Remembering Raoul Wallenberg

 Irwin Cotler is a Member of the Canadian Parliament and the former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. He helped established Canada's Raoul Wallenberg Commemorative Day.

Today is an important moment of remembrance and reminder. It marks the 63^rd anniversary of the January 17^th, 1945 disappearance in the former Soviet Union of Raoul Wallenberg, the lost hero of humanity, whom former Israeli President Chaim Herzog called "the Saint Just of the Nations." Wallenberg, a Swedish non-Jew who saved thousands of Jews in the Holocaust, is the embodiment of the Talmudic idiom that whoever saves a single life, it is as if they have saved an entire universe.

Wallenberg - the lost Hero of the Holocaust - confronted the Nazi killing machine and showed not only that one person can make a difference, but that one person can resist, that one person can confront, that one person can indeed prevail over radical evil.

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Hands off the Law of Return!

The Law of Return is the single most important document defining the character of the Jewish State and its relationship with the Jewish People. The move to amend it represents the most serious assault on that relationship since Ben-Gurion proclaimed statehood in 1948.
 
Menachem Ben-Sasson, chairman of the Knesset Constitution Committee announced that he would hold 12 hours of discussions with the intention of cobbling together a constitution in time for Israel?s 60th Independence Day celebration. Among the controversial issues the committee is to consider is a ?compromise? version of the Law of Return. According to Ben-Sasson all sides will be taken into consideration, all sides will be represented in the final document. This is not encouraging since ?all sides? to be considered includes the Rabbinate?s push for a Halachic-only definition of 'Who is a Jew'. Such a definition would potentially alienate the majority of Jews living in the Diaspora. The third rail of Israeli-Diaspora relations, Who is a Jew must have no place in redefining the Law of Return.

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