslim country. An Indonesian political activist named Gus Dur accepted an invitation to visit Israel in October 1994. But things didn’t begin to change until he, then named Abdurrahman Wahid, became Indonesia’s fourth president (from 1999-2001). It was during his administration that descendants of Jews began to come out of hiding.

Despite the country’s Muslim designation, in 2012 the National News Channel acknowledged that approximately 150 Jewish descendants from all over Indonesia assembled together to celebrate Sukkot there.

Elisheva Wiriaatmadja, an Indonesian who is pursuing an Orthodox Jewish conversion, was invited to speak in a messianic church in Papua. Church members had heard about a group of people from Indonesia who were involved in the process of converting to Judaism and were eager to learn the details of their journey.

Once there, Elisheva discovered people who are obviously direct descendants of Jews. In the 1400s and 1500s when Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal, many of them traveled to Peru. When the Inquisition followed them, many fled to Japan and others continued on to Papua, where a large number eventually intermarried with locals.

Incredibly, one Papua tribe sings a lullaby with this line: “We were once twelve brothers but ten have disappeared.” Although unaware of the significance, many families have surnames like Sukkot, Torah and Menorah. As children they were taught never to step foot in any church as “it is an evil place.”

Recently the hierarchy and attendees of the messianic churches in two Papuan cities gathered together to decide if they should remain Messianic or pursue a return to the religion of their ancestors. After Elisheva contacted Rabbi Tovia Singer, he flew down to meet with and help them. Amazingly, 168 Papuans, including their leaders, left the churches and embraced Judaism.

Elisheva has worked diligently to translate Torah into the local language. She also runs a radio program to teach people Torah. By answering many of her questions I became part of the journey she and others around her pursued. She is a descendant of Dutch Jews who worked for the Dutch East India Company. She and her sister only returned to their Jewish roots within the last few years.

Their journey has not been easy. In an initial attempt to pursue conversion, the community, led by Benjamin Meier Verbrugge, contacted Orthodox rabbanim who rejected them. At the end of 2013 I discovered that, with no Orthodox leadership to guide them, their burning desire to convert led 75 members of the community to have a non-halachic conversion. This is a major issue taking place around the world. The vacuum created by the Orthodox world not dealing with the multitudes that wish to return pushes many to yield to the promises of non-halachic sources who take money for unacceptable conversions.
Baruch Hashem, I helped Elisheva understand that this “conversion” was not “kosher.” Yet, despite the fact that the conversion was not halachically acceptable, it caused a ripple effect throughout the Christian and Muslim communities in that part of the world. That is how the messianic churches in Papua heard about it.

We spent quite some time trying to figure out how the descendants of Jews could go through a halachic conversion. At my suggestion, in March of 2014, Elisheva contacted Rabbi Gutnick at the Beit Din in Sydney, Australia to arrange the conversion. He replied a few hours later that he (miraculously) intended to be in Jakarta within that week to do some kosher supervision. A first meeting was arranged. Since then he has continued to meet with them and is guiding a small group towards a halachic conversion with Rabbi Tuvia Singer as their teacher. The community is spread out and has limited income. They are currently trying to raise funds so they can pay for teachers to come and help them.

From when the first Jews arrived as part of the Dutch East India Company (established in 1602) and their official presence as of 1872, there has been a steady presence of Jews in this remote region of the world. Besides the Dutch, Jews also came from Iraq and Aden. There was a synagogue in Surabaya, which was torn down in 2013. There are accounts from travelers, including those of Rav Yaakov Halevy Sapir in the 1800’s and Israel Cohen’s Java Zionist newspaper in the early 1900’s, as well as stories of Jewish refugees who arrived in the 1930’s and 1940’s, that support the idea that, intermarried or not, there were many Jews who settled in Indonesia.

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