Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Rabbi Shmuley’s Statement on the Drunken Jewish Youths on YouTube

The drunken racist rants recorded in Jerusalem of some American Jewish bums who talked shop on YouTube against Barack Obama was an abomination against Judaism and the State of Israel. I have already written several columns lamenting how a small minority of the large and praiseworthy contingent of Jewish youth who go to Israel from the United States after High School ostensibly to study in Yeshivas end up instead hanging out on Ben Yehuda Street making asses of themselves. That they have no proper supervision and that they are allowed to go through their year in a drunken stupor is an outrage that must be finally addressed by the institutions who host them.

The Jewish community in the United States has legitimate concerns about the President’s insistence that Israeli settlements are the main obstacles to Middle East peace and I intend to address that issue in my next column. But the kind of vile, racist bravado that we witnessed in that video is reprehensible, disgusting, and loathsome and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms. Judaism’s greatest and most important idea is that every human being is created equally in the image of G-d which makes racism not only a crime against humanity but a crime against G-d and religion. These misguided and hate-filled youth represent none but their own lost selves.