Hans-Joachim Schoeps, Heinz Georg Salomon Frank, Max Naumann. These are names of people we were told existed, but had a hard time believing. These are a few of the Jewish supporters of the National Socialist German’s Working Party, also known as the Nazi Party.
Max Naumann was born in 1875 into an assimilated Eastern European Jewish Family. Max attended the Friedrichswerdersches Gymnasium, which not only has a 20 letter first name, but also a second name that means nothing like it sounds. It was not a gym or gymnasium where people work out their bodies, but one of the most elite schools for young men in Berlin in the late 1800’s, where some of the greatest thinkers of the era studied. He continued on to the University of Berlin where he received his law degree.
When the whispers of war came across continent, he joined the Bavarian Army, where he fought for Germany as a captain and infantry commander. Ironically, for his bravery in WWI, he was awarded the very same medals, the Iron Cross 2nd Class and 1st Class, as another soldier in the Bavarian army, a young Adolf Hitler.
After the war, Max Naumann became involved in politics as the founder of Verband nationaldeutscher Juden, The League of German National Jews, or VnJ for short. While very Jewish in name, its primary goals were the total assimilation of ethnic Jewry into the German Volksmeinschaft, the People’s Community. Max believed that generations of anti-Semitism would end when Jews, of their own volition, totally eradicated their own ethnic attachments to their Judaism and Jewish culture, and dissolved into the greater German culture.
The VnJ agitated strongly against all Jews who openly tried to hold onto their Judaism, but especially Zionists and Eastern European Jews. The former they considered to be “racist” threats, serving British imperialistic goals, and the latter, the Eastern European Jews, who clung to their Yiddish, their distinct Jewish garb, and long held Jewish practices were considered spiritually inferior.
Most of the members of the VnJ were middle class; small business owners, lawyers, physicians, many of whom fought for Germany in WWI. They wanted to see more success and acceptance in German Society, and saw the ethnic Jews as the obstacle to their recognition.
In 1927, the VnJ had a monthly publication, Der nationaldeutsche Jude, which had a circulation of 6,000. The publication was filled with articles describing the dangers to Germany of allowing the Zionists and Eastern European Jews to immigrate into the Weimar Republic, the German government from 1918-1933. The Nazis, struggling to assert themselves in the early 1930’s often pointed to the publication as proof to their claims about the Jews, because even the Jews themselves were writing about how dangerous the Zionists and Eastern European Jews were.
After the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, the VnJ fell in line, and openly supported the Nazi Party. When nations around the world began to boycott the Nazi party due to their fascist ideology, open violence, and anti-Semitic attacks, the VnJ rushed to fight the boycotts. They issued a manifesto claiming that Jews were “fairly treated” by the Nazis, and requested in the name of the Jewish people that the international boycotts be halted. They believed that the anti-Semitic attacks and propaganda being perpetrated by the Nazi party, was only a rhetorical tool used to “stir up the masses.” It couldn’t be real, the German culture would never allow for such travesties.
Unfortunately for Max, the Germans outlawed the VnJ, and threw Max in the notorious Columbia concentration camp in middle of Berlin where he was interrogated and tortured for weeks. He died of cancer in 1939, and most of his family was murdered by the Volksmeinschaft, the People’s Community, he spent decades supporting.
Hans-Joachim Schoeps and Heinz Georg Salomon Frank were part of another Jewish German pro-Nazi group, Der Deutsche Vortrupp, The German Vanguard. It was only founded by Schoeps in 1933, the year the Nazis came to power. They were fierce advocates of the Nationalist movement, and called for a fierce separation between German and non-German Jews, showing their desire to align themselves with the Nazi ideology of German Nationalism.
Most of the members of The German Vanguard were intellectuals and students. In their newspaper, Der Deutsche Vortrupp: Blätter einer Gefolgschaft Deutscher Huden, The German Vanguard: Newspaper of a Group of German Jews, Schoeps wrote admiringly, among other things: National Socialism saves Germany from destruction; today Germany is experiencing it völkisch renewal! He called for the “acceleration of the absolutely necessary separation of German and non-German Jews, as well as the collection of all German-conscious Jews under uniform authoritarian leadership while bypassing the old organizations as much as possible.”
While Schoeps was exiled to Sweden in 1938, and Frank fled to Canada right after Kristallnacht, the fate of the rest of the Jews of Europe was not as fortunate, and millions of them perished under the völkisch renewal they so fiercely advocated for. Whatever hopes they had for protection by supporting the Nazi party, whatever beliefs they had that the Nazis antisemitic nature was only rhetorical, whatever patriotism they had for German culture and national strength, were all dashed in the Holocaust and the rivers of Jewish blood that were spilled from 1939 to 1945.
The reason for my renewed curiosity into this dark page of Jewish history is that history is currently doing what it does best; repeat itself. Once again, we are seeing Jews supporting people and ideologies that openly call for our destruction.
Norman Finkelstien, Ilan Pappé, Jewish Voice for Peace, J Street. These are the names of people and organizations that exist, and have considerable platforms, even though we have a hard time believing it.
Norman Gary Finkelstein, born in 1953 to Holocaust survivor parents, grew up in Boro Park, then Mill Basin, both heavily Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn, NY. He attended Binghamton University and then completed his Masters degree at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, a venerated institution in Paris. He received his PhD from Princeton University and then went on to teach at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Huter College, New York University and De Paul University.
Finkelstein rose to prominence in 2000 when he published The Holocaust Industry, a book loved by antisemites worldwide, where he argued that the Holocaust is used a tool by Israel to silence critics of their apartheid regime against the Palestinians. On the very day of the horrific massacre of Jews that occurred on October 7th, 2023, Finkelstein wrote an article on his website, that included this quote:
“For the past 20 years the people of Gaza, half of whom are children, have been immured in a concentration camp. Today they breached the camp’s walls. If we honor John Brown’s armed resistance to slavery; if we honor the Jews who revolted in the Warsaw Ghetto—then moral consistency commands that we honor the heroic resistance in Gaza. I, for one, will never begrudge—on the contrary, it warms every fiber of my soul—the scenes of Gaza’s smiling children as their arrogant Jewish supremacist oppressors have, finally, been humbled. The stars above in heaven are looking kindly down. Glory, glory, hallelujah. The souls of Gaza go marching on!”
Despite Finkelstein claiming in an interview with Piers Morgan that he only wrote that article when he thought there “were only 50 people killed,” the article is still on his site as of this writing.
Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian, political scientist, and former Israeli politician. He is currently a professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies. He was a board member of the Israeli Communist political party Chadash and was a candidate on their party list in the Knesset elections in 1996 and 1999.
His main platforms are the boycott and divestment of Israel. In the wake of October 7th, he stated that he had admiration for Hamas militants’ courage, and their ability to take over military bases in Israel. To this day, he maintains that Hamas is not a terrorist group, but rather a Palestinian resistance organization, that is engaged in the “decolonization of Palestine from the river to the sea.”
Jewish Voice for Peace is an organization founded in 1996, by three UC Berkeley undergraduates. JVP has grown significantly, claiming over 23,000 dues-paying members and 300,000 online supporters by 2024, with more than 80 chapters across the U.S., including a notable presence on college campuses. Their level of support for Hamas has caused them to be removed from many college campuses, but they still remain active with students even on those campuses.
If you see college students wearing tallises while taking over campuses or state capitol buildings, shouting “Globalize the Intifada,” which translates to “kill Jews not just in Israel, but around the world,” you can be ironically be assured that those activists are part of the Jewish Voices for Peace.
My friend saw a sign for Kabbalat Shabbat Services at 3pm on a Friday afternoon in the middle of an college encampment that was calling “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “by any means necessary.” It was the Jewish Voices for Peace that was putting on the Kabbalat Shabbat services, because they are very fiercely active at these campus takeovers, and I’m pretty confident the Muslim Brotherhood organizations they are working with are not putting on Kabbalat Shabbat services, at least not at 3pm on a Friday, when sundown isn’t until 7:30!
If you need translation on their statements; “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” effectively calls for Israel to be Judenrein, Jew-free to borrow a Nazi term, and the 7 million Jews living in it removed. Despite there being 22 Arab countries, many of whom are already Judenrein, and despite Israel’s landmass not even being half of one percent of the Arab country landmasses, the only Jewish country in the world needs to vacate all of their people from their ancient ancestral homeland. And if you’re wondering how that should happen, that other slogan, “by any means necessary,” means that these people support all the things done by Hamas on October 7th, because it was the means they were using to remove the Jews from the river to the sea.
If you’re not sure if Jewish Voice for Peace supports terrorist activity, you can ask them why they invited Rasmea Odeh, a terrorist convicted of killing two Jewish civilians and wounding nine others in a bombing attack at a supermarket, to speak at their National Membership Meeting, and why the 1,000+ attendees gave her a standing ovation when she concluded her speech.
J-Street is another organization that is almost impossible to believe exists. It is a liberal Jewish advocacy organization that was founded in 2007. Its stated goal is: “”To promote American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically through a two-state solution, ensuring Israel’s future as a secure, Jewish, and democratic state alongside a secure and viable Palestinian state.”
But you would be hard pressed for to find anything they do that works to ensure Israel’s future as a secure Jewish state. In every single congressional race, they support the more anti-Israel candidate. They fight against any legislation that tries to stop the BDS movement, the movement to boycott and sanction Israel. They consistently lobby the government to withhold weapons sales to Israel, even while Israel is fighting for its existence on seven fronts against Arab groups and nations who openly express the desire to repeat October 7th as many times as possible.
Each election cycle, J-Street spends millions of dollars supporting the most vocally anti-Israel candidates, and if you go to their homepage, you will see that every single position they champion is to undermine the State of Israel and its ability to protect its citizens. With “Pro-Israel” organizations like J-Street, who needs “Anti-Israel” organizations?
Tzorinam ben Vofsi of Naftali, Shiftan ben Livni of Asher, Naakan ben Tzochar of Dan. We have no record of these names, but they likely sound like the names of people we know existed. The reason we don’t have their names is because they never made it out of Egypt when our ancestors left 3,337 years ago. While discussed by almost every Midrashic Source, this group of people is most widely described by the Midrash Sechel Tov, (Exodus 10:20). There was a very large contingent of Jews who “were entirely wicked, that had attached themselves to the idols of Egypt, and didn’t want to leave Egypt. Hashem killed them in the three days of the darkness… and the Jews buried them, and gave thanks to Hashem that their enemies didn’t see them burying their brothers.
It’s hard to imagine a group of Jews that would become so deeply ingrained with Egyptian culture that they wouldn’t want to leave the place that enslaved them. It’s hard to believe that they might have even started groups and organizations that would fanatically support the people who were looking to annihilate their people. It’s hard to imagine that there might have been Jews would proclaim their allegiance to the very Egyptian monarchy that was dropping Jewish babies into the Nile. A group that would disseminate papyri that called for eradication of their own identity and a movement to assimilate entirely into the Volksmeinschaft, the People’s Community of Egyptian society. But then again, when we look at recent history, and the current situation, maybe it’s not so hard to imagine.
Pesach is soon upon us, the holiday known as Zman Cheiruseinu, the Time of Our Freedom. What does freedom mean? The Torah tells us that the whole goal of our Exodus was so that we would make it to Mt Sinai, where we would be given 613 commandments. That sounds a lot like switching one master to another Master, not like freedom at all. Even the famous statement, “Let my people go!” is a myth. The real statement is (Exodus 9:1), “Send my people out, so that they may serve me!” It’s almost like Hashem is saying, “Pharoah, let the Jews leave your service, so that they may join my service.” It seems like we didn’t get freedom, we just switched masters.
But that brings us to the secret of freedom. No one is truly free. Everyone serves something. You can live your life in the service of your wife and children. You can live your life in the service of a law firm or consulting firm that expects 95 hours a week from you. You can live your life in the service of amassing luxury cars, watches, yachts, or private jets. You can live your life in the service of your local and college sports teams. You can live your life in the service of “living my life my way!” You can live your life in the service of whatever the culture around you is currently selling, the people who shout at rallies and hold up signs that effectively say, “I’m with the current thing!” You can live your life protecting women’s rights and then two years later protecting unhealthy men who want to take away women’s rights.
I live my life in service too, and the more I do, the better I feel about myself! I try to live my life in service of Hashem, following his commandments as best I can. I try to live my life in service of my wife and children, working many hours to provide for them and their needs, physical, emotional, and spiritual. I try to live my life in service of the Jewish community. But sometimes I fail, and I live in service of my laziness, my greed, my anger, or my desire to fit in.
When I stood on the Chuppah with my wife, I was taking on tens of thousands of “commandments” over the course of the rest of my life, responsibilities to the young woman standing beside me and to the children we would bring into the world. But I made that choice freely, and work to better fulfill those responsibilities, because I know that those commandments and that service will ennoble me.
Jews throughout the ages, from Egypt, to Germany, to the USA in 2025, have failed and been seduced into serving the Volksmeinschaft, the People’s Community, or the people around them. Hashem warns us about this (Deut. 12:30) “Do not inquire about their gods, saying, “How did those nations worship their gods? I too will follow those practices.” But the allure is strong, and unfortunately it grabs our brothers and sisters in every generation.
This Pesach, let’s remember what our gift of Freedom is. It’s the Freedom to choose to serve the Gottschaft, God’s work, instead of the Volksmeinschaft, the People’s Community. It’s the freedom to choose to devote your life to His way, instead of their way. It’s the freedom to become the divine being we were meant to be, and not become a slave to outside cultures that wish to destroy us. It’s the freedom to be our greatest selves, by choosing to serve the greatest cause, bringing G-dliness to a broken world.
Parsha Dvar Torah
In this week’s parsha, Pekudei, we continue reading about the building of the Tabernacle, and finally see it completed. In all, there are four parshiot that deal almost exclusively with the building of the Tabernacle, and the vessels and vestments used inside it. The Torah goes into enormous detail describing every facet of the construction. It even repeats everything twice – once when it was commanded and once when it was built. This is uncharacteristic of the Torah which normally is very brief. Why did the Torah go into such detail specifically here?
The Tabernacle was the place in which G-d dwelled amongst the Jews. It was also a model around which we can learn to build our homes, and through which we can learn to build a temple inside ourselves for G-d. If we want to have a good relationship with our spouses in our homes, and a good relationship with G-d we need to understand that the majority of a relationship is built through the details.
People often wonder why Judaism stresses all sorts of intricate laws. Shabbat, kashrut, Passover, and tefillin are just some examples of mitzvot that are governed by dozens of technical laws. Why can’t we just love G-d? Why isn’t it enough for me to talk to Him a few times a day, give Him thanks, and tell Him that I love him?
Let’s answer that with this question. Would it be enough for you to simply tell your wife you love her? How about if you told her five times a day? Of course not! The way you show her you love her is by doing all the little things she wants you to do for her. By taking out the garbage, by putting down the seat in the washroom, by writing little love note, by doing the dishes, and by packing a lunch for her to take to work. Not only does doing those things show her you love her, but they also build your love for her, because you’re sacrificing for her, you’re putting her needs above your own. Taking care of the little details is what builds the big love.
We find a focus on detail by even the greatest of Sages. The Talmud recounts the chores that various great Rabbis would do to prepare for Shabbos. Rava would salt the fish, Rav Chisda would cut up beets, Rav Yosef would chop wood, and Rav Nachman would shlepp things that were needed for Shabbos on his shoulder. All of these Sages could have easily exempted themselves from these seemingly trivial tasks, claiming that they should save their time and energy for bigger and better tasks. But they loved Shabbos, and they wanted to be involved in every little detail of creating the perfect Shabbos. The love was in the details.
Rav Leib Chassid, one of the close disciples of the Vilna Gaon, settled in Telshe, Lithuania after the passing of his great teacher. He quickly developed a reputation for his great piety and spent his days studying torah, praying with heartfelt emotion, and helping others. Rarely did he leave his holy work.
One time, he told his wife and children that he needed to go on a journey, and after packing properly he was off. He was gone for weeks and people wondered where he was. He came back aglow with joy. He explained to his family that he wasn’t sure where the proper place to say Amen for the fourth blessing of Birkat Hamazon. So he traveled for weeks to consult with a great sage, and now he knew! When the love is there, even the smallest details are worth going to the ends of the world for.
The Tabernacle was the place G-d would live with His people. The only way it could be built was if we covered all the details, as details are the basis of a real loving relationship. Since this was the foundation of our relationship with G-d, the Torah spent four parshiot on it. Similarly, all the details contained in the mitzvot are the building blocks for the temple we can create within ourselves for G-d. By meticulously following the details He asks of us, we are putting Him above ourselves, and in that way we can build a big temple with little bricks!
Parsha Summary
Pekudei begins with an enumeration the exact amounts of gold, silver, and copper that were donated. (Quick lesson: no matter how great you are, if you are using public funds there should be a level of accountability. Listen up Department of Defense!!!) It then describes in detail the making of the vestments worn by the Kohanim and the Kohen Gadol (the priests and the High Priest). They were discussed already in detail in Parshat Tzav, three weeks ago, please feel free to see that email for more details (yes, I’m sure you save my emails, don’t you?).
The Parsha ends with the commandment to actually set up the Mishkan, and describes its being erected. The Parsha, and indeed the Book of Exodus, closes with the climactic moment when G-d’s glory comes down from on High and rests in the Mishkan that was built for him!
This Shabbos, being the Shabbos before Rosh Chodesh Nissan is Shabbos Hachodesh. We take out a second Sefer Torah, from which we read we read Parshat Hachodesh, in which G-d commands the Jewish people to set their calendar by the moon, the celestial being that goes through constant renewal. May we combine the lesson of renewal with that of humanities’ goal of constantly elevating ourselves, and may we energize ourselves to go through frequent bursts of renewal, ever striving higher!
Quote of the Week: The most exquisite pleasure is giving pleasure to others. – A. Gambiner
Random Fact of the Week: A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbook can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court.
Funny Line of the Week: Found on n a blanket from Taiwan. -NOT TO BE USED AS PROTECTION FROM A TORNADO. Found on a Korean kitchen knife. – WARNING: KEEP OUT OF CHILDREN.
Have a Dandy Shabbos,
R’ Leiby Burnham
