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https://aish.com/coronating-the-king-4-ways-to-prepare-for-rosh-hashanah/?
Coronating the King: 4 Ways to Prepare for Rosh 
We may not be invited to King Charles coronation, but we’re all eagerly wanted at a more prestigious coronation – the installation of the ultimate King on Rosh Hashanah.

Immediately upon his mother’s passing, Prince Charles became King of England and the wheels of tradition were set in motion for his coronation ceremony, although it won’t take place for several months. The death of Queen Elizabeth and the transition of power has gripped not only citizens of the United Kingdom, but people around the world.

What is so intriguing and captivating about the royal family that draws such enormous attention, focus, and even obsession?

Dr. Donna Rockwell, a clinical psychologist who specializes in celebrity and fame, suggests that the answer is the royal family's strict adherence to procedure and tradition. She explained: “Life by its very nature is tumultuous and dislocated... [T]he royal family represents order, discipline, stability and a sort of calmness in communication with one another that actually physiologically settles a person.”

Dr. Rockwell believes the royal family represents an escape from an unsettling world: "So in the same way, I think that when an adult is feeling a sense of inner chaos, it's comforting, even neurologically speaking, to be able to observe something of structure," she said.  "The universe is profoundly chaotic so whenever we can anchor ourselves into a sense of order and safety, really, we tend to relax. And that generates the reward center of the brain."

While none of us will be invited to King Charles coronation, all of us are not only invited, but eagerly wanted, at a greater, more prestigious coronation. The installation of the ultimate King, the King of Kings, will take place in just a few days on Rosh Hashanah.

We associate Rosh Hashanah with judgment, but the Torah itself never mentions this theme. Rosh Hashanah corresponds with the creation—not of the world, the first day of creation, but with the birth of man, the sixth day. As the Machzor says, “Zeh hayom techilat ma’asecha, this is the day it all began.”

How do we commemorate our being brought into this world? The answer is through annually coronating God as King and Sovereign over us, the world and everything in it. The Vilna Gaon explains that the shofar on Rosh Hashanah serves in the role of trumpets at the King’s coronation, producing blasts of joy, celebration, and allegiance.

If connecting with the procedure and tradition of human royalty bring calm and comfort, all the more so when we coronate and celebrate God’s Monarchy with our rich practices and customs and with it accept the order, discipline, and stability that a life of loyalty to Him provides.

Rosh Hashanah has its own majesty and pageantry. The transfer to white Torah covers and curtain over the synagogue’s Ark, the reverberating sounds of the shofar, and the stirring traditional melodies – are nothing short of grand, regal, and royal.

Here are four things to keep in mind for this week’s Coronation of the King of Kings:

1. Loyal Member of the Kingdom
While a coronation is about establishing and celebrating a monarch, it generates a period of evaluation and judgment.  Following the coronation, the re-established monarch takes stock of His kingdom, evaluating the role and service of everything in it.  On Rosh Hashanah, everything in the world comes before the King to be assessed and considered.

In anticipation of the coronation, ask yourself if you are fulfilling the purpose for which you were created?  Are you living a mission-driven life, advancing the vision and values of the King?  Are you making the unique contributions that only you can make?

2. My Father, My King
In our case, the King is also our Father.  While the image of God as Monarch intimidates, imposes and instills fear and judgment, the description of Him as our Father reflects His love, affection, and fighting on our behalf.  While both are true, we refer to Him first as our Father reflecting that we are blessed to feel the closeness that He is our Father.

3. Don’t Sleep Through the Coronation
The custom is not to nap on Rosh Hashanah day.  On Coronation Day we should be so excited and exhilarated, so joyous and celebratory that we have no time or interest to take a doze.  But more significantly, being royalty demands that we don’t sleep through life, let it pass us by or be carried by momentum.

On Rosh Hashana we are meant to remain awake and aware, fully conscious, and present, not only physically, but spiritually.

4. Coronation and Community
Dr. Rockwell notes that the royals have the ability to make us feel like we’re part of one big happy family.  When we connect and care about the other members of the Kingdom, it brings honor to the King.  King Solomon taught (Proverbs 14:28) that the glory of the King is revealed when the masses are unified in their acceptance of His sovereignty.  Prepare for Coronation Day by connecting with fellow subjects of the King, showing them care and concern, feeling a sense of unity, a shared history and a shared destiny.

In the Rosh Hashanah prayers we recite, “And those from afar will hear and will come, and they will bestow on You the crown of kingship.”   “Afar” can be a geographic description or a spiritual one.  Even if you feel disconnected and far away, coronation is the time to come close and reconnect.

The royal website states that the coronation ceremony “has remained essentially the same over a thousand years,” so we can expect many of the same events from Queen Elizabeth's coronation to occur at the coming one for King Charles, even though more than 90% of the current population was not alive to see it.

In a world of constant upgrades and improvements, it is important to remember that new is not necessarily better and there are traditions that are meant to remain unchanged.  We are blessed to be heirs to a uniquely rich tradition, one that goes back much further than 1,000 years.  While our coronation ceremony remains unchanged, may each of us use this time to change for the better.

https://aish.com/pivotal-shofar-blasts-throughout-jewish-history/? > Holidays > The High Holidays > Rosh Hashanah > The Shofar
Pivotal Shofar Blasts throughout Jewish HistorySeptember 20, 2022 | by Rabbi Mordechai

The shofar has become the voice of the Jewish people at different occasion throughout history.

Don Aguilar’s Incredible Shofar Concert
While unverified and undocumented, is nevertheless a widespread legend amongst Jews and is cited by the author Eliyahu Kitov in his famous Book of Our Heritage.

This story is supposed to have occurred in 1497, five years after the expulsion of Spain’s Jews. The Jews who remained in Spain were converts to Christianity, many of whom secretly practiced some Judaism in secret. These crypto-Jews were known as conversos, anusim (Hebrew for “those coerced”) or by the derogatory term, Marranos. One of these conversos was a musician, Don Aguilar.

He announced that on Sunday, the 5th of September, he would personally lead an orchestra in Barcelona in a novel concert of his own composition. The piece he wrote would be a celebration of native peoples and their cultures. Exotic instruments from around the world would be utilized in the composition. Many secret Jews came to the concert because that date was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and one of the “exotic” instruments was a ram’s horn.

The horn was played by another converso, who sounded the traditional notes of the shofar blowing in synagogues throughout history and around the world, Tekiah, shevarim, teruah, tekiah.1 Most of the audience appreciated this virtuoso performance of a “primitive” and unfamiliar instrument. However, for the secret Jews in the audience, Don Aguilar’s “music” gave them their first chance in years to fulfill the commandment of hearing the Shofar.2

I cannot attest to the historicity of this story, but I can attest to many examples of Jews going to extraordinary lengths to preserve their heritage under every condition, as we shall see.

WATCH Defiance: The Astonishing Shofar Blowing During the Spanish Inquisition
Shofar in Auschwitz
Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Meisels discusses his Rosh Hashanah experience in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944:

“The experience of one transport that left Auschwitz is seared in my memory. With the grace of God, I was miraculously able to bring a shofar into the camp. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, I went from block to block, shofar in hand, to sound the tekiyot3. This put my life in danger, and I had to avoid the Nazis and malevolent Kapos.4 I thank God that due to His mercy and compassion I was privileged to sound the shofar that Rosh Hashanah some twenty times, coming to a hundred blasts in total. This revived the spirits of the shattered camp inmates and gave them some peace of mind knowing that at least they could observe one mitzvah in Auschwitz – that of shofar on Rosh Hashanah.

“I can still hear reverberating in my ears the sobs that burst forth from those thousand people during the tekiot. I especially remember the trembling voice of the well-known Chassid who announced the sounds before I blew them. He was Rabbi Yehoshua Fleischman, may God avenge his death, from Debrecen, Hungary, who called out the notes in a piercing wail, tekiah, shevarim-teruah, tekiah. I could barely concentrate…



“The boys who were locked in the block and were about to be sent to the crematoria found out that I had a shofar. I heard shouts and entreaties emanating from their block imploring me to come to them and sound the one hundred blasts of the shofar so they could fulfill this precious mitzvah (commandment) on Rosh Hashanah in their last moments of life, before they would be martyred and sanctify the Name of God.

“I was beside myself and completely confounded, because this involved a tremendous risk since it was nearing twilight, a dangerous hour, and the Nazis would be coming to take them. If the Nazis were to suddenly show up while I was in there with the youngsters, no doubt they would take me to the crematoria as well. The Kapos, so famous for their ruthlessness, would not let me escape. I stood there weighing the situation and trying to decide what to do. It was very doubtful that I should take the risk to blow the shofar for the boys in such a dangerous situation, and it was not clear that the risk would be justified even if there were some doubts about the danger. But the youths’ bitter supplications were heart-piercing. ‘Rebbe, rebbe! Please for the sake of God have pity on our souls. We beg you to enable us to observe this mitzvah in our last moments.’ I stood there immobile. I was all alone in my decision….

If truth be told, my decision was probably at variance with the strict law which rules that you do not endanger yourself, or even put yourself slightly at risk, to perform the mitzvah of shofar….”5

At the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel, survivors recounted that Rosh Hashanah. Menachem Brickman, a boy from Lodz taken to Auschwitz when the ghetto was liquidated, described the experience:

The sound of eternity has burst forth even in Auschwitz.

“Suddenly, a sound—a sharp, ongoing sound that hits me. All at once I become tense and listen to the sound, which casts me back to my father’s house. But the sound is already gone… For a moment I think it was an illusion. A shofar? A shofar being blown in Auschwitz. But the thought races through my head. If there’s a shofar, maybe there is still hope. I turn to one of the men and ask him in Yiddish, ‘Vas iz dos?’ (What is this?) ‘A shofar,’ he tells me. ‘It’s Rosh Hashanah today.’ Rosh Hashanah, I think to myself. A shofar being blown on Rosh Hashanah. Right under the Nazis’ noses. Something about the blowing instills in me renewed hope. The sound of eternity has burst forth even in Auschwitz. I keep wondering who blew the shofar and how he managed to smuggle a shofar into Auschwitz. It seems like a tremendous miracle to me. A small light in the dark of night.”6

Clandestine Shofar in Palestine during the British Mandate
During the British Mandate over Palestine, the British wanted to quash any Jewish nationalism and Jewish claims to the Land of Israel. One of the most dramatic examples of shofar blowing was performed by Rabbi Moshe Segal (1904-1985) during the British Mandate. He describes it in his memoirs:

“In those years, the area in front of the Kotel (the Western Wall) did not look as it does today. Only a narrow alley separated the Kotel and the Arab houses on its other side. The British Government forbade us to place an Ark, tables or benches in the alley; even a small stool could not be brought to the Kotel. The British also instituted the following ordinances, designed to humble the Jews at the holiest place of their faith: it is forbidden to pray out loud, lest one upset the Arab residents; it is forbidden to read from the Torah; it is forbidden to sound the shofar on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The British Government placed policemen at the Kotel to enforce these rules.

“On Yom Kippur of that year [1930] I was praying at the Kotel. During the brief intermission between… prayers, I overheard people whispering to each other: ‘Where will we go to hear the shofar? It'll be impossible to blow here. There are as many policemen as people praying...’ The Police Commander himself was there, to make sure that the Jews will not, God forbid, sound the single blast that closes the fast.

“I listened to these whisperings, and thought to myself: Can we possibly forgo the sounding of the shofar that accompanies our proclamation of the sovereignty of God? Can we possibly forgo the sounding of the shofar, which symbolizes the redemption of Israel? True, the sounding of the shofar at the close of Yom Kippur is only a custom, but "A Jewish custom is Torah"! I approached Rabbi Yitzchak Horenstein, who served as the Rabbi of our ‘congregation,’ and said to him: ‘Give me a shofar.

‘What for?’

‘I'll blow.’

‘What are you talking about? Don't you see the police?’

‘I'll blow.’

“The Rabbi abruptly turned away from me, but not before he cast a glance at the prayer stand at the left end of the alley. I understood: the shofar was in the stand. When the hour of the blowing approached, I walked over to the stand and leaned against it.


“I opened the drawer and slipped the shofar into my shirt. I had the shofar, but what if they saw me before I had a chance to blow it? I was still unmarried at the time, and following the Ashkenazic custom, did not wear a tallit (prayer shawl). I turned to person praying at my side and asked him for his tallit. My request must have seemed strange to him, but the Jews are a kind people, especially at the holiest moments of the holiest day, and he handed me his tallit without a word.

“I wrapped myself in the tallit. At that moment, I felt that I had created my own private domain. All around me, a foreign government prevails, ruling over the people of Israel even on their holiest day and at their holiest place, and we are not free to serve our God; but under this tallit is another domain. Here I am under no dominion save that of my Father in Heaven; here I shall do as He commands me, and no force on earth will stop me.

“When the closing verses of the concluding prayer – ‘Hear O Israel,’ ‘Blessed be the name’ and "The Lord is God’ -- were proclaimed, I took the shofar and blew a long, resounding blast. Everything happened very quickly. Many hands grabbed me. I removed the tallit from over my head, and before me stood the Police Commander, who ordered my arrest.

“I was taken to the… prison in the Old City, and an Arab policeman was appointed to watch over me. Many hours passed; I was given no food or water to break my fast. At midnight, the policeman received an order to release me, and he let me out without a word.

“I then learned that when the chief rabbi of the Holy Land, Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook, heard of my arrest, he immediately contacted the secretary of High Commissioner of Palestine, and asked that I be released. When his request was refused, he stated that he would not break his fast until I was freed. The High Commissioner resisted for many hours, but finally, out of respect for the Rabbi, he had no choice but to set me free.

“For the next 18 years, until the Arab conquest of the Old City in 1948, the shofar was sounded at the Kotel every Yom Kippur. The British well understood the significance of this blast; they knew that it will ultimately demolish their reign over our land as the walls of Jericho crumbled before the shofar of Joshua, and they did everything in their power to prevent it. But every Yom Kippur, the shofar was sounded by men who know they would be arrested for their part in staking our claim on the holiest of our possessions.”7

Shofar of Liberation
The next shofar is one of liberation and exaltation and took place at the Western Wall, but this time on June 7th, 1967, during the Six Day War. Below is a transcript of a live radio broadcast of that dramatic and joyous occasion:

“Yossi Ronen (reporter for Israeli Army Radio): We are now walking on one of the main streets of Jerusalem towards the Old City. The head of the force is about to enter the Old City.

[Gunfire.]

Yossi Ronen: There is still shooting from all directions; we’re advancing towards the entrance of the Old City.

[Sound of gunfire and soldiers’ footsteps.]

[Yelling of commands to soldiers.] [More soldiers’ footsteps.]

The soldiers are keeping approximately 5 meters between them. It’s still dangerous to walk around here; there is still sniper shooting here and there.

[Gunfire.]

We’re all told to stop; we’re advancing towards the mountainside; on our left is the Mount of Olives; we’re now in the Old City opposite the Russian church. I’m right now lowering my head; we’re running next to the mountainside. We can see the stone walls. They’re still shooting at us. The Israeli tanks are at the entrance to the Old City, and ahead we go, through the Lion’s Gate. I’m with the first unit to break through into the Old City. There is a Jordanian bus next to me, totally burnt; it is very hot here. We’re about to enter the Old City itself. We’re standing below the Lion’s Gate, the Gate is about to come crashing down, probably because of the previous shelling. Soldiers are taking cover next to the palm trees; I’m also staying close to one of the trees. We’re getting further and further into the city.

[Gunfire.]

Colonel Motta Gur announces on the army wireless: The Temple Mount is in our hands! I repeat, the Temple Mount is in our hands!

All forces, stop firing! This is the David Operations Room. All forces, stop firing! I repeat, all forces, stop firing! Over….

Yossi Ronen: I’m driving fast through the Lion’s Gate all the way inside the Old City.

Command on the army wireless: Comb the area, discover the source of the firing. Protect every building, in every way. Do not touch anything, especially in the holy places.

[Lt.- Col. Uzi Eilam blows the Shofar. Soldiers are singing ‘Jerusalem of Gold’.]

Yossi Ronen: I’m walking right now down the steps towards the Western Wall. I’m not a religious man, I never have been, but this is the Western Wall and I’m touching the stones of the Western Wall.

Soldiers: [reciting the blessing: Blessed are You Lord God King of the Universe who has sustained us and kept us and has brought us to this day!

Rabbi Goren blowing the shofar

Rabbi Shlomo Goren (Chief Rabbi of the IDF): Blessed are You our God, who comforts Zion and builds Jerusalem]

Soldiers: Amen!

[Soldiers sing ‘Hatikvah’ next to the Western Wall.]

Rabbi Goren now recites a prayer for fallen soldiers [Soldiers and reporter weep in the background]

Rabbi Goren sounds the shofar, with the sounds of gunfire in the background.

Rabbi Goren: This year in a rebuilt Jerusalem! In the Jerusalem of old!8

The shofar of Inquisition-era Spain represents the eternal Jewish spark that cannot be extinguished and the flame of Judaism within every Jew that has enabled our continuity despite everything.

The shofar of Auschwitz is a cry of faith in God from the depths of the soul - even in the depths of hell.

The shofar at the Kotel under the British Mandate is the shofar of defiance and determination, two features of the Jewish people that were instrumental in building the State of Israel.

The shofar at the liberation of the Old City is a shofar of triumph and joy as the Jewish people return home and rebuild our ancient homeland and capital city.

The final shofar is not of history but of the future. In the central prayer of Jewish liturgy, the Silent Prayer, also known as the Eighteen Blessings, we say “Sound the great shofar for our liberty, and raise a banner to gather our exiles, and gather us together quickly from the four corners of the earth. into our Land. Blessed are You, God, Gatherer of the dispersed of His people Israel.” What is this “great shofar” to which the prayer refers?

I believe that the “great shofar” is composed of all the smaller shofars of our history – from Spain, Auschwitz, Jerusalem, and every synagogue in the world – all which will be joined together into the “great shofar” which will, in the words of the Bible, “proclaim liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants thereof.”

Tekiah is a long blast; shevarim, three shorter blasts; truah, nine shorter blasts.
Eliyahu Kitov, Book of Our Heritage, Feldheim Pub; Revised Edition, 1978
Plural of tekiah
Non-German, Jewish and non-Jewish camp guards and enforcers
Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Meisels ztz”l, Introduction to Responsa Mekadshei Hashem (Chs. 5-8)
Included in the Hebrew CD-ROM Rabbinic Prefaces, Michlalah-Jerusalem, Esther Farbstein
Moshe Halevi Segal, Dor VeDor, Maarachot Publishing, 1985. Zeev Golan, Shofars of Rebellion, Machon Jabotinsky, 2006
Report of Yossi Ronen, Galei Tzahal, Radio Broadcast, Archives of the Avi Yaffe Recording Studio, Jerusalem.

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Who is This Hasidic Rapper Breaking into the Mainstream?September 12, 2022 | by Kylie Ora

Kendrick Lamar. Drake. DaBaby. Moshe Reuven? Meet the rising Hasidic rapper whose inspirational music is resonating with millions.

Moshe Reuven Sheradsky has always loved rap. When he was 8 years old, he was already writing musical poetry to express himself to the world.

“That was the way I expressed my feelings,” said Sheradsky, who goes by the name Moshe Reuven. “In my teens, it became a serious endeavor. My friends and I did it recreationally, but it became more than just a hobby.”

Now, what started as something fun is now a full- blown music career. Moshe Reuven is a rising star in the industry and has signed to Create Music Group, alongside popular artists like The Chainsmokers, Dillon Francis, and Future. He’s collaborated with Julian Marley, Bob Marley’s son, and he has 1.6 million followers on Instagram and millions of plays on Spotify. He’s been featured in Forbes and Rolling Stone as well.

Moshe Reuven’s music is quite different from most mainstream rap today. It’s uplifting, spiritual, inspirational – and catchy at the same time.

In his latest hit song, “Say,” (which you can listen on Spotify) the chorus, sung by Julian Marley, goes:

Ya only got one life
Do what ya got to do
Go ahead and speak your truth
You only got one life
Go make the most of it
Push it and don’t you quit
One moment in space and time
It’s your turn to wake and shine
So keep on to the fullest
Give on and never give less, be thankful
You’re blessed, no room for no stress

Moshe Reuven connected with Julian after his debut song, “You Are Not Alone,” took off (it currently has more than 1.4 million listens on Spotify).
“I sent Julian several of the songs in the works and he said he felt ‘Say’ sounded really incredible. I told him I needed to figure out what I’m doing for the chorus. I felt his sound would be the perfect compliment to the song. He eventually sent over vocals and my engineer worked on it and finally we had ‘Say.’ It was really meant to be.”

Though Moshe Reuven’s music is very spiritual, he wasn’t always so connected to his faith. Growing up in a Jewish family in Florida, he went through the motions of Jewish practice but didn’t fully embrace them.

“I enjoyed the stories and much of what I learned in Hebrew school, but never took going very seriously,” he said. “It was just something we had to do.”

When Moshe Reuven was a teen, he started partying. And while it was fun, he didn’t find it fulfilling. After one night of partying too hard, he decided he wanted to connect more to his faith.

“I dug deeper and deeper into what I believed, and what God wanted from me,” he said. “I began praying daily, as part of my authentic spiritual journey. Deep down, I was reconnecting to Judaism without even realizing it.”

Following a fateful meeting with a rabbi on his college campus, Moshe Reuven slowly became observant. He was eventually ordained as a rabbi as well. Today, he’s living in New Jersey and is part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. His goal is to help others have a better life and transform them into better versions of themselves.

“The Lubavitcher Rebbe would often stress that one’s talents and opportunities are a divine calling that one has a responsibility to capitalize on for the greater good of humanity,” he said. “I think I have a unique ability to reach a very large amount of people and I am to utilize that as part of my spiritual work.”

With all his success, Moshe Reuven feels truly blessed. He built his massive following by spreading Jewish wisdom on Instagram and TikTok and putting out music that people are connecting to.



“Thank God, people happen to love it, and I’ve amassed some really amazing fans as an artist,” he said. “I can’t say I planned it perfectly. God definitely did.”

To Moshe Reuven, music is more than just his career; it’s how he fulfills his purpose in this world, and does his part to make it a more beautiful place for everyone.

“Music is an expression of the soul, regardless of what genre that it’s in, and my music is an expression of my soul and the journey I walk with God. Whoever you are in the world, you too walk a journey with God. Perhaps my songs can be part of the soundtrack to that journey.”

https://aish.com/10-questions-to-ask-yourself-this-rosh-hashanah/?

10 Questions to Ask Yourself This Rosh Hashanah
September 14, 2022 | by Rabbi Nechemia 

Questions to help you reconnect to your life’s purpose, clarify your goals, and passionately embrace this upcoming new year.

Rosh Hashanah is around the corner, and preparing to stand before God, pleading to be written in the Book of Life, can feel daunting. This time of year could feel like a downer, full of guilt, dread, and despair. It shouldn't. This is the time to reconnect to your life’s purpose, to flex and strengthen your free will muscles and feel more alive, focused and enthused.

You want to come into Rosh Hashanah with clarity about your purpose in life, knowing why you want to be granted another of year of life. This is the time to get back to basics, to restate your life goals and make any necessary recalibrations to ensure you get there.

It’s a new year. Nothing is holding you back. Think positively and greet Rosh Hashanah with passion and drive to live the upcoming year to its fullest.

Here is a list of questions that will help you with your introspection. Be sure to take some time out to think about these questions. Write down your answers. That will help concretize your thinking. Meditate on them; don’t rush. There's a lot here. Don't tackle them all at once. Perhaps think about one a day.

I hope that once you’re done, you’ll be closer to gaining the clarity you need to confidently declare, “Inscribe us in the Book of Life!”

10 Questions for the New Year
What are your core strengths and talents? How can you use them more productively and meaningfully?

Looking back at this past year, for what things are you most grateful?

What is one of your greatest weaknesses? How is this holding you back? What practical steps can you take to improve in this area?

Do you have a life’s mission statement? Write it out. What are you doing to fulfill that mission? Ask a mentor or friend for feedback.

If you only had one year to live, what would you make sure to do? Which are you going to commit to doing this year?

If fear was no issue, what goal would you set out to accomplish? What can you do to push through your fear, and what steps can you take to start working on accomplishing this goal?

What practical steps can you take to lead a healthier life?

Looking at the significant relationships you have in your life, which one would benefit most from your additional attention? What can you do to improve that relationship?

In what state is your relationship with God? What step(s) can you commit to take on to strengthen that relationship?

What project or goal, if left undone, will you regret most not having accomplished next Rosh Hashanah?

aish.com > Current Issues > Society
History of the Swastika: 6 Facts
July 3, 2022 | by Dr. Yvette Alt 
Swastikas have a long history and are widely employed around the world today.
The state of Victoria in Australia has made it illegal to display swastikas. After racist incidents increased 750% over the past year and a half, Victorian legislators moved to ban the Nazi-linked image.

“Victoria has now become the first (state) in Australia to ban the public display of the Nazi symbol, recognizing its role in inciting antisemitism and hate,” tweeted Jacyln Symes, Victoria’s Attorney-General and Minister for Emergency Services.

Brazil, Germany and Hungary also ban public displays of swastikas.
Although the swastika is identified with Nazism today, the symbol has a long history and continues to be widely used in art, architecture and religious devotion today.

Here are 6 facts about this powerful symbol.
Asian Origins
The word swastika comes from the Asian language Sanskrit, where svastika means good luck and success. The earliest images of swastikas in Asia date back thousands of years.

Pictures of swastikas were a common design on ancient Mesopotamian coins and were carved into temples and homes. These ancient swastikas appeared in two forms: the more familiar version that is associated with Nazi Germany which appears to be rotating clockwise, and a counter-clockwise version (called a sauvastika in Sanskrit).

While the svastika was associated with the movement of the sun across the sky and had positive connotations, the sauvastika was commonly associated with nighttime, fear and death.

Associations with Idolatry
Swastika images have been found in cultures around the world, including in Europe and in native American art. (Swastikas – and sauvastikas - are particularly common in Navajo art.) The meanings of these designs varied. In many cases swastikas were associated with various gods and goddesses in diverse cultures. In India, swastikas are associated with the god Ganesh, bringer of luck, while the backwards sauvastika is used as a symbol of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death.

Hindu swastika
In northern Europe, this image was associated with the Norse god Thor, who was said to control storms and thunder and was one of the most powerful idols in the Norse pantheon. In Buddhism, swastikas represent the intellect of the Buddha. They are often imprinted into statues of Buddha on the heart, feet or hands and are sometimes used to decorate Buddhist temples and ritual clothing.

For adherents of the Jain religion, swastikas represent their seventh saint, and are also used to represent the concept of rebirth. In May 2022, archeologists excavating near the Gyanvapi Mosque in the southern Indian city of Varanasi found two old swastikas carved near the old mosque, raising the possibility that this symbol was sacred to Muslims in the area.

Even Christianity has used the swastika symbol. Early and Byzantine Christian art contain swastikas. Some versions of the crux gemmate, the “jeweled cross” that was popular in the Middle Ages, were represented in swastika form.

Popular Motif in Asia Today
Swastikas – and sauvastikas – continue to be popular motifs in much of the world today. In Indonesia and India, swastikas are carved into houses and temples as a sign of prosperity.

Home décor being sold on Ali Express

Swastika is also a girl’s name in India, where it means lucky.

19th Century German Popularity
In the 1800s, the great German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) did much to popularize archeology – and also the swastika image. While excavating the site of ancient Troy in Turkey, Schliemann unearthed images of ancient swastikas. He’d seen similar designs on old pottery back in Germany and was excited by this coincidence.

Schliemann formulated the theory that a common Euro-Asian civilization had used swastikas in their religious worship, and that the image had spread widely across Asia and Europe in ancient times. This theory fit neatly into the burgeoning (and today largely discredited) idea that a common Aryan ancestral civilization settled in present-day Iran then spread into Europe and India, bringing with them their religious symbols and language (as well as their supposedly superior genetic makeup).
Swastikas became popular in the 1800s in Germany and elsewhere Europe, and for a time they were seen as a symbol of Europe’s ancient past. But the overtly racist tones of German interest in their “Aryan” ancestors transformed the swastika into a nationalist symbol. Known as the Hakenkreuz, or hooked cross, in German, swastikas eventually became associated in Germany with the far right and with anti-Jewish feeling. After World War I and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the swastika was the symbol of groups who wanted to create a racially “pure” German state.

Nazi Embrace
As he wrote his anti-Jewish screed Mien Kampf in 1925, Adolf Hitler described creating a new German flag: a black swastika on a white disk, placed against a red background. The colors of his proposed flag echoed the old imperial German flag, and the swastika represented a racially pure “Aryan” Germany. After gaining power in 1933, Hitler mandated that the Nazi flag he’d designed be flown on all government buildings.

A protest in New York two years later was the ostensible impetus for Hitler to mandate that his swastika-featuring flag become Germany’s national icon. One day in July 1935, several hundred Americans swarmed the German passenger ship SS Bremen as it lay docked in New York’s harbor. They were outraged at recent anti-Jewish actions in Germany and wanted to protest. They took the swastika-emblazoned flag from the ship’s mast and ripped it up, throwing it into the Hudson River.

Hitler’s government protested the move and vowed revenge. Soon after, while passing the infamous Nuremberg Race Laws disenfranchised Germany’s Jews and enshrined anti-Jewish discrimination in German law, Hitler ordered the passing of a Flag Law. The Nazi flag, with its large swastika, was now the official flag of Germany.

Bans on Swastikas Today – and Renewed Popularity
Following the Holocaust, many European nations – including Germany and other countries allied with Germany during World War II such as France, Italy, Hungary and Austria - banned the display of swastikas. While displaying a swastika is illegal in much of Europe today, in some other regions of the world swastikas are an ever-present symbol signifying rising hatred of Jews.
The Anti-Defamation League notes that: “Among white supremacists, the swastika is a very common symbol… Since the (1998) release of ‘American History X,’ a favorite movie of white supremacists, it has been very common for male while supremacists to get a swastika tattoo on their left breast in imitation of the mains character in that movie. One trend seen most often in California among members of white power gangs is the popularity of very large outline swastika tattoos.”

USA Today has noted that the popularity of swastikas has been rising for a while: “It is more popular than ever among non-ideological haters – kids, vandals, anyone out to shock or rebel or express a personal grudge against someone who happens to be Jewish, black, Hispanic or gay.”

Part of this trend, the newspaper notes, is that organized hate groups have begun to try and discourage the use of swastikas, on the assumption that such an offensive symbol detracts from their image and might scare off potential supporters.

That seems to have been the case recently in Gaza. There, in 2019, Hamas, the terror group which calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, asked its supporters to stop waving Nazi swastika flags at protests because it made them look too extremist and might deter international supporters from backing the terror group.

With the recent uptick in anti-Jewish hate around the world, it’s possible that we’ll be seeing more swastikas displayed – not as ancient Asian religious symbols, but as anti-Jewish motifs.

https://aish.com/thank-you-maam-a-personal-letter-to-the-queen/?acid=1b81364b7cf9d6c258b67cddaa94e16b&src=ac-txt

Thank You, Ma’am: A Personal Letter to the QueenSeptember 11, 2022 | by Rabbi Shaul

I am deeply grateful that you were queen during my lifetime.
Thank you, Ma’am
With all of my heart, thank you, Ma’am, for being one of the “little princesses” who lifted our nation in its darkest hour
Thank you, Ma’am, for your first public speech during the Blitz to encourage frightened children around you. Putting your people before yourself, even at age 14.

Thank you, Ma’am, for leading the way by volunteering for civilian duties during the war.

Thank you, Ma’am, for devoting your entire life to the service of “our great imperial family” when you were only 21.

Thank you, Ma’am, for keeping that promise fully, wholeheartedly and with a deep sense of love.

Thank you, Ma’am, for putting aside your personal grief, when your father passed away, and focusing instead on the needs of your country.

Thank you, Ma’am, for taking on the full burden of leadership at the young age of 25. Your life was ahead of you – but you put it behind you and chose your nation instead.



Thank you, Ma’am, for travelling the world numerous times in service of that nation.

Thank you, Ma’am, for not neglecting your family, but nevertheless, always putting us first.

Thank you, Ma’am, for representing us, your nation, so capably, so ably and with such skill, diplomacy and tenacity for seventy years.

Thank you, Ma’am, for being a queen that made us so proud.

Thank you, Ma’am, for being the magnet that drew hundreds of millions of tourists to our country.

Thank you, Ma’am, for appointing your last Prime Minister, your final duty, only two days before you passed away. You could not have been well. But who would have known?

Thank you, Ma’am, for seeing yourself as our servant, rather than we as yours.

Thank you, Ma’am, for 70 years of service as our monarch.

Thank you, Ma’am, for 70 years of stability and prosperity.

Thank you, Ma’am, for seventy years of being a role model of faith in God, love for humanity, duty, optimism and propriety.

Thank you, Ma’am, for the brave face that you have always worn for us, even in your darkest of personal times.

Thank you, Ma’am, for your unswerving and unequivocal support for 15, yes 15, Prime Ministers.

Thank you, Ma’am, for being the rock upon which our country has built a modern world for itself.

Thank you, Ma’am, for leaving our county so much better off than when you began.

Thank you, Ma’am, for being the only queen that I have ever known. A queen to admire. A queen to love. A queen to respect. A queen to miss and mourn for. A queen to leave an empty space in my heart now that you are gone

Thank you, Ma’am, for your dignity, your humility, your love.

Thank you, Ma’am, for your life of unequivocal service to our nation.

My life, and the life of your 67 million subjects, has been infinitely better because of your service. And I am deeply grateful that you were queen during my lifetime.

With all of my heart,
Shaul Rosenblatt


https://aish.com/king-charles-iii-and-the-jews/
aish.com > Current Issues > Society
King Charles III and the JewsSeptember 11, 2022 | by Dr. Yvette Alt MillerFacebookEmailPrintFriendlyShare

6 Facts about Britain’s new king.
With the passing of Britain’s beloved Queen Elizabeth II at age 96, the longest serving monarch in the United Kingdom’s history, her eldest son Prince Charles has become Britain’s newest monarch.  Here are six facts about King Charles III, Jews, and Israel.

Circumcised by a Rabbi
King Charles III has something in common with thousands of British Jews, he was circumcised by Rabbi Jacob Snowman (1871-1959), a brilliant physician and one of London’s leading mohelim (Jewish ritual circumcisers).

The tradition dates back to the early 1700s, when Britain’s King George I – who was born in Germany – imported the custom of German noblemen to have mohelim circumcise their sons.  It’s unclear why this became a tradition, but some speculate that their extensive experience reassured anxious parents that their sons would be safe during the procedure.  Charles’ mother Queen Elizabeth wanted only the best for Charles, so she turned to Rabbi Snowman, who was well known in London’s Jewish community.

Visiting Israel

Unlike Queen Elizabeth II, who never visited Israel in all her long years on the throne, her son Charles has made trips to the Jewish state.  One emotional visit occurred in 2016, when he travelled to Jerusalem for the funeral of former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.  While there, Charles visited the grave of his grandmother, Princess Alice of Greece, who saved Jews during the Holocaust and was named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.  She is buried in Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Born in 1885, Princess Alice was the great granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria.  She married Prince Andrew of Greece and moved to Athens with her new husband. She was intensely unhappy. A religious Christian, Alice watched as her husband drifted into a life of dissolution. With the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, her three daughters all became ardent Fascists and married Nazi officials.  Only her son Philip, King Charles father, defied Nazism, moving to England and fighting with distinction in the British air force during World War II.

Princess Alice remained at home in Athens alone; her husband had long since left her and was completely devoted to a life of drinking and gambling. During the Holocaust, Princess Alice invited a Jewish family she was friends with, the Cohens, to move into her apartment with her. Her building was next to the Gestapo’s Athens headquarters, and Princess Alice was even brought in for questioning at one point, but she refused to divulge the fact that she was sheltering Jews.

After the Holocaust, she was named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.  Alice founded a religious order and died in 1969.  Her wish was to be buried in Israel.  At first her family ignored her request, but in 1988 the Royal Family arranged for her remains to be reinterred in Jerusalem.  On his 2016 visit to her grave, Charles brought purple flowers that had been grown in Scotland – her favorite – and placed them on her grave.

King Charles visited Israel again in 2020, when he attended the World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.  There, Charles lingered, speaking with Jewish Holocaust survivors at length, and hearing their stories. “He was very interested in how it was in Auschwitz and how we managed to survive,” explained survivor Marta Weiss, who met the newest monarch during his visit. “He was very sympathetic. He came across as genuinely interested, not just doing it for the sake of it.”

He Owns His Own Personalized Kippah
King Charles III owns his own personalized kippah: a blue velvet yarmalke adorned with the official royal crest of the Prince of Wales, his previous title, embroidered in gold and white thread.


One of the first sightings of the royal kippah was at the installation of Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mervis in 2013. Charles was the first member of the royal family to attend an installation of a chief rabbi.

Friends with Leading Orthodox Rabbi
King Charles and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of Britain, of blessed memory, forged a close bond, brought together by their public roles as community leaders in Britain and by their shared commitment to making the world a better place. When Rabbi Sacks died in 2020, Charles delivered an emotional eulogy for his friend and teacher.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks “and I were exact contemporaries, born in the year of the foundation of the State of Israel, and, over many years, I had come to value his counsel immensely.  He was a trusted guide, and inspired teacher and a true and steadfast friend.  I shall miss him more than words can say….  He taught us how to listen to others, and how to learn from them without compromising the convictions of either party; he taught us to value participation in the common life of the nation; and through it all, he taught us the need to respect the integrity and harmony of God’s Creation.”

Adding Portraits of Holocaust Survivors to the Royal Collection
Last year, King Charles commissioned seven major new paintings to add to the official Royal Collection of art, displayed in Buckingham Palace: seven paintings of Holocaust survivors.  The project was part of the prince’s long-standing aim of educating future generations and ensuring that the horrors of the Holocaust are never forgotten.

King Charles himself wrote an introduction to the exhibit’s catalog: “Behind every portrait is a unique story, of a life lived, of love, of loss.  However, these portraits represent something far greater than seven remarkable individuals.  They stand as a living memorial to the six million innocent men, women, and children whose stories will never be told, whose portraits will never be painted. They stand as a powerful testament to the quite extraordinary resilience and courage of those who survived and who, despite their advancing years, have continued to tell the world of the unimaginable atrocities they witnessed. They stand as a permanent reminder for our generation – and indeed, to future generations – of the depths of depravity and evil humankind can fall to when reason, compassion and truth are abandoned.”

Seven Portraits: Surviving the Holocaust went on display in Buckingham Place in January 2022.

Touched by Jewish Prayers for the Royal Family
Each week, Jews across Britain and the Commonwealth pray for the welfare of the monarch and their near relations in synagogue on Shabbat.  For decades, that meant praying for the welfare of Queen Elizabeth II – and her son, “Charles, Prince of Wales, and all the royal family….”

In 2019, at a royal Hanukah party at Buckingham Palace, King Charles praised Britain’s Jewish community and formally thanked them for their prayers. “I say this from a particular and personal perspective, because I Have grown up being deeply touched by the fact that British synagogues have, for centuries, remembered my family in your weekly prayers. And as you remember my family, so we too remember and celebrate you.”

King Charles III is consoling his nation from the depths of his very own grief. It is a testament to his commitment to a life of service and giving to others.

After Queen Elizabeth II's death, Britain's Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, noted that "Throughout her extraordinary reign, she conducted herself with grace, dignity and humility and was a global role model for distinguished leadership and selfless devotion to society… Every week in synagogue we have prayed for her welfare, well-being and wisdom, and she never let us down."

We wish those very same qualities for her son, Britain's new king, and extend our deepest sympathies and our wishes for a long a successful reign.

https://aish.com/the-german-presidents-stunning-act-of-repentance/?acid=1b81364b7cf9d6c258b67cddaa94e16b&src=ac-txt
The German President’s Stunning Act of RepentanceSeptember 8, 2022 | by Sara Yoheved Rigler

In Munich. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke as if he had studied Maimonides’ five steps of teshuvah.

In the Jewish calendar, tis the season to do teshuvah — to repent for past wrongdoings. Rabbis and spiritual mentors are discoursing on the steps of teshuvah outlined by Maimonides, the great 12th century expositor of the concept. But, ironically, it is the President of Germany who this week gave the world a stunning example of repentance.

The weeks leading up to the 50th anniversary of the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics were fraught with dissension. The families of the victims announced that they would boycott the commemorative ceremony because the German government had for 50 years lied to them, refused to share the archive of thousands of files and hundreds of forensic pictures that revealed what had happened to their loved ones, and offered a pittance of a financial compensation.

Although it was Arab terrorists who had murdered the athletes, the families of the victims rightly accused the Germans of failure to protect the athletes (even refusing Israeli security offers), the botched rescue operation, and the cold, mendacious way the German government handled the affair afterwards.

Finally, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier offered to fly to Israel to work out an agreement, and the families agreed to attend the ceremony.

In Munich, amidst the dark grief of commemorating the tragedy, a beacon of light shone forth from an unlikely source. President Steinmeier spoke as if he had studied Maimonides’ five steps of teshuvah.

1. The first step of teshuvah is admitting one’s failure, without rationalizations or excuses.
Here’s how President Steinmeier began his address:

Today’s act of remembrance can only be sincere if we are prepared to recognize painful facts – if we acknowledge that the story of the Olympic attack is also a story of misjudgments and of dreadful, fatal mistakes: of, in fact, failure. We are talking about a great tragedy and a triple failure.

The first failure regards the preparations for the games and the security strategy; the second comprises the events of Sept. 5 and 6, 1972; and the third failure begins the day after the attack: the silence, the denial, the forgetting.”

2. The second step is to regret one’s wrong action.
President Steinmeier acknowledged that it was Germany’s responsibility as the host of the games to protect all the athletes, especially those from Israel. In a poignant admission, tinged with remorse, he confessed:

There were survivors of the Shoah among the athletes and their coaches. Their safety had been entrusted to us. What a great vote of confidence it was to take part, after the crimes against humanity of the Shoah, in Olympic Games hosted by the country of the perpetrators. … We were not prepared for an attack of this kind, and yet we ought to have been; that, too, is part of the bitter truth…. Honored family members, I cannot fathom what suffering, what pain you’ve been through, how can life go on. For five decades, that gnawing pain has been with you.

3. The third step is undertaking to act differently in the future.
After five decades of Germany denying the existence of the archives and evading their obligation to the victims’ families, President Steinmeier announced that the German government would establish an Israeli-German commission of historians to “shed light onto that dark chapter.”

Directly addressing the families, he declared: “You have a right to finally know the truth, to finally receive answers to the questions that have tormented you for decades. And they include the question of why you were left alone with your suffering, your pain, for so long.”

4. The fourth step (if another person has been hurt) is to ask forgiveness.
President Steinmeier did exactly that, declaring: “As the head of state of this country and in the name of the Federal Republic of Germany, I ask your forgiveness for the woefully inadequate protection afforded to the Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich and for the woefully inadequate investigation afterwards.”

5. The fifth step (if property is involved) is to make restitution.
The German government, after its long refusal to do so, offered the victims’ families a compensation package of 28 million dollars.

Teshuvah, our sages assert, actually changes the past. The damage remains, but the person who has done genuine teshuvah is no longer the same agent of wrongdoing. By transforming oneself, through admitting, regretting, resolving to act differently in the future, apologizing, and making restitution, the progenitor of the evil has become an agent of light.

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier deserves credit for showing us all how to do it.

https://aish.com/jamaica-jews-and-christopher-columbus-the-fascinating-history-of-jews-in-jamaica/?acid=1b81364b7cf9d6c258b67cddaa94e16b&src=ac-txt
ish.com > History > Middle Ages
Jamaica, Jews and Christopher Columbus: The Fascinating History of Jews in JamaicaSeptember 4, 2022 | by Rabbi Ken SpiroFacebookEmailPrintFriendlyShare

What did Bob Marley have in common with Jews?

Jamaica! Reggae music, Bob Marley, beaches, palm trees, Usain Bolt and… Jews.

Jews!?

Surprisingly, the Jewish connection to Jamaica is very old and very interesting. In order to understand the Jewish connection to Jamaica, we need to go back to Spain, 1492.

The date 1492 usually conjures Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World. But 1492 is also the year of one of the most traumatic events in Jewish history – the expulsion of Jews from Spain. These two events are actually connected.

July 31st, 1492 was the date set by Ferdinand and Isabella, the king and queen of Spain, for all Jews to either convert to Christianity or leave the country. On that date the Jewish community of Spain, which had flourished for 780 years, came to an end. It is estimated that about half the Jews converted and stayed. Many secretly held onto their Jewish traditions, becoming Marranos, a derogatory term that means pigs, or Bnei Anusim (Hebrew for “the children who were forced”). At great risks, these secret Jews continued to practice Judaism, while an equal number left the country.

Many went to Portugal where they were forcibly baptized five years later. Immediately after the July 31st deadline, Columbus, who was possibly of Jewish ancestry, set sail on three ships with 88 crew (five of whom were Jewish) in search of a westerly route to the Far East. Two months later, on October 12th, 1492, he stumbled upon the Bahamas and opened up the Americas for European colonization.

Part of the reward that Columbus received for his discovery was the Island of Jamaica.

Columbus’s accidental discovery of the Americas opened up a massive new world for conquest, colonization and fierce competition, primarily between Catholic Spain, Portugal and France and Protestant England and Holland (which declared in dependence from Spain in 1581).

It also opened up a new port of refuge for the persecuted and exiled Jewish refugees of the Iberian Peninsula.

Today North America remains the largest Diaspora community in the Jewish world, overwhelming populated by the descendants of Eastern European, Ashkenazi Jews who fled by the millions from Czarist Russia between 1882 and 1914. Long before any Jews came to North America, they first settled in the West Indies and South America and Sephardic Jews (“Sephardic” meaning from Spain) got there centuries before any Ashkenazim showed up.

The expulsion of 1492 and the hardships that followed, for those who remained in Spain and Portugal, were the primary reasons for the arrival of these first Sephardic Jews to the new world.

Back in Spain and Portugal, in the early 16th century, thousands of Jewish forced-converts to Christianity, now known as “new Christians,” lived in constant terror of discovery at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition, which began in 1478, hunted down, arrested and often tortured and murdered tens of thousands of new Christians on suspicion of secretly practicing their old faith and negatively influencing other new Christians. It is estimated that more than 30,000 people, many of them Jews, were executed by the Inquisition, which did not officially end until 1834.

Shaare Shalom Synagogue

During the 16th century, fear of the Inquisition and a desire for a religious freedom led many of these crypto-Jews (forced converts who continue to secretly cling to their faith) to flee Spain and Portugal for North Africa, Holland, the Ottoman Empire and the New World.

The Americas proved to be an attractive option for crypto-Jewish refugees. Colonization opened up many economic opportunities and there was much greater freedom since these Spanish and Portuguese colonies were far away from the prying eyes of the Inquisition. The oldest of these communities were located in Brazil, Suriname, Curacao, St Domingo, Barbados and Jamaica.

Crypto-Jewish refugees from the Iberian Peninsula began to arrive in Jamaica soon after Columbus’s voyage, probably around 1494. They identified themselves as Spanish or Portuguese, not as Jews, and settle in Kingston, Port Royal, Montego Bay and other locations throughout the Island. Columbus, who controlled the island, did not allow the Inquisition into Jamaica, so while these crypto-Jews could not yet openly practice their faith, it was much easier and safer to practice in secret in Jamaica than back in Spain. Economic opportunities were also abundant, especially in trading in sugar, vanilla, tobacco, rum and gold. The community prospered and grew in relative freedom.

The situation for the Jews of Jamaica improved dramatically when England, which was Spain’s arch-enemy, conquered the Island in 1655. The timing was perfect as Oliver Cromwell, who ruled England at that time, had just allowed Jews back into England 365 years after they were expelled by Edward I in 1290. The Jews of Jamaica could finally openly practice their faith. After Cromwell, King Charles II confirmed the citizenship and the rights of the Jews of both Great Britain and the colonies including Jamaica.

The first synagogue in Jamaica was built in the later half of the 17th century, but was destroyed by an earthquake in 1692. Synagogues in Jamaica and the West Indies have a very unique feature: wooden floors covered with sand. There is much speculation as to reason, ranging from a remembrance of the wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt to commemorating the attempts by crypto-Jews back in Spain, living in fear of the inquisition, to muffle the sound of their footsteps while they prayed in secret. As the population grew, so did the number of synagogues scattered throughout the island.

A floor of sand inside the Shaare Shalom synagogue.

The expanding Jewish population in the 17th century helped turn Jamaica into a thriving trading center in the Caribbean and also a major launching point for raids against Spanish and Portuguese shipping. Jews such as Abraham Blauvelt worked as privateers (legally sanctioned by the British government to raid enemy ships as part of maritime warfare) while other Jews, like Moses Cohen Enrique, were actual pirates.

The exact extent of Jewish pirate activity is much debated and likely exaggerated but it certainly would have been sweet revenge for the Jews of Jamaica whose ancestors were so abused in the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. In the Hunt’s Bay Cemetery (there are 22 known Jewish cemeteries in Jamaica) there are seven grave stones with skull and crossbones on them.

Skull and crossbones on a Jewish tombstone - Hunt's Bay Cemetery, Jamaica
Ashkenazi Jews began to arriving in Jamaica in the early 18th century and by 1710 approximately 20% of the population of Kingston, the largest city and today the capital, was Jewish. The Jewish population reached its peak in the 1880’s when 22,000 of the island’s 580,000 residence were Jewish, including four of Kingston’s mayors.

Jamaica achieved independence from Britain in 1962 and its first US ambassador, Neville Ashenheim, was Jewish. Political instability in the 1970s let to a mass exodus of Jews from the island and today only between 300 to 500 Jews remain. Besides a Chabad House, the only synagogue open is Shaare Shalom in Kingston, built in 1885.

A fascinating connection between Jews and Jamaica is Rastafarianism – a religion and social movement that appeared in Jamaica in the 1930s that was popularized by the Reggae musician Bob Marley. While Jews had nothing to do with the founding of Rastafarianism, there is no question that Judaism and Biblical themes and concepts like the Exodus narrative played a significant role in shaping Rastafarianism. The music of Bob Marley is laced with Biblical references and even direct quotes from the Bible.

So the next time you hear Marley singing “Zion train is coming our way”, you’ll know that it already made a stop in Jamaica more than 500 years ago.

https://aish.com/can-philosophy-prove-anything/?
Can Philosophy Prove Anything?September 4, 2022 | by Peter van Inwagen
If science can't prove or disprove something, can philosophy?

The omnipresence of God is the reason why His non-existence can't be proved by science alone. Science can prove the non-existence only of things that would exhibit some sort of local presence if they existed—like the celestial spheres or the luminiferous ether or spontaneously generated life or the canals of Mars or people whose lives and fortunes depend on the way the points of light in the terrestrial sky were arranged at the moment of their birth.

If a medieval student had asked his astronomy teachers why we couldn't see the celestial spheres, he would have been told that they were invisible because they were perfectly transparent. But, of course, you can prove the non-existence of a locally present but invisible thing, whether it's H.G. Wells' Invisible Man or the celestial spheres. It will have to manifest its local presence in some way. Everyone agreed that the celestial spheres manifested themselves in certain regions of space by being a real solid presence there—one that would stop a comet dead in its tracks.

God isn't like that: He's not invisible by being locally present but perfectly transparent; He's invisible by not being locally present at all. The luminiferous ether is locally present everywhere, perfectly transparent (by definition), and intangible—at least in the sense that we can detect no resistance when we move a physical object through it. Nevertheless, the fact that it is locally present (even if uniformly so everywhere) has observational consequences.

The earth moves around the sun in very nearly a circle, and the constant change of direction of the earth's motion through the motionless ether would have certain consequences for how light behaves. When we look for these consequences, we don't find them, and they are of such a magnitude that, even a century ago, finding them was well within the competency of experimental physics. So, because of its local presence, the ether can have its existence disproved by science. God, however, being without local presence, is not in the business of having his existence disproved by science.

God, however, being without local presence, is not in the business of having his existence disproved by science.

If what I have said is correct, it does not mean God's existence can't be disproved. It means that the proof will have to be something other than a scientific disproof (though it may include premises that have been established by scientific investigation). It will have to be a philosophical disproof: God's not being a locally present being means that the question of the relation between any observation and any statement about God will have to be a philosophical question. If anyone ever presents any argument of the form:

We observe so-and-so and not such-and-such.

If there were a God, we should observe such-and-such, not so-and-so.

Hence, There is no God, that person has to be offering a philosophical argument because the second premise (the premise that tells us what we should observe if there were a God) will never be so self-evidently true that it doesn't need any defense. This is because a being who is not locally present is so different from the kinds of beings our mental reflexes are used to dealing with.

God's not being a locally present being means that the question of the relation between any observation and any statement about God will have to be a philosophical question

The defense will have to be a philosophical one (because science, the only other possible source of defense, deals only with locally present beings). I say this not because philosophy is above science, grander, or made of finer intellectual clay but simply because philosophy is the final home of all those questions about the general nature of things that we don't know how to deal with in any decisive or compelling way.

The Non-existence of God Argument
Very well, then: any argument for the non-existence of God must be a philosophical argument. But what does this mean? If it is a fact that any argument for the non-existence of God must be a philosophical argument, what are the implications of this fact?

I will try to answer these questions. My attempt begins with a definition. Let us say that an argument for some conclusion is a compelling argument for that conclusion if any human being who carefully considered the argument, understood its premises and the reasoning by which the conclusion was derived from the premises, and did not accept the conclusion would be positively irrational.

This definition is not so stringent as to be useless. There are compelling arguments for certain conclusions. Mathematics is full of them; one famous example would be Euclid's proof that there is no greatest prime. Here is a non-mathematical example. The great crackpot Immanuel Velikovsky (there can be greatness in crackpottery) sets out in his 1950 best-seller Worlds in Collision, a theory according to which the earth has changed its direction of spin during the span of recorded human history. (His position is not that this reversal was a miracle, as in H. G. Wells' story The Man Who Could Work Miracles. He contends that it was an event in the natural order.)

Now anyone with even the most elementary physics knowledge will know this is impossible. But let us leave physics aside. If such an event were to occur, the very least we could expect is that, at the moment of the reversal of the direction of the earth's rotation, there would be violent earthquakes on every point on the surface of the earth. (Those who are not willing to leave physics aside will realize that this statement is comparable to the statement that if a hydrogen bomb were to go off in your bedroom, the very least you could expect is that the bedroom windows would be blown out.)

So, if Velikovsky is right, there was some moment in, say, the last ten thousand years at which there were violent earthquakes all over the earth's surface. But there is a compelling argument for the conclusion that this thesis is false. (The argument is due to Isaac Asimov.) In many places in the world, there are limestone caverns decorated by nature with those remarkable structures called stalactites and stalagmites—and these structures are as delicate as they are lovely. A violent earthquake would cause them all to come crashing down. And they take hundreds of thousands of years to form.

It follows that there has been no earthquake during the last ten thousand years, at least in those places where there are stalactites and stalagmites. And so Velikovsky is refuted. And this argument is, in my sense, compelling. Anyone who understands it and does not reject at least Velikovsky's thesis that the earth changed its direction of spin in the last ten thousand years is simply being irrational. (Strictly speaking, I suppose, the scientific reasons for thinking that stalactites and stalagmites take hundreds of thousands of years to form would have to be included in the reasoning for it to be truly compelling. But I think it would be irrational to reject expert testimony on this matter, and that is what geologists tell us.)

There are, therefore, compelling arguments—against there having been ubiquitous earthquakes within the last ten thousand years, against the existence of the celestial spheres, against the existence of astrological influences. All these examples are arguments for the non-existence of various things, and I have chosen them as examples because non-existence arguments are our primary interest here. But, of course, I don't mean to imply by my choice of examples that there aren't also compelling arguments for the existence of various things. There is, for example, a persuasive argument for the existence of a causal link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.

But are there any compelling philosophical arguments? If so, what would they be? Let us look at a philosophical argument that I will use as an example simply because I think it's a pretty good argument. First, a bit of stage-setting. Let's say that one has free will if, when faced with a decision between two or more alternatives, one is at least sometimes able to choose either of them: each is open to one. Suppose, for example, that I'm trying to decide whether to admit to the offense the police have charged me with (and of which I'm indeed guilty) or to try to brazen it out.

If I'm both able to confess and able to try to brazen it out, if both alternatives are open to me, then I have free will—at least on this particular occasion. And let's say that determinism is the thesis that the past determines a unique future. Given the past and the laws of nature, there's only one way for things to go on. It seems pretty obvious to most people that determinism implies that no one has free will. It comes as a surprise to most undergraduate students of philosophy that many great philosophers have denied this—that many great philosophers have affirmed that one can have free will even if the past determines a unique future. (Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill are examples of great philosophers who have affirmed this.)

But here's a philosophical argument, which I think is pretty good, for the conclusion that these great philosophers were wrong—that their defenses of the compatibility of free will and determinism were, in the words of an equally great philosopher, William James, "a quagmire of evasion."



What’s True about Determinism
Consider the case in which I'm trying to decide whether to confess or to try to brazen it out. If determinism is true, one of the two alternatives I'm trying to decide between belongs to that one future that is determined to occur by what has already happened. Let's suppose that the determined alternative is confession, that the past determines that I'm going to confess. If I have free will, then, although I'm in fact going to confess, it must be the case that I'm able to try to brazen it out. That is to say, a future in which I attempt to deceive the police must, in some sense, be open to me.

But, given the past, such a future can occur only if there is a violation of the laws of nature. And how can a future in which a violation of the laws of nature occurs be open to me? How can I be able to do something such that, before I do it, a violation of the laws of nature must occur? It just seems evident that, if it was determined a million years before I was born that when a certain moment rolls round, I'll confess my crime to the police, it isn't open to me to do anything else—I'm not able to do anything else. And it just seems evident, therefore, that Hobbes, Hume, and Mill were wrong.

Well, there's a philosophical argument. As I say, to me, it seems to be a pretty good argument. But is it a compelling argument? That is if someone understands it and continues to believe that one can have free will even in a world in which determinism rules, must we conclude that that person is simply irrational? If anyone thinks this, he has to deal with an awkward fact: many very able philosophers reject this argument. I'd like to believe that the argument is compelling because, if for no other reason, I've spent a large part of my professional career defending various rather more technical versions of it.

But if I am tempted to believe this, I have to consider an awkward fact: my great contemporary, the late Professor David Lewis of Princeton University, was aware of this argument and rejected its conclusion. And I am convinced that Lewis understood the argument perfectly. And, although he once asked me not to say this, he was more intelligent than I am and a technically more able philosopher to boot. I have simply enormous respect for Lewis; I cannot adequately convey to you the depth of this respect.

After hearing one of Lewis's lectures, I once heard a philosopher say, "Lewis is so smart it's scary." And I agree. Am I to believe that Lewis was irrational—for that's what I must believe if I'm to believe that the argument I've laid out is compelling? I find I can't believe that. In fact, I find that trying to believe that is like trying to believe that the sun is green or that pigs can fly. I can only conclude that the argument I've spent a large part of my professional life defending, whatever its merits may be, is not compelling. And, I must add that Lewis is not the only philosopher I respect who rejects this argument; there have been and are many others.

Now, what of arguments for the non-existence of God—which, as I've tried to show, must be philosophical arguments? Let me lay those arguments aside for the moment. I'll make a generalization: with the possible exception of some arguments for the non-existence of God, there are no compelling arguments for any substantive conclusion in philosophy.

I offer the following argument for this generalization (and if you're waiting to catch me out in a contradiction on this point, I'll tell you right now that I don't regard this argument as compelling; I just think it's a pretty cogent argument): on both sides in every important philosophical dispute, there are highly able philosophers. Are there objectively true moral principles, or is morality an entirely subjective matter? Can a purely physical thing be conscious? Do we really know anything, or is knowledge an illusion? Has the state the right to compel us to do things that benefit others but not ourselves? Is it, in principle, possible for science to explain why there is anything at all?

For each of these questions, you can find able philosophers who will answer it Yes, others who will answer it No, and some who will say Maybe. Therefore, we must admit that a pretty strong—but not, of course, compelling—case can be made for the conclusion that there are no compelling arguments in philosophy (with the possible exception of arguments for the non-existence of God)—no proofs.

Now someone may point out that proof is a very strong word and that in the practical business of life (and in science as well), we are often satisfied with something a good deal weaker than proof. If I am apprehended walking out of a jeweler's shop with thousands of dollars worth of the shop's diamonds in a concealed pocket in my overcoat, that doesn't prove I'm a jewel thief. Maybe the concealed pocket is there for some innocent reason, and perhaps someone slipped the diamonds into the pocket to frame me.

It happens all the time in the movies. Still, as Thoreau said, "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk"—meaning that that's very good evidence that the dairy is watering the milk. The evidence I have imagined may not constitute a proof that I am a thief, but it would probably be enough to get me convicted of theft in a court of law, and it would provide anyone who knew about it with an excellent reason for thinking that I was a thief.

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Mikhail Gorbachev in His Own WordsAugust 31, 2022 | 
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller

10 quotes by and about the Soviet leader.

When Mikhail Gorbachev, who has died at the age of 91, assumed leadership of the Soviet Union in 1985, there was little to indicate that he would be anything other than a pragmatic Communist ruler in the mold of his predecessors. A long time committed member of the Communist party, Gorbachev believed in the ideals that had governed the Soviet Union for decades. For the country’s Jews, that meant enforcing draconian laws against Jewish rituals and Zionism. Even teaching Hebrew was outlawed. Gorbachev also continued to enforce the country’s rules against Jewish emigration: hundreds of thousands of Jews who longed to live openly as Jews in Israel or elsewhere were denied this basic freedom.

Yet Gorbachev was different than previous Soviet leaders. Frustrated with the relative poverty of the Soviet Union, he instituted a series of reforms. Glasnost - openness to new ideas - and perestroika - restructuring - became his goals. The Soviet Union slowly instituted some reforms. Gorbachev freed some political prisoners, allowed for more open elections than ever before, reduced the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal, and engaged politically with the West. He also began to ease many of the repressive rules targeting Soviet Jews.


In 1985, Gorbachev reestablished diplomatic ties with Israel. He began to loosen the quotas of Soviet Jews who were granted permission to leave. In 1989, 71,000 Soviet Jews were given visas to leave the Soviet Union. (At the time, the Jewish population of the entire Soviet Union was over 1.7 million.)  By 1991, when Boris Yeltsin succeeded Gorbachev as leader, over 330,000 Jews had been granted permission to emigrate, and the numbers continued to grow. In 1990, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to end the Cold War.

Here are ten quotes from Mikhail Gorbachev and people who knew him. Together, they help tell the story of his remarkable life and accomplishments in their own words.

Admitting Soviet Antisemitism
In October 1991, Gorbachev broke with 70 years of Soviet precedent and publicly admitted that the Soviet Union was deeply, structurally antisemitic. The occasion was the 50th anniversary of the Nazi atrocity of Babi Yar, in which over 30,000 Jews were murdered by Nazi soldiers in Ukraine (which at the time was part of the Soviet Union).

The poisonous seeds of antisemitism arose even on Soviet soil. The Stalinist bureaucracy, publicly decrying antisemitism, in practice used it to isolate the country from the outside world, counting on chauvinism to strengthen its hold. – Mikhail Gorbachev’s representative Alexander Yakovley, delivering Gorbachev’s words, 1991

You must know, the democratic Russian public rejects and denounces antisemitism, and will do everything in its power to uproot the phenomenon from our society.  – Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking in Israel, 1992

American Presidents Pressure Gorbachev to Free Soviet Jews
US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush pressed Gorbachev to improve the Soviet Union’s treatment of Jews and to allow Jewish emigration, helping nudge the Soviet leader significantly on this issue.

Every time Gorbachev would walk into a meeting with Reagan by the mid-’80s, the first thing Reagan would do - and we see this in memoirs and oral histories - is Reagan would pull out a piece of paper with names of Soviet Jews who had been refused visas or had been somehow sent to prison for their activism and he said, ‘Well if you want to talk, first we have to discuss these names….’  – Gal Beckerman, author of When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry (2010)

Let’s not see five or six or ten or twenty refuseniks released at one time, but thousands, tens of thousands. Mr. Gorbachev, let these people go. Let them go. – Vice President George H.W. Bush, speaking to Gorbachev on December 12, 1987, when 750,000 protestors called for emigration of Soviet Jews from the National Mall in Washington, DC, ahead of a summit between President Reagan and Secretary Gorbachev

Continuing Repression
Although Gorbachev allowed hundreds of thousands of Jews to emigrate, his reforms came far too late for some. One young victim of Soviet repression even under Gorbachev’s rule was Mikhail Shirman, a Jew who’d been allowed to leave and later became desperately ill with blood cancer. His only hope of survival was a bone marrow transplant from his sister Inessa Fleurov, who lived in Moscow. Despite her desperate pleas, Gorbachev refused to let her leave.

Pamela Cohen, who served as the President of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, recalled bringing Shirman to the 1986 summit between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan.  When a reporter from the Chicago Tribune asked Shirman (who later died from cancer) why he’d traveled to Reykjavik for the summit, Shirman gave a chilling answer:

I’ve come to meet my murderer. – Mikhail Sherman, victim of Soviet repression (quoted in Hidden Heroes: One Woman’s Story of Resistance and Rescue in the Soviet Union by Pamela Braun Cohen; 2021)

By raising hopes for (Jewish) emigration one day and dashing them the next, all to extensive press coverage, Gorbachev succeeds in diverting attention from the actual plight of Soviet Jewry – not the abysmally low emigration figures, but also the incidents of harassment, imprisonment, and intimidation of Hebrew teachers and emigration activists which have actually increased sharply in number since he took office in 1985. – “Gorbachev and the Jews,” an article in Commentary by Allan Kagedan, May 1986

Missing the Jews Who Left
When Gorbachev loosened rules for Soviet Jews to emigrate, the trickle of Jews who’d long tried to leave and start new lives in Israel or elsewhere became a flood. In 1991, Gorbachev lamented the loss of so many highly educated Jewish denizens.

The right to emigrate has been granted, but I say frankly that we, society, deeply regret the departure of our countrymen and that the country is losing so many talented, skilled and enterprising citizens. – Mikhail Gorbachev, 1991

They (Soviet Jews) had done so much for our country…nevertheless, I could not tell them not to go (because that was the moral) position of freedom. – Mikhail Gorbachev, on a visit to Israel in 1992

Proud of Political Reforms
I see myself as a man who started the reforms that were necessary for the country and for Europe and the world. I am often asked, would I have started it all again if I had to repeat it? Yes, indeed.  And with more persistence and determination. – Mikhail Gorbachev, in an interview with AP News Service, 1992

In 2008, a Russian-born businesswoman named Sofya Tamarkin attended a speech ceremony in Philadelphia, where she then lived, in which Pres. George H.W. Bush awarded Mikhail Gorbachev the Liberty Medal for ending the Cold War. Energized by the ceremony, Sofya afterwards walked up to the former Soviet leader to ask for his autograph, calling out in Russian: “Mr Gorbachev, I am a Russian-born Jew. We immigrated in 1989. I respect you and feel gratitude for the life I have today. Meeting you is a great honor. May I ask you for your autograph as a memory of this important day?”

Gorbachev didn’t hesitate in his reply. Distilling a lifetime of political work into one phrase, Gorbachev answered:

“Ваша жизнь мой автограф – Your life is my autograph.” https://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/4556711/jewish/What-Mikhail-Gorbachev-Taught-Me-When-I-Asked-for-His-Autograph.htm

The Horse: A Path to Peace of MindAugust 28, 2022 | by Un/Known, Aish.com's 
What's the best perspective to be able to keep calm in a turbulent world?

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Napoleon and the Jews August 22, 2022 | by Benjamin 
Was the diminutive ruler a friend or foe to the Jews?
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His namesake is famous the world over for 19th century imperial conquests, a personality complex synonymous with overcompensating, and an awesome independent film.

But did you know that Napoleon’s conquests also ushered in an era of unparalleled freedom for the Jews of Western Europe?

Back in the late 1700s, Jews in Italy were segregated and forced to live in ghettos. Jews could leave during the day, but they were forced to wear arm bands or bonnets with an identifying star of David.

When Napoleon occupied Ancona in central Italy, he saw the anti-Jewish discrimination and ordered to close the ghettos immediately, allowing Jews to live freely and practice Judaism openly. Napoleon also closed the ghettos in Rome and liberated the Jews of Venice, Verona, and Padua.

If European emancipation wasn’t enough, some historians believe Napoleon was even ready to give the Jews back their ancestral homeland of Israel, which at the time was still under Ottoman rule.

Why was the compact conqueror so benevolent to the Jews?

According to his personal physician Dr. Barry O’Meara, Napoleon was quoted as saying, “It is my wish that the Jews be treated like brothers as if we were all part of Judaism… I thought that this would bring to France many riches because the Jews are numerous and they would come in large numbers to our country where they would enjoy more privileges than in any other nation.”

But Napoleon’s love for the Jews wasn’t so clear cut. In 1808 he issued an Infamous Decree limiting Jewish residence in France and took away many freedoms. Historian Richard Ayrun believed that Napoleon in fact “despised the Jews” and was only using them for his own political advantage. Napoleon has also been quoted as calling Jews “a nasty people, cowardly, and cruel” and also a “most contemptible of people.”

So was Napoleon a friend or foe?

Whatever his true feelings, Napoleon’s actions undeniably made Jewish life a whole lot easier throughout Western Europe. Perhaps it’s fitting that it is illegal in France to name a pig Napoleon, but that doesn’t make it Kosher.

aish.com > Philosophy > Ponder
Near Death Experience in Ancient Jewish SourcesAugust 24, 2022 | by Rabbi Adam JacobsFacebookEmailPrintFriendlyShare

Is the Near Death Experience a purely modern phenomenon or are there credible sources that support it in ancient texts?

A number of months ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Jeffrey Long - a radiation oncologist and a leading researcher of the phenomenon known as the “Near Death Experience” (NDE). NDEs are an established fact though there is some controversy regarding their ultimate cause. Some maintain that NDEs result from chemicals released in the dying or distressed brain, hallucinations due to lack of oxygen, or several other theories.

The issue is that these hypotheses become more and more strained in situations where there cannot be any brain activity, such as under general anesthesia or where the person has suffered cardiac arrest, which quickly leads to the total cessation of brain activity (and is compounded when the person has been gone for an extended period of time - sometimes up to two hours or more).

Those who have had such experiences often describe an indescribably blissful sensation, a profound recognition of love and the oneness of all of reality, and an absence of fear and pain.

There are 12 hallmarks of the Near Death Experience, including passing through a tunnel, meeting deceased friends or relatives, encounters with spiritual beings, a life review, and more. Additionally, those who have had such experiences often describe an indescribably blissful sensation, a profound recognition of love and the oneness of all of reality, and a total absence of fear and pain.

During my conversation with Dr. Long, it occurred to me that much of what he was describing is consistent with my understanding (from the Jewish tradition) of the nature of spiritual reality. I mentioned this to him, and he expressed surprise that an ancient tradition could have any insight into this phenomenon. This stands to reason given that there has been a sharp increase in the number of reports of NDEs due to the remarkable advances in resuscitation science - more and more people are pulling through to be able to deliver these reports.

NDE in Jewish Sources
The following are a few examples in Jewish sources that seem to support modern findings of NDEs:

Many near-death experiencers report their consciousness hovering above their recently deceased bodies. They seem to be aware (and often able to report later) the life-saving activities of the doctors and emergency services who are engaged in trying to save them. The Babylonian Talmud circa 400 CE wrote, “For three days the soul hovers over the body and observes.”
 

Often, those who have been temporarily dead report an unexpected peacefulness in the dying process (though this is not the case universally). Counterintuitively, even those who have died in violent circumstances often describe their actual death as calm and lacking in terror or fear of any kind. Again, the Talmud reports that “death is like removing a strand of hair from a cup of milk” (meaning very simple and easy). Admittedly, it also says that very actualized people only experience this death.
 

There is a popular notion that people in particularly intense situations will see “their lives flash before their eyes.” There seems to be something to this as many near-death experiencers report a full life review as part of their experience. The review is often depicted as occurring in the blink of an eye yet conveying in minute detail every aspect of every event in the person’s life (and the effect that these events had on others). Once again, the Talmud records that “at the hour of a person’s departure to his eternal home, all his deeds are enumerated before him and are rendered visible to him once again, and the deeds themselves say to him: You did such and such, in such and such a place, on such and such a day, and he says: Yes, that is exactly what happened.”
In addition to these categories, Jewish sources also seem to describe: the existence of a spiritual “body,” meeting friends and loved ones, meeting angelic beings, seeing the Divine Presence, and more.

The scientific and medical communities appear to be taking the claims of those who experience NDEs more and more seriously. Their findings have even been published in some of the world’s leading, peer-reviewed medical journals. All of which may lend credence to a series of ideas presented hundreds of years ago in the works of Judaic sages long before there was any such thing as a medical journal.

Perhaps these concepts are just a coincidence or some carefully cherry-picked examples. Or maybe it’s a reason to take these works seriously and research them more intently for other layers of knowledge and insight they may possess.
These ideas are all extensively treated in the book “Life After Life” by Rabbi DovBer Pinson.

Mathematical Evidence for Miracles?August 21, 2022 | 
by Harold Gans
Is there such a thing as a mathematically inexplicable event?

Is it Luck or is it a Miracle?
Do you believe in miracles? The answer to that question probably depends on whether you believe in God or not. After all, if there is a God, then He can perform miracles. But without belief in God, one would probably note that there are no miracles that have been verified in a strictly scientific way in modern times. Most “miracles” that are reported can either be explained away as coincidence or lack of verifiable evidence. But is this true of all reported miracles?

In the spring of 1967, Israel found itself surrounded by enemies bent on its imminent destruction. On May 14, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered a full mobilization of Egypt’s armed forces. On May 27, Nasser proclaimed, “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel.”1 Arab troops numbered 350,000 versus the Israeli’s 264,000 troops; the Arabs had 2,000 tanks versus 800 Israeli tanks, and the Arabs had 700 combat aircraft versus 300 Israeli combat aircraft.2

On June 5, the Israeli air force launched a preemptive air strike, destroying most of the Egyptian air force – some 400 combat aircraft – as well as disabling almost all of their airfields. Follow-up attacks quickly destroyed the Syrian and Jordanian air forces as well. With the destruction of Arab airpower, the fate of the Arab armies was sealed. The war lasted only six days and ended with a decisive Israeli victory. Israel’s success appeared to be a direct result of a brilliant and well-executed first strike.

As is often the case with war stories, things were not so simple. Behind the scenes, there were developments that could have resulted in the total destruction of Israel.3 On the morning of June 9, Israel invaded Syria’s Golan Heights. Syria was then a client state of the former Soviet Union. On June 10, Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev called US President Lyndon Johnson. He told him that the Soviet Union would go to war against Israel if Israel did not withdraw from Syria immediately.

Johnson was not intimidated; he ordered the US 6th fleet stationed in the Mediterranean to advance toward the Middle East. The message to the Russians was clear. Brezhnev became cautious but was still determined to enter the war against Israel. He entrusted this task to Air Colonel General Vasily Reshetnikov, the commander of the USSR’s long-range strategic bombers. Brezhnev ordered him to use those bombers to annihilate Israel.

At that time, Reshetnikov had four squadrons of these bombers stationed in the Ukraine, within range of Israel. They would be fully armed and ready to fly within hours. Brezhnev further required that all Soviet identifying information be removed from the attacking aircraft and their crew members, and the Egyptian insignia should be painted on the bombers. Thus, should a plane be shot down, the Soviets could claim that they had given the aircraft to the Egyptians, thus avoiding a direct confrontation with the Americans.

Israel was winning the war on all three fronts but was unaware of the overwhelming force being prepared to obliterate them. However, one serious problem then presented itself to the Soviets. They needed green paint for the stars in the Egyptian insignia, and there was no green paint to be found in the Ukraine!4 Thus, the bombers were never deployed, and the war was over the next day. For all the Israeli’s ingenuity, meticulous preparation, and brilliant execution of that first air strike, it was a lack of green paint in the Ukraine that saved them from total destruction! Was this just “luck,” or was it a miracle?

There are surely many people who would call this a miracle. But how would a completely objective person know that it was not simply luck? Can one confirm a miracle scientifically? To answer this question definitively, we must jump ahead 24 years.

Desert Storm
On January 17, 1991, a coalition of armed forces from 34 countries led by the United States started operation “Desert Storm” to liberate the recently conquered Kuwait from Iraq. Iraq began retaliating the next day. Over a period of several weeks, 39 modified Scud B (Al Hussein) missiles were fired at Israel by Iraq (even though Israel was not one of the 34 country coalition!), with 14 exploding in highly populated residential areas of Tel Aviv and Haifa. (The remainder of the Scuds were either duds, landed in the wilderness, in the Mediterranean, or were intercepted by US Patriot anti-missile missiles.) These Scuds directly killed two Israelis, and 11 were seriously injured.

In 1993, a scientific paper written by Fetter, Lewis, and Gronlund, entitled “Why Were Scud Casualties So Low?” was published in the prestigious British scientific journal Nature.5 An expanded and more detailed version of the paper appeared a few months later.6 The low casualty rate had attracted professional, scientific interest. The paper used a standard mathematical formula to predict the number of casualties expected in any particular missile attack.

chabad.org
As a test of the formula’s accuracy, it was first applied to the 125 modified Scud B missiles that exploded in Teheran, Iran, between February 29, 1988, and April 4, 1988, during the “War of the Cities” between Iran and Iraq. Reports indicate that, on average, between 9.2 and 16 people in Teheran were killed per Scud. The formula predicts an average of 14.4 deaths per Scud in Teheran. This prediction is accurate since 14.4 is between 9.2 and 16. Similarly, the predicted number of seriously injured per Scud in Teheran, 35.1, is close to the observed value of approximately 32 per Scud.

The Fetter et al. papers offer several possible explanations but finally conclude that there is no evidence for anything more than “sheer luck” involved.7 The Israelis were just very lucky!8

Having established that the formula works well, the Fetter et al. paper applied this formula to the case of the Scud attacks on Tel Aviv and Haifa. The formula predicted that the 14 scuds that exploded in Tel Aviv and Haifa’s residential areas should have resulted in 21 deaths and 61 seriously injured.9 This is significantly larger than the two deaths and 11 serious injuries that occurred. The paper notes that the total number of casualties caused by all fourteen Scud explosions in Israel is less than the average number of casualties caused by a single missile explosion in Teheran”.10 How does one explain such an incredible discrepancy?

The Fetter et al. papers offer several possible explanations but finally conclude that there is no evidence for anything more than “sheer luck” involved.11 The Israelis were just very lucky!12

Consider the following chart of casualties from Scud explosions inside Israel and anywhere else in the world. Does this look like luck?
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People of the Rock: The Jewish Community of Gibraltar, Then and NowAugust 21, 2022 | by Emily Paster
The history and food of this unique Jewish community.

Did you know that a thriving Jewish community has existed for centuries in Gibraltar, the British territory at the tip of the Iberian peninsula? Even when Jews were excluded from Spain, tiny Gibraltar was home to a prosperous Sephardic community that lived in harmony with their non-Jewish neighbors. Today, that community melds influences from pre-Inquisition Spain, Morocco and even Britain to create a unique way of life and, yes, a unique cuisine.

When we think of the history of the Jews on the Iberian peninsula, our first thought is likely of the persecution by the Spanish Inquisition that culminated in the 1492 expulsion of Spain’s Jews. But there is another, happier story of a Jewish community in Iberia that was allowed to live and worship for centuries in harmony with their Christian and Muslim neighbors - the story of Gibraltar’s Jews. Even today, a small but well-established community of Jews call Gibraltar home and claim among their numbers some of the territory’s most prominent citizens.

View from the top of the Rock

A narrow peninsula at the tip of Iberia, Gibraltar guards the only entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean; as such, the territory has been important strategically since antiquity. Indeed in Greek mythology this area is the site of the Pillars of Hercules - that is, where the Greek hero smashed through Mount Atlas to create the narrow straits separating Europe from Africa.

Gibraltar is probably best known today for one of these mythological pillars, the Rock of Gibraltar. The Rock is a massive limestone formation over 400 meters tall that towers over the Straits of Gibraltar and shelters the mischievous Barbary Apes, the only wild monkeys that live in Europe. Surrounding the Rock is a community of some 30,000 people - among them approximately 850 Jews - that call this curious little peninsula home.

Today, Gibraltar is one of the few remaining outposts of the once-great British empire. Spain ceded Gibraltar to the British in 1713 in the Treaty of Utrecht, and it has been a bone of contention between the two nations ever since. Today, Gibraltar is officially designated as a British overseas territory with a local parliament and government that run all domestic affairs. Spain may wish that it were otherwise, but the people of Gibraltar have reaffirmed many times their wish to remain British.

As you might imagine, over the centuries, the fate of the Jews in Gibraltar hinged on which nation, Spain or Great Britain, controlled the territory. After the Expulsion in 1492, no Jews were permitted to live anywhere on the Iberian Peninsula. And, as long as Gibraltar was Spanish, that ban remained in effect. The Spanish hostility to the Jews was such that even when they ceded control of Gibraltar to the British, the Spanish Crown specified, as condition of the treaty, that no Jews be permitted to live in Gibraltar.

The British may well have intended to honor that provision of the treaty, but necessity intervened. Forced to rely on local sources for supplies, and unable to trade with their enemy, the Spanish, the British occupying force in Gibraltar turned to Morocco just across the Straits. Jewish merchants and traders in Northern Morocco - descendants of Iberian Jews who fled the Inquisition centuries earlier - were more than happy to supply the British army. Slowly, as this trading relationship developed, Jews began to settle in Gibraltar - which felt to them like a homecoming of sorts - despite the official prohibition.

Angered by several such treaty violations, the Spanish sought to regain control of Gibraltar in 1727, but their siege of the peninsula was unsuccessful. Emboldened, the British entered into an agreement with the Sultan of Morocco in 1729 to allow the Sultan’s Jewish subjects to legally reside in Gibraltar but did not count the Jews in the official census. In 1749, the British officially gave the Jews the right to settle on the island permanently and a rabbi arrived in the colony from London to establish a congregation and build the first Jewish house of worship. At that time, approximately 600 Jews, mostly of Spanish-Moroccan heritage, lived in the colony. In many instances, the descendants of those families reside in Gibraltar to this day.

Thus began an era of almost uninterrupted stability and prosperity for the Jews of Gibraltar. The Spanish Jews who settled in Gibraltar during this era had remained somewhat insular during their centuries of exile in Morocco and maintained their language, customs and, naturally, food. Thus, in many ways the Jewish community of Gibraltar in the 18th and 19th centuries was almost like a recreation of pre-Inquisition Spanish Jewry.

One of the characteristics of this old Sephardic community was a willingness to engage and interact with non-Jews, while being privately observant. “Judaism [in Gibraltar], much like in old Spain - and much like in Morocco pre the 1960’s - was a way of carrying oneself as opposed to a set of laws,” explains Rachel Benaim-Abudarham, an American journalist of Moroccan-Gibraltarian heritage who has lived and worked in the peninsula. (Benaim-Abudarham is also married to a Gibraltarian from a prominent Jewish family that, like hers, has been in Gibraltar for centuries, so her ties to Gibraltar run deep.)

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the Jewish community in Gibraltar continued to grow and the leaders of the community built three additional synagogues. The Jewish population reached its peak of between 1500 and 2000 people - which was a substantial percentage of the overall population - in the mid-19th century. With Jews, Christians and Muslims living together in relative harmony, the Gibraltar of the 18th and 19th centuries was a tolerant and multi-cultural society and Jews occupied many prominent positions in politics and business. The Jews of Gibraltar brought with them from Morocco “a conviviality, or an interfaith, intercultural harmony where people live together, connect and work together [while maintaining] their own independent identities,” explains Benaim-Abudarham.

Despite this long period of calm and prosperity, Gibraltar’s Jewish community could not escape the upheavals of the 20th century. Like most civilians, the Jews of Gibraltar were evacuated during WWII, when the territory was an important strategic stronghold for the Allies. Most of the evacuees were relocated to Great Britain. Some Gibraltarians, including many of the Jews, chose to remain in England or emigrated to America after the war ended due to the poor conditions on the peninsula, leading to a decline in the Jewish population from its heyday just a century earlier.

Despite the decline in numbers, the Jewish community of Gibraltar remained prominent in the territory’s affairs throughout the 20th century. Sir Joshua Hassan, Gibraltar’s best-known politician, the architect of Gibraltar’s move to greater self-determination, and its first-ever Chief Minister was Jewish. Solomon “Momy” Levy was another prominent Jewish civic leader: not only was Levy the chairman of the Jewish Community Association for many years, he also held the (mostly ceremonial) post of mayor in 2007 and prior to his death in 2008.

Today, the Jewish community of Gibraltar remains small - under 1000 people - but it is growing steadily thanks to emigration, mainly from Great Britain, and also a high birth rate. And in such a small place, a community of that size makes up about 2% of the overall population of Gibraltar. Despite its modest size, Gibraltar’s Jewish community enjoys an impressive infrastructure with four operating synagogues - all Orthodox - Jewish day schools, a mikveh and kosher stores and restaurants.

The vibrancy and prominence of Gibraltar’s Jewish community is readily apparent to visitors. Rabbi Max Weiss of Oak Park Temple in Oak Park, Illinois visited Gibraltar in 2015 as part of a congregational trip to Spain and was struck by the visibility of the Jewish presence there. “When you arrive…and walk to the shops that are lining the plaza, one of the first things you notice is that many of them have mezuzot on the doors,” noted Rabbi Weiss. “It’s a very vibrant and active Jewish community.” What’s more: the Jews of Gibraltar make no effort to hide their faith: “The Jewish people there were not hiding who they were. They weren’t wearing baseball caps,” Rabbi Weiss points out. “They were wearing cultural identifiers.” Given the history of tolerance and acceptance in Gibraltar, this level of self-assurance is not surprising but it is a contrast with other parts of mainland Europe where many Jews avoid outward displays of their faith.

Today, the Jews of Gibraltar not only live at a famous crossroads of civilization, but the community itself is at a crossroads. The Jewish community of Gibraltar was, up until the 1990’s, relatively homogenous: nearly everyone was Sephardic and Moroccan. That is no longer true today. “In the 90’s,” explains Benaim-Abudarham, “there was integration with the British Jewish community, specifically of Manchester and then later with London.” Gibraltarian Jews started attending Orthodox, Ashkenazi schools in England and Jewish leaders in Gibraltar started bringing over Ashkenazi teachers from England. According to Benaim-Abudarham, these influences “have made the community not more observant, and not more traditionally observant but more observant of halacha in a way that Ashkenazim are familiar with.”

These very recent changes to the Jewish community have led to some tension around how children are educated and how to accommodate the growing numbers of Ashkenazim in Gibraltar. “Gibraltar is probably the only Sephardic majority community left in the world,” according to Benaim-Abudarham. “It is the only place where people can be Sephardic without, in some ways, having to conform to Ashkenazim.”

Those who have lived in Gibraltar for generations are understandably reluctant to change their cherished way of life, which, again, is in some ways, the last vestige of pre-Inquisition Spanish Jewry. But at the same time, Gibraltarian Jews want to be a part of global Jewry and maintain their connections to the greater British Jewish community, which is Ashkenazi. And an increasing number of families in Gibraltar include both Ashkenazi and Sephardic members. This tension has led to a bit of an “identity crisis,” according to Benaim-Abudarham. “Everyone gets along and everyone is friends because this place really is that small. But now there is an ongoing conversation about the future of what Jewish life here will look like.”

In terms of cuisine, however, Gibraltarian Jewish food is mainly Sephardic or, to put a finer point on it, Spanish-Moroccan with a hint of British thrown in for good measure. All Gibraltarian cuisine, naturally, is influenced by the territory’s history of isolation and hardship. Justin Bautista, a Gibraltarian food blogger, points out that “Gibraltar has been affected by sieges, famine, and evacuations which greatly affected how families shared meals and sourced ingredients. Traditional meals include many stews which were cheap and cheerful.” Indeed, Gibraltar’s Jewish community has their own version of cholent, known as adafina, which combines chickpeas, beef, rice, eggs, potatoes and spices in a large casserole that cooks low and slow overnight on Friday to be ready for lunch on Shabbat.

Gibraltarian Jewish cuisine is not spicy, but contains many spices that are typical of Spanish-Moroccan food, such as paprika, turmeric, ginger, and cumin. Couscous is another typical Moroccan food that is traditional among Gibraltar’s Jews, especially when paired with beef and lamb. Couscous is often eaten on Shavuot, according to Benaim-Abudarham.

Fried fish is also quite traditional, which is perhaps not surprising given that Britain’s beloved fish and chips has Jewish origins. But when Gibraltar’s Jews make fried fish they add their spices to create a unique Spanish-Moroccan-British fusion. Indeed, Benaim-Abudarham points out that what is perhaps most distinctive about Jewish Gibraltarian cuisine is how they take a typical British dish, like Shepherd’s Pie, and add Moroccan spices to it.

The desserts and pastries enjoyed by Gibraltar’s Jewish community “are very Moroccan in nature,” says Benaim-Abudarham, including many different types of fried doughnuts. Amar’s Bakery, one of Gibraltar’s kosher eateries, is known for their japonesas, which are custard-filled fried doughnuts enjoyed all year round, but especially on Hanukkah. According to Bautista, while Amar’s Bakery is Jewish-owned and kosher, it is an institution beloved by all Gibraltarians for its freshly-made breads, demonstrating how much the Jewish community has influenced and continues to influence life “on the Rock.”

Gibraltar’s national dish is a simple flatbread known as calentita. Made with chickpea flour, oil and water, and not much more, calentita used to be a common street food in Gibraltar, much like a similar chickpea-based dish from the south of France, socca. Bautista believes that calentita has a Jewish connection, but the origin of the dish is actually a source of some debate. Benaim-Abudarham reports that her mother-in-law, Estrella Abudarham, claims that calentitia is originally Moroccan while other Gibraltarians say it is native to their land. But certainly it is a dish that Gibraltarian Jews, along with their neighbors, have eaten for generations.

The future of Gibraltarian Jewish cuisine, however, is also at a crossroads or turning point. The younger generation “don’t dedicate themselves as much to the food” as previous generations did because of busy careers and family obligations, notes Benaim-Abudarham. For that reason, scholars of Jewish food history, such as Hélène Jawhara Piñer have spent time with revered figures like Estrella Abudarham - an expert on Gibraltarian Jewish cuisine - learning the recipes and stories of this unique community with its roots in pre-Inquisition Spain.

When visiting you can take a Jewish tour of Gibraltar with JewishGibraltarTours and learn more about their unique Jewish history.

Bring a bit of Jewish Gibraltar into your home with my recipe for Calentita.

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Saadiah Gaon, Rashi and Maimonides: How Three Rabbis Revolutionized Judaism
August 14, 2022 | by Rabbi Mordechai 

How three great Jewish scholars transformed our views of the Bible, education, Judaism, science and life.

You may not realize it, but you and your ancestors have been impacted by the author of a rhyming dictionary in 9th century Iraq, an 11th century teacher in the Champagne region of France, and an Arabic speaking doctor in 12th century Cairo.
I am referring to three great Jewish scholars who revolutionized our views of the Bible, education, Judaism, science and life: Saadiah Gaon, Rashi and Maimonides.

Rabbi Saadiah Gaon
Saadiah ibn Yosef al-Fayumi was born in Fayum, Egypt in 882 CE. As a young man he left Egypt and travelled to Palestine, Babylon and Syria. He stopped in Tiberias, a center of Jewish learning on the shores of Lake Kinneret, where he studied Hebrew language and grammar, philosophy and theology.

Saadiah was later appointed leader of the Jewish academy of learning in Sura (south of Baghdad), and was given the title Gaon, exalted one. He wrote books on Jewish law and philosophy and translated the Torah into Arabic – the Tafsir, a translation still used today and recently republished for the Arabic-speaking world.

One of his earliest works was a Hebrew rhyming dictionary which he wrote in order to encourage the writing of Hebrew poetry.1 One of the scholars who took up Saadiah’s charge was Dunash ibn Lebrett, from Morocco, who became an accomplished poet and wrote one of the oldest songs sung at the Shabbat table, called Dror Yikrah. This actually sparked off the genre of Hebrew poetry, primarily in Spain, including great poets such as Yehudah Halevi, Shlomo Ibn Gvirol and Avraham Ibn Ezra.2

Saadiah Gaon’s greatest work was his book Kitab al Amanat wa-al-Ataqadat, The Book of Beliefs and Knowledge, which was the first systematic, logical presentation of Jewish philosophy and is one of the classics of Jewish literature. This was also one of the earliest of modern style books, written with the now familiar table of contents, introduction, sections and chapters.

Saadiah Gaon transformed how we interpret and understand the Biblical text. In his Book of Beliefs and Knowledge, he opened the door to understanding the Biblical text in a non-literal way and presented four rules that indicate that one may depart from literalism.

A street sign in Tel Aviv, Israel

“It is a well-known first principle that anything found in Scripture is to be understood according to its simple meaning, with the exception of those cases where such is impossible, due to one of four possible causes:

Our perceived reality dismisses it. An example would be the verse, “And Adam called his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all life.3” Now, we see that the ox and the lion are not born from a human woman. So, we know that these words refer not to all living beings, but only to human life.
Our sense of reason dismisses it. For example, the verse, “For God, your God, is a consuming fire, a God of vengeance.4” Now, fire is a creation, and it requires some sort of material to burn. At times it is extinguished. Our sense of reason cannot accept that God could be such. So, we are forced to say that there is some idea hidden within the usage of fire to describe God’s vengeance. Indeed, there is a verse, “For in the fire of My vengeance the entire earth will be consumed.5”
Another verse explicitly negates it. In such a case, we must provide a resolution that is not explicitly stated…
We have a tradition that compromises the text in some way. In this case, we must reinterpret the text to fit the authentic tradition…”6
That a religious scholar in the early medieval period would suggest that our senses, our reason and our logic should be used in understanding the text of the holy Scripture, even to the extent of usurping the literal meaning in favor of an allegorical interpretations, was then – and is even now – revolutionary.

https://aish.com/in-the-shadow-of-david-and-goliath/?
In the Shadow of David and Goliath
August 14, 2022 | by Rivka Ronda Robinson
Twenty-eight charred olive pits cracked the archaeology case.
Remember the story of David using his slingshot to kill the Philistine giant Goliath? Archaeologists believe that they found where that happened and Israel has now turned the site into a national park.
The 3,000-year-old site is known by its modern name, Khirbet Qeiyafa, near Beit Shemesh southwest of Jerusalem. It overlooks the Elah Valley.

Lead archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel says 28 charred olive pits unearthed from 2007 to 2013 helped cracked the mystery of the site’s age. His team used carbon-14 dating to figure out how old the olive pits were.

A Fortified City from King David’s Time
“This fortified city is the only archaeological site from the time of King David,” asserts Prof. Garfinkel, the Yigal Yadin chair of archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Cultic room at Khirbet Qeiyafa.

The ancient olive pits proved that the site now known as Khirbet Qeiyafa existed in the early 10th century BCE.

Archaeologists discovered the city’s two gates—a western one, which faced the Biblical city of Philistine Gath, and a southern one, which faced Judah. They connected the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa with the Biblical city of Sha'arayim, Hebrew for “two gates,” mentioned in the story of David and Goliath. (1 Samuel 17:52)

In a building near the southern gate, archaeologists excavated a group worship room. They uncovered two building models, one made from clay and the other carved in limestone. The latter proved the royal architecture that the Bible attributed to the palace and temple in Jerusalem was known in this region too.

Garfinkel codirected the excavations with Saar Ganor, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority and a student at Hebrew University.

Their team identified remnants of one building found as David’s palace and the other as a massive royal storeroom. A highly centralized administration apparently took nearly 100,000 tons of stones to construct.

Bible Text Proves Accurate
Garfinkel said Khirbet Qeiyafa clearly shows that the Biblical text preserves historical memories.

Before King David’s rule, residents dwelled in small farming, tribal communities. Those areas turned into urban centers around the 10th century BCE.

Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon.

“Our site indicates a social change in the time of David. We have evidence there was a process of urbanism, and that the Biblical tradition is accurate,” says Garfinkel. “We understand now how the period of David looked.”

Khirbet Qeiyafa displays the urban planning typical of other cities in the Judean kingdom, indicating a centralized state was in place in the days of King David.

Archaeologists turned up clues like pottery imported from Cyprus and objects imported from Jordan and Egypt that probably contained perfume or medicine. “This means the city was strong from an economic point of view,” according to Garfinkel.

Further evidence of an ancient civilization’s activity included thousands of sheep, goat, cow and fish bones. Casemate walls—double walls with transverse walls separating the space between them into chambers—reflected the urban planning typical of the times.

Archaeologists, students and volunteers devoted long hours to seven seasons of excavations. For six weeks each summer, they would awaken at 4 AM to drive to the site in the dark, then begin work at sunrise, with a 7 AM break for coffee and cake. They kept going until temperatures peaked at 1 PM.


Afternoons were reserved for lunch and naps. At 4 PM everyone would regroup to wash and discuss objects they had found, then enjoy dinner and a lecture.

Dig This: Museums Display King David-Era Artifacts
Major artifacts they unearthed are on display at the Israel Museum and Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, including shrine models, holy relics and evidence of perhaps the oldest Hebrew writing ever discovered.

Garfinkel notes that the Elah Valley was of strategic importance in King David’s time, as a corridor from the coastline up through the center of Judah and its stronghold cities of Hebron and Jerusalem.

His dig helped preserve history for generations to come. Garfinkel successfully lobbied for the 500-hectare (1,200-acre) site to become a national park instead of a new neighborhood.
“This is my greatest achievement in life,” he marvels. “I helped save the Elah Valley.”

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King Sennacherib and the Siege of LachishAugust 14, 2022 | by Dr. Yvette Alt MillerFacebookEmailPrintFriendlyShare

The Lachish Relief graphically portrays Biblical scenes of a 3,000-year-old Jewish calamity.

In 1839, a young English lawyer named Austen Henry Layard quit his job in London.  Austen, 22, showed signs of a promising legal career but he longed for adventure.  His horseback journey though present-day Turkey, Syria and Iraq would change our understanding of history.

In the Middle East, Austen began trying to excavate sites that he believed were mentioned in the Bible. His first attempt resulted in unearthing a massive 3,000-year-old Assyrian palace filled with exquisitely preserved artwork near the present-day Iraqi city of Mosul.

Austen Henry Layard
Austen moved on to another site near Mosul and stumbled upon the ancient city of Nineveh, seat of the fearsome Assyrian King Sennacherib whose terrifying attacks on ancient Judea are documented in the Bible.

King Sennacherib
King Sennacherib was one of the most fearsome rulers the Middle East has ever known.  Ascending to power in about the year 705 BCE, Sennacherib succeeded his father King Sargon II as ruler of Assyria. Neil MacGregor, the Director of the British Museum, calls Sennacherib’s ancient Assyrian empire “the largest land empire yet created” and “the beginning of the very idea of the Middle East as a single theatre of conflict and control.”

Sennacherib ruled a massive area that stretched from Iran to Egypt, yet faced two significant rebellions.  The larger one was in Babylon (which would soon steal Assyria’s mantle as the great power in the Middle East).  Sennacherib spent much of his early reign fighting Babylonian rebels. He so thoroughly destroyed the city of Babylon that river waters flowed over it, as if its massive buildings and bustling settlements had never existed.  Then, in the year 701 BCE, he turned his attention to the Jewish kingdom in the south.

Sennacherib receiving the submission of the Jews before Lachish.

The tragic story of what happened next is told in the Biblical Book of Kings II.  During Assyrian rule, present-day Israel was split into two Jewish kingdoms: the kingdom of Israel to the north, and the kingdom of Judah to the south.  Jewish kings resisted Assyrian rule, and the Assyrian empire reacted mercilessly.  In 722 BCE, King Sargon II attacked the kingdom of Israel, overrunning it with his soldiers. He slayed many thousands and carted tens of thousands more to settle far-flung areas of the Assyrian kingdom.  By the time Sennacherib was crowned, only the kingdom of Judah remained as a Jewish entity.

The City of Lachish
Lachish was a city in the kingdom of Judah with a very long history.  First settled by cavemen before the 31st century BCE, Lachish developed into a prosperous walled city ruled by Canaanite tribesmen and later by Egypt.  It was conquered by the Israelites, but fell into ruin until the reign of King David, when building began once again in the town.  As the largest Judean city close to the hostile Philistine tribe, Lachish was crucial for the Jewish kingdom’s defense.

The single inscription which identifies the location depicted in the reliefs reads: "Sennacherib, the mighty king, king of the country of Assyria, sitting on the throne of judgment, before (or at the entrance of) the city of Lachish. I give permission for its slaughter"

According to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ancient Lachish “was fortified with a double line of massive mud-brick walls on stone foundations.  The main city wall on top of the mound was 6 meters wide, with a sloping glacis (a sloping mound beneath a fort) supported by a revetment wall along the middle of the slope.  The city gate, in the southwestern wall, is one of the largest and most strongly fortified gates known of this period.  It consists of an outer gate in a huge tower built of large stones which protrudes from the line of defenses.  The gatehouse, on top of the mound, consists of three pairs of chambers with wooden doors on hinges…”

Attacking the Kingdom of Judah
In the year 701 BCE, King Sennacherib sent his mighty forces to Judah to subdue the rebellious Jews living there.  Judah’s King Hezekiah amassed his own troops, but they were swiftly overwhelmed.  “In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria attacked all the fortified cities of Judah, and captured them” (Kings II 18:13).  City after city fell to Sennacherib: Sidon, Ammon, Ashkelon, Ekron, and Lachish. Sennacherib’s own records of the carnage, carved in stone, survived and are today housed in the British Museum in London:

“Because Hezekiah, King of Judah, would not submit to my yoke, I came up against him, and by force of arms and by the might of my power I took 46 of his strong-fenced cities; and of the smaller towns which were scattered about, I took and plundered a countless number.  From these places I took and carried off 200,156 persons, old and young, male and female, together with horses and mules, asses and camels, oxen and sheep, a countless multitude.”

Sennacherib himself made Lachish his base during this conquest. The Bible describes King Hezekiah contacting him there: “Hezekiah king of Judah sent (word) to the king of Assyria, to Lachish….” (Kings II 18:14).  Sennacherib demanded a huge tribute from King Hezekiah, and soon negotiations broke down. Sennacherib amassed an enormous army to lay siege to Jerusalem, the capital of Judah.

Lachish leaders being flayed alive

His troops surrounded and besieged the city, but their attack was halted by a mysterious plague.  “An angel of God went out and struck down one hundred eighty-five thousand (soldiers) of the Assyrian camp.  The rest arose in the morning and behold - they were all dead corpses!  So Sennacherib king of Assyria journeyed forth, went and returned, and he settle in Nineveh” (II Kings 19:35-36).

The mysterious plague that struck the Assyrian soldiers was also recorded by Herodotus, a Greek historian of the ancient world:

“As the two armies lay here opposite one another, there came in the night, a multitude of field-mice, which devoured all the quivers and bowstrings of the enemy, and ate the thongs by which they managed their shields.  Next morning they commenced their fight, and great multitudes fell, as they had no arms with which to defend themselves…”  (Herodotus, The Histories, Book 2, Chapter 141).

In Nineveh, Sennacherib devoted himself to building an enormous new palace for himself.  For decoration, he ordered his workmen to build a grisly monument: a giant eight-foot frieze carved from floor to ceiling that depicted, in horrific detail, all the tortures that Sennacherib and his soldiers had heaped upon the conquered, besieged Jews. The panels were so numerous that they stretched across an entire room.  Sennacherib chose the destruction of Lachish as the subject to represent the entire conquest of Judah.

Uncovering the Lachish Relief
Nearly 3,000 years later, Austen Henry Layard excavated Sennacherib’s palace near Mosul. He could scarcely believe his eyes as he uncovered the huge stone reliefs of the siege of Lachish.

He later wrote:

“Here, therefore, was the actual picture of the taking of Lachish, the city as we know from the Bible, besieged by Sennacherib, when he sent his generals to demand tribute of Hezekiah, and which he had captured before their return; evidence of the most remarkable character to confirm the interpretation of the inscriptions, and to identify the king who caused them to be engraved with the Sennacherib of Scripture” (Austen Henry Layard, Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon: 1853).

The discovery of the Lachish Relief cemented Austin Henry Layard’s reputation. He returned home to England in triumph, and was later knighted and elected to Parliament. He kept many of the priceless artifacts he’d discovered, and bequeathed them to the British Museum after his death.

People escaping from Lachish
Among his gifts to the museum was the Lachish Relief, as the stone carvings of the siege of Lachish are called.  They remain in the British Museum to this day, a haunting rendition of one of the worst tragedies in Jewish national history.

Remembering Over 200,000 Jewish Refugees
British Museum Director Neil MacGregor explains that the Lachish Relief panels “would once have been brightly painted, but even without any color today they are astonishing historical documents - like a film in stone, an early Hollywood epic, perhaps, with a cast of thousands. The first scene shows the invading army marching in, then comes the bloody battle in the besieged town, and then we move on to the dead, the injured and the columns of passive refugees…. As the frieze progresses, wave after wave of Assyrians scale the city walls and eventually overwhelm the resident Judaeans.”

Later scenes show the horrific scenes of Jewish refugees after Sennacherib’s victory in Lachish. “Survivors flee the burning city, carrying what they can. These lines of people, carrying their worldly goods and heading for deportation, must be one of the earliest depictions of refugees that exist.”  (Quoted in A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor: 1996).

Despite the passage of time, the cries of the residents of Lachish continue to call out today, recorded in the panels that Sennacherib so ghoulishly ordered built.

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Chicken Soup for the MindJune 12, 2014 | by Jack
A Chinese girl forced me to confront what it means to be Jewish.
“What are we waiting for?" my Chinese girlfriend asked, somewhat confused, as we sat facing each other in the privacy of my apartment. For weeks we’d been talking about the prospect of getting married.

I held back. I was not supposed to marry a Gentile, I thought. It would be a betrayal of my family, my ancestors, my tradition. Yet it would sound racist if I told her that.

Then I realized: It would sound racist to me as well.

I was raised with a lox-and-bagels Judaism, replete with misconceptions and negative stereotypes about the religious life. The few laws that we kept – such as not eating pork – we did because of habit or tradition.

Confronted with an ancient, fascinating Chinese tradition, I was challenged to identify with my Jewishness.

Like many of my peers, I had an affinity for Jewish culture, and that’s where it ended. And like many young Jews, I became interested in philosophy and spirituality. In college I studied Marxism, Platonism, socialism, humanism, feminism. I wanted to know if any of them was the key to fixing the world. I delved into the teachings of Christianity and Buddhism. I travelled to the arctic for a month hoping to taste native spirituality.

In the process, I became disillusioned with one “ism” after another. And Judaism is an “ism” that was never even on my radar.

Until I met Belinda.

Interdating Questions
At first it was exotic and exciting: I was expanding my horizons. But soon the guilt and the doubts started pouring in. Were any of the Buddhist practices idol worship? Did it matter whether our future children ate pork and shrimp? Or was my discomfort with these issues the result of years of conditioning and guilt induced by my parents, synagogue and community? Whatever the case, I couldn’t just snap my fingers and make my upbringing disappear.

And not only that: As I was confronted with an ancient, rich and fascinating Chinese tradition that I knew nothing about, I was challenged to identify what was unique and special about my Jewishness.

When you’re forced to explain and justify your Jewish beliefs, values or practices to a foreign audience, something interesting happens: the conversations become very stimulating. My Chinese girlfriend would ask me questions about Judaism and I’d run and dig up answers – and not just any answers, they had to be the most satisfying answers possible, so that she’d find Judaism appealing. In the process of sharing my heritage with her, I discovered more and more of its treasures. In the space of four years, from not having a mezuzah at my front door, I became a kippah-clad, Shabbat observant, tefillin-donning Jew. Go figure.

Meanwhile, Belinda herself became increasingly drawn to Jewish values and beliefs – while also investigating other religions – and came to see the divine nature of Torah. Since Gentiles are not required to be Jewish to merit a portion in the afterlife, her decision to embrace Judaism came only after months of introspection, further learning, and immersion in Jewish life. Once she converted, I didn’t wait long before proposing to her at a kosher Chinese restaurant!

But it doesn’t always work that way. Interdating more often than not leads to intermarriage, non-Jewish children and further disaffection from our heritage. In my case, the opposite happened. What accounts for the difference?

Judaism: Culture or Meaning?
Most non-religious Jews who date only other Jews do so because of family and community expectations. Or because of the Holocaust. Or because of antisemitism. But these reasons are rather tenuous, tainted with guilt. Many cultures exert pressure to marry one’s one kind, but why give in to it –especially in a multicultural society?

Falling in love can override all these considerations. And here, I think, is the key. It all boils down to the bifurcation of Judaism into those who abide by it as a religion (and by religion I mean an all encompassing sacred and meaningful way of life, something one believes is actually real and true) and those who identify with it as a culture.

The recent Pew study on the state of Judaism in America asked respondents to identify what is essential to their Jewish identity. 14% replied “eating traditional Jewish foods” and 42% replied, “having a good sense of humour.” If that’s what Judaism is to them, there is not much to be lost in marrying a Gentile. In the same vein, Belinda and I realized that culturally we could take the best of both worlds. We can celebrate Rosh Hashanah and we can celebrate Chinese New Year. We can eat matzah ball soup one day and won-ton another. We can exchange Jackie Mason jokes and dabble in the wisdom of Confucius. We’d both be enriched.

The author with his family/>

To curb intermarriage, we need young Jews to identify with a Judaism that is relevant and meaningful.

But if Judaism is more than just a tradition, it is built on the revelation at Sinai when God gave the Jewish people His Torah, the Divine instruction manual for living, then the ramifications are vastly different. It’s not something I can blithely ignore. They’re commandments; not suggestions. And included in the Torah is the prohibition against intermarriage.

When you identify as a cultural Jew, seeking diversity in your relationship may be appealing. When you identify as a religious Jew, the boundaries are more clearly defined.

So if we want to curb intermarriage, we need to get young Jews to identify with Judaism as a religion that is relevant and meaningful, rather than simply as a culture.

Discovering the Relevance of Judaism
I believe interdating is a symptom of a problem, namely, Jewish ignorance. My interdating journey forced me to dive into learning anew, unlearn what I believed Jewish religion was, and relearn it with depth and authenticity that fundamentally changed my identity as a Jew.

I believe a big part of Jewish education today must consist of unlearning what we assume Judaism is all about. Is Judaism about refraining from eating pork because of habit or tradition, or is it about observing the kosher laws because that’s one of God’s ways of ensuring we remain a holy nation? Is Judaism about cultivating a sense of humor, or is it about cultivating a relationship with the Creator?

In short, we need to distinguish between authentic Torah Judaism and its myriad cultural echos.

Only then can we appreciate what it truly means to be Jewish.

Olivia Newton John’s Grandfather was a Nobel-Prize Winning Jewish PhysicistAugust 10, 2022 | 
by Dr. Yvette Alt MillerFacebookEmailPrintFriendlyShare
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The singing sensation hailed from a distinguished Jewish family.
Olivia Newton-John is being mourned across the globe as a charismatic singer and the star of the 1978 hit movie Grease.  Starting out in a teen band that she created when she was still a schoolgirl in Melbourne, Newton-John wowed audiences the world over in a career that spanned decades.
Yet the girl next door image that Newton-John cultivated in her long performing career hid the fact that she was a highly idealistic woman who hailed from a distinguished, intellectual family.
Max Born
Newton-John was the granddaughter of one of the 20th century’s greatest scientists, the German Jewish physicist Max Born who worked with Albert Einstein and won the Nobel Prize (along with Walter Bothe) in 1954. Her family tree included professors and at least one rabbi.
Max Born and Newton-John’s Jewish Heritage
Max Born was born in 1882 in the Polish city of Breslau, into a highly cultured, academic Jewish home.  His professor father hired tutors to teach Max privately, and Max soon distinguished himself in math and physics, gaining a Ph.D. at the University of Gottingen in Germany in 1908.
His friends and colleagues read like a list of some of the greatest scientific minds of the modern age. Max Born was good friends with Albert Einstein and is credited with developing modern quantum mechanics along with Erwin Schrodinger and Werner Heisenberg.
Max married a brilliant mathematical student named Hedwig Ehrenberg, who had some Jewish heritage. Though she wasn’t Jewish herself, Hedwig was a descendent of Rabbi Philipp Ehrenberg, a German jurist and spiritual leader. Max and Hedwig had three children - two girls and a boy - though their marriage was a troubled one and they later divorced.  Their daughter Irene was Olivia Newton-John’s mother.
The family originally lived in Gottingen, where Max completed his Ph.D. and received a job as professor.  He taught there until April 1933, two months after Hitler became leader of Germany.  That month, all Jewish academics in Germany were summarily fired from their jobs.  Max Born accepted a temporary lectureship at the University of Cambridge, a position that saved his life and the life of his family.  While he taught, Hedwig became active in trying to find jobs for the Jewish refugees who were streaming into Britain throughout the 1930s.
Olivia Newton-John was born in Cambridge
Olivia Newton-John’s mother Irene married Brinley Newton-John, a quick-witted intellect who worked as a codebreaker during World War II, helping Britain’s MI5 break the Enigma Code in Bletchley Park. After the war, he became a linguist and professor of German. Their daughter Olivia was born in Cambridge in 1948.  When Brinley accepted a job teaching German at the University of Melbourne in 1954, their family relocated to there. Olivia left behind her Jewish grandfather and built a new life in Australia.
Spokesperson for Idealistic Causes
As Olivia Newton-John became a superstar, she used her fame to speak out on environmental issues.  After she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987, she worked tireless support cancer charities.  In 2012, she endowed the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Center in Melbourne to help other cancer patients.



Olivia Newton-John’s idealism has much in common with her grandfather Max Born, who also used his renown to speak out about the crucial importance of working towards global peace.

Max Born is credited with saying that “Those who say the study of science make a man an atheist, must be rather silly people.”  In his later life, Max Born wrote a great deal, urging people to work to make the world a better place.  His talented granddaughter Olivia similarly used her platform to help make the world a little sweeter as well.

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When King Louis IX Tried to Wipe Out JudaismAugust 3, 2022 | by 
King Louis IX had a Jewish problem. They still named a city after him.

When King Louis IX Tried to Wipe Out Judaism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTv7YI3Yhc

Written by B.C. Wallin, with thanks to Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Created and Produced by Aish.com

When King Louis IX Tried to Wipe Out Judaism
By B.C. Wallin
And Pope Gregory IX put the Talmud on trial.

Louis XVI had his relationship with Marie Antoinette. Louis XV had his thing about furniture. But do you know about Louis IX, the king who tried to wipe out Judaism once and for all?

Crowned in 1226, Louis IX was the type of king who liked to take justice into his own hands. He’d often personally judge cases and deliver punishments in his Great Hall in Paris. And he also had a thing about the Jews. He forced Jews into manual labor with the Ordinance of Melun in 1230 and liked to debate Jews about their religion.

In 1232, Pope Gregory IX received a letter claiming that the Talmud, the enormous Jewish text that had defined Jewish practice since being compiled in the fifth century, attacked the Catholic Church at least 35 times and needed to be destroyed. If the Pope agreed, there would be no more Talmud, and, as an added bonus, no more Jewish practice.

The Pope announced that the Talmud was going to be put on trial and instructed all Catholic institutions in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal to seize all copies in their midst.

Officials burst into synagogues and confiscated precious, hand-written volumes of the Talmud from synagogues across Europe. Two months later the Talmud was put on trial, and can you guess who oversaw it? Yup, this guy. (Image of Louis IX)

King Louis IX ordered four prominent rabbis to defend the Talmud. They faced off against Nicholas Donin, a Parisian Jew who had abandoned his faith and converted to Catholicism. Donin was not a fan of Judaism; he was also the one who’d written the damning letter to the Pope that started this crisis.

King Louis set the rules. Rule number 1: The Rabbis couldn’t criticize Christianity in any way. And if rule number 2 could have been announced, it would’ve been that there’s no way the Jews can win.

The trial did not go well. At one point, King Louis got so enraged, he shouted that a good Christian would plunge his sword into a Jew and not debate. One rabbi had to flee for his life. The remaining prominent rabbis argued all they could, but the Talmud was found “guilty” and condemned to burning.

Two years later, official searched all over France for any remaining volumes of Talmud and other Hebrew books. On June 17, 1242, 24 wagons deposited close to 10,000 books at the Place de Greve, near Notre Dame Cathedral, where they were burned.

After the trial, King Louis expelled the Jews from France and led Crusades to the holy land that targeted Jewish communities along the way. And even with his crimes against the Jews, they still named a city after him. (Image of St. Louis). How about that for history?

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When King Louis IX Tried to Wipe Out JudaismAugust 3, 2022 
| by aish.com
King Louis IX had a Jewish problem. They still named a city after him.

When King Louis IX Tried to Wipe Out Judaism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laTv7YI3Yhc

Click here if you are unable to view this video.
https://aish.com/when-king-louis-ix-tried-to-wipe-out-judaism/?
Written by B.C. Wallin, with thanks to Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Created and Produced by Aish.com

When King Louis IX Tried to Wipe Out Judaism
By B.C. Wallin
And Pope Gregory IX put the Talmud on trial.

Louis XVI had his relationship with Marie Antoinette. Louis XV had his thing about furniture. But do you know about Louis IX, the king who tried to wipe out Judaism once and for all?

Crowned in 1226, Louis IX was the type of king who liked to take justice into his own hands. He’d often personally judge cases and deliver punishments in his Great Hall in Paris. And he also had a thing about the Jews. He forced Jews into manual labor with the Ordinance of Melun in 1230 and liked to debate Jews about their religion.

In 1232, Pope Gregory IX received a letter claiming that the Talmud, the enormous Jewish text that had defined Jewish practice since being compiled in the fifth century, attacked the Catholic Church at least 35 times and needed to be destroyed. If the Pope agreed, there would be no more Talmud, and, as an added bonus, no more Jewish practice.

The Pope announced that the Talmud was going to be put on trial and instructed all Catholic institutions in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal to seize all copies in their midst.

Officials burst into synagogues and confiscated precious, hand-written volumes of the Talmud from synagogues across Europe. Two months later the Talmud was put on trial, and can you guess who oversaw it? Yup, this guy. (Image of Louis IX)

King Louis IX ordered four prominent rabbis to defend the Talmud. They faced off against Nicholas Donin, a Parisian Jew who had abandoned his faith and converted to Catholicism. Donin was not a fan of Judaism; he was also the one who’d written the damning letter to the Pope that started this crisis.

King Louis set the rules. Rule number 1: The Rabbis couldn’t criticize Christianity in any way. And if rule number 2 could have been announced, it would’ve been that there’s no way the Jews can win.

The trial did not go well. At one point, King Louis got so enraged, he shouted that a good Christian would plunge his sword into a Jew and not debate. One rabbi had to flee for his life. The remaining prominent rabbis argued all they could, but the Talmud was found “guilty” and condemned to burning.

Two years later, official searched all over France for any remaining volumes of Talmud and other Hebrew books. On June 17, 1242, 24 wagons deposited close to 10,000 books at the Place de Greve, near Notre Dame Cathedral, where they were burned.

After the trial, King Louis expelled the Jews from France and led Crusades to the holy land that targeted Jewish communities along the way. And even with his crimes against the Jews, they still named a city after him. (Image of St. Louis). How about that for history?

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Messengers from the Russian Moral AbyssJuly 31, 2022 | by Prof. Joshua
Cousins of mine embarking on their new life in Israel shared chilling accounts of a country that resembles prewar Germany.

It was February 25th, the day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Yevgeny and Anastasia Dubov, a Moscow couple in their early 20s, were in a panic. Recently married, both had just begun well-paid positions in graphic design. But they had taken leadership roles as student activists in the public demonstrations in support of Alexei Navalny, champion of the opposition in Russia and nemesis of Vladimir Putin. Acquaintances of theirs had been rounded up and jailed.

It was time – they had to flee.

The next day they were on a plane to Istanbul, hoping that the situation would quickly return to normal. After a month, and with no end in sight to the war now in its sixth month, they made the move that Yevgeny had toyed with since the eight-month Nativ program he had attended here for Russian university students in 2019 – they would move to Israel on Aliyah.

As Yevgeny and Anastasia related their journey at our Friday night Shabbat table, I was brought back in time. It was 40 years ago that we stood in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza in New York in support of Soviet Jewry, chanting the movement’s anthem, “When they come for us, we’ll be gone.” Never could I have believed that all these years later this would be the fate of distant cousins of mine, the ages of my own children.

Their Jewish journey is a fascinating one. Yevgeny had one Jewish grandfather in Russia whom he didn’t know well, and who himself was highly assimilated. Anastasia has no Jewish relatives at all; her mother goes to church. Over dinner, though, it was clear how much they relish everything Jewish.

The day of their aliyah they changed the family name, from Dubov to Udovitch – my mother’s maiden name, and the surname of Yevgeny’s one assimilated Jewish grandfather. Given a choice of pumpkin soup or chicken soup – they went with chicken soup because that’s what Jews traditionally eat on Friday night.

Where does this thirst and enthusiasm for things Jewish come from?

Yevgeny remembered with fondness my wife’s vegan whole wheat challah from his previous visit with us while on his Nativ program. After dinner, they commented how much it had meant to them to join a family for a Friday night dinner, and that the idea of a weekly family reunion is something you rarely ever see in Russia. “We loved watching you give the blessings to your grown children – it’s such a connection to a deep tradition.”

I was puzzled: Where does this thirst and enthusiasm for things Jewish come from?

Yevgeny is Russian, but can no longer comfortably identify as a Russian with the decline and deprivation of political culture under Putin. “They’ve stolen the home we knew,” Anastasia says about recent events in Russia.

And so, with a deep yearning to identify with an untainted identity, they are seeking to reconnect with the vestige of another culture and another heritage that they know is buried somewhere in their past – their Jewish heritage.

But our conversation took a dark turn when I asked what their parents think of the war.

It’s a generation that just laps up what the government spews out, and it’s all that they know. For them, this is not a war against Ukraine. It’s a war against the United States.

“We try not to talk about it with them,” Yevgeny answered. “We, of course, are horrified – all our friends are. But my parents’ generation still has delusions of Soviet pride in them. They dream of a return to supposed glory and eminence in the world. It’s a generation that just laps up what the government spews out, and it’s all that they know. For them, this is not a war against Ukraine. It’s a war against the United States. And it’s a war to the finish. ‘Our very survival is on the line’ – that’s what they’re told,” he said.

“But when you send them photos of children’s corpses, schools and hospitals blown to bits – how can they possibly support that?” I asked.

“They laugh at us,” Yevgeny explained, “that we are so naïve as to fall for that fake news.”

I was speechless. How could Yevgeny’s parents, who had raised such a sensitive and intelligent young man, be so easily duped?

I had always wondered how ordinary Weimar republic Germans descended into a moral abyss. Surely it must have been the perfect storm of culture, history economics and the communication technologies of the time. A black swan, a confluence of events unlikely to ever repeat itself and entirely beyond comprehension. Who would have thought that in 2022 such a quick descent into collective moral depravity could overtake a culture with a strong economy, and where the internet guarantees that no atrocity is a secret from public view.

It was the Nazi chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels who once said, “We shall reach our goal when we have the power to laugh as we destroy, as we smash, whatever was sacred to us as tradition, as education, and as human affection.” And it was Goebbels who said, “This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.”

It is an utterly unsettling thought. Goebbels’ ideas were instrumental in the deaths of 25 million Russians during World War II. And now, seemingly, good Russians like Yevgeny’s parents can dismiss the images of destruction, convinced of the purity of it all, entirely without noticing the propaganda within which they are immersed.

We remember so many tragedies during these three weeks of mourning between 17 Tammuz and 9 Av, but relate to them as events of the past. Recalling these dark episodes in history and watching what is unfolding today before our eyes is a sobering reminder that the rapid collective descent into the moral abyss is ever a threat lurking just beneath the surface.
This article originally appeared in the Times of Israel.

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Our Messy Ethical LivesJuly 24, 2022 | by Rabbi Dr. Samuel LebensFacebookEmailPrintFriendlyShare

There are some scenarios in life when no matter what you choose, it's gonna get ugly.

Sometimes it can feel as if you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't. The famous French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, agreed. There are some situations, he thought, in which one simply cannot do the right thing.

He had a student during the Second World War whose older brother had been killed in the German invasion of France. His mother was living a miserable life. Her husband was inclined to become a Nazi collaborator, and she felt deeply betrayed by this treason. Sartre's student – her only remaining child – was her one consolation in life. He was faced with the choice of going to England to join the Free French Forces and join the fight against Nazism or staying with his mother and helping her live.

In Sartre's view, there wasn't a perfect choice in this instance. His student would either betray his mother or his nation.

There wasn't a perfect choice: His student would either betray his mother or his nation.

Immanuel Kant would disagree with Sartre. There's always an answer to any ethical dilemma. An ethical theory should operate with all of the clarity and precision of a mathematical theory. If the theory seems to generate contradictions or conflict, then the fault lies with us, and we have to fix the theory or fix our mistake in applying the theory.

The ethical life, when properly understood, is not messy at all; it's pristine.

The Jewish Position
One might be tempted to think that a Jewish ethic will side with Kant over Sartre. Jewish law suggests to us what to do in any given situation. Even when the law seems to be making conflicting demands of us, there's always a solution. For instance:

The duty to save a life overrides any other law in the Torah, with three exceptions:
you cannot murder an innocent bystander
worship an idol, or
Engage in certain forbidden sexual acts to save a life.
When there's a conflict between complying with a positive commandment and obeying a negative commandment, the positive commandment overrides the negative one.
When there's a conflict between complying with a positive public commandment and a positive private one, the public one overrides the private one.
The job of the Rabbis is to apply Jewish law to new situations or to account for new technology. But if there's ever a doubt about how the law should be applied, the fault lies with us, not the law.

Having said all of that, there's a famous story in the Book of Genesis with which we must contend. The patriarch Jacob is coming home after many years. He's told that his brother Esau is approaching with a large military force. The last thing Jacob knew about his brother was that Esau wanted to kill him.

You can imagine how Jacob must have felt. The text tells us that he was "greatly afraid and distressed." That's understandable. But the Torah is typically economical with its adjectives. Why are we told that he was afraid and distressed when the meaning of the two words is pretty close? Either word would have been enough to give us the general idea.

Rabbi Yehuda, the son of Ilai, asks just this question in the Midrash (homiletic works that complement and fill out the Torah's narrative). This is his answer:

[Jacob] was afraid that he would be killed and distressed that he may have to kill. He said, "if [Esau] gets the better of me, he will kill me, and, if I get the better of him, then I will kill him." And thus, he was afraid that he would be killed and distressed that he may have to kill.

But hold on. If Jacob had killed Esau to save his own life (or the lives of others), he would have fulfilled a religious obligation. You are commanded to defend your life and the lives of others, even if you have to use lethal force to neutralize the threat. It's a positive commandment to act that way.

But that's the point. Not every religious obligation is one that you should enjoy. Jacob knows that he'll act as he has to, even if it means killing in self-defense, but the prospect of such an action nevertheless distresses him.

The truth, it seems, lies somewhere between Sartre and Kant. Life is messy. Even if you always do the very best that you can do, it seems that it isn't always possible to live your life and make the tough decisions without sometimes getting your hands dirty.

If ethical theory demands that you reveal a secret and therefore betray somebody's trust in a particular situation, then you shouldn't feel guilty since you did nothing wrong. Perhaps the ethical law allowed you to make the promise when you made it. Still, because of extraordinary circumstances, the ethical law later demanded that you break the promise (to save a person's life, for example). If that's the case, then you did nothing wrong, and guilt would be irrational.

Living a moral life in this world of imperfection requires a willingness to get your hands dirty.

And yet, breaking a promise, or missing an appointment, even if you only did it to save a person's life, might still leave you feeling tainted. The taint is felt because you refrained from doing something good, albeit because you were obliged to do something better, or you were obliged to do something ugly to prevent yourself from doing something worse.

The taint isn't the taint of guilt, but it is a taint nevertheless. And so, even if there aren't ethical dilemmas, doing the right thing can sometimes be ugly.

That, I take it, was Rabbi Yehuda's point. At this stage in his life, Jacob understood the damage that doing the right thing can do. It distressed him. But it didn't paralyze him.

Sartre was wrong. There are always right answers as to how you should act. But living a moral life in this world of imperfection requires a willingness to get your hands dirty.

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About the Author

Rabbi Dr. Samuel Lebens

More from this Author 
Samuel Lebens is associate Professor in the philosophy department at the University of Haifa, he is also an Orthodox Rabbi and Jewish educator. His first book was a study of Bertrand Russell's evolving theories about the nature of meaning. His second book is a study in the analytic philosophy of Judaism. Sam's academic interests span the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language.

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A Magic Trick in AuschwitzJuly 25, 2019 | by Rivka Ronda 
For Werner Reich. magic sparked a crumb of hope during the Holocaust.

Werner Reich passed away on July 8 at his home in Smithtown, N.Y., on Long Island. He was 94.

In the hell of Auschwitz it was a magic trick that gave Werner Reich hope. The 91-year-old Holocaust survivor remembers seeing the trick to this day.

As a 16-year-old, he had come back from a work assignment, climbed onto the top of a bare wooden bunk in the concentration camp barracks and found another inmate doing a card trick. Reich recalls, “It was like finding a gorilla in your bathroom. You can’t comprehend where it came from, what it was doing there. It knocked my socks off, although I didn’t have any.”

The older man, Herbert Lewin – whose stage name as a magician in Berlin had been The Great Nivelli – kindly explained how the trick worked without being asked. “I remembered every detail. It was the first trick I’d ever seen in my life. From that point on I practiced that card trick every single day in my head,” says Reich.

Balm for the Soul
“The trick provided for me a mental diversion from the daily gnawing of hunger and the constant fear for my life. It gave me something to think about, something that was a goal.”

He knew the rhythm, the movement, the flow of the trick well enough to recreate it in England after his liberation from Auschwitz, Poland.

The gift of a card trick during the unimaginable, harrowing time spawned a lifelong interest in magic. Although Reich doesn’t perform magic for pay, he enjoys using it to uplift the spirits of hospital patients and friends. He also donates his talent for fundraisers.

A member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and the Psychic Entertainers Association, Reich says magic has taught him how to think outside the box and approach problems from a different angle. He has learned to think on his feet, maintain presence of mind and take command of an audience.

“For this reason, I have never had a ‘bad’ audience and am a successful speaker even in the worst school.”

Teaching Youths Not to Hate
Imprisoned in jail and concentration camps from ages 15 through 17, the nonagenarian uses his energy to speak 100 times a year and promote Holocaust awareness at schools, colleges, synagogues, churches and conventions worldwide.

Sometimes he is called on to do an intervention. “Anti-Semitism has been here all the time. It’s just coming to the surface,” says Reich. For instance, a school where teens had been caught painting swastikas invited him to teach them the meaning and consequences of their actions.

The response is always positive, he says. Even though he has every right to play the victim card, Reich tells audiences not to feel sorry for him.

“I have had a very good life!” he reports. “What is important is not to be a bystander. We are all responsible for each other. I always quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: ‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.’ I beg them not to be a silent friend.”

A Happy Life Turns Ugly
Born in Berlin in 1927, he describes his early years as a typical middle-class Jewish life. His father worked as a mechanical and electrical engineer. His mother was a proud German who had served in the army in World War I, saved the lives of soldiers and received an Iron Cross military medal.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, Germany stopped allowing Jews to work at major companies, colleges and hospitals. Reich’s father lost his job. The children had to leave school.

At age 6, Reich and his family moved to Yugoslavia, where his father had served during WW I as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army.

“In 1933 people thought in two years Hitler would be out and we’d go back home. We had to sell our house for next to nothing. When we left, 25 percent of all our financial means was confiscated by the government as an emigration tax. We came to Yugoslavia and my father couldn’t find job because the country was strictly agricultural,” Reich recently told an audience at the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta.

“I was a kid, I was very happy. I went to school. I learned Croat and Serbian. I didn’t know the problems my parents had. In 1940 my father died, then a few months later Germany invaded Yugoslavia. Everything got turned upside down.”

His mother felt safe because of her military service, but she feared for her children and placed the elder, a daughter, with one couple and Werner with another who worked in the resistance movement. He quips, “It’s like hiding the cheese in the mousetrap.”
The Gestapo Knocks
Werner lived a lonely life, cooking, cleaning and developing film for the resistance movement. One morning there was a knock at the door. Several Gestapo agents burst in and threw everything out of the closets. One stood guard over Reich with a gun, ordering him to leave the door open when he went to the bathroom.

The secret police then arrested the 13-year-old and took him to prison, questioning and hitting him for hours, no matter what answers he gave. They locked him in a basement cell with a concrete floor and bucket for a toilet and fed him only liverwurst sandwiches for three days. “They obviously lacked imagination as far as food was concerned,” he says dryly.

He spent two months in different prisons. In one cell in Gratz, Austria, he looked out a third-floor window to the prison yard below and saw his mother walking in a circle. It would be the last time he would ever see her. He then spent 10 months in Terezin, a concentration camp north of Prague in the Czech Republic.

Little could Reich imagine the horrors to come. “I was sort of convinced all of this was going to stop very soon. I didn’t know anything about death camps.”

He soon found out as one of 2,500 prisoners shipped via railroad cattle cars. “They gave us a piece of bread and a couple of cans of sardines the Red Cross must have sent. Buckets overflowed after an hour. We were lying in our feces and urine.”

Stealing the Horses’ Food to Survive
After three days the train doors opened. “It was a scene out of hell. We asked where we were. They told us we were in Auschwitz.” Stripped, shaved and tattooed with the number A-1828 on his arm, Reich lived on 400 calories a day. After a couple of months there, he passed through three selections by Dr. Mengele. The vast majority were killed after that.

“We were trying our best to survive. It was a question of life or death.” He worked in the stables and stole the horses’ food. After nine months there, in January 1945 he and 60,000 other prisoners went on a three-day death march during which 15,000 died. He then suffered a four-day railroad transport in coal cars to the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. In open railroad cars, they endured snow, ice and death from frostbite.

At Mauthausen, he relates, “We got a tablespoon of moldy bread a day. I slept next to a dead man for three days just to get his rations.”

When liberated on May 5, 1945, at the age of 17, Reich weighed just 64 pounds. He then went to Communist Yugoslavia. After regaining his strength, he managed to escape to England, find work and get married. He and his wife, Eva, moved to New York, where his sister settled after the war.

A Lucky Life, A Lucky Man
Reich spent 10 years studying in college at night and worked as an industrial engineer. He and Eva were married for 61 years until her death in 2016. “She was the love of my life. I have two sons, David and Michael, two delightful daughters-in-law and four grandchildren. Life has been very, very good to me. I really have no complaints. I was lucky. I was really lucky.”

Herbert Lewin – The Great Nivelli, the magician whose stage name derived from reversing the spelling of his last name – also survived the war. He wound up settling in New York less than 30 minutes away from Reich. After Lewin died in 1977, his former bunkmate spotted the obituary in a magician’s magazine. They never met again after Auschwitz.