Letters/Discussion Forums
Jews should’n want Lithuanian citizenship
Daniel Lutrin’s article in last week’s Jewish Report about the difficulty in obtaining Lithuanian citizenship for himself and his family is hard to understand. Firstly, I find it incomprehensible that a Diaspora Jew should seek (a second) citizenship in any country except his own, that is Israel.
Choni Davidowitz
To claim, as Lutrin does, that former Lithuanian Jews and their descendants have an ancestral right to citizenship is an insult to the G-d of Israel. The ONLY country to which any Jew has an ancestral right is the Land of Israel.
By his own admission Lutrin writes that “when the Nazis marched into Lithuania in 1941 the government and people did not lift a finger as Jews in over 200 shtetls were humiliated, tortured, and ultimately murdered by Lithuanian collaborators”.
Which Jew with pure emotions would wish to now seek citizenship of that country and for that matter any European country which aided and abetted the German murderers?
The Yizkor prayer Jews recite in synagogues four times a year includes the one for martyrs: “May G-d remember the souls of the holy and pure ones who were killed, murdered, burned, gassed and strangled for the sanctification of the name through the hands of the German oppressors (and collaborators). Yemach sh’mom v’zichrom (may their name and memory be obliterated).”
Again we must ask: Which Jew would like citizenship of one of these countries?
Last but not least, the Holocaust has taught each and every Jew that it is forbidden for us to derive any benefit from countries that have persecuted our people. (Hilchot Sanhedrin 15:9).
How can we seek to walk around these countries (as citizens) which have caused unspeakable misfortune to klal Yisrael? There is not a single Jewish family in which at least one of its members have perished in these places. How can anyone with pure emotions associate with these places, much less seek citizenship, after they have poured contempt and disgrace upon us?
With all due respect to Lutrin and all those who seek citizenship of these countries, may I suggest they should rather seek citizenship for themselves and their families in their one and only true ancestral land – the Land of Israel. Seeking citizenship anywhere but Israel is scorning G-d’s most precious gift to His people.
Golden Acres, Johannesburg