After witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust, the Jewish nation swore, “Never again!” Yet to our shame and dismay, we have forgotten this oath. The destruction of a people is not limited to the physical, but also includes the spiritual ruin that stems from assimilation and loss of identity. The Jews of Diaspora communities are rapidly becoming lost to us, and we seem to have neither the strength nor the desire to bring them back.
Diaspora is Jewry’s Graveyard was written in order to mobilize the Jewish people to fight for our survival. In this revolutionary work, Rabbi Dr. Yehoshua Kemelman seeks to document this phenomenon, provide practical suggestions to end our existential crisis and strengthen the bond of our nation. As he points out the challenges that we need to address as a people, he charts a course of rescue for the perplexed of our generation. Any Jew who is concerned about the survival of the Jewish people, as well as the survival of his or her own children as Jews, will benefit from reading this book.
About the Author
Rabbi Dr. Yehoshua Kemelman, M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt., the former Head of the Beth Din of Australia and New Zealand and Rabbi of the Sydney Central Synagogue, is the author of numerous articles and monographs on Jewish law and life. Under the auspices of the Israeli halachic institution Otzar ha-poskim, Rabbi Kemelman published a book on Halacha in Hebrew entitled Haneshira le-or ha-halacha, about the halachic implications of the advance process of spiritual and national loss of the vast majority of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the former Soviet Union. While on their way to immigrate to Israel, many Russian Jews were encouraged and assisted by American Jewish welfare organizations to immigrate to the United States. Among his other works are a treatise entitled A Guide to the Jewish Dietary Laws and a weekly “Ask the Rabbi” column for the Australian Jewish News.