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https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Horrific-Valentines-Day-Massacre-of-Jews.html?s=mm
Horrific Valentine’s Day Massacre of Jews
Feb 9, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Horrific Valentine’s Day Massacre of Jews
On Valentine’s Day 1349 thousands of Jews were burned to death, accused of poisoning wells.

Most people associate February 14 with love and romance. Yet hundreds of years ago Valentine’s Day saw a horrific mass murder when 2,000 Jews were burned alive in the French city of Strasbourg.

The year was 1349 and the Bubonic Plague, known as the Black Death, was sweeping across Europe, wiping out whole communities. Between 1347 and 1352, it killed millions of people. Historian Ole J. Benedictow estimates that 60% of Europeans died from the disease. One Italian writer recorded what the plague did to the city of Florence, where he lived: “All the citizens did little else except to carry dead bodies to be buried… At every church they dug deep pits down to the water-table; and thus those who were poor who died during the night were bundled up quickly and thrown into the pit.”

Bubonic Plague is caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis and is most commonly spread by fleas that live on rodents like rats and mice. The disease still exists, and sickens thousands of people each year, including a handful of people in the United States and other developed countries. Caught early, Bubonic Plague is treatable with modern medicines. In the Middle Ages, of course, no medical treatment existed to mitigate the Plague’s devastating effects. It’s estimated that about 80% of people who contracted the Plague in Medieval Europe died.

The Massacre of Jews at Strasbourg, by Eugene Beyer
The first major European outbreak of Plague occurred in Messina, Italy, in 1347, and it spread rapidly from there. Historians estimate that the largest wave of Bubonic Plague – the pandemic that was dubbed The Black Death – originated in Central Asia. As it began sweeping through European communities, terrified people cast about for someone to blame. Jews were a natural choice. As the Black Death advanced, Christians turned on the Jews in their midst, accusing them of spreading the Plague by poisoning Christian people’s wells.

Many Christians leapt to accuse Jews of deliberately spreading the disease to harm Christians.
Jews, often forced into overcrowded and fenced-in Jewish quarters, suffered from the Black Death at rates comparable to their Christian neighbors. Yet even though it was apparent that Jews were sickening and dying as well, many Christians leapt to accuse Jews of deliberately spreading the disease to harm Christians. Historian Heinrich Graetz described the fevered atmosphere of hate and accusations leveled at European Jews: “...the suspicion arose that the Jews had poisoned the brooks and wells, and even the air, in order to annihilate the Christians of every country at one blow”. (Detailed in Graetz’s History of the Jews, 1894).


 
Jewish communities found themselves under attack. Of the approximately 363 Jewish communities in Europe at the time, Jews were attacked in fully half of them by mobs blaming them for spreading the Plague.

These attacks were horrifically violent. In Cologne, Jews were locked into a synagogue which was then set on fire. In Mainz, the entire town’s sizeable Jewish community was murdered in just one day. Jews were massacred and tortured across Europe, in Spain, Italy, France, the Low Countries, and the Germanic Lands. Emperor Charles I, the Holy Roman Emperor, decreed that the property of Jews murdered for supposedly spreading the Plague could be seized by their Christian neighbors with impunity. With this financial incentive to kill Jews, the attacks only intensified.

In 1349, a group of feudal lords in France’s Alsace region attempted to make the attacks on Jews official. They assembled in the French town of Benfeld, and formally blamed Jews for the Black Death. They also adopted a series of steps to target Jews, singling Jews out for murder and calling for them to be expelled from towns. This “Benfeld Decree” had an immediate effect as Jews in thirty communities across Alsace were attacked. Only the city of Strasbourg, which had a large Jewish community, resisted, protecting their city’s Jews.

The atmosphere in Strasbourg in early 1349 was tense. The Black Death had not yet reached the city, though anxious citizens awaited the first case of victims to sicken and die any day. Strasbourg’s Bishop Berthold III railed against Jews, but the city’s elected officials held firm. Mayor Kunze of Wintertur, Strasbourg’s sheriff, Gosse Sturm, and a local lay leader named Peter Swaber all vociferously defended and protected Strasbourg’s Jews.

On February 10, 1349, the restless citizens finally had enough. A mob rose up and overthrew Strasbourg’s city government, installing an unstable government “of the people” instead. This hateful group that was now in charge was a strange amalgam: led by the local guilds of butchers and tailors, it was financially backed by local nobles who hated the Jews and hoped to seize their property. One of this new mob’s first acts was to arrest the city’s Jews on the charge of poisoning Christian wells in order to spread the Black Death.

The Black Death
Friday, February 13, 1349 was a black day for Strasbourg’s Jews. Normally, they would have spent the day preparing for Shabbat, baking challah, cleaning their homes and preparing festive meals. Instead, under heavy armed guard, women, children and men were dragged from their homes, imprisoned, and charged with murder. Any Jew who was willing to convert to Christianity would be spared, they were told. As the terrified Jews awaited their fate, the city’s new governors were building a huge wooden platform that could hold thousands of people inside the Jewish cemetery. For the Jews, the next day was Shabbat. For Strasbourg’s Christian citizens, the next day was February 14, St. Valentine’s Day. They designated this saint’s day as the date on which they would execute Strasbourg’s entire Jewish population.

In the morning of Valentine’s Day, a large crowd assembled to watch. A local priest named Jakob Twinger von Konigshofen recorded the grisly massacre: “they burnt the Jews on a wooden platform in their cemetery,” he wrote. “There were about two thousand of them.” Some young children were yanked away from their parents’ arms, and saved so that they could be baptized and raised as Christians. For most Jews, however, no such aid arrived. As the enormous wooden structure went up in flames, around 2,000 thousand Jews were slowly burned alive.

Their murder took hours. Afterwards, eager townspeople combed through the smoldering ashes, not searching for survivors, but looking for valuables. von Konigshofen recorded the financial motive for this enormous massacre: “...everything (all debt) that was owed to the Jews was cancelled… The council...took the cash that the Jews possessed and divided it among the working-men proportionately. The money was indeed the thing that killed the Jews. If they had been poor and if the feudal lords had not been in debt, they would not have been burnt.”

Strasbourg’s mob government and citizens faced no criticism. A few months later, Emperor Charles IV officially pardoned the citizens of Strasbourg for killing their town’s Jews and for stealing their money.

With the passage of so much time, many have seemed to forget the cataclysm of violence that led to the torture and murder of so many Jews during the Black Death. Yet we owe it to the victims to remember.

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Red-Sea-Spies-The-True-Story.html?s=mm
Red Sea Spies: The True Story
Feb 1, 2020  |  by Raffi Berg
Red Sea Spies: The True Story
Far from being passive victims, it was the Ethiopian Jews' incredible heroism, sacrifice and steadfast commitment that enabled them to be saved.

Gunshots ring out, panic sets in, the black Jews are told to hurry – take only what they can carry and get out of the village as heavily armed troops close in. Terrified, the Jews are helped onto a waiting truck and whisked from immediate danger by white men – Israeli Jews from the Mossad, come to take them out. “We leave no one behind,” says one of their saviours, leaving the vehicle and leading the group across arid, sun-baked plains and mountainous terrain, all the way from Ethiopia to a safe-house in Sudan.

Such are the opening scenes which set the narrative in the Netflix movie “Red Sea Diving Resort” – a film which describes itself as “inspired by true events”. What it does not claim is that it is “based on” facts. (Whether it is a good or bad movie is for viewers to decide).

Ethiopian Jew in Wallaka, Ethiopia, 1984 (Photo: Doron Bacher, Beit Hatefutsoth)
It is, by now, well known that around 30,000 Ethiopian Jews were spirited to Israel, in epic operations carried out by the Mossad and the Israel Defense Forces in the 1980s and early 1990s, in such legendary missions as Operation Moses and Solomon. It is also commonly understood that they were rescued – plucked from the brink of extinction – as civil war, drought and famine gripped northern Ethiopia, an appalling situation which pricked the world’s conscience and culminated with the historic Live Aid charity event watched by billions of people.

That the Jews were saved by Israel is unquestionable – but the conception, and all too often depiction, that they were “rescued” is not only dubious, but incorrect. There is a difference – and it is a big one.

 Red Sea Diving resort
When I set out to write my book “Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Holiday Resort” – the incredible tale of how Israeli agents smuggled Ethiopian Jews to Israel while using a bogus holiday village as cover – I laboured under the illusion that these “hapless” and endangered Jews owed their salvation entirely to the heroic actions of those carrying out the orders of then Prime Minister Menachem Begin to bring them to Israel. However, the more I researched and learned about this special community, the more I came to realize that they were not passive victims of circumstance whose destiny lay in the hands of the Israelis sent to retrieve them. On the contrary – had it not been for the heroism, sacrifice and single-mindedness of the Ethiopian Jews themselves, Moses, Solomon and the other operations of their kind would never have happened. Period.

As the Mossad commander who instigated and led the mission, Dani, told me in one of our many meetings: “It was like two big wheels, two strong wheels, actually met – one was the old Ethiopian Jews’ dream to go back to Zion and Jerusalem, and the other one was the Israeli Jews that came to help them fulfil this – it was the fusion of wheels that was the strength of this operation.”

Arous resort in 2005

For centuries and even millennia, the longing to return to what they knew as the Land of Jerusalem was their life force. “Jerusalem” – a land they literally thought of as paved with gold and flowing with milk and honey – occupied their thoughts and prayers. Grandparents told grandchildren about a city which was Heaven on Earth, animals were shechted (the laws of kashrut were scrupulously observed, along with Shabbat and other tenets of the Jewish faith) in its direction and songs and poems were sung about it (“Shimela! Shimela!" Ethiopian Jewish children would sing on catching sight of a stork, as migrating musters headed to the Holy Land. "Agerachin Yerushalem dehena?" – "Stork! Stork! How is our country Jerusalem doing?")

In 1862, a first valiant but futile attempt was made to walk en masse to Jerusalem. Led by a spiritual leader (kes), Abba Mahari, thousands of Ethiopian Jews headed towards what they believed to be the Red Sea, but they failed to cross and many drowned trying. Years later, when the Ethiopian Jews were visited by scholar Josef Halevy (the first foreign Jew to find them), he wrote how the villagers paid little attention to him until he mentioned the word “Jerusalem,” whereupon they were seized by a burning curiosity and he was showered with questions about Mount Zion and the Temple (they did not know it had been destroyed, assuming the land was still under the occupation of the Romans).

In 1948, when Ethiopian Jews heard that the State of Israel had been declared, they danced jubilantly in the streets, and when they learned it had been attacked they fasted. It wasn’t until 1975 that the State of Israel recognized the Ethiopian Jews as halachically Jewish, entitling them to settle in Israel under the Law of Return.

Their immigration though was not encouraged, nor were they allowed to leave Ethiopia – then ruled by an anti-Zionist Marxist dictatorship – to go there. That all changed with the advent of Begin in 1977 and his instruction to the Mossad to do whatever it took to bring the Ethiopian Jews to the Jewish state. Getting them out of Ethiopia itself was an insurmountable challenge – the country was riven by conflict and its topography meant airlifts were out of the question. The Mossad was stuck for an answer, until the arrival of a cryptic letter from an Ethiopian Jew, wanted by the Ethiopian authorities for Zionist activity, who had run away to Sudan.

“Send me a[n airline] ticket,” it said. The name of the fugitive Jew was Ferede Aklum. Dani was sent to track him down (which incredibly he did, despite having nothing to go on), and the two of them hatched a plan to get more Ethiopian Jews to follow Ferede’s lead and come to Sudan, from where the Mossad would smuggle them out to Israel. Dani and Ferede got word back to Ferede’s village in the Ethiopian Highlands, and the first to respond were Ferede’s brothers, who made the journey without hesitation. When more villagers heard that a way was open to get to Israel, more followed – at first a handful, then a trickle, and ultimately a deluge.

Ethiopian Jews kissing the ground in Israel on arrival
(Photo: Israel Intelligence Heritage Commemoration Center)

Village after village emptied, Jews leaving behind the family homes they had lived in for centuries as well as their way of life, for the sole purpose of going to Israel – and they risked their lives to do it. They travelled by foot – up and down mountains, through jungle, across rivers and over desert – men, women, children, the elderly and the infirm. They left quietly at night so as not to alert their Christian neighbours, who would have informed the authorities. On their way they were attacked by bandits and wild animals, and stalked by hunger and thirst.

The trek was hundreds of kilometres long and took weeks – in some cases, months. Some Jews were caught by Ethiopian soldiers patrolling the border with Sudan, arrested and sent back to where they started. Where they survived imprisonment, they just made the journey all over again.

It is said that when the Jews got to Sudan they kissed the ground, in the mistaken belief that they had made it to Jerusalem; in one case, where an elderly Ethiopian Jew eventually arrived at an absorption centre in Ashkelon following an airlift, he ingested mouthfuls of soil, overcome at finally being in the Holy Land. More than 1,500 Ethiopian Jews died in their effort to get to Israel, to return to their ancestral home and fulfil an ancient dream. No – the Ethiopian Jews were not passive, but very much agents of their own destiny, who took their fate in their own hands, and suffered greatly in doing so.

Memorial in Jerusalem to Ethiopian Jewish refugees

And they were incredibly brave, both those who made it out alive and those who did not. Not only did they put themselves through the most gruelling ordeal, but even after they had reached the camps, mothers sent their children, alone and into the unknown, to get smuggled out by the Mossad, because they knew it would save their lives, while they remained behind.

Every year, their odyssey and their sacrifices are remembered at a ceremony attended by the president, prime minister and other leading state figures, on an occasion known as Memorial Day for Ethiopian Jews who Perished on their Way to Israel. By law, it coincides with Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), such is the level of its importance, and it is held on Mount Herzl, the resting place of the founding father of Zionism.

Where the Ethiopian Jews were rescued by the Mossad and IDF, it was from the refugee camps in Sudan where they languished in terrible conditions. The Israelis operating behind enemy lines to get them out of there were heroic, for sure; but no less so were the Ethiopian Jews themselves who paved the way which enabled the secret operations to happen. For this they deserve our utmost respect and deepest admiration, and for the sake of history the narrative ought to be correct.

“Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Holiday Resort” (Icon Books), by Raffi Berg is released in the UK on 6 February, and in the US on 14 April.



Top 5 Reasons to Learn Hebrew
Feb 9, 2020  |  by Rabbi Shraga Simmons
Why you should sign up to Aish Academy’s just-launched online Hebrew Ulpan course.
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Top-5-Reasons-to-Learn-Hebrew.html?s=mm
Every Jew can and should learn Hebrew. In honor the launch of Aish Academy’s new Hebrew Ulpan course, here are the top 5 reasons to learn Hebrew:

1. Hebrew is the building blocks of Creation.
Imagine a chemical compound of hydrogen and oxygen that produces water; a small change – adding a second another oxygen molecule – produces hydrogen peroxide. So too, in the metaphysical world: the 22 Hebrew letters are the building blocks of Creation. Betzalel's ability to construct the Mishkan (Tabernacle), the forerunner of the Temple, came through understanding how God combined Hebrew letters to create the world.

The Talmud says that Adam named the animals by identifying their essence. For example, the word chamor (donkey) is the same root as chomer (physicality) – because a donkey is notable for hauling physical loads.

As a description of the metaphysical reality, Hebrew is steeped in deeper meaning, whereas conventional languages are arbitrary, with no inherent meaning in the words or letters. For example, Man is named Adam because he was created from dust of the earth (adama), the source of potential growth. Compare this to the Hebrew word for animal, "beheima" which is a contraction of two Hebrew words, "bah" (in it) and "mah" (what) – meaning the essence of an animal is already in it; it will physically grow but it has already reached its spiritual potential.

2. Hebrew is the language of the Bible, Siddur, and Jewish study.
The Torah is written in Hebrew, and learning Hebrew opens access to thousands of years of historical and philosophical texts. Translations can never fully express the nuance of the original.
 
To fully participate in Jewish prayer, rituals and Torah study, there is no more authentic and satisfying way than in the original language. In fact, many of the schismatic religions that emerged from Judaism are riddled with mistaken translations of the original Hebrew.

3. Hebrew is key to Jewish identity.
Hebrew is a special, “holy” language, as we say in the holiday prayers: "v'romam'tanu m'kol ha'lishonot" – God elevated the Jewish people above other languages. Hebrew is the national language of the Jewish people spoken by Abraham, Moses, and King David. Furthermore, the prophet Zephaniah (3:9) predicts that in the future, Hebrew will become the primary global language.

Unlike English, which is read from left-to-right, Hebrew is read from right-to-left. Hebrew expresses a particular “mentality,” and sometimes Western concepts are backwards when viewed from a Torah perspective. That is why Deuteronomy 11:19 instructs us to teach Torah to our children and “speak to them.” Rashi explains that Hebrew is such a core element of Jewish identity that every child should be taught to speak Hebrew; otherwise it is in some respect “like burying the child.”

4. Hebrew is the language of Israel today.
After the destruction of the Second Holy Temple in 70 CE, the Jewish people were exiled around the world and Hebrew basically ceased to be a spoken language in everyday life. Once Jews began returning to the Holy Land in the 19th century, Hebrew became revived as a spoken language, and today is the primary language of nearly half of the Jewish people worldwide.

This may represent the only time in history that an ancient language has been resurrected for modern use, symbolizing the eternal nature of the Jewish people.

Learning Hebrew opens a window into the culture and values of Israeli society. Far beyond hummus and falafel, there is no better way to connect to Israel than by learning its language.

5. Hebrew is at the root of America’s founding.
America's first institutions of higher learning, including Harvard and Princeton, made Bible study and Hebrew part of the required curriculum. The Yale seal depicts the Hebrew words "Urim V'Tumim," an item worn in the Holy Temple. The seals of both Columbia University and Dartmouth feature the Hebrew name of God. So popular was the Hebrew language in the 18th century that several students at Yale delivered their commencement orations in Hebrew.

America’s founding fathers were steeped in the study of Hebrew, quoting the Bible more than any other document. At one point, the founding fathers seriously considered designating Hebrew as America's official language.

In learning Hebrew, English-speakers have a good head-start. Since Israelis love to travel, and because Israeli is a technologically advanced country, modern Hebrew incorporates many “loan words” from English. Additionally, many “English” words derive from the Hebrew original, for example: regular (ragil), giraffe (oref – neck), igloo (igool – circle), albino (lavan – white), sapphire (sappir), couple (kaful – double), havoc (hafech – opposite), idea (yide’a – knowledge), organization (irgun), etc.

Hebrew is at the heart of Jewish life, and unites Jews from all corners of the world. Give your Jewish identity and Torah literacy a boost by registering now for the Hebrew Ulpan at Aish Academy.

The Aish Academy Hebrew Ulpan course is taught by Rabbi Shlomo Eitan. Rabbi Eitan is an internationally recognized linguistics expert and has developed a proven method to teach Hebrew. Unlike other Hebrew language courses, Rabbi Eitan focuses on the structure of the language and through small incremental steps, you’ll master the fundamentals of Hebrew.

Click here to find out more about Aish Academy's Online Hebrew Ulpan Course.

About the Author
Rabbi Shraga SimmonsMore by this Author >

Rabbi Shraga Simmons is the co-founder of Aish.com, and co-author of "48 Ways to Wisdom" (ArtScroll). He is Founder and Director of Aish.com's advanced learning site. He is co-founder of HonestReporting.com, and author of "David & Goliath", the definitive account of anti-Israel media bias. Originally from Buffalo, New York, he holds a degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, and rabbinic ordination from the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. He lives with his wife and children in the Modi'in region of Israel.

https://www.aish.com/h/15sh/i/Tu-BShvat-Three-inspiring-Messages.html?s=mm
Tu B'Shvat: Three inspiring Messages
Feb 5, 2020  |  by Adam Ross
Tu B'Shvat: Three inspiring Messages
Learning wisdom from the trees.

Tu B'Shvat, the Jewish New Year for Trees, falls on the 15th day of the month of Shvat. Beyond its agricultural significance, this day calls us to harness the power of a new start and take that first step to kickstart the ‘spring’ in our lives. Here are three inspiring messages of the day.

Where you think is where you are.
On Tu B'Shvat we have a custom of eating fruits such as figs, pomegranates, dates and olives, yet in reality look around – there are no fruits yet on the trees! We're in the middle of winter; isn’t this celebration a little premature? The message of Tu B'Shvat is that although the fruit have not yet grown, the process which creates them has begun!

For people, our fruits are our deeds and achievements – and they too have their origin. They begin with an idea. Rabbi Nahman of Breslov taught, “A person is not only where he is physically, but where he is thinking about being.” When an idea crystalizes in our minds, we are already halfway towards achieving it. Tu B'Shvat’s message is that all great accomplishments begin in a compelling idea and goal. So dream, think positive and celebrate the power of our ideas!

Let nature inspire you.
Rabbi Avigdor Miller, one of the last generation’s great rabbis, was known to take time appreciating the awesomeness of nature, marveling at the intricate detail and unfathomable wisdom in the world that God made. “Look at this apple, so perfect, so sweet, so round,” he would say before channeling his gratitude into a blessing. Nature is not only there to feed us, but also to inspire us.

On Tu B'Shvat we can look at trees and their fruit as our teachers and guides. The date palm which grows in salty conditions yet brings forth honey teaches us to extract the good from the bad. The olive tree, which produces oil, encourages us to bring more light into the world, and the grape which is crushed before producing expensive wine, teaches us the value of humility.

The Kabbalistic Tu B'Shvat Seder is replete with these pearls of wisdom intended to help us elevate our lives, improve our character and aspire to greatness.

Spring is on its way.
We all have periods of winter in our lives, times of darkness, coldness and isolation, and sometimes it's hard to imagine ourselves back in a positive place. In Israel, after four long, cold months most trees have lost their leaves, battered by the harsh winds and frost. Just when they look ready to be cut up and used for firewood, new life appears again. The almond tree blossoms, these barren trees which have laid dormant for so long make a comeback.

Tu B'Shvat’s message is not to let the difficult non-productive times in our lives define us. Like trees, we too live our lives in cycles, like the moon that waxes and wanes, shrinking and disappearing before growing and becoming full. Tu B'Shvat falls during a full moon. Life is a cycle, spring is just around the corner and as the Talmud states, better times can come “in the blink of an eye.” As we witness the start of the transition from winter to spring, Tu B'Shvat teaches and builds our patience and trust that good times are ahead.

https://www.aish.com/sp/pg/5-Steps-for-Personal-Growth.html?s=mm
5 Steps for Personal Growth
Feb 1, 2020
by Rabbi Noah Weinberg adapted by Rabbi Eric Coopersmith
5 Steps for Personal Growth
How to get out of neutral and back into high gear.

In honor of the 11the yahrzeit of Rav Noah Weinberg, zt"l, the 11th of Shvat.

The capacity for change is the secret of the longevity and vibrancy of the Jewish nation. Thrown out of one country after another, the Jews were invariably able to pick themselves up, brush themselves off and start building again in a new country. School systems were running, mutual help organizations were reorganized, and communities were reestablished.

What is at the heart of this ability to change and grow?

As children, we expect that growth and change are necessary for development. But somehow as adults, many of us lose that impulse and think of the growth process as something reserved for young people.

You don't expect the behavior of your ten-year-old to remain the way it was when he was five. If it did, you would view that as a tragedy. If your 25-year-old had the same interests as a 15-year-old, you would be understandably upset.


 
But what about a 40-year old who's acting the same way he did at 35? Is it any less of a tragedy to lose the years between 35 or 40 than it would have been to lose the years between 5 and 10?

Losing the capacity to grow is tragic at any age. Any time you're not growing and changing, you're not living. You're just existing.

What strategies are best to bring about continuous, self-propelled growth? There are five important elements:

1. Setting Goals
Firmly setting goals propels you to change. This is true even if the goal was imposed on you. For example, if you know your parents will disown you unless you have passing grades in college, you'll force yourself to change your study habits. The goal of pleasing your parents will propel you to develop your capacity to understand and retain the subject matter.

The same thing happens if you decide to take a job, or get married. Once you've made your commitment, you'll change and grow in order to reach your goal.

In order to set goals, you have to ask yourself: what do I want to accomplish in life? Do I want to be a good person? If so, what defines "good" and how do I get there? Do I want a happy marriage? If so, how do I make a marriage work? Do I want to raise healthy children? How do I go about insuring that I raise them properly? How do I fulfill my responsibilities as a Jew? What's the best way to earn a living?

One way to begin to develop your goals is to write down ten things that you really want to accomplish; goals that you may have swimming around in your mind. Pick what you think is most important and work out a realistic plan for getting there. Once you are moving well on this goal, pick another and do the same thing. Slowly but surely you'll be able to change everything you want to change about yourself.

2. Take responsibility for yourself.
Deciding that you are going to be responsible for yourself. As the Mishna says in Pirkei Avos: "Im ayn ani li mi li? If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" (Avos 1:14)

You alone are responsible to make the decisions that will direct your life. You are responsible for how much happiness you attain, and how much you accomplish in life. People who tend to blame their situation on others, whether it's their parents, bosses, peers or friends, generally do not accomplish. The beginning of responsibility is to realize that blaming others is a way avoiding the real work of living your life. So stop blaming and start living.

3. Get clarity.
In order to make the choices that will help us set goals, we need clarity on the issues involved.

Imagine yourself taking your brand new, shiny red sportscar for its first ride. As you're cruising along, the guy behind you runs the light and slams into you, completely demolishing the rear end of your car.

Your blood is boiling. You walk over to his car yelling your head off, ready to pulverize the guy. Until he steps out of his car and you find yourself looking up at six feet, five inches of pure muscle.

What do you say? "Pardon me, sir. Just wanted to make sure you weren't hurt. Didn't mean to bother you...."

What happened to your rage? You gained new information: This guy is bigger and stronger than me. Venting my anger could be dangerous!

New information can completely change the way you view a situation. That's why part of taking responsibility for your life is making the effort to attain as much clarity as you can.

When we have clarity, we change.

Determine which issues in life you are unclear about. If you're not moving toward a goal, it means there's something confusing you. Push the fuzziness away. Track it down. What's holding you back? Clarity causes us to act. If you're not acting, you're not clear. Sit yourself down and figure out why.

4. Take an accounting.
Taking an accounting is the primary way of accepting responsibility to follow through on the goals you set for yourself.

At night, plan out what you want to do the next day. The night afterwards, you see whether you accomplished it.

You can do this little by little, even with relatively insignificant things, until you gain control over your time.

How would you like to get up in the morning? Full of energy or moaning your way through for the first fifteen minutes? Do you want to find your socks and shoes where you expect them or would you like to look for them every morning? Learn to take control of your life.

As you get into the habit of planning each day, your mind begins to take control. Instead of confusion or vegetating, clarity begins to shine through. As you use your intellect to pierce through the fog, to see where you want to go and how you want to get there, positive, proactive living -- change for the better -- takes over.

5. Strategize.
Every goal needs a strategy to make it work. And that takes some thinking.

If you're going to college to get a job, don't expect it to happen by itself. You've got to strategize: How am I going to spend these four years so that when I get graduate, all I have to do is wave my degree and I've got a job?

If one of your goals is to have a fulfilling marriage, what to do you need to do – and who do you need to become – to make the goal a reality?

Whatever the goal, taking responsibility involves developing an effective strategy to bring it into fruition.

Life is filled with unlimited potential. These 5 steps can be powerful catalysts to get us out of neutral and back into high gear.

https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/jerusalem/tau-dig-outside-jerusalem-unearths-a-rival-to-king-solomons-temple/2020/02/03/?fbclid=IwAR070WYxjgYOT3D14EJPj7VSawHQSBEHycxEaLup0PB4nALwgDAdJHpGrE8
TAU Dig Outside Jerusalem Unearths a Rival to King Solomon’s Temple
By David Israel - 8 Shevat 5780 – February 3, 2020
Archaeologists from Tel Aviv University led by Prof. Oded Lipschits and Ph.D. candidate Shua Kisilevitz continue the excavating of a unique temple from the time of the First Jewish Temple at Tel Moẓa near Jerusalem. The temple complex, which is the only one of its kind discovered to date in the realm of the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, is similar in many respects to the detailed description of temple built by King Solomon, in Kings I chapter 6.

Researchers say the site contributes greatly to understanding the First Temple period and to comparing the archaeological findings – here and in other sites – with the Bible narrative.

Their article, A Rival to Solomon’s Temple – The Place of Worship at Tel Moẓa Explained, was published in in Biblical Archaeology Review last December. See also: Another Temple in Judah! (PDF).


Ritual stand base with remains of decoration in the shape of a pair of lions or sphinxes in the Moẓa temple / K. Amit
“The excavation at Tel Moẓa began in 1993, as a rescue excavation by the Israel Antiquities Authority – in preparation for the construction of a section of road that will replace the exit roundabout at Highway 1,” says Kisilevitz. “Additional rescue excavations were carried out in 2002, 2003 and 2012-13. These excavations uncovered an important site, whose dominant period was the time of the First Temple – From the 10th to the early 6th century BCE (Second Iron Age).”

“The findings indicate that there was an important economic and administrative center here, at the fertile Moẓa valley, with dozens of silos and two large grain storage facilities,” Kisilevitz continues. “At the center of the site, a monumental temple complex of the ‘North Syrian Temple’ type was exposed, whose plan is typical of the Ancient Near East. Among other things, an altar for offering sacrifices was revealed, alongside a table for offerings and many ritual utensils were discovered at the site – among them human- and horse- shaped clay figurines.”


Human figurine from the Moẓa temple / K. Amit
“The temple at Moẓa is the only temple compound of this type discovered to date in the realms of Judea and Israel,” she said. “Its architectural plan and decorations that adorn the ritual vessels are similar to those attributed to Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, and described in detail in the Book of Kings I chapter 6.”

In March 2019, following the completion of the construction of the bridge leading to Jerusalem and the removal of sand fillings that covered the site during construction, the archaeologists returned to Tel Moẓa, this time as an academic excavation of Tel Aviv University.


Horse figurine from the Moẓa temple / K. Amit
“The excavations this season were very focused, and the goal was twofold: first, continue to expose the temple structure; and second, use advanced scientific technologies to better understand the site,” says Kisilevitz. “We discovered that the structure was at least 21 meters (63 ft.) long, and that underneath the temple courtyard floor there are remains of another worship-related structure, probably from the 10th century BCE.”

Researchers point out that the temple complex, with its various layers, constitutes an unprecedented finding in the archeology of Israel: worship structures erected at the beginning of the Second Iron Age, and a temple that continued to exist throughout most of the First Temple period, alongside Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. Therefore, the site contributes greatly to understanding the evolution of worship in Judea, and to understanding the process of forming the Kingdom of Judea.

During the excavation, the researchers sampled materials from four layers exposed in a section on the eastern side of the temple, and submitted them for testing using various technologies: OSL – physical method for dating dirt samples; Carbon 14 dating test for organic materials; and micro-archeology techniques using microscopes, infrared rays, and other scientific instruments to reveal the hidden components within the archaeological findings.


Horse figurine from the Moẓa temple / K. Amit
“The results of the tests will give us a lot of information about the temple,” Kisilevitz says. “Among other things, we hope they will help us to accurately determine the dates of the different layers, find out if the structure has been abandoned at any time, and reconstruct the nature of the activities that took place in the temple courtyard.”

“Since most of the ritual activity took place in the courtyard, while the temple structure itself was only accessible to priests, we hope that further excavation in this area will reveal more objects of worship,” she says.

“The findings of the excavation at Tel Moẓa, past, present and future, are of great importance in understanding the First Temple period, and comparing the archaeological findings to the Bible,” Prof. Lipschits summarizes.

“The very presence of a temple similar to Solomon’s Temple just a few miles from Jerusalem raises many questions,” he notes, “Since the biblical text is rife with struggles against erecting worship sites outside Jerusalem, and even explicitly states that the God of Israel must be worshiped only in the temple in Jerusalem. Furthermore, the books of Kings II and II Chronicles speak of two religious reforms that dealt with precisely this point: King Hezekiah’s reform at the end of the 8th century BCE, and the more radical reform of King Josiah, which destroyed all places of worship outside Jerusalem in the late 7th century BCE.”

“We hope our findings will help us answer a variety of intriguing questions: who erected the temple in Moẓa and when?” Lipschits elaborates. “What ritual has taken place in it at different times? What was the relationship between the community around the temple in Moẓa and the community around the temple in Jerusalem? Did the priests of the temple of Moẓa at some point accept the supremacy of the priests and rulers of the temple in Jerusalem, and if so, when did this happen?

Did the Temple in Moẓa survive Hezekiah and Josiah’s religious reforms, and did it continue to operate until the destruction of the Kingdom of Judea by the Babylonians in 586 BC?”

Two additional excavation seasons are planned at Tel Moẓa, in the spring of 2020 and 2021, with students and researchers from around the world, especially from Israel, Germany, the Czech Republic and the US. Researchers are confident that many exciting discoveries await them on the unique site that does not stop surprising…

Dovid, Melech Yisrael: 4 Facts about This Iconic Jewish Song
Jan 25, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Get a deeper understanding of this famous song.
It’s one of the first songs Jewish kids learn in Jewish preschool or summer camp:
Dovid, Melech Yisrael, Chai Vikayam…. David, King of Israel, Lives Forever…
For generations, Jews have sung this song about King David, yet the song carries some deeper meanings too. Here are four facts about this iconic Jewish song.
Remembering King David
King David was born in the year 907 BCE in Bethlehem. He was the youngest of eight boys, and seemingly was overlooked by his family. When the murderous Philistine nation sought to wage war on the Jewish people, David’s older brothers went to go fight, while David stayed behind to tend his family’s animals.

One day, David’s father asked him to visit his brothers on the front lines of the war and bring them provisions. The situation that David came across was a stalemate: the Philistine army had a giant of a soldier, a huge man named Goliath who was clad in armor and towered over all the other men, and he stood on a hilltop, daring anyone to try and fight him. While the Jews debated who could best defeat Goliath, David stepped forward and volunteered. David’s older brother told him he should go back home and tend to the animals and leave the fighting to men who were more capable.

Instead, David picked up some stones and advanced on Goliath, holding his trusty slingshot. Goliath was covered with armor, but David aimed a rock directly at Goliath’s forehead, which was uncovered, and managed to knock out and then defeat the enormous man (I Samuel 17:23-54). David went on to become a decorated military hero in the war against the Philistines, and eventually married Michal, daughter of King Saul. David became king after the death of King Saul, and during his reign he secured Israel’s borders. Among his many military accomplishments was capturing Jerusalem and declaring the holy city Israel’s capital: David’s son King Solomon eventually built the Jewish Temple there.

David’s life was full of travail and struggle; one of his most enduring legacies is much of the Book of Psalms, most of which he wrote and which give expression to the timeless Jewish longing to connect with the Divine.

The fragmentary Tel Dan stela, containing the Tel Dan inscription (or “House of David” inscription) provided the first historical evidence of King David from the Bible. Photo: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem/Israel Antiquities Authority (photograph by Meidad Suchowolski).

King David is mentioned over 1,000 times in the Torah, and is the earliest Biblical figure for whom archeologists have uncovered evidence: a stone found in northern Israel in 1993 refers to the “House of David” ruling Israel 3,000 years ago, in the 9th Century BCE.

King David Living “Forever”
King David reigned for 40 years; the Torah records his death and notes that he’s buried in the “City of David,” an area in central Jerusalem near the Western Wall. Yet Jewish tradition says that in a sense, King David lives eternally.

King David specified that his son Solomon should succeed him as king, yet as David lay dying, another one of his sons, Adonijah, declared himself ruler. King David’s wife Batsheva raced to tell the dying king of this development. David assured her that Solomon was his chosen heir, and Batsheva received this good news by declaring “May my lord King David live forever!” (I Kings 1:31). It wasn’t meant literally - in fact David died soon after - but Batsheva’s words reflected the reality that the timeless Jewish values King David stood for would continue through the reign of his son King Solomon, and through future kings from the House of David.

By continuing to live in King David’s legacy - by being Jewish and praying in the holy city of Jerusalem - we all are ensuring that the Jewish life King David represented continues to live on. King David is also described as the ancestor of the future Messiah: no matter how seemingly dark the situation of the Jewish people might be, we always know that the kingship of the House of David will return one day, and the trajectory of Jewish history will endure.

Waxing Like the Moon
The words David Melech Yisrael Chai Vikayam (David, King of Israel, Lives Forever) were first declared by the great Jewish sage Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi in the 2nd Century CE. He was a member of the Sanhedrin, a court of rabbis who guided Jewish life in the land of Israel. One of the Sanhedrin’s jobs was tracking the waxing and waning of the moon in the sky. When the first new crescent moon reappeared in the sky, the Sanhedrin would call witnesses who’d seen the moon reemerge, then declare that a new Jewish month had begun.

The moon’s fluctuating brightness in the night sky reminded Rabbi Yehuda of the ever-shifting fortunes of the Jewish people. He personally witnessed the oppression and humiliation of the Jewish people in the land of Israel, persecuted by their cruel Roman overlords. Yet instead of giving into despair, Rabbi Yehuda reminded himself that just as the moon waxes and wanes, so too does the glory of the Jewish people. The kings of Israel who were descended from David might have seemed to be no more, but Rabbi Yehuda had faith that one day their glory would return. Thus, he came up with an unusual way to let people know a new moon had reappeared:

“Rabbi Yehuda Nanasi once said to Rabbi Hiyya (another member of the Sanhedrin): Go to a place called Ein Tav and sanctify the New Moon there, and send me a sign that you have sanctified it. The sign is: Dovid Melech Yisroel Chai Vikayam (Talmud Rosh Hashanah 25a).

This declaration gave the Jewish people hope: even when the glory of the House of David seems to disappear from the world, we have faith that one day his kingdom will reemerge.

David Melech Yisrael Chai Vikayam has become part of the monthly “Kiddush Levanah” (Sanctification of the New Moon) service, said by Jews around the world each month when the first crescent of the reappearing New Moon appears in the night sky.

Zionist Anthem
The song David Melech Yisrael Chai Vikayam became a popular song with early Zionists whose activities rebuilding Jewish life in the Land of Israel seemed to fulfill the prophecy of the song, that one day the glory of King David’s life and legacy would begin to be rebuilt.

On November 29, 1947, the nations of the world, meeting in the United Nations, voted on whether or not to establish a modern Jewish state in the ancient land of Israel. One by one, the nations of the world cast their votes. In the end, thirteen countries voted against, ten abstained, and thirty-three voted in favor of allowing Jews to create a Jewish homeland once again. In Israel, reaction to the news was rapturous. Crowds poured into the streets, singing and dancing. One of the songs that reverberated through the land was David Melech Yisrael.

Zipporah Porath was one of the people celebrating in the streets of Jerusalem. The next day, she wrote a letter to her parents describing the scene: “Dearest Mother, Dad and Naomi, I walked in a semi-daze through the crowds of happy faces, through the deafening singing of ‘David, Melech Yisrael, chai, chai vekayam’ (David, King of Israel, lives and is alive), past the British tanks and jeeps piled high with pyramids of flag-waving, cheering children”. (Quoted in Letters from Jerusalem: 1947-1948 by Zipporah Porath, Jonathan Publications, 2005.)

Another reveler was Mordecai Chertoff, who also wrote about the crowd’s joy in a letter home to his parents in the United States. After listening to the UN tense vote on the radio, huge crowds poured into the streets.

“We heard a tremendous roar from Ben Yehuda Street (in downtown Jerusalem). ‘David Melech Yisrael chai chai vekayam’ and the roar is repeated again and again from the throats of the youth of Jerusalem banding together in a huge hora around an armored (British) police car...we ran and danced and ran and laughed and cried interchangeably without even noticing our tears. We got on a large truck with a great crowd… One young man with a trumpet walked the entire city and people followed him to the Jewish Agency...and suddenly (the crowd) started chanting ‘get a flag, get a flag…’ and suddenly the blue and white appeared on the balcony and a jubilant and fresh ‘Hatikvah’ (Israel’s national anthem) which we had never dared to hope for and never anticipated, erupted from five thousand mouths. (Quoted in Palestine Posts: An Eyewitness Account of the Birth of Israel. Based on the Letters of Mordecai S. Chertoff by Daniel Chertoff. The Toby Press, 2019.

Bringing Jews Together
David Melech Yisrael Chai Vikayam has continued to bring Jews together, serving as a simple-to-sing anthem of Jewish nationhood and survival.

Yasha (Yakov) Yosifovich Kazakov was a Soviet “refusenik” (Jew who was prevented from emigrating to Israel) in the 1960s. He later was able to realize his dream and move to Israel. There, he recalled the special role that Dovid Melech Yisroel played for him and other refuseniks longing to build their homes in the Jewish state. “At nights, groups of us would gather in private homes and spend hours singing Israeli songs, new ones and old ones, from Dovid Melech Yisrael to Sharm-el-Sheikh...whenever a new song was broadcast over the Voice of Israel, we’d be singing it within a week” (quoted in Momentous Century: Personal and Eyewitness Accounts of the Rise of the Jewish Homeland and State, 1875-1978, Levi Soshuk and Azriel Louis Eisenberg, eds. Associated University Presses: 1984.

Joyce Boll, an American film producer who worked with David Letterman and Oprah Winfrey, decided to move to Israel after she visited the Jewish state as an adult. She met some family relatives in Netanya, but it was only when she paid a visit to the Dead Sea that Ms. Boll realized she wanted to live in Israel. She met some Israeli soldiers at the Dead Sea, and wanted to connect with them. “I didn’t know a word in Hebrew” Ms. Boll later recalled, “so I sang David Melech Yisrael”, the only Hebrew song she knew, which her grandmother had taught her.

The Israeli soldiers knew the simple, catchy song too, and joined in. As they sang together, Ms. Boll recalls “I thought to myself: ‘This is amazing. We are so different yet one ancient song connects us, connects the entire tribe.’ It was then that I understood where I belong.”

With its easy to remember words, its catchy tune, and its deep meaning of Jewish survival, Dovid Melech Yisrael is a way for Jews of all ages and all around the world to bond, expressing their shared history through joyous music.
About the Author
Dr. Yvette Alt MillerMore by this Author >
Yvette Alt Miller earned her B.A. at Harvard University. She completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Jewish Studies at Oxford University, and has a Ph.D. In International Relations from the London School of Economics. She lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics. Her book Angels at the table: a Practical Guide to Celebrating Shabbat takes readers through the rituals of Shabbat and more, explaining the full beautiful spectrum of Jewish traditions with warmth and humor. It has been praised as "life-changing", a modern classic, and used in classes and discussion groups around the world.
2020 Aish.com - Your life. Your Judaism.

My White Privilege Has Nothing to Do with It
Jan 25, 2020  |  by Judy Gruen
My White Privilege Has Nothing to Do with It
Identity politics and the victimization mindset has poisoned too many interactions between citizens.

Standing in line to return an item at Nordstrom Rack, I felt my patience draining away. Half a dozen people were ahead of me and the line had not moved for quite some time. A harried young clerk was processing voluminous returns from a customer, a black woman. I sighed and grumbled to the blonde woman ahead of me about the inefficient and lengthy process.

“I bet she has at least thirty other things in there!” the blonde said, nodding toward the woman and her enormous shopping bag. Her tone was more bemused than annoyed. “If it were me making all those returns, I’d at least look over at the people waiting and say, ‘Sorry, folks!’” I agreed.

At that, a black woman who had joined the line after me reproached us. “Hey, be nice. You don’t get how privileged you are. You don’t know what that woman is going through.”

The blonde and I exchanged a look of disbelief. “And you have no idea what I’m going through, or what she is going through,” the blonde nodded toward me.

This has nothing to do with ‘privilege’ and everything to do with simple, common courtesy.
“This has nothing to do with ‘privilege’ and everything to do with simple, common courtesy,” I added. Dug in and defensive, she replied that we were simply too privileged to realize we were privileged, while she in her victimhood was woke.
 
Though I’ve read countless stories of people weaponizing this word – privilege – and hurling it as a rhetorical cudgel, it was troubling to experience it firsthand. It speaks volumes about the implied guilt of anyone who is white, and the implied untouchable status of people of color. It is, quite simply, reverse bigotry.

When I suggested to our interlocutor that civil courtesies should be color-blind, she dismissed the idea. My expectations for what is polite behavior shouldn’t be imposed on others, she said. I was flabbergasted.

Tears of anger and frustration began to fill my eyes. “Please don’t talk to me about privilege when there are armed guards in front of nearly every synagogue in this city,” I said.

I was wrong to engage her in any debate and I knew it. The Talmud rightly warns against answering those who insult us. Self-restraint and an ability to accept rebuke is considered praiseworthy, but in the moment, my typical self-restraint failed me. It was painful and upsetting that she offered no shred of sympathy for the current wave of violence against Jews. In fact, she turned the focus back on herself and her own feelings of vulnerability.

Shouldn’t we feel each other’s pain? Should either of us be reduced to a bigoted stereotype?
This woman and I are both members of oppressed minority groups. Our hearts should go out to one another over the senseless hatred that still plagues our communities. Instead, she viewed me as a caricature, a one-dimensional being who lives in some mythical world where all I have is “privilege” but no hardships, where I am consumed with self-interest and devoid of human empathy or sympathy. I could take no more and left the line.

Like so many Jews, I carry the weight of historical and ongoing Jewish oppression with me every day. That awareness is alive with tension now because of the alarming rise in brazen, often violent attacks against Jewish institutions and Jews as individuals. Certainly, this woman carries her own emotional burden from the terrible history of oppression, violence, slavery and hatred against blacks. Surely, she has been affected either directly or indirectly. Shouldn’t we feel each other’s pain? Should either of us be reduced to a bigoted stereotype?

Every life is complex. No one lives a life of pure privilege, and in a free country such as the United States, few live lives of pure victimization. Many people discover their greatness through the crucible of oppression: Dr. Martin Luther King, Nathan Sharansky, Nelson Mandela, Dr. Viktor Frankl. Conversely, many people born into privilege often feel rudderless, their material wealth suffocating their spiritual growth. Judaism teaches us never to forget our former oppression, but to look forward to the future and not stay stuck in a painful past.

The victimization mindset has fostered a divisive, resentful and reductionist way of viewing ourselves and others. Through name-calling and call-out culture, people are insulted and shamed through politically correct bigotry.

Am I privileged? Yes, for many reasons: my family, my faith, my community, my health. But even amid hardship and pain, and even through the history of oppression Jews have faced, I can find reasons to thank God.

No, I didn’t know what that woman with piles of clothes at the counter was “going through.” But I do know one thing: turning a perfectly valid human gripe about a long shopping line into an accusation about “privilege” just trivializes the very serious issues that are foundational to the stresses and fractures in our society.

Sometimes, a long line is just a long maddening line.

https://www.aish.com/tp/i/moha/48910302.html?s=mm
Time for Freedom
Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16)
by Rabbi Ari Kahn

Time for Freedom
Aside from our physical tormentors, true liberation means to be freed from the things that haunt our minds.

And God spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt saying: 'This month is the first of the months for you, it shall be the first of the months of the year for you. Speak to the entire Congregation of Israel, saying, on the tenth of this month each person shall take a lamb ...' [Exodus 12:1-3]

These verses mark the first commandment given to the entire congregation of Israel.

The Midrash cited by Rashi on the very first verse of the Torah, questions the propriety of the Torah beginning with the narrative of creation and then the stories of the Patriarchs. One would have assumed that the Torah -- being a book of laws -- would have begun with a legal section. Rashi specifically asks, "Why didn't the Torah begin with the passage from the Book of Exodus that reads This month is the first ... "

We must conclude that ultimately the narratives of Genesis and Exodus are quite important and are therefore included in the Torah. Nonetheless, the verses cited above could have been the beginning of the Torah, and, had they been the beginning, would have made an appropriate one.

* * *
 
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT

As noted above these verses mark the first commandment given to the entire community of Israelites. But there is more to this passage that makes it unique.

For one, we might ask: Why was this the first commandment? Surely God had at least 613 other choices.

Furthermore, why was this Commandment given in the land of Egypt? Why couldn't the Jews wait until Sinai?

In a sense the commandment regarding the new moon is a prerequisite for the holiday of Passover which would be celebrated in Egypt. In order to separate a lamb on the tenth of the month, one needs to know when the tenth of the month is. In order to have a seder on the eve of the fifteenth one needs to know when the fifteenth is.

Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, Zat"zal, explained why this commandment was given here, and now. The Jews in Egypt were slaves, and therefore lacked a sense of time. They needed to acquire a sense of time in order to be truly liberated, transformed from objects to independent people.

While this explanation certainly gives us insight into the concept, one could argue that many, if not all, of the commandments contribute to the religious personality of the Jew. It is hard to see why this commandment could not have waited some two months until Sinai. God simply could have told Moses: "In ten days have the people prepare a lamb, and in two weeks we are leaving."

I think that an analysis of the seder which the Jews celebrated in Egypt will help us to understand the importance of this commandment, and why it was indeed given at this particular point in time.

* * *

THE PUZZLE OF THE FIRST SEDER

The Jews were commanded to take a lamb, to slaughter it, and to smear its blood on the door posts and door frames.

This was certainly liberating, considering that many animals were worshipped in Egypt; to kill the animals, and smear the blood was certainly perceived as a defiant act against the Egyptians, and rejection of their deity.

They were then commanded to:

'Eat the meat (of the sacrifice) that evening, roasted; eat it with matza (unleavened bread) and maror (bitter herbs).' [Exodus 12:8]

At first glance this verse seems unexceptional, for thousands of years Jews have observed this rite, eating matza and maror on Passover eve, either with the sacrifice (during the time of the Temple) or by itself. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the Jews in Egypt ate the Passover sacrifice with maror and matza.

Upon contemplation, a problem arises: Why do we eat maror or matza?

We are taught in the Mishna [Pesachim, Ch.10] that we eat maror as a "memorial" to the Jewish lives embittered by slavery. If this is the case then it indeed seems strange that the Jews in Egypt prior to the Exodus needed a memorial, as if they had already forgotten what it was like to be slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. Perhaps today we need to eat bitter herbs in order to remind ourselves what the bitterness of slavery was like, but why would the slaves need such a reminder?

The matza poses an even more difficult challenge. The reason we eat matza is also taught in the Mishna -- the Jews left Egypt in such haste that they did not even have time for their bread to rise.

The people took their dough before it could rise ... They baked the dough which they took out of Egypt, into matza for it did not rise for they were exiled from Egypt and they could not tarry, and they had not made any other provisions. [Exodus 12:34,39]

That, of course, refers to the matza they took with them. But what about the matza they ate (as commanded) before they left?
Let us consider the sequence of events:

God speaks to Moses prior to the first day of Nisan, telling Moses that there is a concept of New Moons, months and years.
 
He further instructs Moses to tell the people to prepare lambs for the sacrifice by the tenth of the month.
The celebratory, festive dinner will take place on the night of the fourteenth (leading into the fifteenth).
 
At midnight that night, the first born of the Egyptians will die, and God will "pass over" the homes of the Jews who will escape unscathed.

Sometime after midnight Pharaoh will come looking for Moses, and subsequently the Jews will be quickly sent out of Egypt.

The actual exodus will take place in the morning, at which point the Jews will have to leave so quickly that there will not even be time for the bread to rise, hence the introduction of matza.
 

Again, we must ask: Why eat the matza the previous evening? When the Jews ate matza that evening, what was their religious experience while eating it?

* * *
COMPLETE TRUST

The night before redemption, while they were still enslaved to Pharaoh, the Jews smeared the blood of the Paschal lamb on the doors, and then sat down to celebrate the redemption, because at that point they already felt free!

In their minds, they were liberated from the oppression of Pharaoh. They believed so completely in the forthcoming redemption that they were literally able to taste it.

Their trust in God was complete. They were still in Egypt physically, but they were long gone psychologically.

It seems that this was God's purpose on that awesome night. Once the Jews felt liberated, they needed to eat from the bitter herbs in order to remind them of the oppression. They were even able to eat the matza, which would serve as the symbol of their rapid exodus that would actually take place only the next morning. They knew that they would be leaving so quickly that they would not have time for the bread to rise.

They trusted in God completely, and literally tasted the future.

How ironic, then the commandment that every year we are to envision ourselves as if we left Egypt. The Jews in Egypt did just that: They envisioned themselves as if they left Egypt, the only difference being that they accomplished this by looking into the future, while we must look into the past.

In every generation a person is obligated to envision himself as if he left Egypt.[Mishna Pesachim 116b]

* * *
THE NATURE OF REDEMPTION

The issue at hand is in reality the very nature of redemption. Redemption is not merely political, or geographical. True redemption will bring with it complete liberation, physical, and psychological.

One can imagine if the Messiah were to come today, and bring all the Jews to Israel, and cause all the nations "to beat their swords into plowshares ..." it would not suffice if we were still psychologically enslaved.

For example, if we were still tormented by the horrors of the Holocaust, not understanding the ways of God, we would in effect still be enslaved.

The Talmud teaches:

Rav Acha, the son of Chanina taught, "The future world is not like this world. In this world on good tidings, we say 'Blessed is the one who is good and brings good.' When bad news arrives we say, 'Blessed is the true Judge.' In the future the only blessing will be: 'Blessed is the one who is good and brings good.' [Pesachim 50a]

We see that redemption has a psychological aspect to it as well.

True liberation means to be freed from the things that haunt our minds, aside from our physical tormentors.

This is what God wanted to teach us in Egypt; how to become truly free.

There is an old saying that "it is easier to take a Jew out of exile than take the exile out of a Jew." We will see this in future Torah portions as the Jews suffer setbacks during the sojourn in the desert, many due to their inability to free themselves from their past.

God gave them one glorious lesson in Egypt, on the "art of liberation. "

* * *
ANOINTING THE SEASONS

We can now understand why the Torah begins this section with the commandment concerning time.

We are commanded to anoint the seasons, to decide when the new moon has arrived.

We are entrusted with the ability to determine the nature of time. Will it be sacred or mundane?

We are at the same time taught a powerful lesson: The Jew has the ability to transcend time, to trust in God so completely that the problems of the present are resolved when considered in the larger context of eternity.

Will the night be a time of fear, or the final moment before dawn?

The ability of the Jews to trust in God was the final act that ushered in the redemption from Egypt. For when a Jew truly trusts in God, he becomes part of the world to come, tasting redemption.

Blaming Jews for Murder: Modern Blood Libel
Jan 27, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Blaming-Jews-for-Murder-Modern-Blood-Libel.html?s=mm
Blaming Jews for Murder: Modern Blood Libel
Jews have been blamed for violence in cases where they’ve been victims or tried to help.

Recent weeks have seen a slew of accusations against Jews for murder, in complete contravention of the facts. The accusations are chutzpah on steroids. Here are four horrible examples of Jews being blamed for deaths, both of others and at times for their own.

Modern-Day Blood Libel
When the parents of Qais Abu Ramila, an eight-year-old Arab boy living just outside Jerusalem, didn’t know where he was on Friday, January 24, 2020, they called the police. A few hours previously, they’d given the boy a 50 shekel and told him to pick some items at a nearby grocery store. When he still hadn’t returned home hours later, his parents feared the worst and turned to local officials as well as Jewish volunteers for help.

Israeli first responders leapt into action, searching his neighborhood. After appealing for help, hundreds of Israelis joined in the search overnight. Some local residents began to blame Jews. While the search was still going on, police were forced to use precious resources to block an angry mob of Arab men from attacking a nearby Jewish neighborhood after false allegations that Jews had murdered the boy whipped up hatred.

By the early hours of Saturday morning, Israeli first responders feared the boy might have fallen into a pit that recent rains had rendered full of water. Searchers pumped water out of a rainwater-filled area, and found Abu Ramila’s lifeless body. The 50-shekel note was still in his pocket. Magen David Adom ambulance workers tried to revive him but tragically he was declared dead.

Abu Ramila’s parents mourned their son, telling local Israeli journalists that he was “the flower” of their family. They acknowledged that his death was a horrible accident. Yet while the Abu Ramila family was grieving, an anonymous social media post declared the completely fabricated lie that Israeli Jews had murdered the boy, kidnapping and assaulting him before throwing him into a well to drown. This lie was reminiscent of medieval accusations that Jews poisoned wells and killed Christian children. Despite its obvious falseness, the post gained traction, being shared and re-tweeted by prominent figures around the world.


 
Palestinian official Hanan Ashwari re-tweeted the false accusation. Former British MP and radio personality George Galloway took the lie even further, asserting that the boy (whose age he got wrong) was murdered by illegal Israeli settlers” (sic) and - in what sounded a lot like an incitement to violence - called for “anyone (to) check this evil rampage against the people of Palestine. Anyone?” In the US, Rep. Rashida Tlaib also re-tweeted the slanderous lie that the eight year old was murdered by Jews. She deleted the tweet when it’s grotesque accusation proved to be false, but not before it was seen by supporters, baselessly smearing Israeli Jews as murderers.

Blaming Jews for their Own Murders
After two domestic terrorists who were members of a Black-supremacist cult-like religion attacked a kosher grocery store and murdered four people in cold blood on December 10, 2020, some locals blamed the Jewish victims.

That morning, the two terrorists first shot Det. Joseph Seals, a father of five. They then drove a short distance to a heavily Jewish area in Jersey City, where a note later found in their car revealed they intended to attack a Jewish school. Instead of the Jewish school, the murderers entered a kosher grocery store next door, where they murdered three people: Mindy Ferencz, the owner of the store and a mother of three young children; shopper Moshe Deutsch; and worker Douglas Miguel Rodriguez. A manifesto found in the killers’ car showed they set out to murder Jews - yet as news of the horrific murder unfolded, many locals turned their anger not on the murderers who’d attacked their community, but on Jews themselves.

“I blame the Jews” one woman at the scene of the attack said that night. The founder of a group that combats anti-Semitism filmed a crowd of Jersey City residents. One by one locals railed against the Jewish victims, not the terrorists who attacked them. “Four of yours are dead, right” one local asked the obviously Jewish cameraman, before spewing “If they were dead, that’s great.” Other passersby said they blamed “Jew shenanigans” and yelled “Get the Jews out of Jersey City”.

These horrific statements were made in the hours after the murders, when emotions were running high. Yet even later on, when it became apparent that this was a premeditated attack aimed at Jewish children and adults, one member of the Jersey City Board of Education, Joan Terrell Paige, posted on social media calling Jews “brutes” and said she empathized not with the victims but with the murderers: “What is the message they were sending?” she asked of the killers. “Are we brave enough to explore the answer to their message?” When local officials and fellow Board of Education called on Paige to resign, residents rallied to her support, attending a board meeting in order to defend her and repeat her odious message.

Attacking Israel on International Holocaust Remembrance Day
As Israelis and world leaders prepared to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, one BBC reporter took the opportunity to seemingly attack Israelis for remembering the Holocaust at all.

In her internationally-broadcast report on January 22, 2020, BBC reporter Orla Guerin interviewed a Holocaust survivor inside Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. Her report concluded with images of young Israeli soldiers entering the memorial; many were visibly moved as they looked at pictures of victims who might have been their great grandparents or other relatives.

These young soldiers, who every day put their lives on the line to defend the Jewish state, understand the history of the Jewish people they are defending. It’s appropriate that they learn about the Holocaust and its role in recent Jewish and Israeli history. Yet instead of commenting on the fact that Jews continue to face horrific anti-Semitism and that Israel, as the homeland and refuge of the Jewish people, is an indelible part of Jewish survival, Ms. Guerlin used the end of her report to trot out tired tropes attacking the Jewish state. “For decades, it (Israel) has occupied Palestinian territories” Ms. Guerlin asserts, in one sentence seemingly erasing any Jewish connection to the land of Israel, and smearing Israel as an illegitimate country with no right to its land. “...but some here will always see their nation through the prism of persecution and survival,” Ms. Guerlin concludes, apparently denying Israelis the right that every other nation in the world takes as their right: providing a refuge from persecution and fighting for their survival.

This report, viewed by millions of people world-wide, was a smear on Israeli sovereignty and legitimacy. Coming at the end of a report about the Holocaust, in which millions of Jews were murdered because there was no Jewish state to which they could flee, was an especially offensive example of chutzpah.

Jew-Killer Goes Scot-Free in France
After Sarah Halimi, a 66-year-old Orthodox Jewish teacher and grandmother living in Paris was murdered on April 4, 2017, her killer jubilantly announced “I’ve killed the shaitan (Arabic for demon)” and “Allahu Akbar!” before throwing her battered body off her third-floor balcony to her death below. The killer was Kobili Traore; he lived in Mrs. Halimi’s building and often insulted Mrs. Halimi and her family. Despite the fact that he recently told a judge his hatred was fueled by seeing Jewish objects in Mrs. Halimi’s home, he was recently released by a judge, who declared him not culpable for the murder due to marijuana use.

Traore broke into Mrs. Halimi’s apartment after first forcing his way into another apartment in a building next door. The terrified family there barricaded themselves in a bedroom. They, like Traore, were Muslim immigrants from Africa, and they heard Traore ranting and quoting passages from the Koran. They phoned the police, but not before Traore stepped out onto their balcony and climbed on Mrs. Halimi’s balcony. He attacked her and beat her mercilessly before throwing her to her death.

Despite the clearly anti-Semitic nature of the murder, Traore wasn’t charged with a hate crime. He pleaded not guilty, telling the judge that he wasn’t responsible for his actions because he’d smoked marijuana before the murder. In an apparent contradiction of his marijuana defense, he also told the judge presiding over his case that viewing Judaica in the Halimi’s apartment, such as a Jewish candelabra and a siddur (Jewish prayer book) enraged him, making him feel he had no option but to kill Mrs. Halimi.

In December 2019, a French court ruled that Traore was not criminally responsible for his actions. He’s avoided jail time, receiving psychiatric counseling instead. On January 5, 2020, hundreds of Jews marched through the streets of Paris, protesting this outrageous decision. “My sister was massacred,” Mrs. Halimi’s brother William Attal told the crowd: the killer “targeted my sister because she was Jewish”.

The Torah exhorts us to “Distance yourself from a false word” (Exodus 23:7). It’s up to all of us to stand up and point out the truth and dispel these slanderous lies.


https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Stoking-Hatred-between-Black-and-Jewish-Communities.html?s=mm
Stoking Hatred between Black and Jewish Communities
Jan 26, 2020  |  by Rabbi Avi ShafranStoking Hatred between Black and Jewish Communities
Using fake accounts on social media, white supremacists are fanning flames of hatred. They must not be allowed to succeed.

“BLACKS NEED TO RESPECT JEWISH AUTHORITY,” reads the stark, all-caps message on Telegram, an instant messaging service. The word “JEWISH” is reverse-color emphasized.

The message came from a fake account, like similar racist sentiments from similarly nonexistent “Jewish” users that flooded the social media giant Twitter a few months back.

A tweet, for example, from the fictional “Elaine Goldschmidt” who, “frightened by the string of anti-Semitic attacks,” bemoaned the fact that blacks (the tweet uses a much-reviled slur) “were supposed to be on our side. Now we have lost control of them.” The photo used in the profile was lifted from the account of a Scottish woman, Janey Godley, who, when she found out, was not pleased.

The tweet garnered hundreds of “retweets” and “likes,” including one, ostensibly from the unsubtly named, fictional “Ari Shekelburg,” who addresses “Fellow Chosen Ones…”

Indifference or Collaboration: Which One is the Road to Auschwitz?
Jan 25, 2020  |  by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

Does indifference to evil make you complicit?
On the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, on January 27 of this year, remembering isn't enough. To remember is merely to record what was; it does not ensure that there will be no comparable sequel.

Less than a century after we recognized the depths to which supposedly civilized human beings could sink as they sought to carry out a “final solution” of barbaric genocide, we are again witnessing the rise of a similar kind of anti-Semitism to the sickness of Nazi Germany. And merely mouthing the post-World War II slogan of “never again” or building hundreds of memorials to the six million will do nothing to prevent a repeat of the Holocaust unless we take to heart the real lessons we need to take away from a moment in history that brings shame to mankind.

How did Auschwitz happen? How was it possible for a cultured society to countenance concentration camps, crematoria and death factories? How could madness become acceptable to a sane and civilized world?

In a remarkable article in the New York Times last week by Rivka Weinberg, a philosophy professor, the author asks us to change our perspective from the moral message we've been teaching for years as take away from the horrors of the Holocaust. The gist of her argument is captured in the title to her piece: “The road to Auschwitz wasn’t paved with indifference.”

Weinberg asserts that we don’t have to be heroes to avoid genocides. We just have to make sure not to help them along.
Weinberg takes issue with the historian Ian Kershaw who wrote “The road to Auschwitz was built by hate but paved with indifference.” Weinberg asserts no, it was built with collaboration. The Nazis succeeded wherever anti-Semitism was entrenched, where Jew hatred was endemic. Her conclusion: “The truth about how massive moral crimes occur is both unsettling and comforting. It’s unsettling to accept how many people participated in appalling moral crimes but comforting to realize that we don’t have to be heroes to avoid genocides. We just have to make sure not to help them along.”

According to her, what we are to take away from the Holocaust has nothing to do with the sin of indifference. Silence in the face of evil should not be blamed.

“The belief that atrocities happen when people aren’t educated against the evils of bystanding has become part of our culture and how we think we’re learning from history. ‘Don’t be a bystander!’ we’re exhorted. ‘Be an upstander!’ we teach our children. But that’s all a big mistake. All of it: It’s false that doing nothing creates moral catastrophes; it’s false that people are generally indifferent to the plight of others; it’s false that we can educate people into heroism; and it’s false that if we fail to transmit these lessons another Holocaust is around the corner.”

What then is the message?

"Next time the murderers come, it’s understandable if it’s too much to ask for us to risk our lives, our children, or even our jobs, to save others. Just don’t welcome the murderers, don’t help them organize the oppression or make it “less terrible” (that won’t work anyway), and don’t turn people in. That will usually be enough."

To which I can only add, yes that will usually be enough - enough to let the murderers succeed, to let the killings proceed without interruption, to permit the crimes to become so much a part of daily life that soon after having been originally met with silence they will no longer even have the ability to stir the conscience or move the hearts of indifferent viewers.

It is hard to believe that a distance of 75 years from Auschwitz can so cloud our vision and distort our perspective that passivity in the face of evil – simply not actively collaborating – frees us from any guilt and is even sufficient to defeat crimes comparable to the Holocaust. Far better to acknowledge the truth as Elie Wiesel understood it: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death.”

To do nothing is by definition in effect to collaborate.

Weinberg wants to limit culpability only to collaborators. How can she not understand what J.K. Rowling expressed so powerfully: “Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.”

In other words, to do nothing is by definition in effect to collaborate.

That is what the Torah meant when it commanded us in the book of Leviticus, “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.” Apathy is a sin. But it is more than a sin. Rollo May concluded that “Apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice.” It is the kind of cowardice that empowers evil. It is what makes draconian evil possible.

No one can absolve those who remained passive witnesses while six million were slaughtered in their presence.
No one – not any historian or victim, not any student of the Holocaust – can absolve those who remained passive witnesses while six million were slaughtered in their presence. Even if they didn’t “welcome the murderers, help them organize the oppression, or turn people in”, they carry the mark of Cain on their foreheads.

Weinberg feels we have no right to expect heroism. “Heroism is exceptional, saintly; that’s not who most of us are, nor who most of us can be, so we’re kind of off the hook.” It is a philosophy that preaches the victory of the wicked; human beings can never be counted on to fight on behalf of their better nature. We may be created in the image of God but we can never be expected act as if we are Godly. The most we can hope for is to educate against collaboration. And remarkably enough this acceptance of our imperfection is supposed to ensure we have liberated ourselves from the crematoria of Auschwitz.

No, the world needs a different lesson. It is the only one that can offer us hope. It alone can turn the dream of “never again” into the fulfillment of the vision of universal peace. It is the message that asks us to view our survival as possible only on a foundation of morality, rooted in the awareness of our potential for individual greatness.

As we watch the civilized world slowly begin to sink again into the swamp of hatred and anti-Semitism we need most of all to commit that we will never again be passive observers of evil. As difficult as it may seem, we need to call upon our spiritual and intellectual resources to pledge that Auschwitz will never happen again because we have no choice but this time around to be heroes.
https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Indifference-or-Collaboration-Which-One-is-the-Road-to-Auschwitz.html?s=mm

Indifference or Collaboration: Which One is the Road to Auschwitz?
Jan 25, 2020  |  by Rabbi Benjamin Blech
https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Indifference-or-Collaboration-Which-One-is-the-Road-to-Auschwitz.html?s=mm
Does indifference to evil make you complicit?
On the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, on January 27 of this year, remembering isn't enough. To remember is merely to record what was; it does not ensure that there will be no comparable sequel.

Less than a century after we recognized the depths to which supposedly civilized human beings could sink as they sought to carry out a “final solution” of barbaric genocide, we are again witnessing the rise of a similar kind of anti-Semitism to the sickness of Nazi Germany. And merely mouthing the post-World War II slogan of “never again” or building hundreds of memorials to the six million will do nothing to prevent a repeat of the Holocaust unless we take to heart the real lessons we need to take away from a moment in history that brings shame to mankind.

How did Auschwitz happen? How was it possible for a cultured society to countenance concentration camps, crematoria and death factories? How could madness become acceptable to a sane and civilized world?

In a remarkable article in the New York Times last week by Rivka Weinberg, a philosophy professor, the author asks us to change our perspective from the moral message we've been teaching for years as take away from the horrors of the Holocaust. The gist of her argument is captured in the title to her piece: “The road to Auschwitz wasn’t paved with indifference.”

Weinberg asserts that we don’t have to be heroes to avoid genocides. We just have to make sure not to help them along.
Weinberg takes issue with the historian Ian Kershaw who wrote “The road to Auschwitz was built by hate but paved with indifference.” Weinberg asserts no, it was built with collaboration. The Nazis succeeded wherever anti-Semitism was entrenched, where Jew hatred was endemic. Her conclusion: “The truth about how massive moral crimes occur is both unsettling and comforting. It’s unsettling to accept how many people participated in appalling moral crimes but comforting to realize that we don’t have to be heroes to avoid genocides. We just have to make sure not to help them along.”

According to her, what we are to take away from the Holocaust has nothing to do with the sin of indifference. Silence in the face of evil should not be blamed.

“The belief that atrocities happen when people aren’t educated against the evils of bystanding has become part of our culture and how we think we’re learning from history. ‘Don’t be a bystander!’ we’re exhorted. ‘Be an upstander!’ we teach our children. But that’s all a big mistake. All of it: It’s false that doing nothing creates moral catastrophes; it’s false that people are generally indifferent to the plight of others; it’s false that we can educate people into heroism; and it’s false that if we fail to transmit these lessons another Holocaust is around the corner.”

What then is the message?

"Next time the murderers come, it’s understandable if it’s too much to ask for us to risk our lives, our children, or even our jobs, to save others. Just don’t welcome the murderers, don’t help them organize the oppression or make it “less terrible” (that won’t work anyway), and don’t turn people in. That will usually be enough."

To which I can only add, yes that will usually be enough - enough to let the murderers succeed, to let the killings proceed without interruption, to permit the crimes to become so much a part of daily life that soon after having been originally met with silence they will no longer even have the ability to stir the conscience or move the hearts of indifferent viewers.

It is hard to believe that a distance of 75 years from Auschwitz can so cloud our vision and distort our perspective that passivity in the face of evil – simply not actively collaborating – frees us from any guilt and is even sufficient to defeat crimes comparable to the Holocaust. Far better to acknowledge the truth as Elie Wiesel understood it: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death.”

To do nothing is by definition in effect to collaborate.

Weinberg wants to limit culpability only to collaborators. How can she not understand what J.K. Rowling expressed so powerfully: “Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy.”

In other words, to do nothing is by definition in effect to collaborate.

That is what the Torah meant when it commanded us in the book of Leviticus, “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.” Apathy is a sin. But it is more than a sin. Rollo May concluded that “Apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice.” It is the kind of cowardice that empowers evil. It is what makes draconian evil possible.

No one can absolve those who remained passive witnesses while six million were slaughtered in their presence.
No one – not any historian or victim, not any student of the Holocaust – can absolve those who remained passive witnesses while six million were slaughtered in their presence. Even if they didn’t “welcome the murderers, help them organize the oppression, or turn people in”, they carry the mark of Cain on their foreheads.

Weinberg feels we have no right to expect heroism. “Heroism is exceptional, saintly; that’s not who most of us are, nor who most of us can be, so we’re kind of off the hook.” It is a philosophy that preaches the victory of the wicked; human beings can never be counted on to fight on behalf of their better nature. We may be created in the image of God but we can never be expected act as if we are Godly. The most we can hope for is to educate against collaboration. And remarkably enough this acceptance of our imperfection is supposed to ensure we have liberated ourselves from the crematoria of Auschwitz.

No, the world needs a different lesson. It is the only one that can offer us hope. It alone can turn the dream of “never again” into the fulfillment of the vision of universal peace. It is the message that asks us to view our survival as possible only on a foundation of morality, rooted in the awareness of our potential for individual greatness.

As we watch the civilized world slowly begin to sink again into the swamp of hatred and anti-Semitism we need most of all to commit that we will never again be passive observers of evil. As difficult as it may seem, we need to call upon our spiritual and intellectual resources to pledge that Auschwitz will never happen again because we have no choice but this time around to be heroes.


Auschwitz 75 Years Later: Universal Lessons
Jan 26, 2020  |  by Irwin Cotler
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Auschwitz-75-Years-Later-Universal-Lessons.html?s=mm
With the global resurgence of anti-Semitic incitement, violence and terror, these are the crucial lessons we must take to heart.

I write on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz – the most brutal extermination camp of the 20th century – of horrors too terrible to be believed, but not too terrible to have happened.

Of the 1.3 million people murdered at Auschwitz, 1.1 million were Jews. As Elie Wiesel put it, “The Holocaust was a war against the Jews in which not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.”

I write also in the immediate aftermath of the 75th anniversary of the arrest and disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg on January 17, 1945. Wallenberg demonstrated how one person with the compassion to care and courage to act can confront evil, prevail and transform history. It is a tragedy that this hero of the Holocaust who saved so many was not saved by so many who could, and we owe a duty to Raoul Wallenberg to determine the truth of his fate.

I write also on the occasion of a global resurgence of anti-Semitic incitement, violence and terror, and in the midst of ongoing ethnic cleansing and mass atrocity.

And so, at this important historical moment, we should ask ourselves: What have we learned in the last 75 years – and more importantly – what must we do?

Lesson 1: Zachor – the imperative of remembrance

The first lesson is the danger of forgetting – the killing of the victims a second time – and the imperative of remembrance – zachor. As we remember the victims of the Shoah – defamed, demonized and dehumanized as prologue and justification for genocide – we must understand that the mass murder of six million Jews and millions of non-Jews is not a matter of abstract statistics.

As we say at such moments of remembrance, “Unto each person there is a name, each person has an identity, each person is a universe.” As the Talmud reminds us, “Whoever saves a single life, it is as if he or she has saved an entire universe.” Thus, the abiding universal imperative: we are each, wherever we are, the guarantors of each other’s destiny.

Lesson 2: The danger of state-sanctioned incitement to hate and genocide
The genocide of European Jewry – like the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, whose 25th anniversary we just commemorated, and where 10,000 Tutsis were murdered every day for three months – succeeded not only because of the machinery of death, but because of a state-sanctioned ideology of hate. For example, the Jew was seen as the personification of the devil, as the enemy of humankind and humanity could only be redeemed by the death of the Jew.

The Canadian Supreme Court affirmed – and as echoed by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda – “the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers – it began with words.” Indeed, in another important principle and precedent, the Supreme Court held that the very incitement to genocide constitutes the crime in and of itself, whether or not acts of genocide follow.

Lesson 3: The danger of the resurgent global anti-Semitism
The third lesson is the danger of anti-Semitism – the oldest and most enduring of hatreds – and the most lethal. If the Holocaust is a metaphor for radical evil, anti-Semitism is a metaphor for radical hatred. Let there be no mistake about it: Jews died at Auschwitz because of anti-Semitism, but anti-Semitism did not die. It remains the bloody canary in the mineshaft of global evil today. And as we have learned only too painfully, while anti-Semitism begins with Jews, it doesn’t end with Jews. As Ahmed Shaheed, the Special Rapporteur for Freedom if Religion and Belief put it in his report to the United Nations, anti-Semitism is a threat not only to Jews but to our common humanity.

Lesson 4: Holocaust denial – from assaultive speech to criminal conspiracy
The Holocaust denial movement – the cutting edge of anti-Semitism old and new – is not just an assault on Jewish memory and human dignity in its accusation that the Holocaust is a hoax; rather, it constitutes an international criminal conspiracy to cover up the worst crimes in history. Here is the historiography of the Holocaust in its most tragic, bitter irony – in its ultimate Orwellian inversion. First, we move from the genocide of the Jewish people, to a denial that the genocide ever took place; then in a classic Orwellian cover up of an international conspiracy, the Holocaust Denial movement whitewashes the crimes of the Nazis, as it excoriates the crimes of the Jews. It not only holds that the Holocaust was a hoax, but maligns the Jews for fabricating the hoax, something which is now being repeated in the genocidal denial in Rwanda.

It is our responsibility to unmask the bearers of false witness – to expose the criminality of the deniers as we protect the dignity of their victims.

Lesson 5: Indifference and inaction in the face of mass atrocity and genocide
These Holocaust crimes, like the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, resulted not only from state-sanctioned incitement to hatred and genocide, but from crimes of indifference, from conspiracies of silence – from the international community as bystander.

Indeed, what makes the Holocaust and the genocide of the Tutsis so unspeakable is not only the horror of the crimes, but that these crimes were preventable. No one can say that we did not know; we knew, but we did not act.

Let there be no mistake about it: Indifference and inaction always means coming down on the side of the aggressor, never the target. In the face of evil, indifference is acquiescence, if not complicity in evil itself.

Lesson 6: The responsibility to bring war criminals to justice
If the last century – symbolized by the Holocaust – was the age of atrocity, it was also the age of impunity. Few of the perpetrators were brought to justice; and so, just as there must be no sanctuary for hate, no refuge for bigotry, there must be no base or sanctuary for these enemies of humankind. In this context, the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) was seen as the most dramatic development in international criminal law since Nuremberg. But the ICC must guard against an abuse of its mandate and mission lest it undermine its very purpose.

Lesson 7: Speaking truth to power
The Holocaust was made possible not only because of the “bureaucratization of genocide,” as Robert Lifton put it – and as the Nazi desk murderer Adolf Eichmann personified – but because of the complicity of the elites, including physicians, church leaders, judges, lawyers, engineers, architects and educators.

Holocaust crimes were also the crimes of the Nuremberg elites. It is our responsibility, then, to speak truth to power, to hold power accountable to truth.

The double entendre of Nuremberg – of the Nuremberg racism and of the Nuremberg principles – must be part of our learning as it is part of our legacy.

Lesson 8: The assault on the vulnerable and powerless
The eighth lesson concerns the vulnerability of the powerless and the powerlessness of the vulnerable, as dramatized at Auschwitz by the remnants of shoes and suitcases, crutches and hair of the murdered. Indeed, it is revealing, as Prof. Henry Friedlander points out in his work titled The Origins of Nazi Genocide that the first group targeted for killing were the Jewish disabled.

It is our responsibility to give voice to the voiceless and to empower the powerless, be they the disabled, poor, elderly, women victimized by violence, or vulnerable children – the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. In a word, the test of a just society is how it treats it’s the most vulnerable among them.

Lesson 9: Violence targeted against women
The Holocaust – and the genocides since – have included horrific crimes against women. Moreover, these crimes have not only attended the genocide or been in consequence of it, but have in fact been in pursuit of it. Yet they remain the still unarticulated horror of the Holocaust, and the genocide of European Jewry.

Seventy-five years later, that lesson remains to be learned – and acted upon – whether we speak of the horrific crimes against women in the Congo or in Syria. We must appreciate that significant numbers of the world’s population are routinely subject to rape, assault, torture, starvation, humiliation, mutilation and even murder simply because they are female.

Lesson 10: Mass atrocities against children
If there is an atrocity that belies understanding – it is the willful exploitation, maiming and killing of a child – the most vulnerable of the vulnerable.

What then, is one to say about the genocide – the mass murder – of children – the destruction of millions of universes, of generations yet unborn and never to be born? As the poet Bialik put it – writing after the Kishinev pogroms in 1905, which killed hundreds of children – “There is no revenge that can be invented for the murder of a child.”

Indeed, the Nazi genocide was the genocide of millions of children, and 1.5 million children perished in the Holocaust of European Jewry. But we have yet to learn from this most horrific of horrors, let alone act upon it – as millions of children the world over are subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, slavery, execution and recruitment as “child soldiers” incited to terrorize and kill others.

It is our responsibility to ensure that protecting children’s rights is at the core of whatever we do – and therefore, of who we are.

Lesson 11: The rescuers
We must pay tribute to the rescuers, the righteous among the nations, of whom Raoul Wallenberg is metaphor and message. Wallenberg, a Swedish non-Jew, saved more Jews in six months in Hungary in 1944 than almost any single government or organization. Tragically, the man who saved so many was not himself saved by so many who could have. As citizens – particularly from countries where Raoul Wallenberg is an honorary citizen: the US, Canada, Australia and Israel – we have a responsibility to help determine the fate of this great hero of the Holocaust, whom the UN called the Greatest Humanitarian of the twentieth century.

Lesson 12: Holocaust Remembrance and the State of Israel
A compelling refrain that I would often hear from Holocaust survivors – including in my visits to Auschwitz – is that it is not the case that if there had been no Holocaust there would not have been a State of Israel. It is the other way around, and we should never forget it: that if there had been a State of Israel – the indigenous homeland for an indigenous Jewish people, there would not have been a Holocaust or the many horrors of Jewish and human history.

Lesson 13: The legacy of Holocaust survivors
Finally, we must remember – and celebrate – the survivors of the Holocaust, the true heroes of humanity; for they witnessed and endured the worst of inhumanity, but somehow found in the depths of their own humanity, the courage to go on, to rebuild their lives as they helped build our communities.

Together with them, we must remember – and pledge – that never again will we be indifferent to incitement and hate; never again will we be silent in the face of evil; never again will we indulge racism and anti-Semitism; never again will we ignore the plight of the vulnerable; and never again will we be indifferent in the face of mass atrocity and impunity.

We will speak up – and act – against racism, against hate, against anti-Semitism, against mass atrocity, against injustice and against the crime of crimes whose name we should shudder to mention: genocide.

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Israels-Biggest-Diplomatic-Event-Sends-Powerful-Message.html?s=mm
Why Jerusalem is the right place to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Israel is the right place to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, where the Nazis murdered 1.3 million people, 1.1 million of them Jews. The camp was liberated on January 27, 1945 by the Red Army as they advanced from the East.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, US Vice President Mike Pence and Prince Charles of Great Britain are among the glittering array of world leaders descending on Israel’s capital for the largest diplomatic event in its history, organized by the Holocaust Forum Foundation, Yad Vashem and the Office of the President Reuven Rivlin. Despite delegations from 49 countries, including 41 heads of state, not everyone approved.

The director of the Auschwitz Museum in Poland is fuming. Piotr Cywinski argued that holding a commemorative ceremony anywhere else but the site of the death camp was inconceivable. Describing the choice of location as a “provocation,” Cywinski also accused the Holocaust Forum Foundation of “immaturity” by holding a commemoration outside of Poland

Souring Relations
The argument continues to sour Israel’s relations with Poland who recently passed laws criminalizing suggesting the country was complicit in the murder of Jews during World War Two. Both Yad Vashem and the Israeli government objected to the white washing of history, pointing to several notorious accounts of Polish anti-Semitism during and after the Nazi occupation. The Polish President is a noticeable absence from the events in Jerusalem this week, having not been granted a speech at the main ceremony held at Yad Vashem. But the decision to hold the event in Jerusalem and not in Auschwitz was the right one.

Celebrating Jewish Life
Holding the event in Jerusalem is the most tangible way of not only commemorating Jewish deaths but also expressing support for Jewish life. Communities across the world are having to battle those who seek to ban crucial elements of Jewish practice such as circumcision, and the kosher slaughtering of animals. Holding this forum in Jerusalem, strengthens the international commitment to Jewish life and to Jewish living, stating unequivocally that the Jewish People is not a museum piece, but a thriving, living, breathing nation.
 
At this major milestone, with attacks on Jews on the rise especially in the US and across Europe and anti-Zionism a constant feature, asking world leaders to commit to fighting anti-Semitism at an event in Jerusalem sends out a powerful message. It counters the trend that says it is okay to fight anti-Semitism and still be an anti-Zionist.

As Israel’s right to a Jewish homeland is questioned, anti-Semites posing as anti-Zionists are sadly now a feature of mainstream political parties with Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn a prime example. Commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz in Jerusalem sends out a powerful message to world leaders that standing up against racism in their own countries isn’t enough if they turn a blind eye to the delegitimization of Israel. The denial of Israel’s right to a national homeland is anti-Semitism mutated on the world stage.

Traffic Jams are an easy price to pay
As convoys of limousines traverse the city’s main arteries, from their hotels to their various engagements, 10,000 police are securing the event.

For residents of the city, road closures and traffic jams are a fair price to pay for the knowledge that they live in the center of the world. Whether its Putin, Pence, or Prince Charles, visits from world leaders remind us that the world looks to Jerusalem for hope, and in contrast to the horrors carried out by Nazi Germany its destiny is to shed light to the world.

Fixing Homes of the Poor in Israel
Jan 19, 2020  |  by Adam Ross

Fixing Homes of the Poor in Israel
A new charity in Israel is restoring pride to homes, giving free handyman services to the poor.

A $1 million anonymous pledge in 2015 led to the creation of Quality of Life, an Israeli charity whose mission is to gift struggling families with a free visit from a hard-working handyman.

“Fixing leaking taps, cupboard doors which are hanging off, and replacing burned out light bulbs will never take priority over paying food, gas or water bills,” Mrs. Fleischer, the organization’s office manager, told Aish.com. “To live in a home that feels like it is falling apart slowly eats away at a person’s dignity.

“The impact is huge. There are many cases of children who are embarrassed to bring their friends home because the door handles are missing, the chairs and tables wobble at the slightest touch and barely any of the lights work anymore.”

With its team of eight full time handymen covering the length and breadth of the country, Quality of Life receives referrals from other organizations of families living on the wire. Since 2016 it has waved its healing magic in over 10,000 homes.

“Some people ask how much can really be achieved in two and a half hours, but a handyman can get through a dozen jobs in that time - jobs which have been gnawing away for years.”

A single mother from Beit Shemesh in central Israel recently told the organization that when her son came home from school and saw all the repairs done in the house, he asked her, “Did Elijah the prophet come visit?” It was the first time in years their house had proper lighting.

“He transformed my shack into a palace,” one woman told them. “Almost all of the kitchen cupboards had fallen off. He made it look new. I almost wept from excitement.”

Moshe the handyman

Shelves that have fallen down, doors that have come away from their hinges and blocked and leaking pipes are among the chronic issues.

“As a single mother, this is one of the things that I find most difficult,” one woman explained. “There is only so much that I know how to do on my own and hiring someone for the rest of the jobs can add up to a lot.”

Mrs Fliescher added, “In homes where there is neither the money or the know-how to fix these things, these problems often affect the marriage and create enormous stress in the home.”

Knowing somebody cares
One woman was in the final stages of a divorce when she received a call from QOL asking when a handyman could schedule a visit. She said the knowledge that someone was caring and thinking about her gave her the feeling that God was watching out for her. It was her first positive thought in months.

“This is the power of kindness,” Mrs Fliescher said. “It can be a ray of hope just when you need it the most.”

‘The fix it man is here!’
Handyman Moshe Klein has been working for QOL for the past 2.5 years.

“Almost every house I visit there are excited kids, sometimes looking out of the window waiting for me to arrive. One of them calls out ‘The fix it man is here!’ and there’s a rush of excitement. The whole family is so grateful.”

“Once a year, the charity brings all of the handymen together for a meal out, and we all recognize it is a unique job. I don’t think there are handymen anywhere else in the world who have this kind of work satisfaction.”

Klein says it is not only job satisfaction that he owes to his work with QOL but also his life. A month ago, after returning from a Shabbat with family in the north, he narrowly escaped a major car crash.

“I was with my wife and four children, and we were five minutes from being home when two cars ahead crashed right in front of me blocking both lanes. I slammed on the brakes, as I was heading right into them and feared we would end up sandwiched between them.

"Suddenly, they hit each other again and one car was knocked to the left while the other was sent a few meters further down the road. A gap opened up and although we collided with the car ahead, our speed had tailed off just enough that the collision was no way as serious as it could have been. I had four children with me and we escaped without a scratch.

Moshe's lifesaving car

“I said to my wife, ‘That car may only look like an ordinary fix-it car, but it spends nearly all of its time driving me from home to home doing mitzvot, bringing smiles and brightening up the lives of other Jews in Israel. How could that car play a part in hurting us now?’ It may sound odd, but I feel strongly that I owe my life and that of my family to the mitzvot I have been privileged to do.”

Visit Quality of Life’s website at https://qolhomes.org/

Huge Cache of Nazi-Looted Art
Dec 28, 2019  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Huge-Cache-of-Nazi-Looted-Art.html?s=mm
The public can finally see paintings from one of the largest Nazi-era collections of stolen art.

When German customs agents boarded the train on a September evening in 2010 they had little reason to suspect anything was amiss. The train had recently left Zurich and was crossing into Germany on its way to Munich, one of dozens of such journeys each week.

As they asked to see each passenger’s passport, one elderly German man became agitated and nervous. Alarmed, the custom agents searched his belongings and found something curious: eighteen crisp, new 500 Euro notes. Carrying this money – about 9,000 Euros, or a little more than $10,000 – wasn’t a crime, but the passenger was behaving so oddly that the agents called the police.

The passenger was Cornelius Gurlitt, a reclusive businessman living in Munich. He claimed he’d been in Switzerland in order to sell a painting, but had little documentation of the transaction. German police investigated his finances, and eventually obtained a search warrant for his small apartment. What they found rocked the global art world.
Cornelius Gurlitt

Hundreds upon hundreds of art works – by some of the most famous artists the world has ever known – were stuffed into filing cabinets and suitcases. 121 framed paintings and drawings were stacked on a shelf. A further staggering 1,258 unframed pieces were stuffed into drawers and filing cabinets. The pieces were dirty but unharmed.
Police couldn’t believe their eyes as they pulled canvas after canvas out of luggage and other spaces where they’d been crammed in the tight space. Many of the canvases bore the signatures of Renoir, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, Chagall, Durer, Delacroix, and other famous artists. The works of art were priceless. The oldest was an engraving by Albrecht Durer from the 1500s. The haul would eventually be assessed at a value of $1.35 billion.

It wasn’t hard to figure out how Mr. Gurlitt came to possess this unprecedented collection: his father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, had been one of the Third Reich’s primary art dealers, helping Nazis steal and sell hundreds of thousands of pieces of art from the 1930s through 1945. Historians believe that up to 20% of all the art in Nazi-occupied Europe was stolen by the Nazi regime and re-sold or, in some cases like Mr. Gurlitt’s, amassed in secret hordes.

Hildebrand Gurlitt
Hildebrand Gurlitt was born in 1895 into an artistic family and became a museum director and champion of the type of avant-garde art popular in the 1920s and 1930s that would soon be labeled “degenerate” by the ascendant Nazi regime. Working first in the Konig Albert Museum in Zwickau, in the Saxony region of Germany, then at the Kunstverein Museum in Hamburg, Gurlitt’s insistence on promoting modern art by figures such as Max Pechman, George Grosz, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and others led to his dismissal from both posts. After 1933, when he was forced out of his post in Hamburg, Gurlitt was classified as a Jew under the Nazis’ draconian racial laws; his father’s mother had been Jewish, though Gurlitt himself didn’t consider himself Jewish and was married to Helene, who was an Aryan German.

In the 1930s, the new Nazi regime began to seize “degenerate” art and force dealers to sell such art at below market prices. The Nazis had these pieces sold abroad as a way to raise money for their political activities at home. This clandestine art dealing channel was advertised as “Department IX” of the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Gurlitt applied for a job with the outfit and became one of four art dealers authorized to work for the Third Reich. (To guarantee no one would find out about his Jewish grandmother, Gurlitt registered his business in Helene’s name.) He pressured other art dealers to sell their art to him, often with the implicit understanding that they had no choice but to sell their collections to Gurlitt at below market rates. Many of these works were sold abroad, most often in Paris; some were kept for a museum that Hitler planned to build in the German city of Linz.
Part of the Gurlitt Collection

Gurlitt prospered particularly at the expense of Jewish art dealers. In 1935, all German art dealers had to become members of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts, and that body began to systematically exclude Jews. Desperate, Jewish dealers found themselves selling their collections for a pittance. “When we speak about looting and art theft it normally wasn’t robbing,” explains Rein Wolfs, Director of the Bundeskunsthalle museum in Bonn. “It was a more, let’s say subtle, way of getting these works… It was mostly by suppression or by putting so much pressure on somebody that he had to sell.”

Throughout the 1930s, the Nazis seized modern art, often created by Jewish artists, from museums and private collectors, deeming the works too “degenerate” to be seen publicly. In 1937, senior Nazi official Joseph Goebbels arranged an exhibition of 650 of these stolen artworks in Munich. The exhibit attracted over two million people, including Adolf Hitler. Afterwards, the works were either destroyed or given to Gurlitt and other Nazi-approved art dealers to sell outside the country.

Soon, Hildebrand Gurlitt was distinguishing himself as one of the Nazis’ most profitable art dealers. He routinely sold Old Masters abroad, knowing that they would command the highest prices. Many works made their way into his personal collection, too. It’s hard to comprehend the scale of the looting: art historian Meike Hoffmann estimates that over 650,000 individual paintings, drawings, books, sculptures and other works were taken from museums, private collections and churches in Nazi-occupied Europe. Historian Susan Ronald notes in her book Hitler’s Art Thief; Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe’s Treasures that by 1939 so many items were stolen that the Nazi art warehouse on Kopenikerstrasse in Berlin became one of Germany’s largest de facto art collections, with over 12,000 works. When World War II broke out in September 1939, that number swelled enormously.

After the war, Gurlitt presented himself as a victim of Nazi persecution, based on his Jewish grandmother, and was allowed to keep much of his art. He told Allied investigators that his private art collection had been destroyed in Allied air raids. In peacetime, he worked for an art collection in Western Germany called the Kunstvereins fur die Rheinlande und Westfalen, where he championed modern artists in the late 1940s and early 1950s, much as he had in the 1930s, as if the war never happened. When he died in 1956 at the age of 61, Hildebrand Gurlitt left his enormous secret art collection to his son Cornelius and his daughter Renate.

Cornelius was a reclusive figure. Nobody outside his small family knew of the priceless treasures crammed into storage areas all over the apartment he inherited from his father, until police searched his home in 2012. That same year, Renate died; when those going through her belongings found eighteen pieces of art of dubious provenance in her home, they were sent to the German Lost Art Foundation, which helps track down the owners of art that was seized in the Nazi era.

The foundation was able to find the owners of four of Renate’s works: two drawings the artist Charles-Dominique-Joseph Eisen, a painting by Augustin de Saint-Aubin, and a self-portrait by Anne Vallayer-Coster were all hanging on the walls of the Jewish Deutsch de la Meurthe family in Paris when their apartment and belongings were seized by the Nazis. One daughter, Georgette, survived the Holocaust, and was able to take possession of her family’s artwork.

In the case of Cornelius Gurlitt’s much larger collection, the German authorities did nothing for months. It was only a year later when the German magazine Focus reported on the existence of the collection that public pressure came to bear and the authorities stepped up their efforts to track down the heirs of the artwork’s original owners. In most cases, little could be done. Germany set up a special task force just to deal with the Gurlitt trove. It identified 499 works that could be proven to have been stolen by Nazis. Of these, the task force was only able to find heirs to claim four works of art. After two years, the task force announced it was dissolving; an international outcry led it to continue its work, though little changed. In many cases, it seemed too much time had passed: the original owners of the plundered artworks were dead and no heirs could be found to claim them.

Cornelius Gurlitt died in 2014 and seems to have had a change of heart before he died, desiring at last that the stolen artworks go to their rightful owners. He bequeathed the artworks to the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern, Switzerland, with the proviso that the museum continues to try and track down the pieces’ rightful owners. It has proved a difficult task, but the museum has come up with a creative way to highlight the problem of Nazi theft and to ensure that the Gurlitt Trove is seen widely. In 2017 they opened a special exhibit in Bern, as well as exhibits in Bonn and Berlin, showing some of the stolen paintings and educating museum-goers about Nazi activities.

A show is also currently underway at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. “Fateful Choices: Art from the Gurlitt Trove” shows a hundred works from the collection. The exhibit is a reminder of the fundamental way that Nazi looting changed the art world in Europe and beyond. “It sheds light on systematic looting of art by Nazi Germany,” explained Germany’s Ambassador to Israel, Susanne Wasum-Rainer, when she viewed the exhibition in Jerusalem. “The exhibit is a visible success because of the amazing cooperation across borders in the field of provenance research. It pays tribute to the families, collectors, and artists who suffered in the war.”

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Cambodian-Princess-Has-a-Bat-Mitzvah.html?s=mm
Cambodian Princess Has a Bat Mitzvah
Jan 14, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Cambodian Princess Has a Bat Mitzvah
Elior Koroghli, a member of the Cambodian Royal Family and an Orthodox Jew, recently celebrated her Bat Mitzvah, the first of its kind in Cambodia.

Many Jewish bat mitzvah girls feel as special as a princess. Elior Koroghli, a bat mitzvah girl from Las Vegas, actually is one.

She recently celebrated her bat mitzvah in Cambodia, where her great grandfather His Majesty King Monivong once reigned, and where the current monarch, His Majesty King Norodom Sihamoni, is her cousin. "It was such a wonderful time to bond with family," explains Elior's mother, Susan, in  an exclusive Aish.com interview.

This was Elior’s second bat mitzvah celebration. The outgoing twelve year old celebrated earlier in her hometown of Las Vegas where she and her family are members of the Chabad Jewish community. The Koroghlis routinely host dozens of guests for Shabbat in their beautiful home. On Sukkot, their huge sukkah can hold up to 120 guests.

“The Koroghlis have people for Shabbat every week,” Rabbi Mendy Harlig, Rabbi of Chabad of Henderson in Las Vegas, explained. Sometimes his shul holds community celebrations in the Koroghli’s home.

Elior with her parents, Ray and Susie Koroghli, her brothers and her sister at a Chanukah menorah-lighting during the celebration. (Photo: Kang Predi/Teh Ranie) 

 
Susie and Ray Koroghli met in the United States, where Susie’s family lived. Her father, Thay Sok, was a Cambodian diplomat and Susie (whose full name is Sathsowi Thay) was born in Washington DC. Though her family lived all over the world and she spent much of her childhood in California, Susie grew up steeped in Cambodian culture at home. She met Ray, a Persian Jew from the Iranian city of Shiraz, after he came to study in the United States in the 1970s. Ray and Susie were both living in Las Vegas and met at  a birthday party of a mutual friend. "I was tired -- I had just come from work," Susie recalls, but when she met Ray she realized he was someone special. The pair bonded but given their religious differences marriage wasn't something they were ready to discuss. "We got to know each other for quite awhile," Susie remembers. After years of study, Susie converted to Judaism and married Ray, determined to build a Jewish home. 

Even though they were not yet Orthodox, Ray sometimes attended the Orthodox synagogue Chabad of Southern Nevada. One day, Susie was waiting to meet Ray at the synagogue when she listened to a Torah class given by Rabbi Mendy's brother, Rabbi Shea Harlig. The class was "What is God?" and spoke to Susie in a pround way. "I'd always thought something bigger created all this -- Heaven and earth. I was riveted and wanted to learn more and more. I started learning from that day on." 

The bat mitzvah girl in traditional Cambodian dress. (Photo: Kang Predi/Teh Ranie)
Rabbi Shea had heard that his new student was a princess but he took it with a grain of salt. “At first I thought it was a compliment her mother told her,” he recalls with a chuckle. Eventually Rabbi Harlig realized that indeed Susie was a real live royal. “She took some classes in Judaism and then she started growing,” Rabbi Harlig says. As Susie took on more and more Jewish observance she gradually moved her family to fully embrace an Orthodox Jewish life.

After learning about Judaism, Susie had an Orthodox conversion. She and Ray embrace an Orthodox lifestyle. They remarried in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony. When their children were ready for school, they chose an Orthodox Jewish school. They threw themselves into their warm Jewish community, building a home full of Torah and mitzvot.

Elior’s twelfth birthday was on the fifth night of Hanukkah in December 2018. Her family hosted a grand bat mitzvah for Elior and her friends at their home in Las Vegas. A year later, the family travelled to Phnom Phen for a second event: a royal gala celebration with the Cambodian royal family.

Elior's Bat Mitzvah celebration was held in the historic Raffles Hotel Le Royal which her grandfather, King Norodom Sihmoni, helped found. "My cousin, Princess Norodom, suggested we hold it there," Susie explained, given the hotel's royal connections and beautiful grand ballroom. Before the hotel was ready to host its first ever bat mitzvah celebration, there were a few hurdles to take care of. First, the hotel's entire kitchen had to be made kosher. That gargantuan fell to Rabbi Bentzion and Rebbetzin Mashi Butman, who founded Chabad of Cambodia in 2009. Together with Susie, they “kashered” (made kosher) the hotel’s kitchens. They flew in Israeli star chef Kobi Mizrahi to prepare a bat mitzvah feast fit for a king - literally. Throughout all the preparations, Susie kept a watchful eye on the cooking, including overseeing some food that was prepared in a local hotel kitchen for her guests during the gala ten-day visit.

Elior's grandmother, center, is the daughter of King Monivong, who ruled Cambodia until his death in 1941. (Photo: Kang Predi/Teh Ranie)

Dressed in traditional royal Cambodian garb, Elior and her family made speeches, lit a large menorah, and talked about their gratitude to God. Guests enjoyed a gala kosher meal. A few days later, in a separate royal ceremony, Elior and her parents and siblings were formally presented to King Norodom Sihamoni and the queen mother, Queen Norodom Monineath. "They said it was so wonderful that we chose to celebrate our daughter's birthday in Cambodia. It was wonderful to be all together with my family." 

Elior’s bat mitzvah celebration continued on Shabbat at the Chabad Cambodia Jewish center. When the family walked to and from the Jewish center, a royal honor guard accompanied them.

Even though Elior, her brothers, and her mother are members of Cambodia’s royal family, their Judaism gives them another source of royal feeling as well. “My wife lights up the room wherever she goes,” Ray says. “People are just drawn to her and are fascinated by her knowledge of Judaism, as well as her actions.” Asked if his wife is a Cambodian princess, Ray responds, “I call her my queen”.

Now back home in Las Vegas, Susie says that the entire Bat Mitzvah celebration was perfect. Her family was able to celebrate with Ray's family as well, as 30 people from Las Vegas flew to Cambodia to join their celebration. Ray and Susie plan to celebrate their son's Bar Mitzvah in Israel. Describing the beauty of her family's royal gala and visit, Susie sums up her feelings with a heartfelt "Baruch Hashem," thanking God for leading her on her Jewish journey and making this unique Bat Mitzvah celebration possible.

A Doctor’s Diary: A Peek behind Aging and Death
Jan 11, 2020  |  by Dr. Geoffrey Simmons
https://www.aish.com/ci/sam/A-Doctors-Diary-A-Peek-behind-Aging-and-Death.html?s=mm
A Doctor’s Diary: A Peek behind Aging and Death
A look at the body's amazing biological clockwork.

I just attended my 50th year medical school reunion. As I entered, I was struck by the fact that we all had changed into senior citizens. Nearly everyone had gray hair and some were balding, most were shorter, and nearly all had crinkle lines. It didn’t matter whether an alumnus had once been a surgeon or a pathologist or had worked in the distant jungles, we all had been marching to the same biological drum.

I’ve often wondered if that drumbeat might actually be a form of a planned obsolescence by our Maker, much like industries do with new cars and computers. Might some of our genes be set to activate and deactivate at specific times and places? Many of our changes throughout life say so.

We know that our bodies are controlled by many ON/OFF switches. Growth hormone levels are high in children and wane in later years. Sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen) peak in early adulthood and then drop off in later life. These changes are not as simple as On or Off switches, however. How all of these “use by (age)” or “discard by (age)” mechanisms could have simultaneously evolved and coordinated remains a mystery. Neither trial and error nor mutation can explain it.

Our growth patterns depend on very orderly and specific processes. All physical changes, and many mental changes, are expected and predictable. We’re cute as babies and not so cute as seniors. We’re our most attractive when it’s time to court and have children. Even pimples show up on time. There are periods for growth, reproduction, and waning. Thomas Armstrong’s Twelve Stages of the Human Life Cycle has clearly defined them as pre-birth, birth, infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, late childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, midlife, mature adulthood, late adulthood and death and dying. No one seems to skip any one of these, add in new steps, or take them out of order.

With the exception of red blood cells, which lose their DNA very early on, duplicates of a person’s blueprints are found within the nucleus of every single cell. Yet, different cells know to follow the specific dictates relevant to their assigned work and particular location. Heart cells don’t show up in the throat and/or beat erratically. They connect and beat in unison. Bone cells make, fix or replace bone, lymph cells stand guard in lymph nodes, and liver cells do what livers do. All systems work together like a constantly-changing, 3-D jigsaw puzzle with trillions of moving pieces.

Somehow the idea that our whole body turns over every seven years and we become a totally new person is often cited as a fact, but the statement is not factual. The idea of turnover however is correct. Specific cells turn over at different rates. Skin is much faster than heart cells. Brain cells (neurons) in the cerebral cortex linger person’s whole life, but can change their dendrites; whereas cells in the placenta die with birth. White cells last about one year, red blood cells about four months, and platelets ten days. Parts of the body replace themselves at different times and different rates. Despite the ongoing turnover, the number of red blood cells and white blood cells within the blood stream remain constant. All biological systems act as if they were controlled by timers. All of these timers seem to have a “Best if used by” date) stamped in their DNA. And, maybe "Discard after (date)".

The loss of our baby teeth is a great example of biological clockwork and planned obsolescence. We start off with 20, lose them all and grow 32 permanents. Why this happens is not entirely clear, but it may be that baby teeth are place-holders to help keep the oral cavity in the right shape to mature, and/or diets change as we age and more sturdy teeth are needed. Virtually all mammals do this in some form.

We crawl, walk and talk at specific ages. These stages also happen in order, and build on each other. We grow beards and pubic hair at specific times; young women typically menstruate as young teens and stop having periods around fifty (obsolescence?). It’s very rare for women to have babies at later ages. One might assume reproductive capabilities shutdown for very good reasons. Some of our inner clocks have snooze alarms; some can be impacted by unusual circumstances such as warfare, starvation and severe weather conditions. Some timers are responsible for an entire organism, while others control the minutest chemical reactions.

Our timing devices are called telomeres or DNA tags and they are found at the ends of chromosomes. How they are regulated and coordinated is not yet solved. One might compare their looks to plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces, yet these are stacked by the thousands. Each time a cell divides, a designated number of these tags disappear (fall off?).

It isn’t known whether these tags are just markers (like X's on a calendar), or they actually determine (partially or wholly) rate of aging. Or both. The next daughter cells that come along are always older. The owner’s face may wrinkle a bit more and muscle tissues may weaken a bit. It’s all in the program. Over time, bones become more porous and break more easily, kidney function slowly deteriorates, lung function diminishes and exercise tolerance lessens, memory capability lessens, and immune systems slowly lose capability. How the right big toe ages at the same rate as the left pinkie or skin parallels bone changes (and so on) are not fully understood. But they are timed and they progress toward obsolescence.

Dying actually begins at conception. From the moment of conception the directions for a person’s demise are passed on to every cell. As Haruki Murakami, a bestselling Japanese writer said, “Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”

God's Unconditional Love: A Meditation
https://www.aish.com/sp/pg/Gods-Unconditional-Love-A-Meditation.html?s=mm
Jan 11, 2020  |  by Rivka Malka Perlman

God's Unconditional Love: A Meditation
Imagine being loved so deeply that every part of you is known, cherished and held.

To so many people, it seems unbelievable that God actually loves us. Could I really be intrinsically worthy and be loved?

It is God's great desire that we know of His love. The more we deepen our experience of this, the more our life comes alive. This video recording is a tiny taste of God’s love for us.

Feeling God's love is a journey. It is the undoing of decades of programming that tells you that you are not enough, you are not loved, you are not anything special.

But you are. You truly are.

I invite you to listen in and to notice how it feels to be unconditionally loved. Then, when the video is over, you can sit for a minute, look around and notice what would it feel like to always know that this love is streaming into you. How would life be different?

The text to the audio is below, as well as a link to many Torah sources that underscore this idea. This is not a mere feel-good exercise. It is the core of what it means to believe in God. It is the fuel of our life Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=5OiQJRSj8DU&feature=emb_logo

For Torah sources, click here.https://rivkamalka.com/Godslove/

Graphic artwork by Yoram Raanan https://www.yoramraanan.com/
Text from the video:

To My Precious One,
Do you know how much I love you? I have loved you since the beginning of time. I will love you until the end of time. There is not one part of you that I don’t love.

I love your smile, your laugh. I love your fears and your sadness. I love your mistakes and I love your humanity.

My darling child. I made you from My very love for you. You are a piece of me. In you, I see magnificence, power, sensitivity and caring. In you I see nobility of spirit and generosity. I see how you give everything you can in every situation. I see how you blame yourself when you can’t give what you want to. I wish you wouldn't do that. Please know that I know that you are doing the best you can with what you have.

You are on a journey and the journey includes all kinds of roadblocks and limitations. I placed them there. Each one is designed to help you slow down and to look inwards and upwards towards Me.

All I desire is to give to you. All I long for is your closeness. In every situation, you have a choice - to look towards me or away from me. Please look towards me. I have so much I want to give you. I have sent you into a world filled with flowers, trees, and sunshine. I have placed you in a palace of growth and opportunity.

Every day when you wake up I look forward to seeing you, to hearing from you, I lovingly place your soul back in your body and anticipate the wonderful things that you will do with the gift of life each day.

Do you know how your smile lights up the world? When you smile at another your radiance warms their hearts and ignites the heavens to a shower of mercy. When My children love one another, my love for them is ever greater.

How dear are your efforts to me! I know that you struggle. For you are a soul - a beautiful holy soul sent on a mission to create light in a world that seems dark. Your mission is to create beauty from pain and to become selfless and giving in a reality that tries to tell you otherwise.

I see everything. I know everything. I know the secrets of your heart and how you try. I know the small subtle acts of kindness that you do and I celebrate them. I honor your tears of frustration for the warrior that you are.

You are a magnificent creation. Your beauty overwhelms me. Your essence is holiness and purity. Your greatness is like the sun. You are full of light and love and goodness and though you don’t always know this I do.

You may at times think that a difficult life means that I am not nearby. This is a mistake. Please know this. God is close to the brokenhearted. You, who suffer - You are my exalted ones. You know pain and therefore have compassion. You know struggle and therefore have humility. You know loneliness and therefore have kindness. You look out for the one who feels left out.

I have not given you pain to hurt you. I never want to hurt you. I love you with all of my being for now and for eternity. I gave it to you because I know who you are. You are a soul destined for greatness. You are one that I count on to bring kindness to My world. I love you for it. I love who you are and I want to be close to you. When you cry I cry with you.

My child do you know how I take pleasure in your thanks? When you thank Me I know that You have received My love. That you have received the gifts that I am sending You. Your gratitude brings me joy. I want to give you more and more gifts and I relish the way that you delight in them and turns towards Me with an open heart to receive.

Please don't ever doubt your lovability. You are beloved. More precious than pearls and gems. Your deeds build the universe. Your good intentions bring healing and light. Your belovedness is intrinsic. It's who you are and I cannot get enough of you. Every minute I want to give you more and more. Every second I want you to know of My love.

Please look and see. Please notice all the gifts of love I am sending your way and open your arms to receive. Divine Providence is nothing more than Me saying I love you. I want everything to work out for you.

My Dear, In your service for me, please be gentle on yourself. If you have done something that is not right, you can fix it and move on. If you have caused pain, you can apologize and move on. If you need to work on your character, you can work on it. But through all the fixing and work that you do, please never once think that you have fallen out of My favor. I love you no matter what. I only want what's best for you and believe in your exaltedness.

I want your Teshuva so that you can return to who you are meant to be. It's for you, my dear, for you. For you to be proud of yourself and to align with me. As for me, my love is constant. It never changes no matter what you do. I watch you work and I am in awe of you.

You are not only beloved, you are worthy.

Worthy of love. Worthy of gifts. Worthy of friendship, worthy of receiving help. Please, My Dear, accept the love that I send you through human messengers. Accept the opportunities to give and to share, knowing that I believe in you. You are worthy of all things good. Any shame you carry is a space within you that My love is not felt.

I want to fill you completely with My love.

I want to wrap you in its comfort and blanket you in warmth I want to bring you surprises and delights and miracles. I love you I love you I love you and I will never leave you.

With Everlasting Love,
Your Father in Heaven

https://www.aish.com/jw/id/Operation-Good-Neighbor-Syrian-Thanks-Israel-for-Saving-her-Life.html?s=mm
Operation Good Neighbor: Syrian Thanks Israel for Saving her Life
Jan 11, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Operation Good Neighbor: Syrian Thanks Israel for Saving her Life
A viral story is drawing attention to Israel’s heroic efforts that saved thousands of Syrian refugees.

Noam Shalev, an Israeli film producer, was recently vacationing in Sweden. While eating in a restaurant in Stockholm, he was served dinner by a young Arab waitress. When it was time to pay his bill, Shalev handed over his Israeli credit card – and his waitress went into shock, dropping the card on the floor, trembling and starting to cry.

“Where are you from?” she asked tearfully, looking at the Hebrew writing on the credit card.

Afraid that his waitress was anti-Semitic, Mr. Shalev started to put on his coat, ready to exit the restaurant quickly. When he answered that he was from Israel, the waitress composed herself. She was from Syria, she explained, and had never met an Israeli. Yet she owed Israel a huge debt of gratitude and wanted to thank her Israeli customer.

Several years ago, back in Syria, the waitress’ mother was gravely ill and lay on her deathbed. An Israeli humanitarian program, Operation Good Neighbor, brought her mother to Israel for medical treatment; after three weeks in a hospital in the northern Israeli city of Safed, her mother recovered. The mother returned home to Syria, and the entire family eventually fled from Syria’s brutal civil war and found asylum in Sweden.

The waitress then picked up her cellphone, called her mother, and handed the phone to Mr. Shalev. “I find myself speaking in mixed English and German with an excited and crying woman, who asked me for only one thing: give thanks to all your brothers in Israel who gave her daughters the privilege of having a mother.” Noam Shalev posted the story on Facebook on January 4, 2020. After it was re-posted in English by Slingshot Israel, a group of former Israeli soldiers who educate the public about Israeli life; within days it had been shared and read tens of thousands of times around the world.
One of the people who read the post was Lt. Col. (Res.) Eyal Dror, the commanding officer of Israel’s Operation Good Neighbor, which coordinated the aid that brought the waitress’ mother – and thousands of other Syrian civilians like her – to Israel for life-saving medical treatment. In an Aish.com exclusive interview, Lt. Col. Dror explained that when he read the story, he realized it meant that Syrians aided by the Jewish state “are not forgetting the State of Israel when we saved their lives. What we’ve done continues to be important and remembered," shaping perceptions of Israel in parts of the Arab world and beyond.

Israel Aid to Syria
Israel began aiding Syrian refugees near its border after civil war broke out in that country nearly a decade ago. In 2016, humanitarian efforts gained a huge boost with the establishment of “Operation Good Neighbor”, a special unit within the Israel Defense Force (IDF) to oversee aid, including sending medical and other supplies over the border to help Syrian civilians, building and staffing a maternal hospital and a day clinic on the border, and facilitating medical treatment inside of Israel’s world-class hospitals for sick and wounded Syrians.

The program brought nearly 5,000 Syrians to Israel for medical treatment, including over 1,300 children. Lt. Col. Dror says that he cannot forget the stories behind each of the Syrians he was able to help. “To see little children crossing the border into Israel late at night in the very hard winter, to see them crossing barefoot – it can break your heart. I have three little children, and I saw these Syrian civilians like my own children.”

He remembers watching some little Syrian children who’d been brought to Israel for treatment falling down and bumping themselves, yet not crying. Dror couldn’t understand their lack of tears. A Syrian mother explained to him: the children didn’t cry because they’d learned back in Syria that nobody would help them even if they cried.

“I couldn’t imagine a child not crying,” Dror recalls. “It reminded me of stories I’d heard about the Holocaust – a little child knowing that no one would help him even if he cried.”

Injured and ill Syrians were primarily treated in Israeli hospitals in the northern Israeli cities Nehariya, Tiberias and Safed, though Lt. Col. Dror explains that hospitals all across the country participated too, welcoming Syrian citizens for life-saving care. Because the Syrian regime has long demonized Jews and Israelis, many of these civilians who spent time in Israeli hospitals were forced to lie about where they’d been once they returned to Syria. Medicines and other medical equipment had to be altered so that no Hebrew writing was visible so Syrians would not face deadly reprisals back home.

Operation Good Neighbors also helped coordinate humanitarian groups’ aid efforts, helping disparate Jewish, Christian and Muslim charities cooperate and work together. “I don’t know how many times in history a Christian and a Muslim and a Jewish organization cooperated together to help Muslims – all under the command of an Israeli officer,” Dror recalls.

As the IDF ramped up its aid to Syrians, individual Israelis increased their giving as well, donating money as well as hundreds of pounds of clothing, toys, medical supplies, blankets, bedding and other items to civilians on the other side of the border. “Volunteers went home to home in every village in the Golan Heights, collecting donations of clothes and other vital items to help Syrians survive the fighting. The number of people who took part was very large." Outside of the Golan Heights, other Israeli charities coordinated donations and help across the country.

IDF soldiers helped build a clinic in Syria near the border with Israel. Called Mazor Ladach, which means “relief for the suffering”, over 7,000 Syrians have been treated there. Israel also worked in partnership with Syrian doctors to build and staff a maternal hospital, sending thousands of items of equipment and supplying the hospital with fuel. To date, over a thousand Syrian children have been born in that hospital, kept running in partnership with the Jewish state.

Lt. Col. Dror estimates that he oversaw the transfer of equipment worth nearly 500 million shekels to Syrian civilians – over $144 million. Operation Good Neighbor even supplied nearly $1 million to help run a Syrian bakery and spent about $5 million on the maternity hospital. “We supplied with them with all kinds of help… We supported them during those years which were hard for them” when fighting raged through Syria.

The Israeli Government estimates that Israel has sent 1,700 tons of food, 1.1 million liters of fuel, 26,000 cases of medical supplies, 20 generators, 40 vehicles, 630 tents, 8,200 boxes of diapers, 49,000 cases of baby food, and 700,000 lbs of clothing.

Operation Good Neighbor was forced to stop operations in September 13 2018, after Syrian dictator Bashar Assad regained control of Syrian territory near Israel’s border, where the humanitarian operations had been running. Helping civilians became too dangerous.

One of Operation Good Neighbor’s last acts was the daring rescue of Syria’s “White Helmets” civil defense group on the night of June 21, 2018. The White Helmets consisted of US-trained and Canadian-trained volunteer medical and other emergency personnel and helped evacuate civilians from conflict zones and provide medical treatment. Bashar Assad labeled the White Helmets as traitors and terrorists, and in June 2018 they found themselves under attack, at risk of massacre, until Israel stepped in to save the volunteers and their families.

After the White Helmets exposed that the Assad's regime was using poison gas on its people they were targeted for elimination. “One night we opened the gate between Israel and Syria, a potential flash point for attacks, for ten hours – that was a huge amount of time given the ferociousness of the fighting," Lt. Col. Dror says. White Helmet volunteers and their families poured through the border, finding refuge in Israel. “422 people crossed into Israel that night, including babies and children." The White Helmet volunteers and their families were eventually resettled in Europe, Dror explains, where they continue to tell the story of their dramatic rescue by Israel.

For Lt. Col. Dror and many of the people who helped him aid Syrians, Operation Good Neighbor isn't really over. “The most important thing in my life was these three years that changed the lives of thousands of Syrians,” Lt. Col. Dror explains.

He insists that even though today Israel is no longer able to run the programs aiding civilians as openly as it once did, the fact that in Syrians’ hour of need Israelis came to their help has changed people’s minds about the Jewish state. "Syrians were educated to hate us as propaganda under the Assad regime. Today, they know that the only country that stood with them: Israel."

Speaking with Aish.com, Noam Shalev, who wrote the viral Facebook post, echoed this sentiment. “I hope that people can learn from this experience that behind the politics and propaganda, it’s all about people. The only way to make the world a better place is to be better. I think that every Israeli and every Jew should be proud of the way Israel treated the Syrian refugees."

The nine-year-old Syrian girl's drawing
Lt. Col. Dror keeps a picture in his office that a nine-year-old Syrian girl drew for him. She showed up one day at the border fence with Israel, suffering from diabetes. Israeli soldiers quickly transported her to an Israeli hospital where she received life-saving treatment. “The doctor said if she’d waited even another 24 hours, she would have died,” Dror recalls. When she was well enough to go home, the little girl first made a present: a picture of the Israeli flag, as well as her name in Arabic, then a heart, then Lt. Col. Dror’s name in Arabic. “Can you imagine a Syrian girl that drew a heart to an IDF officer who saved her life?” Dror asks; “This was when imagination became true reality.”

"There are many more stories like the Syrian waitress in Stockholm," Lt. Col. Dror notes, "of ordinary Syrians who grew up thinking that Jews and Israelis were monsters, and now are proclaiming to the world the many ways that Israel helped them in their hour of need."

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/6-Common-Foods-Popularized-by-Jews.html?s=mm
6 Common Foods Popularized by Jews
Jan 5, 2020  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
6 Common Foods Popularized by Jews
Common foods whose popularity was spread by Jews.

Some of the most commonplace foods we take for granted weren’t always so easy to come by. In many cases, it was Jewish traders or businesspeople who introduced basic ingredients to new markets. Take artichokes – for years, Italians called this vegetable “Jewish food”, because Jews introduced it to the region. In Spain, Jews introduced eggplant; the vegetable was so associated with Jews that during the Spanish Inquisition, eating eggplant was even grounds for accusing someone of being a secret Jew.
Here are six other common foods whose popularity was spread by Jews.

Growing Oranges in Europe
Surprisingly, the Jewish holiday of Sukkot helped popularize oranges in Europe. Because Jews use etrogs to celebrate Sukkot, Jews in Southern Europe were adept at tending to citrus trees and orchards. (In fact, in the chaotic period after the fall of the Roman Empire, Jews are thought to have been the only people continuing to grow citrus fruit in Europe.) When Arab traders started bringing the first oranges from India to Europe to sell in the Middle Ages, Jewish citrus growers added the new fruit to their orchards.

Soon, oranges became a quintessential Sephardi Jewish food, used in cakes, meat dishes, and salads. Food history writer Gil Marks notes that “It was by no coincidence that the centers of medieval citrus cultivation directly corresponded to the centers of Jewish population.” (Quoted in Encyclopedia of Jewish Food by Gil Marks, John Wiley & Sons: 2010.) Jewish traders brought oranges – as well as etrogs and other citrus fruit – to Jewish communities in northern Europe, where they were a coveted treat. In some Ashkenazi Jewish communities, an orange was a popular Hanukkah gift. Later, Sephardi Jews introduced orange cultivation to South America and the Caribbean, as well.

In more recent times, Jewish peddlers introduced oranges to mass markets in western Europe. In a book about London’s poor published in 1851, the author Henry Mayhew noted that “the (orange) trade was, not many years ago, confined almost entirely to the Jew boys who kept aloof from the vagrant lads of the streets”. (London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew, 1861.)

 
Jewish vendors sold oranges from baskets or stalls on busy streets, and later branched into the wholesale and import markets, ensuring that oranges became available widely in Europe and beyond.

Secret Formula for Vanilla
Vanilla is native to the eastern coast of Mexico, and for years the Totonac Indians and Aztecs cultivated it and cooked with the fragrant vanilla flowers. Vanilla only develops its delicious flavor after weeks of intense processing; Native American chefs developed top-secret techniques to cook vanilla, and refused to share their knowledge with European conquerors. But they did let some Jewish traders and interpreters in on their secret.

Jews – both Sephardi Jews and also secret “Converso” Jews who maintained their Jewish identity and practice in secret in order to outwit the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions – often served as translators in the 1500s and 1600s. Jews in the New World frequently spoke Dutch, Spanish and English, and also taught themselves some indigenous languages, and were in high demand among traders. Some of these Jewish interpreters gained native Indians’ trust.

The first non-natives to manufacture vanilla were David and Rafael Mercado, Jewish brothers who settled in what is today French Guiana, and built a sugar processing plant there. The local Dutch authorities forbade them from making sugar, so the Mercado brothers turned to vanilla instead. Vanilla is extremely hard to grow, but the Mercados – and soon other Jewish producers – developed methods to make vanilla commercially viable.

Sephardi Jews began exporting vanilla to Jewish communities in Europe. Ashkenazi Jews entered the vanilla trade too, and for years the vanilla industry was closely associated with Jewish producers, who never let out the secret to vanilla production. It was only in the mid-1800s that French traders succeeded in smuggling vanilla plants out of Mexico to the French tropical colony Tahiti; it took years to grow them there. Eventually, Jewish dominance of the vanilla industry faded away as vanilla became more widespread and popular and scientific advances in Europe allowed people to process vanilla more easily. (For more information, see Encyclopedia of Jewish Food by Gil Marks, John Wiley & Sons: 2010).

Jewish Doctor Prescribing Tomatoes
Tomatoes are a New World fruit, brought back to Europe by Spanish conquerors in the 1500s. While tomatoes quickly became popular in the Ottoman Empire and were embraced by Middle Eastern cooks, including Jews, it took generations for Western Europeans to start eating them.

Tomatoes were a popular plant to grow, but only for ornamental purposes, and were considered dangerous to eat. Many Europeans thought tomatoes were poisonous, in part because they’re a member of the nightshade plant family, which contains poisonous plants, and also because diners used to eat off of pewter plates, which reacted negatively with the acidity in tomatoes, causing unpleasant tastes and sickening some diners.

One of the first Westerners to recognize tomatoes’ high nutritional value was a Jewish physician living in 18th Century Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, Dr. John de Sequeyra. He took care of Thomas Jefferson’s father, and had some progressive ideas. Dr de Sequeyra believed tomatoes were chock-full of vitamins and advised eating one tomato every day. Dr. de Sequeyra made an impression on the Jefferson family, and Thomas Jefferson took Dr. de Sequeyra’s advice. One day, Thomas Jefferson announced he would eat a tomato in public; a crowd gathered and waited for ill effects. None came, and tomatoes began to be embraced in Virginia, and beyond.

(Discussed in Notes on an Early Virginia Physician: Dr. John de Sequeyra: The Portuguese-Jewish PHysician of Colonial Williamsburg by Robert Shosteck, American Jewish Archives: 1971).

Bringing Coffee to the West
Native to Ethiopia, coffee beans were being used to make beverages in Yemen in the Middle Ages. From there, coffee drinking made its way north, becoming popular throughout the Middle East. Years later, Jews were in the vanguard of bringing coffee to Western Europe, introducing this delicious beverage to European consumers and building coffeehouses where it could be sampled and enjoyed.

Jews in the Italian city of Livorno opened the first coffeehouses in Europe in 1632. It was a huge success, and soon, Jews, as well as Turks and Armenians, were opening coffeehouses in the Netherlands and France, encouraging the first generation of coffee drinkers in those countries. England’s first coffeehouse was the brainchild of a businessman known as “Jacob the Jew”, who opened the Angel Inn in Oxford in 1650. Four years later, another Jew named Cirques Jobson opened England’s second coffeehouse nearby.

French Chocolates
Chocolate is made from cocoa beans, which are indigenous to Mexico. European explorers encountered xocalatl, a bitter drink made from cocoa beans that was popular with the Aztecs. In the 1600s, European settlers competed to produce and export cocoa beans and products made with them from Mexico; many of these early traders were Sephardi Jews.

The world’s first commercial cocoa-producing factory was founded in the late 1600s by Benjamin d’Acosta de Andrade, a secret Jew from Portugal. When Benjamin was expelled from a French colony in the Caribbean, he moved to the Dutch-controlled island of Curacao, where Jews could live openly, and began manufacturing cocoa. Many of his customers seem to have been European Jews, who developed a taste for early chocolate products.



The center of chocolate production in Europe in the 1600s was the Jewish ghetto of Bayonne, France. Jews had moved to Bayonne from Portugal after the establishment of the Portuguese Inquisition in 1536. They brought their business ties to traders in the Americas with them, and for a time, Bayonne was one of Europe’s most prolific traders with West Indies, importing chocolate and other products into France.

Jews in Bayonne experimented with cooking techniques, mixing bitter cocoa beans with sugar, cream, vanilla and other ingredients to create sweet-tasting delicious chocolates. They built Europe’s first ever chocolate factories and soon Bayonne was the center of the new craze for chocolate that was sweeping France. Non-Jews near Bayonne began producing chocolates too, and Christian producers started pressuring the French government to stop Jews from selling chocolate and competing with their French counterparts. In 1691, the French government banned Bayonne’s Jews from selling chocolates to Christians.

In 2013, French authorities formally recognized and thanked the Jewish community of Bayonne for bringing chocolate to France 500 years before. “Since we are the inheritors of the Jews’ savoir faire, it was our duty to thank them, but also to restore a historic truth: after they introduced chocolate to France, Bayonne Jewry was gradually evicted from the chocolate industry in the 17h century by the very people who had learned everything from them” explained Jean-Michel Barate, then head of the Chocolate Academy of Bayonne.

Inventing “Kiwifruit”
Frieda Caplan started working in her husband’s family business, selling wholesale fruits and vegetables in Los Angeles, in 1955 because she could work flexible hours and be with her young children. The child of Jewish refugees from Russia, she was part of a tight-knit Jewish family. Other wholesalers in Los Angeles regarded Frieda as a curiosity, and whenever an unknown type of produce would arrive in the market, sellers would shunt it to Frieda. She started her own company, Produce Specialties, Inc., in 1962, focusing on importing and distributing fruits and vegetables that were little known in the United States.

Frieda Caplan

One of her first customers was a buyer in Salt Lake City who’d just come back from New Zealand and tasted delicious fruit there called “Chinese Gooseberries”. The product wasn’t available in the United States – could Frieda Caplan import some for him, he wondered? Frieda ordered a delivery, but didn’t think something called Chinese Gooseberries would sell in the US. Since the fruits were grown in New Zealand, she renamed them kiwifruit instead. It took about 18 years, Frieda estimated, for kiwis to become popular in the United States, but by 1986 she was selling a million pounds of kiwis each year.

Kiwis aren’t the only fruits introduced and popularized in the United States by Frieda Caplan. She also introduced seedless watermelon, spaghetti squash, habanero chilis, sugar snap peas, jicama and “champagne” grapes (which she named – they were previously called Zante currants) to the American market. Previously unavailable or only sold in specialty ethnic stores, these popular fruits and vegetables are now widely popular and commonly available – thanks to Frieda Caplan and her years of innovative importing and marketing business

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Torah-Is-Food-for-the-Soul-Celebrating-the-Completion-of-Learning-the-Talmud-.html?s=mfeat
Torah Is Food for the Soul: Celebrating the Completion of Learning the Talmud
Jan 2, 2020  |  by Rabbi Efrem Goldberg
Torah Is Food for the Soul: Celebrating the Completion of Learning the Talmud 
We defeat the anti-Semites by embracing Torah stronger and dedicating ourselves to share it with our brothers and sisters.

When Rav Meir Shapiro zt”l, the founder of the Daf Yomi, the page-of-Talmud-a-day program, was seven years old, he found his mother crying and he asked her why. She explained that she was terribly sad because his Torah teacher was scheduled to come that day but didn’t show up. The young boy didn’t understand why that moved her to tears. She explained, “You don’t understand Meir’l because you are too young, but my son, I want you to always remember, if you miss a day of learning, it cannot be replaced, it cannot be made up.”

Rav Meir Shapiro’s mother understood something so fundamental, so basic and so core to our people: Torah is not information, it is not a set of facts, laws, or history. Torah learning is not just a way of life, it is what provides life, sustains life and nourishes life. Without it we simply cannot live.

Rav Meir Shapiro’s mother’s tears left an indelible impression and when the opportunity presented itself, he introduced a system and initiative which would ensure we would never miss a day of learning in our lives. It is estimated that today there are more than 300,000 people around the world who learn the Daf Yomi daily. Rav Meir Shapiro and his wife didn’t have biological children, but make no mistake, each page of Talmud learned is his continuity and legacy, each of the members of the daf his progeny.

Much of the credit for the Daf Yomi, for the countless people who learn it daily, for the tens of millions of pages of Talmud learned in the last seven and a half years, goes to his mother. She, and Jewish women since then, have inspired, supported, promoted and sacrificed to ensure that a day of learning is never missed. They, too, are heroes of the daf who deserve recognition and appreciation this morning.
 
In the golden age of the Jewish people, Torah informed and inspired us, and in some of our darkest periods and bleakest moments, Torah learning is what gave us not only courage, faith and hope, but it gave us life.

The Tanya writes: Torah is the nourishment for the soul who learns it sincerely. Mitzvot are garments, they enable us to make contact with the Divine by doing them, but Torah is the spiritual food we ingest. We digest it and it becomes absorbed by us, part of us, informing us, inspiring us and enabling us to not only touch the Divine but be of one mind with Him, integrated as one. When we learn Torah we are feeding our soul, hydrating our spirt.

Today, we are going to recite the Hadran, the prayer recited upon completing a tractate of Talmud, from a very special Gemara. The Nazis had stolen, looted, and burned all the Torah books belonging to German Jews. Not one complete set of Talmud could be found in Western Europe. Rabbi Samuel Snieg and Rabbi Samuel Rose, both survivors of Dachau, had an idea to print an entire full-size set of Talmud in Germany. They printed 50 sets of what became known as “The Survivors’ Talmud” on the exact printing machines the Nazis had used to produce their propaganda during the war. The survivors in the DP camps were starving for food, but many were also desperate to feed their souls, eager to resume learning the Daf Yomi.

Today, almost 75 years later, as we once again face a rise of those who want to harm us, heinous attacks by those who want to eliminate us, we will celebrate the completion of Shas with a statement of defiance, of triumph over our enemies. With this siyum, completion, we once again declare "The Jewish People are eternal." We will read the Hadran from a volume of the Survivors’ Talmud, a testament to the immortality of our people and to the central role of Torah in sustaining us.

Shortly, we will hold that volume and proudly declare "we will return to you," we will return to learning the Torah. No matter what, no matter when, "we will return to you." Some will try to cause us to forget the Torah, but we will be back. Others will burn you and destroy you, but we will be back. Yet others, even today, will try to destroy Torah in Shuls in Har Nof, Pittsburgh, Poway, or Monsey, but we will keep coming back, because nothing can keep us away. This is our mission as Jews, this is core to who we are and remains an essential part of our mandate.

Torah is for every single one of us. None of us can afford to be too busy, too distracted, have too much insecurity or too little interest to learn Torah. It needs us and we need it and nobody understood that better than the extraordinary person whom we dedicate this siyum to today. When our dear friend, Rabbi Dr. Brian Galbut, was diagnosed with a devastating brain tumor, he knew that as important as any medicine, treatment or therapy was for his health and wellbeing, it was Torah learning and the learning of others in his merit, that would give him life.

Brian cherished the Daf Yomi, even if it meant breaking his teeth over a difficult topic. Learning a page of Talmud was only a part of his rigorous learning schedule that included exploring topics that interested him and preparing high-level classes that he delivered. The wear and tear of his books, the notes in their margins and the underlines on its pages all testify to his diligence and commitment to learning Torah, all while earning a reputation as an outstanding physician and being one of the most hands-on fathers I ever saw.

When he got sick, the Daf in particular took on special significance for Brian, not only for what it meant for himself but as the perfect project to recruit others to join in his merit. When people wanted to visit while he was recovering from surgery, he suggested learning the Daf together. He got his uncles, brothers-in-law and cousins to learn it with him and for him. He called friends and acquaintances and asked them to take it on for him. As his illness progressed, understanding the Daf became harder and harder but you wouldn’t know it. He smiled and laughed, even while he struggled. He was never fatigued, never defeated. He kept plugging away until he literally, physically couldn’t learn the Daf anymore, and even then, it continued to play in his ears.

In anticipation of this siyum in his memory, several people shared with me the experience of being recruited by Brian to learn the Daf. I will just share what one person wrote:

I will never forget the call. It was a Friday afternoon in July. I was driving home from work. When I first saw the name on the caller ID my jaw practically dropped: “Brian Galbut.” This was two weeks after Brian had been diagnosed and undergone brain surgery. It shocked me to see that he was calling me now. I picked up the phone and said hello. After answering my “How are you doing” with his trademark “Baruch Hashem, feeling great, everything’s great,” he told me he wanted a favor. “You’re smart, you’re capable, you can learn…. I was wondering if you could start learning Daf Yomi in my merit?” I didn’t hesitate to agree.

Those few minutes literally changed my life. I started Daf Yomi the next day. And that learning, but most of all the source behind it – Brian putting himself out there to personally ask me to do it – sparked something in me… Until then, I could check off every box as someone “observant” — but I wasn’t connected in a serious way to learning or davening or in my connection with Hashem. Seeing how Brian immediately reacted to his illness, calling people like me, trying to get us to commit to learning, inspired me to re-evaluate my life and consider what I could do to be more like Brian, someone I had always admired as a model of a true servant of God…

There is literally no area of my life that has not improved because Brian picked up the phone and called me one July day and solicited the initial commitment. Among other things, my Torah learning and davening are better, qualitatively and quantitatively, than they have ever been. We weren’t close friends and yet not a day goes by that I do not think about Brian and what he did for me with one short phone call. I cherish his memory and I will continue to learn Torah in his memory every day.

Brian Galbut knew that if he could get others to learn Torah in his merit, it would not only extend his life, but it would give them eternal life.

Many here are marking the completion of the Talmud, an enormous accomplishment. I wish you all a huge mazel tov and bless you that Hashem should continue to grant you energy, good health and the wherewithal to continue learning. But those who finished the Talmud are only half the reason we are celebrating. We are also here to celebrate those who are about to embark on this extraordinary journey, whether of learning Daf Yomi, or anything else. If you are moved by this event and by this time to imbibe the sweetness of Torah, this celebration is for you. If you are determined to go from today and incorporate Torah study into your life in a real and consistent way, the joy we feel with you today knows no limits.

Make a plan today. Join the movement of those who realize that Torah is our lifeline and take upon yourself a commitment for Torah learning. It could be a page a day or a page a week, it could be Mishna or Tanach, it could be listening to a class or having a study partner but everyone, absolutely everyone here, men, women and children must nourish our souls by feeding them Torah.

Anti-Semites are once again trying to destroy us. Of course, we must fight them in the halls of Congress, in the court of public opinion, with greater measures of safety and with security. But, we ultimately fight their nefarious plan when we double down on our Jewish identity, when we recommit to our Jewish mission and when we promise to keep Torah the centerpiece of our lives. We defeat them not only when we embrace Torah stronger ourselves, but when we dedicate ourselves to share it with our brothers and sisters who have never been introduced to Torah before. This large gathering is extraordinary, but for each person here, there are literally 100 Jews living in our area who are spiritually malnourished, dehydrated and on the brink of spiritual death.

Take something upon yourself right now, right here. May yourself a promise. Do it for the Jewish people, do it elevate the soul of Brian, Boruch Tzvi ben Reuven Natan, most of all do it for yourself.

Adapted from Raqbbi Goldberg's remarks at the South Florida Siyum Hashas in memory of Brian Galbut – Baruch Tzvi ben Reuven Nosson – held on January 1, 2020



https://www.aish.com/ci/s/Jewish-Genius-and-Bret-Stephens.html?s=mm
Jewish Genius and Bret Stephens
Jan 5, 2020  |  by Rabbi Benjamin Blech
Jewish Genius and Bret Stephens
Don't confuse racism with hard-earned excellence.

How smart are Jews?

Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, was enthralled by Norman Lebrecht’s new book Genius & Anxiety discussing the intellectual achievements of Jewish thinkers, artists and entrepreneurs between 1847 and 1947. So he decided last week to devote a column to this fascinating question: How is it that people who never amounted even to one third of 1% of the world’s population contributed so seminally to so many of its most pathbreaking ideas and innovations? In short, what is the secret of Jewish genius?

And that’s when the roof caved in for Bret Stephens. As one of the lone conservatives and vocal supporters of Israel on the Times staff, Stephens is no stranger to controversy. His views have often elicited strong negative reactions. This time though his critics are calling for his head. After all, how dare Stephens suggest there is even the slightest truth to the idea that Jews are somehow intellectually superior.

Never mind the inconvenient facts: Jews, more than any other minority, ethnic or cultural, have been recipients of the Nobel Prize, with almost one-fifth of all Nobel laureates being Jewish. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates. Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, and 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction. A remarkable study conducted by psychologist Richard Lynn and political scientist Tatu Vanhanen, published in 2006 in IQ and Global Inequity, calculated that a Jewish average IQ of 115 is 8 points higher than the generally accepted IQ of their closest rivals – Northeast Asians – and approximately 40% higher than the global average IQ of 79.1.

But, Bret Stephens, you better not dare even hint at Jewish intellectual superiority because that makes you guilty of the contemporary crime of racism.


 
Regretfully, Stephens did make one mistake of judgment. In citing data about Jewish intellectual achievement and IQ, Stephens linked to a paper written by three anthropologists, one of whom, as it turns out, has been accused of being a racist. The Times subsequently removed the link. But guilt by association is wrong; nowhere did Stephens proceed to base Jewish genius on faulty racist doctrine.

Before political correctness would surely have prevented him from stating it so boldly, Mark Twain wrote this about the Jews in the 19th century:

[The Jews] are peculiarly and conspicuously the world’s intellectual aristocracy… [Jewish] contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are... way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world… and has done it with his hands tied behind him.

Twain wasn’t a racist; he was a realist. He chose to recognize the remarkable gifts of a people who excelled for a host of reasons – and passed on their commitment to education and to excellence to their children. And Bret Stephens, searching for the traits that have clearly allowed one people to stand out at the peak of human achievement, did nothing more than focus on possible reasons for Jewish greatness, reasons – as he himself points out – that are not genetically exclusive to Jews but potentially available to all who are willing to pursue excellence.

Why are Jews so smart? At the very same time the “fire Bret Stephens for racism” protest gained steam, Jews around the world offered a highly visible answer. A little shy of 100,000 Jews gathered in the cold at Met-Life Stadium in New Jersey; tens of thousands at Barclays center in Brooklyn; similar numbers in major cities across the country as well as around the world. Venues accustomed to serving as sites for major sports events and entertainment were filled to capacity with Jews celebrating a joyous achievement. For more than seven years, every single day – no matter the weather, their other commitments, their health or their schedules – they learned one full page of the Talmud. In a little over seven years they finished this momentous project. To have studied the Talmud is to recognize the difficulty involved. It is a curriculum which affords no degree at its conclusion. It will in no way add to anyone’s ability to achieve greater financial security. It is purely learning for the sake of learning. It is knowledge for the sake of knowledge. It is making the statement that as our bodies need food for physical sustenance, so too our souls require “soul food”, the nourishment of wisdom and understanding.

I know of no other people who have a similar universal commitment to study and to perfection of the intellect, the quality which Maimonides teaches is the meaning of being created “in the image of God.”

It is not racism to recognize that Jewish respect for scholarship has been a highly significant factor in the creation of an intellectual aristocracy. Here is Talmudic advice for acquiring a suitable mate:

“Our Rabbis teach, Let a man sell all that he has and marry the daughter of a learned man. If he cannot find the daughter of a learned man, let him marry the daughter of one of the great men of his day. If he does not find such a one, let him marry the daughter of one of the heads of the congregation, or, failing this, the daughter of a charity collector, or even the daughter of a schoolmaster; but let him not marry the daughter of an illiterate man, for the unlearned are an abomination.” (Pesachim, 49: 2).

“What makes Jews special is that they aren’t,” Stephens contends in his allegedly eugenicist column. Others might achieve the same goal if they chose to live by similar values. Stephens explains the Jewish focus on education as a consequence of roughly two millennia of exile and persecution.

And there is the understanding, born of repeated exile, that everything that seems solid and valuable is ultimately perishable, while everything that is intangible – knowledge most of all – is potentially everlasting. “We had been well off, but that was all we got out,” the late financier Felix Rohatyn recalled of his narrow escape, with a few hidden gold coins, from the Nazis as a child in World War II. “Ever since, I’ve had the feeling that the only permanent wealth is what you carry around in your head.” If the greatest Jewish minds seem to have no walls, it may be because, for Jews, the walls have so often come tumbling down.

Jews in the diaspora learned that the only possession they could truly call their own was what they accumulated in their mind. The people of the book cherished the book above all – and that is the secret Jews passed on from one generation to the next.

Poor Bret Stephens. Little did he realize that when he chose to acknowledge Jewish genius he opened the floodgates for Jew haters who found yet another way to deny Jews recognition for their achievements - by confusing racism with hard-earned excellence.

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https://www.aish.com/jw/s/The-Monsey-Hanukkah-Horror.html?s=mm
The Monsey Hanukkah Horror
Dec 29, 2019  |  by Rabbi Benjamin Blech
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The Monsey Hanukkah Horror
We Jews, descendants of the Maccabees, need to become more Jewish, not less Jewish.

After the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh we foolishly thought there was only enough hate to last for one day in our civilized society of America. But we were wrong. The list of cities in the headlines with anti-Semitic incidents almost daily grows longer. The virus of hate continues to flourish and incredibly grows stronger. Synagogues have armed guards. Jews are attacked. The darkness overpowers the light in a stunning reversal of the Hanukkah miracle.

It seems just days ago that we were horrified by events in Jersey City. Now, in addition to the Hasidic areas, it is even the exclusive upper East side of Manhattan as well. It does not take peyot, sidelocks, and wide-brimmed black hats to bring out the hatred. It is enough today for the anti-Semites merely to suspect that their victims are Jews.

Let us take a moment to reflect on the remarkable connection between the latest Monsey incident and Hanukkah.

“For the miracles, for the deliverance, for the strength, for the salvation and for the battles” – we thank God for all of these, including the battles. We thank God for Mattathias and his sons who bravely demonstrated that Jews do not believe in passively accepting the efforts of those who seek to destroy us. Jews do not live by the maxim to turn the other cheek. Jews, even those for whom the temple as a dwelling place for God on this earth is the ideal, recognized the need not to rely solely on the Almighty but to put forth all of our own efforts as well to rid us of evil and to make us worthy of God’s presence in our midst.

Hanukkah is the holiday of the Maccabees as much as it is the commemoration of miracles.

It is not a time for silence when anti-Semitic attacks are countered with political platitudes of “zero tolerance” followed by revolving door justice. It is almost impossible to believe that suspects arrested in last week’s string of eight anti-Semitic attacks were quickly released right back into the neighborhoods they allegedly terrorized due to bail reform legislation. New legislation requires arraignment judges to free suspects “in any non-sexual assault that doesn’t cause physical injury, even in cases of hate attacks. Even if there is an injury, then bail could be requested”, but not necessarily granted.

In New York City’s Orthodox neighborhoods Jews are incredulous to discover that even when violent bigots are caught they are immediately released in accord with changed legislation.

Ever since I came to America, fleeing as a young boy from the Europe which made it possible for 6 million Jews to be brutally murdered, I have proudly fulfilled the Hanukkah mitzvah of “publicizing the miracle.” It is Hanukkah which demands of us that we place the menorah by the window facing the street in the outside world. It is our way of imitating the Maccabees. We will not hide our faith. We will proudly announce our identity as Jews.

America to me has always been the blessing that allowed me to walk everywhere, unafraid, with a yarmulke on my head.

Today, for the very first time in my life, someone said to me, “Maybe, for your own sake, it might be safer for you to walk around with a baseball cap instead of your kippah.”

And that of course is the beginning of the end for Jews in every country they have ever lived.

We Jews, descendants of the Maccabees, need – in the spirit of Hanukkah – to become more Jewish, not less Jewish.

Of course I have intensified my prayers. Of course I turn to God and beseech him to help us in this terrible time of danger. But I do not forget that there once was a priest with five sons who joined action to prayer, who proved to the Syrian Greeks that Jews will not choose to be meek victims but rather proud Maccabees.

When Jews are attacked with a machete in a synagogue while celebrating Hanukkah it is way past time for us to make clear – to our politicians, to our neighbors, to our society, to our country – ENOUGH! This will not be allowed to continue - and this time around, after the lessons of the Holocaust, our heroes are the Maccabees, not the Jews of silence.



https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Jews-of-Monsey-Will-Not-Be-Cowed.html?s=mm
Jews of Monsey Will Not Be Cowed
Dec 30, 2019
by Faygie Holt, JNS.org
Jews of Monsey Will Not Be Cowed
Less than 24 hours after the attack, Jews sang and danced, celebrating the dedication of a new Torah scroll.
Less than 24 hours after five people were stabbed at a rabbi’s home on Forshay Road in Monsey, N.Y., Jews gathered on the lawn to sing and dance as a Torah scroll was dedicated at a nearby synagogue, making for a far different scene from the night beforehand.

On Saturday night, Grafton Thomas, 38, entered the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg and began stabbing people who had come to celebrate the seventh night of Hanukkah. Using what has now been described as a machete, the attacker began slashing at people in the home, though several people reportedly threw objects at him, eventually prompting him to flee.

He then turned his attention to Rottenberg’s synagogue, located on an adjacent lot. Finding the building locked, the attacker returned to his car and fled the scene. He was apprehended several hours later by members of the New York Police Department.

While a motive for the attack has not been released, on Sunday New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the rampage an “act of domestic terrorism” after meeting with Rottenberg. Cuomo said he planned to introduce legislation that would increase the penalty of such cases to reflect the seriousness of the crime.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo meets with of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg in Monsey, N.Y. after an attack in his home.
A statement released by Thomas’s lawyer, Michael Sussman, said he had suffered from a “long history of mental illness and hospitalizations,” and had “no known history of anti-Semitism.” Thomas pleaded not guilty to five counts of attempted murder and one count of burglary at his arraignment on Sunday. Bail was set at $5 million.

“We need more police presence. We need to feel more secure, and we don’t feel that now.”
Nevertheless, in the federal hate-crime criminal complaint on Thomas—an African-American who grew up in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., and now lives with his mother in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., about 20 miles from Monsey—said that law-enforcement agents recovered journals from his mother that included anti-Semitic references, as well as Internet searches on Adolf Hitler and where to find local Jewish synagogues.

Eli Cohen, a lifelong resident of Monsey who grew up going to the Rottenberg shul, said the attack has impacted the whole community. “We are all concerned. People are nervous,” he said, noting that kids can no longer walk to synagogue on their own because no one knows what will happen. “Monsey used to be a nice, calm, quiet place, and now, not so much.”

On any given Shabbat morning, some 200-plus people attend Shabbat services at the Rottenberg shul. Holiday programs, like the Hanukkah gathering the rabbi was holding at his home on Saturday night, can draw hundreds more people from the community.

Rivkie Feiner, a member of the Jewish Federation and Foundation of Rockland County’s Jewish Community Relations Council and a board member of the JCC Rockland, was spending Saturday evening with her children at a skating rink less than two miles from Rottenberg’s home when her phone began shrill with notifications about the attack.

As the assailant was on the run and no one knew where he was heading, Feiner began urging everyone standing outside of the indoor rink to come inside and wait.

“It was scary,” she recalled. “Then you started hearing the sirens, the ambulances, the helicopters flying above.”

“People don’t understand the ripple effect. It’s horrible. The entire community is connected through social media, and even our kids hear about it,” said Feiner, a communal leader who was at the scene for a while on Saturday night and met with government officials Sunday. “My 8-year-old came over and asked me what’s a stabbing, and my 11-year-old wouldn’t go to bed until we checked that all the doors were locked. He just wanted to know that the person was caught.”

According to Richard Priem, the Anti-Defamation League’s associate regional director for New York and New Jersey, the attack in Monsey was the 10th anti-Semitic attack recorded by the group since Dec. 23 in the region. Many of those attacks happened in the borough of Brooklyn, N.Y., and were directed at Chassidic Jews who are identifiable by their dress, which for men include long black coats, black hats and on Shabbat, wide fur hats known as streimels.

“The Jewish community is utterly terrified,” Evan Bernstein, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey, said in a statement. “No one should have to live like this.”

The attack also came less than three weeks after a deadly attack on a Jewish market in Jersey City, N.J., where two members of the Chassidic community were among three civilians and a police detective killed during an hours-long siege. The two attackers in that case—a man and a woman—were also killed.

According to Feiner, members of the Chassidic community in Rockland County and elsewhere have expressed how vulnerable they feel because the way they dress makes them identifiably Jewish. “We need more police presence,” she said. “We need to feel more secure, and we don’t feel that now.”

Priem said “It’s hard to pinpoint a specific cause as to why this is happening, but we do know that something meaningful needs to change. We need change from the top level—from the government down to the grassroots.”

In the hours after the attack, life began to return to normal—or at least a “new normal”—in Monsey. People continued to go to synagogues throughout town to pray and shoppers filled local stores, including the kosher supermarkets.

Even Rabbi Rottenberg continued with his plans. Just hours after the attack—his son was among those who had been stabbed—the rabbi addressed members of his congregation. He also recited the Jewish prayer of thanksgiving, which is said when a person survives a dangerous situation.

For Priem, who along with his colleagues had been on the scene for hours, seeing the Torah procession stop in front of the Rottenberg residence was a particularly powerful moment.

“This shows that despite the fear, they continue to adhere to their faith,” he said. “They won’t be cowed to change.”

https://www.aish.com/h/c/s/h/The-Rock-from-Dachau.html?s=mm
The Rock from Dachau
Dec 29, 2019  |  by Rabbi Michoel Green
The Rock from Dachau
When you light your menorah, you’re never alone.

Lighting the menorah on Shrewsbury Town Common is no easy task, but I've done it nearly every night of Hanukkah for the past 17 years. The first night's lighting is always well-attended, since we invite the community to participate.

People often come to assist me or just watch while I light the kerosene lamps. Sometimes it's just me. Today was one of those times. Or so I thought.

Rabbi Green setting up Menorah

As I finished kindling the lights, I alighted from the ladder and began to head back to my van when a man came over to greet me.

"Are you the rabbi who lights this menorah every day?" he asked.

"Yup, that's me," I replied.

"Thank you for doing this," he said. "I'm not Jewish, but I really appreciate this. May I give you something as a token of appreciation? Please wait here for a minute." He ran to his car parked nearby and returned with a small clear-lucite box that contained a small rock glued to a miniature pedestal.

"This rock is from Dachau," he explained. "My grandfather helped liberate it in 1945. I went there several years ago to see it for myself. Please accept this rock as a keepsake. We want people to have them so that no one ever forget what happened there."

The rock from DachauThe rock from Dachau
After a brief conversation, I was surprised to learn that his 95-year-old grandfather and namesake, R.F. Gouley, a veteran of the U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division, is alive and well, and still living here in town. I asked if his grandfather might be willing to speak to groups about his experiences. He replied that his grandfather cannot speak about the horrors he witnessed, so a mere rock from the concentration camp would have to suffice.

After the obligatory selfie, he thanked me again for lighting the menorah in town, and I thanked him for teaching people about his grandfather's experiences. More importantly, I asked him to convey my deepest gratitude to his grandfather for liberating my fellow Jews who survived the horrors of the first Nazi concentration camp.

Mr. Gouley and meMr. Gouley and me
As I returned to my van clutching a rock from Dachau in one hand and my menorah lighter in the other, I couldn't help but consider the significance of this fortuitous encounter.

I felt as though the souls of the kedoshim, the holy martyrs murdered at Dachau sent me a greeting. The rock that witnessed untold horrors and darkest crimes against our people needed to bear witness to the light of our nine-foot menorah proudly illuminating the Town Common of Shrewsbury, MA. From darkness to light.

No, I'm not alone when I light the menorah. Even in snow, sleet, or subzero temperatures. It's never just me.

I am accompanied by all my ancestors from the Maccabees until modern times.

I am joined by the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe (R' Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson) who fearlessly fought to preserve Judaism in the dark days of Stalinist Russia.

I am accompanied by my Rebbe, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the faithful shepherd of world Jewry who rekindled the menorah of our people from the embers of the Holocaust.

And I am accompanied by holy Jews throughout history who lit the menorah with mesiras nefesh, personal self-sacrifice, heroes and heroines who fought to live as Jews, and who died for being a Jew. They are all with me.

Menorah lighting
These kerosene lamps that I faithfully kindle each night are no mere "festive lights." They bear testimony to the Rock of Ages. Let that rock from Dachau witness the Rock of our Salvation, Maoz tzur y'shuati.

That's why our light is unstoppable.

That's why our light will ultimately succeed in illuminating the world, in transforming darkness to light.

When you light your menorah, it's not just you. You are not alone.

You are part of something awesome and invincible. You are a modern-day Maccabee.

Your light will prevail.
Happy Hanukkah. Spread the light.

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Youre-a-Jew-Germanys-Controversial-Ad-Campaign.html?s=mm
“You’re a Jew!”: Germany's Controversial Ad Campaign
Dec 22, 2019  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
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“You’re a Jew!”: Germany's Controversial Ad Campaign
A German ad campaign shines a light on a common slur.
“You’re a Jew!”
Residents of the German capital Berlin have been bombarded with that message on billboards this week. It’s part of a campaign against anti-Semitism that seeks to destigmatize the word “Jew”, which in Germany and other places today is used as an insult.

The posters feature the screaming caption Du Jude (“You’re a Jew!” or “You Jew!”) alongside an object or animal. The posters have received a lot of criticism. Not because they make the assumption that “You’re a Jew!” is some sort of insult, but because the objects featured in them – apparently doing the talking – are so odd: some feature pictures of cleaning cloths, while others feature leeks and ostriches. At the bottom of each poster is the message: “You’re a Jew. #sowhat.”

This campaign is the seventeenth program run by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, which works to fight hate and strengthen democracy in Germany. The “You’re a Jew – so what” campaign was co-sponsored by the Anne Frank Center and funded by Germany’s Federal Government.

“Anyone who deals with anti-Semitism is familiar with the problem,” explains Miki Hermer, one of the women behind the “You’re a Jew” posters. Children routinely insult schoolmates by calling them “Jew” in German schools, and the problem is spreading in popular culture, with “Jew” employed as one of the most shocking slurs in the German language.

In 2018, Michal Schwartze, a Jewish teacher in Frankfurt, Germany, recounted her fears of revealing she is Jewish in her school, where being a Jew is considered one of the worst things anyone can imagine. When students use “Jew” as an insult, she explains, “I don’t say hey I am Jewish, but I make it clear that I am personally affected.” A few years ago, she wrote an article for her school’s newspaper urging students to stop employing “Jew” as an insult, but the problem hasn’t gone away: in the face of such casual hatred, she notes that many German Jews simply “hide their identity”.

For years, Europeans and others have routinely used “Jew” to mean something terrible. In 1973, the Oxford English Dictionary was sued by an elderly Jew named Marcus Shloimovitz, who objected to the dictionary’s definition of “Jews” as “a name of opprobrium or reprobation; specifically applied to a grasping or extortionate money lender or userer, or a trader who drives hard bargains or deals craftily”. The Dictionary’s editor, R. W. Burchfield, defended this definition, but did make one concession: in future editions he would include the historical background behind this insulting definition, explaining that generations of rampant Jew-hatred had given rise to the anti-Jewish loathing behind the dictionary’s offensive definition.

Instead of fading away, using “Jew” as an insult is gaining ground. A 2016 report by the Dutch Jewish information center CIDI noted they were “concerned about the degradation of the word ‘Jew’” in the Netherlands recently. “This word has become increasingly ‘normal’” as a way of insulting people, even when no one involved in a dispute is Jewish. “Jew” has emerged as an all-purpose insult used by people from all backgrounds.

A recent report by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights quoted a Danish woman explaining that “‘Jew’ is a widespread cuss word in Copenhagen”. As a result, she now avoids telling people she’s Jewish.

I find people using “Jewish person” to avoid saying “Jew”, as if the word Jew is somehow shameful or embarrassing. Among French-speaking Jews, “Israelite” is a popular substitution to avoid using the word Jew.

From a Jewish point of view, the name “Jew” doesn’t denote something shameful or negative.

In Hebrew, “Jew” is Yehudi; It comes from the name Judah (Yehuda in Hebrew), the son of the Biblical patriarch Jacob and our matriarch Leah. The Italian Rabbi Obadia ben Jacob Sforno (1475-1550) noted this is a particularly beautiful name, containing the letters yud and hey, which also form the Hebrew name for God. Yehudah also derives from the Hebrew root meaning "thankfulness” and “praise,” Sforno observed.

In fact, during the very week that the You’re a Jew! Posters appeared in Berlin’s subway, Jews around the world were reading about Judah in the Torah portion Vayeishev in synagogue.

In Vayeshev, Judah at first behaves less than honorably. He has a hand in selling his younger brother Joseph into slavery, and later slanders his daughter-in-law Tamar. But then, when he’s confronted with the fact that he was wrong about Tamar, Judah finds the courage to publicly admit he was wrong. In a situation where it would have been easier to keep quiet, Judah is willing to risk embarrassment and declare “She is right!” (Genesis 37:26) and that he was wrong.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, “This moment is a turning point in history. Judah is the first person in the Torah explicitly to admit he was wrong. We do not realize it yet, but this seems to be the moment at which he acquired the depth of character necessary for him to become the first” person to work to improve his character and draw closer to his God-given potential."

For the rest of his life, Judah displayed true heroism: “The man who proposed selling Joseph as a slave...becomes the man who is willing to spend the rest of his life in slavery so that his brother Benjamin can go free” (Genesis 44:33). Without the courage to admit he was wrong, without the strength and humility to work to improve his character, Judah’s later courageousness could never have happened. As Jews, we’re all the heirs of Judah, who worked his to refine himself and push himself to be a better person. It’s an awesome legacy.

Every time we call ourselves “Jew” we’re acknowledging our rich Jewish history – and recalling our ancestor who was unafraid to admit mistakes, who didn’t shirk from acknowledging when he was wrong, and who set us all a shining example of self-improvement and a life devoted to working on becoming the best person we can possibly be. That is the true meaning of “Jew” – and we don’t need any ad campaign to teach us to be proud of that fact.

Hanukkah & Weddings: The Deeper Connection
Dec 22, 2019  |  by Rabbi Benji Levy
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Hanukkah & Weddings: The Deeper Connection
Celebrating Hanukkah represents the same type of joy as getting married – we actively choose who we love in order to continue our people.

Should a couple getting married on Hanukkah light a menorah at their wedding?

The most recent time I was asked this question, rather than answering, I took advantage of the educational opportunity and asked if one can even get married on Hanukkah. The answer is yes, but why?

The Talmud famously states we do not mix two different smachot, or joyous occasions, as they can detract from or be confused with one another, preventing adequate attention to each.1 For this reason, the custom is not to get married on Purim.2 With so many similarities between these two festivals, why can one get married on Hanukkah but not on Purim?

Purim represents the ultimate miracle of physical survival against a physical threat. Haman hated the Jewish people and therefore wanted to exterminate every Jew. The gallows that were set did not discriminate against female or male, young or old, believer or non-believer – the very existence of Jews necessitated their eradication. Jews were never welcome into society regardless of what they could potentially add or remove.

Hanukkah, on the other hand, was very different in this sense. Jews were not hated for who they were but for what they did. It was not their existence but their practice that threatened Greek culture. Jews that acted as Jews were different from those that were prepared to assimilate. Indeed, they were loved as people and only hated as Jews – if only they could express their humanity through Greek society and abandon their particularity, they would be welcome to not simply survive but thrive.

When read this way, the miracle of Purim is a celebration of the most basic human need – the ability to live and breathe. The miracle of Hanukkah, however, is a celebration of the most basic Jewish need – to live freely and actively as a Jew. The enemy of Purim hated us so much that they would kill us regardless of what we did – the enemy of Hanukkah loved us so much that they wanted us to subscribe to their Hellenistic way of life.

Returning to our question, celebrating the miracle of Purim represents a different type of joy to getting married – the former represents being alive, the second how we choose to live. Celebrating Hanukkah represents the same type of joy as getting married – we actively choose who we love in order to continue our people.

A Jewish wedding is becoming rarer, not because of hatred, but because of love – universalism is more embracing than particularity and assimilation is more accommodating than distinction. It is for this reason that one may get married on Hanukkah, according to all opinions, as essentially the smachot are two expressions of the same source – choosing to love rather than falling in or out of love, celebrating the perpetuation of our destiny and Jewish continuity.

Therefore, while there are questions around the blessings, one can light Hanukkah candles at a wedding for the purpose of publicizing the miracle, because indeed, the miracle of a Jewish wedding is the perpetuation of the miracle of Hanukkah – “the strong were delivered into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few.”3 Hanukkah is a time to learn from our past as we spark, ignite and shine through the next generation, illuminating the path ahead for a brighter future!

1. Moed Katan 8b.
2. See the Be’er Heitev on Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim, Hilchot Megillah Purim 696:8. See also the Levush, Magen Avraham and Pri Chadash.
3. HaNissim prayer.

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About the Author
Rabbi Benji LevyMore by this Author >
Rabbi Benji Levy is the CEO of Mosaic United, a $200m joint venture partnership between Israel and the Diaspora to strengthen Jewish identity and connections to Israel for youth around the world. 

Previously he served for 6 years as the Dean of Moriah College in Sydney Australia, one of the largest Jewish schools in the world with over 1,800 pre-kindergarten through high school students where he created a renaissance in Jewish Life and Learning and was instrumental in growing the teen-Israel program. 

 Levy was recently awarded the ‘Educator of the Year Award’ by JNF Australia for his leadership and service and founded several successful educational programs. In January of 2019 he was named by Mekor Rishon as one of the top 3 global change-makers working behind the scenes for Diaspora Jewry. 

He holds a BA in Media and Communications and Honors in Jewish Civilization Thought & Culture from the University of Sydney (USYD), an Education degree from Herzog College in Israel, and is an ordained rabbi. He is currently completing his PhD in Jewish philosophy for which he received the Australian Postgraduate Award. Levy is married with four children.

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The Hanukkah Expulsion of American Jews
Dec 21, 2019  |  by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
https://www.aish.com/ci/s/The-Hanukkah-Expulsion-of-American-Jews.html?s=mm
The Hanukkah Expulsion of American Jews
During the Civil War, General Ulysses Grant expelled American Jews from their homes during Hanukkah.

In the depths of America’s Civil War, the run-up to Hanukkah was tense for the United States’ tiny Jewish community.

Amounting to only half of one percent of the nation’s population, many American Jews at that time were recent immigrants who arrived penniless from Central Europe. Shop-keeping and trading were popular jobs for these new American Jews. Though their community was tiny, as Civil War raged Jews were routinely accused of being traitors and war profiteers, and were demonized in the press and official correspondence.

Antipathy to Jews spanned both sides in the Civil War. In the South, Jews were often regarded as outsiders. In the North, the presence of several high-ranking Jews in the Confederate Army gave fuel to the pernicious falsehood that Jews were somehow behind the South’s decision to secede from the Union and had caused the war. Historian James M. McPherson notes that during the Civil War, “harassed Union officers had come to use the word ‘Jew’ the same way many southerners used ‘Yankee’ – as a shorthand way of describing anyone they considered shrewd, acquisitive, aggressive, and possibly dishonest.” (from Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford University Press: 1988)

Many of these lies about Jews generally centered on the slander that Jews were war profiteers. When the Civil War began, the price of Southern-grown cotton skyrocketed from 10 cents a pound in December 1860 to 68 cents a pound two years later. Even in the midst of war, the North and South continued to depend on each other economically. Northern textile mills relied on Southern cotton; even the Union Army used Southern-grown cotton for its uniforms and tents. To facilitate trade, President Lincoln authorized the distribution of carefully regulated, licensed trading permits allowing cotton to be exported to the North.

Permits were overseen by senior Union Army officials. One of those in charge of distributing them was General Ulysses S. Grant, who governed the District of Tennessee, including areas of nearby Mississippi and Kentucky. Unlike Lincoln, Grant despised issuing trading permits, wondering aloud to aides how the Union Army was supposed to win a war against the Confederacy if they continued to trade with them. In addition to those who legally traded cotton, a robust black-market cotton trade sprang up; many people wrongly assumed that black marketeers were Jews, smearing Jews as profiteers and motivated purely by greed.

Historian Jonathan Sarna describes the simmering tension: “In short order, public corruption rose, mutual trust declined, and recriminations abounded. As is so often the case in such circumstances, suspicion fell particularly upon the Jews, long stereotyped in Christian culture as being financially unscrupulous. Jews became the focus for much of the hatred and mistrust that the war unleashed...” (from When General Grant Expelled the Jews. Nextbook: 2012)

Gen. Grant seemed to be obsessed with Jews, falsely viewing them as somehow being behind the entire black-market cotton trade. Historian Ron Chernow notes that Grant’s imagination was increasingly “endowing (Jews) with almost diabolical powers” and that Gen. Grant ranted about Jews’ supposedly all-reaching influence, writing that Jews “come in with their Carpet sacks in spite of all that can be done to prevent it. The Jews seem to be a privileged class that can travel anywhere…” and spread throughout the country (Quoted in Grant. Penguin Press: 2017). Of over two hundred merchants who were given permits to export cotton to the North, only four were Jewish. Yet this small number didn’t prevent Gen. Grant and others from wrongly seeing Jews as uniquely successful in trade and hating them for it.

Gen. Ulysses Grant

In early December 1862, just weeks before the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, Gen. Grant’s anti-Jewish loathing boiled over. His own father, Jesse Grant, applied for permission to import cotton to the North. Gen. Grant had a strained relationship with his father and now his father was asking to use his son’s influence to prosper in the cotton trade Gen. Grant so despised. Even worse, Jesse Grant was working in partnership with a Jewish family of clothing manufacturers in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was too much for the General; he decided to take a radical step.

General Order No. 11, issued on the first day of Hanukkah, December 17 1862, was brief and chilling:

“The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order. Post commanders will see that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one returning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until and opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners…”

Every Jew in Gen. Grant’s sizeable district was to be expelled within a day. Those returning faced arrest. Instead of targeting Jewish businessmen (which would have been unfair in any case) all Jews – women, children, those not working in trade – were included.

Luckily for many of the Jews in this large area, fighting disrupted telegraph lines and it was hard to get out word of the new law. Nevertheless, Gen. Grant’s order did make it to some districts. Shockingly, locals seemed more than happy to comply and turn on the Jews in their midst.

A Jew identified only as Mr. Silverman, originally from Chicago, was travelling to Holly Springs, Mississippi over Hanukkah, when he heard the order he could no longer remain in the territory. Local reports noted that Mr. Silverman made his way to a telegraph office to contact Gen. Grant and clarify this bizarre request. He was arrested for this so-called “crime”.

In the eastern part of Gen. Grant’s territory, a young Jewish newlywed couple was detained while they travelled through. According to the New York based newspaper Jewish Record, the couple was arrested, had their money and personal possessions robbed, their horse and buggy confiscated, and their luggage burned. It seems there was a scuffle or fight, because the couple became drenched. Despite the winter weather, they were brought to jail, forbidden from changing out of wet clothes, and verbally abused. When they appealed to Brigadier General James Tuttle, commander of the Union garrison in Cairo Illinois, he declined to help, declaring, “You are Jews, and...neither a benefit to the Union or Confederacy.”

Anti-Jewish violence broke out in a number of towns across the region, reaching a crescendo in the town of Paducah, Kentucky.

Jews first moved to Paducah in the 1840s; by that infamous Hanukkah of 1862 the small community had put down roots. The Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities notes that by 1859, eleven Paducah businesses had Jewish owners; half a dozen Jewish-owned clothing stores dotted the town. In 1859, twenty local Jews founded the Chevra Yeshurun Jewish burial society and purchased land for a Jewish cemetery.

When news of General Order No. 11 came, local authorities quickly turned on the Jews in their midst. The B’nai B’rith Missouri Lodge described what happened next: all Jews were given the order “to leave the city of Paducah, Kentucky within twenty-four hours after receiving this order”. Women and children were forced out, too, and in one case a baby was nearly lost in the confusion. Two elderly Jewish women were too ill to leave their homes; kind-hearted local neighbors volunteered to care for them while their relatives were forced to leave.

The petition to Pres. Lincoln from the B’nai B’rith Missouri Lodge
Forced out of their homes, Paducah’s Jews appealed to President Lincoln. Cesar Kaskel, a Jewish immigrant from Prussia who’d moved to Paducah years before, travelled to Washington DC to speak with the president himself. At each stop along the way, he appealed to local journalists “to lend the powerful aid of the press to the suffering cause of outraged humanity (and) to blot out as quick as possible this stain on our national honor” (quoted in Lincoln and the Jews: A History by Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell. St. Martin’s Press: 2015).

When he finally arrived in Washington DC, Cesar Kaskel met Cincinnati’s Congressman, John Addison Gurley, and enlisted his help. Together, the two men went to speak with Pres. Lincoln, who told them he’d had no idea of Gen. Grant’s order expelling the Jews. Lincoln was Biblically literate and spoke to Cesar Kaskel using the metaphor of the ancient Jews being driven from the Land of Israel, asking him: “And so the children of Israel were driven from the happy land of Canaan?” Kaskel replied in a similar tone: “Yes, and that is why we have come unto Father Abraham’s bosom, asking protection.”

Lincoln replied, “And this protection they shall have”.

Historians debate whether or not this conversation really took place using this exalted tone, but Pres. Lincoln did immediately instruct Henry Halleck, the General in Chief of the Union Army, to revoke the decree, which he did on January 6, 1863.

Most of Paducah’s Jews returned, but the pernicious effects of General Order No. 11 lingered for years. The singling out of American Jews “as a class” for special treatment make many feel unwelcome and raised fears that the violence so many had fled in Europe had followed them to their new homes in the United States. Though Ulysses Grant came to regret his order expelling the Jews, the infamous order, coming during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, remained a reminder that even in America, Jews could never feel truly at home.

Each year, Jews around the world sing the song Maoz Tzur after lighting the Hanukkah candles. The words in its final verse – “there is no end to days of evil” – never seemed more true to American Jews than in the winter of 1862, when Jews “as a class” – men, women and children – were denied security and torn from their homes.

8 Short Thoughts for Hanukkah
Dec 18, 2019
by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
8 Short Thoughts for Hanukkah
https://www.aish.com/h/c/t/dt/8-Short-Thoughts-for-Hanukkah.html?s=mm
Illuminate your 8 nights of Hanukkah with these inspiring insights.

1. Inspired by faith, we can change the world
Twenty-two centuries ago, when Israel was under the rule of the empire of Alexander the Great, one particular leader, Antiochus IV, decided to force the pace of Hellenization, forbidding Jews to practice their religion and setting up in the Temple in Jerusalem a statue of Zeus Olympus.

This was too much to bear, and a group of Jews, the Maccabees, fought for their religious freedom, winning a stunning victory against the most powerful army of the ancient world. After three years they reconquered Jerusalem, rededicated the Temple and relit the menorah with the one cruse of undefiled oil they found among the wreckage.

It was one of the most stunning military achievements of the ancient world. It was, as we say in our prayers, a victory of the few over the many, the weak over the strong. It’s summed up in wonderful line from the prophet Zechariah: not by might nor by strength but by my spirit says the Lord. The Maccabees had neither might nor strength, neither weapons nor numbers. But they had a double portion of the Jewish spirit that longs for freedom and is prepared to fight for it.

Never believe that a handful of dedicated people can’t change the world. Inspired by faith, they can. The Maccabees did then. And can we today.

2. The light of the spirit never dies
There’s an interesting question the commentators ask about Hanukkah. For eight days we light lights, and each night we make the blessing over miracles: she-asah nissim la-avotenu. But what was the miracle of the first night? The light that should have lasted one day lasted eight. But that means there was something miraculous about days 2 to 8; but nothing miraculous about the first day.

Perhaps the miracle was this, that the Maccabees found one cruse of oil with its seal intact, undefiled. There was no reason to suppose that anything would have survived the systematic desecration the Greeks and their supporters did to the Temple. Yet the Maccabees searched and found that one jar. Why did they search? Because they had faith that from the worst tragedy something would survive. The miracle of the first night was that of faith itself, the faith that something would remain with which to begin again.

So it has always been in Jewish history. There were times when any other people would have given up in despair: after the destruction of the Temple, or the massacres of the crusades, or the Spanish Expulsion, or the pogroms, or the Holocaust. But somehow Jews did not sit and weep. They gathered what remained, rebuilt our people, and lit a light like no other in history, a light that tells us and the world of the power of the human spirit to overcome every tragedy and refuse to accept defeat.

From the days of Moses and the bush that burned and was not consumed to the days of the Maccabees and the single cruse of oil, Judaism has been humanity’s ner tamid, the everlasting light that no power on earth can extinguish.

3. Hanukkah in our time
Back in 1991 I lit Hanukkah candles with Mikhail Gorbachev, who had, until earlier that year, been president of the Soviet Union. For seventy years the practice of Judaism had been effectively banned in communist Russia. It was one of the two great assaults on our people and faith in the twentieth century. The Germans sought to kill Jews; the Russians tried to kill Judaism. Under Stalin the assault became brutal. Then in 1967, after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, many Soviet Jews sought to leave Russia and go to Israel. Not only was permission refused, but often the Jews concerned lost their jobs and were imprisoned. Around the world Jews campaigned for the prisoners, Refuseniks they were called, to be released and allowed to leave.

Eventually Mikhail Gorbachev realized that the whole soviet system was unworkable. Communism had brought, not freedom and equality, but repression, a police state, and a new hierarchy of power. In the end it collapsed, and Jews regained the freedom to practice Judaism and to go to Israel.

That day in 1991 after we had lit candles together, Mr Gorbachev asked me, through his interpreter, what we had just done. I told him that 22 centuries ago in Israel after the public practice of Judaism had been banned, Jews fought for and won their freedom, and these lights were the symbol of that victory. And I continued: Seventy years ago Jews suffered the same loss of freedom in Russia, and you have now helped them to regain it. So you have become part of the Hanukkah story. And as the interpreter translated those words into Russian, Mikhail Gorbachev blushed. The Hanukkah story still lives, still inspires, telling not just us but the world that though tyranny exists, freedom, with God’s help, will always win the final battle.

4. The first clash of civilizations
One of the key phrases of our time is the clash of civilizations. And Hanukkah is about one of the first great clashes of civilization, between the Greeks and Jews of antiquity, Athens and Jerusalem.

The ancient Greeks produced one of the most remarkable civilizations of all time: philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, historians like Herodotus and Thucydides, dramatists like Sophocles and Aeschylus. They produced art and architecture of a beauty that has never been surpassed. Yet in the second century before the common era they were defeated by the group of Jewish fighters known as the Maccabees, and from then on Greece as a world power went into rapid decline, while the tiny Jewish people survived every exile and persecution and are still alive and well today.

What was the difference? The Greeks, who did not believe in a single, loving God, gave the world the concept of tragedy. We strive, we struggle, at times we achieve greatness, but life has no ultimate purpose. The universe neither knows nor cares that we are here.

Ancient Israel gave the world the idea of hope. We are here because God created us in love, and through love we discover the meaning and purpose of life.

Tragic cultures eventually disintegrate and die. Lacking any sense of ultimate meaning, they lose the moral beliefs and habits on which continuity depends. They sacrifice happiness for pleasure. They sell the future for the present. They lose the passion and energy that brought them greatness ion the first place. That’s what happened to Ancient Greece.

Judaism and its culture of hope survived, and the Hanukkah lights are the symbol of that survival, of Judaism’s refusal to jettison its values for the glamour and prestige of a secular culture, then or now.

A candle of hope may seem a small thing, but on it the very survival of a civilization may depend.

5. The light of war and the light of peace
There is a law about Hanukkah I find moving and profound. Maimonides writes that ‘the command of Hanukkah lights is very precious. One who lacks the money to buy lights should sell something, or if necessary borrow, so as to be able to fulfil the mitzvah.’

The question then arises: What if on Friday afternoon, you find yourself with only one candle? What do you light it as — a Shabbat candle or a Hanukkah one? It can’t be both. Logic suggests that you should light it as a Hanukkah candle. After all, there is no law that you have to sell or borrow to light lights for Shabbat. Yet the law is that, if faced with such a choice, you light it as a Shabbat light. Why?

Listen to Maimonides: ‘The Shabbat light takes priority because it symbolizes shalom bayit, domestic peace. And great is peace because the entire Torah was given in order to make peace in the world.’

Consider: Hanukkah commemorates one of the greatest military victories in Jewish history. Yet Jewish law rules that if we can only light one candle — the Shabbat light takes precedence, because in Judaism the greatest military victory takes second place to peace in the home.

Why did Judaism, alone among the civilizations of the ancient world, survive? Because it valued the home more than the battlefield, marriage more than military grandeur, and children more than generals. Peace in the home mattered to our ancestors more than the greatest military victory.

So as we celebrate Hanukkah, spare a thought for the real victory, which was not military but spiritual. Jews were the people who valued marriage, the home, and peace between husband and wife, above the highest glory on the battlefield. In Judaism, the light of peace takes precedence over the light of war.

6. The third miracle
We all know the miracles of Hanukkah, the military victory of the Maccabees against the Greeks, and the miracle of the oil that should have lasted one day but stayed burning for eight. But there was a third miracle not many people know about. It took place several centuries later.

After the destruction of the second Temple, many rabbis were convinced that Hanukkah should be abolished. After all, it celebrated the rededication of the Temple. And the Temple was no more. It had been destroyed by the Romans under Titus. Without a Temple, what was there left to celebrate?

The Talmud tells us that in at least one town, Lod, Hanukkah was abolished. Yet eventually the other view prevailed, which is why we celebrate Hanukkah to this day.

Why? Because though the Temple was destroyed, Jewish hope was not destroyed. We may have lost the building but we still had the story, and the memory, and the light. And what had happened once in the days of the Maccabees could happen again. And it was those words, “our hope is not destroyed,” became part of the song, Hatikvah, that inspired Jews to return to Israel and rebuild their ancient state. So as you light the Hanukkah candles remember this. The Jewish people kept hope alive, and hope kept the Jewish people alive. We are the voice of hope in the conversation of humankind.

7. Inside/outside
There is more than one command in Judaism to light lights. There are three. There are the Shabbat candles. There is the havdalah candle. And there are the Hanukkah candles.

The difference between them is that Shabbat candles represent shalom bayit, peace in the home. They are lit indoors. They are, if you like, Judaism’s inner light, the light of the sanctity of marriage and the holiness of home.

The Hanukkah candles used to be lit outside — outside the front door. It was only fear of persecution that took the Hanukkah candles back inside, and in recent times the Lubavitcher Rebbe introduced the custom of lighting giant menorahs in public places to bring back the original spirit of the day.

Hanukkah candles are the light Judaism brings to the world when we are unafraid to announce our identity in public, live by our principles and fight, if necessary, for our freedom.

As for the havdalah candle, which is always made up of several wicks woven together, it represents the fusion of the two, the inner light of Shabbat, joined to the outer light we make during the six days of the week when we go out into the world and live our faith in public.

When we live as Jews in private, filling our homes with the light of the Shekhina, the Divine presence, when we live as Jews in public, bringing the light of hope to others, and when we live both together, then we bring light to the world.

There always were two ways to live in a world that is often dark and full of tears. We can curse the darkness or we can light a light, and as the Chassidim say, a little light drives out much darkness. May we all help light up the world.

8. To light another light
There’s a fascinating argument in the Talmud. Can you take one Hanukkah light to light another? Usually, of course, we take an extra light, the shamash, and use it to light all the candles. But suppose we don’t have one. Can we light the first candle and then use it to light the others?

Two great sages of the third century, Rav and Shmuel, disagreed. Rav said No. Shmuel said Yes. Normally we have a rule that when Rav and Shmuel disagree, the law follows Rav. There are only three exceptions and this is one.

Why did Rav say you may not take one Hanukkah candle to light the others?

Because, says the Talmud, you diminish the first candle. Inevitably you spill some of the wax or the oil. And Rav says: don’t do anything that would diminish the light of the first.

But Shmuel disagrees, and the law follows Shmuel. Why?

The best way of answering that is to think of two Jews: both religious, both committed, both living J

ewish lives. One says: I must not get involved with Jews who are less religious than me, because if I do, my own standards will fall. I’ll keep less. My light will be diminished. That’s the view of Rav.

The other says No. When I use the flame of my faith to light a candle in someone else’s life, my Jewishness is not diminished. It grows, because there is now more Jewish light in the world. When it comes to spiritual goods as opposed to material goods, the more I share, the more I have. If I share my knowledge, or faith, or love with others, I won’t have less; I may even have more. That’s the view of Shmuel, and that is how the law was eventually decided.

So share your Judaism with others. Take the flame of your faith and help set other souls on fire.

https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Nu-Jersey-City.html?s=mm
Nu, Jersey City?
Dec 15, 2019  |  by Rabbi Dr. David Fox
Nu, Jersey City?
Dealing with crisis intervention and trauma in the wake of the murderous attack.

With the echoes of sirens and bullets still rebounding off the brick wall buildings of this small urban enclave, my team of volunteer first responders is on the ground. Part of Project Chai's Crisis Intervention, Trauma and Bereavement Department, they move in, superbly prepared to face the victims, the witnesses, the survivors and the spectators who have endured hours of fear and terror. These are Chassidic men and women, trained to provide intervention when crisis strikes and as trauma sears its way into the minds and bodies of those who have been impacted by tragedy.

We pre-briefed our team leaders, and this group, coming from their homes and their jobs, knows the nature of trauma. Some are teachers. Some are EMTs. Some are mental health professionals. Some are rabbis. They have all earned their RRR degree – they are Respectful, Respectable and Respected by others. They understand terror, they comprehend pain, they overlook blood and injury and, yes, carnage, as they triage, rapidly assessing which person will respond optimally to which team member. They converse in Yiddish, yet they also speak English and Spanish, and many other languages, because they attend to Jew and non-Jew, Chassid and atheist, persons of color and persons of prejudice, none of that matters. Trauma has no favorites, and spares nobody.

The team spends the long afternoon and late night in Jersey City. There are students who have been on lockdown in their school which is in the building housing the kosher store from where the shooting was done. There are parents who have waited in fear, and in tears, not knowing what they would discover. There are pedestrians ordered off the street by the courageous police officers struggling to get the catastrophe under control. There are teachers who sheltered their young charges, in this school, and in the next and in the one nearby. Some cannot speak. Some cannot stop speaking. Some cannot move and some cannot keep still. This is the face of trauma, and the body of the traumatized. The interventions begin.

We distribute materials for schools and for parents on understanding their reactions and how to respond as their young ones react with their own thoughts, feelings and behaviors. We present phone consults and phone conferences, in English and other languages, to provide guidance, support and encouragement. The team members huddle to process what they are seeing, hearing, and noting, about the range of distress signs. They call for supervision. They continue the next day and the next. There are, tragically, death notifications to be made. They handle that. There are school presentations to be undertaken. They do that across the adjacent states of New Jersey and New York. They attend funerals, to offer support and reassurance where needed, when the shuddering and tears and anguish overtake family and stranger alike.

A new wave of anxiety surfaces as word emerges from the authorities that this was no random act of violence. Words such as “targeted”, “hatred”, “terroristic”, “anti-Semitic” appear in the news, and now Jewish people across the continent and across the ocean experience further reactions. A new fear, a very, very old and atavistic feeling infiltrates the erstwhile sense of security and assumptive safety which so many older Jews yearned for as the moved to these shores. They fret and query: “Is it happening here too?”

Yet, as I tuned into the news today, I got a different perspective. I watched the cameras scan the site of the attack, outside the little kosher store. There was a small street rally. I listened as one after another individual explained that the whole calamity was the Jews’ own fault. I learned that these things never happened until the Jews moved in. I heard how the Jews were the cause of these shootings. And amidst the expletives describing obscenely what Jews actually are and what Jews should do, I was informed that much more of this Jew-killing needs to keep happening. And I watched as one of the Chassidic first responders spoke gently to one protestor, intuiting from the angry invective that they too might have had a child affected by the hostage siege, and he offered gentle words of consolation.

I am impressed with that man’s demeanor and humanity. And in contradistinction with their vulgar attempt to describe this religion and culture, I concluded that this is what Jews actually are, and this is what Jews should do.

https://www.aish.com/sp/so/I-Want-My-Death-to-be-a-Jewish-One.html?s=mmWant My Death to be a Jewish One
Dec 14, 2019
by Moshe Vistoch, Israel Hayom
I Want My Death to be a Jewish One
During the Holocaust monasteries were Paula's refuge and she delved into Christianity. But now, at 94, she’s decided she wants to die as a Jew.

Earlier this month, Holocaust survivor Paula (not her real name), decided she had to become Jewish again, decades after she had to convert to Christianity in order to survive.

She climbed the stairs that led to her local rabbi’s office with a singular goal: Some 80 years after being baptized into Christianity, she wanted to return to her roots.

“I’m going to die and I want my death to be a Jewish one,” said the 94-year old Venetian native.

"Paula" was the name given to her as she endured the horrors of the Holocaust, where she sought refuge by moving from monastery to monastery throughout the picturesque Italian city. In an exclusive interview with Israel Hayom, she tells her story – asking us not to reveal her true identity – for fear of persecution.

Her roots in Italy are difficult to trace, most likely because her grandmother was born out of wedlock. At 25, her grandmother married another local Jew and received a dowry in the form of a big house. To this day, her descendants – including her granddaughter – live there.

As the noose tightened around the necks of Jews across Italy, many Jews baptized their children, hoping to hide their Jewish roots and save their lives.
Paula, though, was born in 1925 to a family that was both assimilated and connected to the local Jewish community. In the late 1930s, when the Nazis' rise to power coincided with that of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, the noose tightened around the necks of Jews across Italy. As a result, many Jews baptized their children, hoping to hide their Jewish roots and pass as Christians, hence saving their lives.

In 1938, the 13-year-old girl was abruptly taken to a nearby church by her aunts, where she was baptized.

“In those years, the race laws went into effect and my family thought that if I was baptized, the Germans would let me live," she recalled.

Her mother went into hysterics when she heard what her aunts had done.

“My mother quickly washed me, in an attempt to rinse the baptism off me,” she said.

Her mother died that very same year, and the family decided it was best for Paula to hide in monasteries so German forces wouldn’t find her.

“There I was given a new name and forgot my real one,” she said, saying she hid in those buildings for some two years and barely saw her family, who were starving under Mussolini’s rule.

“I had dresses with big pockets, where I would hide morsels of food and give them to my aunts whenever they visited me,” she said.

During that time, the Allies began to occupy the country from its southern coast, compelling many Italian officers to flee to the north – some even staying in the very convent where Paula hid.

Paula then feared she may be discovered, so she and her sister quickly relocated to another monastery.

While staying in these monasteries, Paula attempted to diligently practice the Christian faith, but she never truly connected to the religion and only pretended to do so in order to save her life.

When the war finally ended, the two sisters reunited with their father, an engineer imprisoned in a labor camp in Germany.

“When my father returned, he knocked on the door thin and emaciated. I didn’t recognize him. I didn’t know who he was,” she said.

Life, eventually, returned to normal. Paula became a pharmacist and opened a laboratory at the University of Venice, which continues to operate. After a distinguished career, Paula was considered a prominent figure in the city’s healthcare industry.

She went on to marry a non-Jewish man and had two daughters with him.

“Because I was baptized at such a young age and against my will, I always identified with the story of the anusim,” she explained, referring to Jews who were forced to abandon their faith and convert to another religion while secretly remaining as faithful to Judaism as they could.

Over the years, she maintained an informal relationship with the local Jewish community in Venice. But it was only a month ago that Paula decided to begin the process of becoming a Jew once again.

Paula and her daughter blessed the new mezuzah we hung on her door.
After contacting the local chief rabbi, she was referred to Rabbi Daniel Touitou, an emissary at the Strauss-Amiel Institute of the Or Torah Stone network.

Upon hearing Paula’s story, Rabbi Touitou immediately uncovered Paula’s family history and scanned local archives. The documents revealed that Paula was indeed Jewish and all she needed to do to be admitted back into the fold was to hold an official ceremony.

According to Rabbi Touitou, assimilation and intermarriage pose significant challenges to the local Jewish community, where there are only some 450 left. And although Venice is a very open and tourist-friendly city, there are undercurrents of anti-Semitism, he explained.

“My wife and I came to her house,” Rabi Touitou said. “Paula and her daughter blessed the new mezuzah we hung on her door. We were very excited about her unconventional journey back to Judaism. Paula and her daughter cried when we gave them her certificate admitting her back into the religion.”

This article originally appeared on Israel HaYom.