A reader comments:
I was disturbed by your condemnation of the entire State of Israel and all its inhabitants on p. 27 and in footnote 38. This is a gross over-generalization, inaccurate at best, and a slander of Klal Yisroel (the Jewish people) at worst.
The reader is referring to the following passage and footnote:
Another question arises: If the land (of Israel) vomits out sinners, how in the world is the modern state, which lives as a whole in a constant state of sin, still a state? 28
28 …I refer to public Sabbath desecration, immodest behavior, and celebration of life styles antithetical to Torah – to name a few.
Rabbi Stern responds:
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. It was sloppy on my part, a gross overgeneralization about the entire population of the country. In truth, the current State of Israel does contain a population of Jews who are Torah-observant and are far from sinners constantly engaging in immoral behavior; on the contrary, many are some of holiest people on this planet.
My point was that the majority of Israel’s population, which is Jewish, does not keep the Torah, and it engages in the behaviors I wrote about in the footnote… Furthermore, they don’t only act as individuals – some of these behaviors are state sanctioned.
Here is the question I was trying to set up: If the majority of the population is not being committed to the Torah, how would they not be subject to the problem of being expelled from Israel?