Holocaust survivor Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau was deported to Buchenwald during World War II. He was eight years old when American soldiers liberated the camp in April 1945. The former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, now chief rabbi of Tel Aviv and president of the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem, Rabbi Meir Lau is one of the best-known rabbinic and public figures in Israel.

Rabbi Meir Lau was recently in Montreal, where he was the guest of honour at Académie Yéchiva Yavné’s gala evening, and he spoke to The CJN.

You were clearly happy to come to Montreal for only a few hours to honour the Académie Yéchiva Yavné.

Yes. The Académie Yéchiva Yavné’s remarkable educational work has been based on excellence in teaching Jewish and Torah studies as well as the principal secular educational subjects. I was very impressed by the dynamism of the school’s directors, the great devotion of its teachers and the enthusiasm and seriousness of the students. The school took on the mission of ensuring the durability of a high quality, traditional Jewish education, which is indispensable to ensure the survival of the Jewish People.

For you, Jewish education is the primary key to the future of the Jewish People.

In the Jewish communities where a traditional Jewish education based on transmission of the teachings and values of the Torah is strongly valued, the rate of assimilation of young Jews is much lower than that in Jewish communities that have turned their backs on the traditions that we inherited from our ancestors. Today, in several Diaspora Jewish communities, especially in North America, the rate of assimilation is frightening. A study on American Judaism carried out recently by the Pew Research Center shows that in the United States, one person out of four who was born Jewish has abandoned Judaism. This pernicious tendency is very worrying.

As a Holocaust survivor, are you frightened by the delusional, vehement declarations of Iranian and Arab Holocaust deniers?

Those Holocaust deniers don’t frighten me for one obvious reason: survivors of the Shoah, who had an official number on their upper left forearm, are still living among us. In Israel, during the summer, when you take a bus, you meet octogenarian men and women who have this distinctive symbol of a horrible memory on their arm. These last survivors forcefully personify the indisputable truth of that horrifying slaughter that decimated more than one-third of the Jewish People.

On the other hand, what does worry me a lot is the reason that motivates these people to deny the reality that the Shoah happened. Why do the former Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his successor, Hassan Rouhani, continue to trumpet without the least embarrassment that the Holocaust was nothing but a “grotesque fable,” a “lying invention forged from start to finish by the Zionists”? After all, Ahmadinejad, Rouhani and their henchmen don’t care in the least whether my parents perished in Auschwitz or died a natural death. Those denying and pathologically anti-Semitic ayatollahs repeat such rhetoric because they are in the process of preparing a second Shoah.

Then you take very seriously the Iranian political leaders’ demagogic rhetoric that denies the Holocaust and advocates the destruction of Israel?

The fact that there has already been a first Holocaust, that its perpetrators, Hitler and the Nazis, were defeated and that the State of Israel was born from the ashes of that awful tragedy seriously discredits the macabre aim of the Iranian leaders to destroy Israel and throw all the Jews into the sea. That’s why these people never stop proclaiming that “the Shoah is only an invention of the Jews.” To “justify” their infamous genocidal plan, they must absolutely erase the past of the Jewish People.

What do you think about the new wave of anti-Semitism in the West, particularly in the European countries?

Anti-Semitism is a worldwide mental illness that can’t be explained in a rational way because there’s no logic to it. Some 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland before the Holocaust. A great many of them were very religious Jews who wore payot and shtreimels and spoke Yiddish. The Maskilim – those who promoted Haskalah [the Jewish intellectual movement in the 18th and 19th centuries that was strongly influenced by the European Enlightenment] – said at the time that if only those very pious Jews learned to speak Polish, dressed like non-Jews and became integrated into the majority Polish Catholic society, anti-Semitism would gradually disappear. 

In Germany, however, many Jews were totally integrated into German society and made a notable contribution by distinguishing themselves brilliantly in the sciences, medicine, the arts, finance, including Albert Einstein, the Rothschild family, Walter Benjamin. According to the theory proposed by the Maskilim, the non-Jewish Germans should have lived in perfect harmony with their Jewish fellow citizens. However, when Hitler and the Nazis came to power, they sent those very patriotic German Jews to the gas chambers. They reserved for them the same fate as for the Jews of Poland. That proves to what point anti-Semitism is an illogical problem that can’t be treated in a rational manner.

Israel is very preoccupied with this new outbreak of anti-Semitism in the West.

Yes, but you have to remember that anti-Semitism is not a Jewish or an Israeli problem. It’s the governments and the western nations, especially the Europeans, that have to urgently find solutions to contain this abject scourge in their own countries. The Jews are the victims and not the perpetrators of this awful sickness. As for the fight against the very virulent anti-Semitism that is rampant in the Arab Muslim world, it’s a futile battle that the Jews and the democrats who support them lost long ago.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel, of which you were the head for several years, is today the object of harsh criticism coming from several sectors of Israeli society. They accuse the Chief Rabbinate of being dogmatic and intransigent in the management of some major issues, including conversion and recognition of religious institutions led by rabbis in the Conservative movement.

It is not easy to be a rabbi in Israel. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel is faced with huge challenges today. What the critics of the Chief Rabbinate don’t understand is that this institution can’t make decisions on questions dealing with marriage, divorce, religious status of Israelis except with strict respect for halachic injunctions. One can’t “reform” the spirit of a Halachah that’s thousands of years old and constitutes the main pillar of Jewish identity in order to accommodate Israeli citizens who have a very “liberal” concept of Judaism that distorts the essence of Halachah.

Does this mean you have no concrete solution to settle those differences of opinion?

Dialogue is the only way possible to settle these major differences of opinion. When I was chief rabbi of Israel, and today in my role as chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, I always counted on a mutually respectful dialogue. I regularly met with groups representing all streams of Israeli society. We spoke frankly and with respect. For me, there aren’t 30 Jewish peoples, but one single Jewish People that must be unified to face the great threats that daily weigh on Israel and the Jews still living in the Diaspora.

What do you think about the thorny question of young ultra-Orthodox Israelis enlisting in the ranks of the Israel Defence Forces?

To think that the majority of ultra-Orthodox Israelis are fiercely anti-Zionist is totally wrong. For two years, the number of ultra-Orthodox young people who enlisted in the IDF has continued to grow. You can’t force them to join the Israeli army with coercive laws or threatening ultimatums. 

Many of these ultra-Orthodox young people are very patriotic and ready to serve under the flag to defend Israel against its numerous enemies. You just have to address them tactfully and politely. To consecrate your life to study of our holy Torah is not a crime. To defend the Land of Israel is also an imperative mitzvah. Today, the great majority of ultra-Orthodox youths are conscious that these two great and noble moral obligations don’t have to conflict, but on the contrary, are very compatible. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for style and clarity. It was translated from the French by Carolan Halpern.