Four Hundred Rabbis, lashon hora and Glenn Beck

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As the Torah says: “Thou shalt not go up and down as a tale-bearer among thy people (Lev. 19:16).” The sages said there are three transgressions that would cause a man to lose his place in the world to come: murder, adultery, and idol worship. They taught that lashon hora is equivalent to all three.

In Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, 400 liberal Rabbis joined with a progressive Jewish organization called Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ) to bring shame upon themselves; their holy profession and the entire Jewish community. They signed an open letter/advertisement asking Fox News for disciplinary action against Glenn Beck. JFSJ’s website is filled with the language of the extreme left, including progressive phrases such as “economic justice” and “social change,” that the “White Man” is the oppressor and that the concept of “personal responsibility” is by nature racist.

The letter states, “… you diminish the memory and meaning of the Holocaust when you use it to discredit any individual or organization you disagree with. That is what Fox News has done in recent weeks, and it is not only ‘left-wing Rabbis’ who think so.”

Glenn Beck’s 3-day series about financier and political “sugar daddy” George Soros sparked JFSJ to organize the letter from the Rabbinical 400. In the series, Beck referred to an interview Soros gave to “60 Minutes” to discuss how the financier survived the Holocaust as a 14-year-old boy by collaborating with the Nazis. Paraphrasing Soros’ own words, Beck said, Mr. Soros “used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off.” Beck used Soros’ background to help the audience understand why he makes his decisions. Beck also expressed sympathy for the boy who did what he had to do to stay alive.

The open letter goes on to say that Beck’s three-day ”attack” on Mr. Soros was hardly the first time he has misused the Holocaust to incite viewers. They accused the Fox host of making “literally hundreds of on-air references to the Holocaust and Nazis when characterizing people with whom [Beck] disagree[s].”

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