Rabbi Says Holocaust Was God's Retribution

JERUSALEM - An ultra-Orthodox rabbi considered to be a political kingmaker has enraged religious and secular Israelis by saying the Holocaust was God's punishment for sins such as violating the Sabbath and eating pork.

``Not for a long time has any single remark caused such an emotional reaction,'' said Razi Barkai, host of a radio talk show that was flooded with hundreds of calls yesterday over the remarks of Rabbi Eliezer Schach.

Barkai said calls ran about 3-to-2 against the 97-year-old rabbi, who said another disaster may befall Jews for violating traditional religious tenets.

``The last time he brought destruction, it was the Holocaust . . . Because of the sins, the Almighty may bring another Holocaust upon us, and it may already be tomorrow,'' Schach told Jewish seminary students earlier this week.

About 6 million Jews died in the Nazi genocide during World War II, and tens of thousands of survivors live in Israel. Five percent of Israel's Jewish residents are ultra-Orthodox, while 70 percent define themselves as secular.

``Rabbi Schach today is one of the most powerful men in Israeli politics and each one of his words creates a lot of noise,'' said sociologist Menachem Friedman, an expert on religious communities.

Earlier this year, Schach helped Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir form a government by ordering his followers to join Shamir's coalition. The faction's support gave Shamir 62 votes in the 120-member parliament.

In exchange, the party asked for a series of reform laws, including a ban on sexually suggestive ads and sale of pork, forbidden by Jewish dietary laws.

The Knesset, or parliament, earlier this month outlawed outdoor advertising that features scantily clad people. It is expected to take up some of the other proposals soon.

The proposed laws have angered many secular Israelis, who claim the ultra-Orthodox minority carries too much influence.

Schach's comments on the Holocaust repeated a theme common in the Bible: of divine retribution against the Jewish people for straying from the path of their religious law.

But on another level, many took his remarks to mean that the Jews somehow were to blame for the Nazis' behavior.

``The Almighty keeps a balance sheet of the world, and when the sins become too many, he brings destruction. We don't know how long his patience holds out, sometimes 20 years, sometimes 10 and sometimes only a year,'' Schach said.

Schach's chief rival, Brooklyn-based Rabbi Menachem Schneersohn, told supporters yesterday the Jews who died in the Holocaust were ``pure and holy.''

``Heaven forbid someone should say that the Jews sinned in some way and God settled accounts with them and imposed on them the most terrible sentence of the past generation,'' said Schneersohn, the politically influential leader of the Hasidic Habad movement.

Some of Schach's sharpest critics were Holocaust survivors.

Menahem Russak, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp and a former commander of the Israeli police unit investigating Nazi war crimes, said Schach ``shamed and humiliated'' millions of Holocaust victims.

His voice shaking, Russak told listeners that Schach ``not only exonerated the Nazi murderers, but turned them into messengers of God who were sent to punish the people of Israel for not observing the Torah.''

But another caller, an ultra-Orthodox woman who lost relatives in the Holocaust, defended the rabbi.