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Hi, token American Jew(ish) mottizen here. I don't know Witkoff personally, but for the record neither I nor any other American Jew I've ever met, including ones fanatically supportive of Israel, has ever expressed this sentiment that I'm aware of.
Kushner is Modern Orthodox, attended a yeshiva school growing up, and financially supports Orthodox Jewish institutions. He has studied the Tanya and visited the grave of Schneerson, and so it is reasonable to assume that he agrees with their view that —
The particular denomination which Kushner attends and financially supports also teaches that compassion in gentiles is forbidden, and that consequently you are not allowed to have concern for them dying and are in fact obliged to not aid them when they are dying, which you can find in Chapter 10 of Avodah Kochavim of the Sefer Hamada section of the Mishneh Torah, a work read annually among the members of his congregation (and when they finish reading the work there is an enormous celebration).
All well and good to believe these things in private, but IMO we can’t afford to have someone like this possess an iota of influence in middle eastern foreign policy decision making. They are under no obligation to care about the lives of American which are lost, in fact they are under an obligation to not care about them.
(1) Oh come on; if we're going to be mind-reading based on fisked exerpts, any practicing Christian is an anti-family communist, for Jesus came to set fathers against sons, and mothers against daughters, will reward those who foresook their families, businesses, and children in order to perform religious obeisance to him a hundred fold more than ordinary schmucks, categorically bars the wealthy from heaven, and whose chief follower demands complete subsumption of national loyalty into religious brotherhood.
But of course, you and I both know that this isn't at all how it works (unless you're Kulak's alt, in which case nevermind, at least you're consistent about this). Also, I strongly doubt that Kushner's all that committed an Ortho-Jew, primarily because he married Ivanka. Outmarriage is a big no-no in those circles.
(2) Also, even assuming arguendo that you're right with your mindreading, Orthodox of any description are like 10-15% of American Jews.
The mysterious and parabolic sayings of Jesus are not orthopraxic jurisprudential rulings. But the Mishneh Torah is all about orthopraxic jurisprudential rulings. These are two different religions. The Mishneh Torah is the authoritative redaction of the Talmud and read worldwide by the Orthodox like Jared, as binding rules for life. The mysterious sayings of Jesus have never been distilled down to concrete actionable prescriptions (unlike His specified commandments) but are elaborated upon according to the spirit of the reader. You can see here how Aquinas has collected different readings on the "fathers against sons" saying. Or see how a Pope interprets it. You can't draw a comparison between this and Maimonides, because they are handled differently according to the different conventions of the religion. Or in other words, when Jesus says something mysterious it is meditated upon; when the Mishneh Torah says something, it is both meditated upon and implemented within one’s daily life.
Note that we are now, in a sense, staking the possibility of starting WWIII on the presumption that a particular Orthodox Jew does not follow the most important work in his religion, a work read and studied annually by the observant adherents of his denomination. Why would we we even risk these odds, when we can just say “actually, the ~0.8% of the US population who believes this can’t exercise any foreign policy influence”. We can even append “unless they make some kind of vow or public display of condemnation for these specific verses” to the end of that stipulation, if we want to be abundantly tolerant. But as is, having this guy decide the safety of Israel in a conflict against their mythical enemy Persia does not seem rational to me, as his values do not represent the values of 99% of Americans.
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