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Passover’s Message of Hope in the Aftermath of Oct. 7
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PASSOVER’S MESSAGE OF HOPE IN THE AFTERMATH OF OCT. 7
MOIS NAVON
Rabbi Akiva’s mysterious Passover Seder that is found in the Haggadah yields a relevant insight for today.
abbi Akiva’s mysterious Passover Seder that is found in the Haggadah yields a relevant insight for today.

October 7 has left us in trauma. We walk around doing what we need to do, trying to live the life of October 6. But we are in mourning. We cannot imagine a world different than that of October 8. In the redemptive spirit of Passover, I offer this short insight gleaned from Rabbi Akiva, the “prophet” of hope.

It happened once [on Passover] that Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon were reclining in Bnei Brak and were telling the story of the exodus from Egypt that whole night, until their students came and announced, “The time for [reciting] the morning Shema has arrived.”

This narrative of the sages gathering in Bnei Brak is found in the Haggadah immediately after it taught that “even if we are all wise, insightful sages … we are to tell the story.” On the simplest level, then, the narrative of the gathering in Bnei Brak comes to serve as a shining example of how even those who clearly know the story, nevertheless, gather to expound upon it (Malbim Haggadah). Furthermore, the gathering serves to set the high bar on just how far one must go to ideally fulfill the commandment of telling the story – i.e., “until … the time for the morning Shema has arrived” (Sacks Haggadah).

But the expression – “the time for the morning Shema has arrived” - begs us to dig deeper. If all the narrative wanted to share was the upper limit to end the Seder, it could have said as much in more simple terms: dawn.1

Rabbi Akiva was known as the bastion of faith and optimism of his time – a time of destruction and persecution.

Indeed, the gathering in Bnei Brak is shrouded in sublime mystery. To begin, why was the gathering in Bnei Brak at, what turns out to be Rabbi Akiva’s house (Talmud, Sanhedrin 32b)? This is especially strange because Rabbi Akiva was their junior – Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya was the nasi, religious head of the Jewish community, Rabbi Yehoshua was his deputy; Rabbi Tarfon was Rabbi Akiva’s first teacher and Rabbi Eliezer was an elder statesman (Sacks Haggadah). Adding to the mystery is that R. Eliezer himself is on record as exhorting all to spend their holidays at home with their own family (Sukkah 27b). Why would these community leaders leave their families to spend the entire Seder night with R. Akiva?

The answer, explains Rabbi Yehiel Epstein (Haggadah Leil Shiumurim), is because R. Akiva was known as the bastion of faith and optimism of his time – a time of destruction and persecution. Indeed, with the Temple lost, the sages were in the depths of despair and depression. The Talmud (Makkot 24a-b) describes Rabban Gamliel, along with three of our Bnei Brak seder guests, R. Elazar ben Azarya, R. Yehoshua and R. Akiva, reacting to evidence of the Temple’s destruction. The sages cry and tear the clothes in mourning, but R. Akiva smiles. The sages ask R. Akiva the meaning of his incongruous reaction, to which he explains that if we have lived to witness the prophecies of destruction, surely the prophecies of redemption will come true. The Rabbis exclaimed, “Akiva you have consoled (nechama) us!”

R. Akiva was able to smile in the face of adversity for he lived according to the belief that “whatever the All-merciful does is for the good” (Ber. 60b). He maintained this faith to his dying day when, as the Romans flayed the skin off his face, he used his last breath to say Shema (Ber. 61b). But why the Shema? What is the meaning of the Shema?

R. Shimshon Raphael Hirsh explains that the Shema – “Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Ehad” – is too wordy to simply declare that God is one – for that we could have sufficed with “Hashem Ehad – God is One.” And if we wanted to say that God acting in mercy (signified by God’s Name: Hashem) and God acting in judgment (signified by the God’s Name: Elokeinu) are both aspects of the same One God, we could have sufficed with “Hashem Elokeinu Ehad – Hashem, our God, is One.” But in saying “Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Ehad” we declare our faith that, whether we see God acting in mercy (Hashem) or acting in judgment (Elokeinu), we accept it is all coming from God’s mercy (Hashem) - “even as Elokim (Judgment), He is Hashem (Mercy)” (Hirsch, Deut. 6:4; see my “Yosef is Still Alive - A Lesson In Divine Providence”).

While we are yet in the midst of the deepest darkness, the time has come to express our faith that God’s Judgment is an expression of mercy.

It is not an easy statement of faith, and so we cover our eyes while saying its words, indicating that while we may not see how this is in our world, we accept it nonetheless. It is this statement of faith that concludes that exemplary Passover Seder in R. Akiva’s house. “The time for the morning Shema has arrived.” While we are yet in the midst of the deepest darkness, the time has come to express our faith that “even as Elokim (Judgment), He is Hashem (Mercy),” that “whatever the All-merciful does is for the good.” For, indeed, just as surely as dawn follows night, our redemption will follow dark and difficult times.

And that brings us to the present. We cannot compare the cataclysm that was the destruction of the Temple to the destruction of October 7, yet we can compare the essential feelings of despair. Just as Jews then walked around in mourning, at a loss to imagine a positive future, so do we today walk around with a heavy heart, at a loss to imagine that the much talked about “day after” holds anything positive. It is precisely here that we must remember Rabbi Akiva’s faithful optimism. We must realize that even when God relates to us in Judgment, as Elokim, He is acting mercifully, He is Hashem,” that “whatever the All-merciful does is for the good.” We must take solace (nechama) in the knowledge that if we have lived to witness the prophecies of redemption (Jer. 33:10), surely the prophecies of its completion will come true (Jer. 33:11).

But the complete materialization of the redemption, notes R. Yehuda Amital, takes time. The Talmud explains that redemption comes, “little by little, like the dawning of the day” (JM Ber. 1:1). Through the long night we must remain faithful. The time for the morning Shema has arrived.

Interestingly, a parallel gathering of sages in Lod phrases the same upper limit as “until the cock crowed” (Tosefta Pesachim 10:12). Both gatherings end at dawn, but one is announced by an animal, the other by humans. The contrast suggests that while the cock signals the physical arrival of the rising sun, the students refer to something more sublime.
Mois Navon 2 www.DivreiNavon.com
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I Lost Two Close Friends in the Israel-Hamas War, But Not Because They Died
Radical ideology has the power to end even the closest of friendships.

Like many people, I met two of my closest friends while in college. Initially, we got along through commiserating with each other over some assignment or annoying classmate, perhaps the humdrum of jobs relegated to college students. Eventually, we became very close, and I gladly hosted them for late-night hangouts and even Jewish holidays, like Passover. A novel experience for two people who’d never had a Jewish best friend before — or perhaps just a Jewish friend at all.

Over our decade of friendship, they would come to learn about my family’s history — particularly my grandfather’s story as a Holocaust survivor. They were there when I met my Israeli boyfriend. They were there when I moved to Israel. And I was there when they started a Pagan business and began using non-binary pronouns. When they had graduation parties and started proudly promoting communism. When they declared ACAB – all cops are bastards in support of Black Lives Matter.

It didn’t matter whether or not I agreed with their political beliefs because they were two of my closest friends.

It didn’t matter whether or not I agreed with their political beliefs because they were two of my closest friends. I’d known them since I was 18, after all. You can’t just throw friendship like that away over political disagreements. Admittedly, they weren’t so extreme when I met them, but they were still good people.

That’s what I told myself year after year. And while I was an openly Zionist, proud Jew (you couldn’t walk into our house without the hamsas practically slapping you in the face), I never really pressed them on their opinions of Israel. Partly because I thought they were too afraid to be honest with me, and partly because I knew the truth of what they were too afraid to say.

Until October 7 happened.

In the wake of the barbaric terror attacks in Israel, I wrote about my experience on October 7 and my perspective of the resulting war and geopolitical situation. This article — unrestrained in detailing my political beliefs and frustrations — incensed my two friends to finally reveal their opinions about Israel.

How did they do it? Through social media.

I was enraged and disgusted when they smeared Israel with accusations of genocide before October was even out. How they posted in honor of every single Palestinian martyr. When they claimed Israel stole the bodies of Palestinian children for propaganda. And worst of all, when they posted that the hostages are “waving, smiling and showing positive emotions toward Hamas.” And for what? Because their best friend — who easily could have been one of the unlucky souls kidnapped, raped, or murdered — told her experience of that tragic day.

If you don’t fit into the moral picture declared supreme by the tribe… you get the boot. Even if you’ve been friends for a decade.

Their moral depravity and cowardice had me seething, but I was far from surprised. Everything they stood for and made their lives about was perfectly in line with radical leftist idealism, and when someone subscribes to an ideology, regardless of where it falls on the political spectrum, it can rapidly descend into tribalism. And if you don’t fit into the moral picture declared supreme by the tribe… you get the boot. Even if you’ve been friends for a decade.

A study in the American Journal of Political Science by authors Peter K. Hatemi, Charles Crabtree, and Kevin B. Smith demonstrates that moral beliefs are more likely a result of political ideology, and not the other way around. This explains why, intuitively, I wasn't all that surprised by my friends’ betrayal, because the radical political Left openly vilifies Israel. It also explains why Jews are uniquely susceptible to the ideological hate dominating both sides of the political spectrum, especially considering antisemitism seems to fit the horseshoe theory claiming both extreme ends of the political spectrum are actually closely aligned as opposed to stark opposites. With morality shaped by ideological belief, extremists depict Jews not only as “other,” but as evil.

On the far Left, Jews, and by extension Israel, are seen as the domineering, capitalist oppressors — a notion that fits seamlessly into their victim-victimizer worldview where everything is about power. On the far Right, Jews are sneaky parasites masquerading as white people, seeking to replace true white people. But that is possibly where the differences on the far Left and Right end in regards to antisemitism. Extremes on both sides, being more prone to belief in conspiracy theories, are therefore more likely to believe in the same antisemitic tropes. According to the ADL, people who tend toward belief in conspiracy theories endorse 3.8 times more antisemitic tropes.

The belief that Jews hold too much power in politics, in Hollywood, in the media, on Wall Street — these are all classic features of antisemitism on the far Left and Right. The obsessive fixation on Jews and money, which dates back to Medieval times, is particularly pervasive. All of this culminates in a general distrust, dislike, or hatred of Jews, contributing to the ADL’s new finding that “more than 42% of Americans either have friends/family who dislike Jews (23.2%) or find it socially acceptable for a close family member to support Hamas (27.2%).”

With numbers like that, it’s hard for Jews to know who can be trusted. After my friends revealed how deeply antisemitic they are, I couldn’t help but silently wonder about my other friends. Who else was secretly fostering antisemitic beliefs? Who else would propagate lies about Israel that directly translate into violence against Jews? Who else cared so little whether we Jews lived or died so as to contribute to that violence?

October 7 has forced many Jews to look around and wonder if they’re among true friends.

The answer? No one. As it turns out, the very act of publishing the article that had incensed my two radical friends in the first place — the unabashed expression of my beliefs — served as the perfect shield. All I was left with were the friends who truly valued my life. And the relief in knowing that you are surrounded by people with genuine intentions and love for you — not having to wonder whether they’d hide you or drag you by your throat to the Nazis in the 1940’s — that feeling is ineffable. It’s a gift.

October 7 has forced many Jews to look around and wonder if they’re among true friends. It’s a scary prospect to think those you love couldn’t care less if you live or die — to consider that just maybe your intuition isn’t as strong as their deceit is deft. But the thing about radical ideology is just that, it’s radical, and radicalism is never silent for long, particularly in the face of confrontation.

I still have friends with political perspectives I disagree with, but now I hold nothing back. I challenge them on their opinions of Israel. I remind them of the reality of living here. I mince no words on my opinions of DEI initiatives and I don’t care if I offend someone by telling my truthful experience of war.

For many reasons, we can’t afford to shy away from uncomfortable conversations, specifically about Israel and antisemitism, but as a Jew in the diaspora, it’s the only way to ensure the people who still remain in your life are the ones who value it.

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[VIDEO] MY HEROIC SON WAS KILLED BY HAMAS
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Daniel Perez fought valiantly on October 7th.

The Father of an Israeli Hostage Shares A Passover Message
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SHOULD THE PASSOVER SEDER BE DIFFERENT THIS YEAR?

RABBI MENACHEM LEHRFIELD
How the Passover Haggadah speaks directly to our current situation, conveying a relevant message of hope and resilience.
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SHOULD THE PASSOVER SEDER BE DIFFERENT THIS YEAR?

RABBI MENACHEM LEHRFIELD
How the Passover Haggadah speaks directly to our current situation, conveying a relevant message of hope and resilience.
How the Passover Haggadah speaks directly to our current situation, conveying a relevant message of hope and resilience.

As we gather around the Passover Seder this year, amidst the backdrop of war in Israel, the heart-wrenching reality of hostages still in captivity, the threat from Iran, and the rise of antisemitism around the world, I’ve been asked by so many people: How can we alter our Seder to reflect these dire circumstances?

My answer: you don’t need to change a thing, since the Passover Haggadah, written so long ago, speaks directly to our current reality and remains as relevant today as ever. Its sacred texts and rituals, passed down through generations, convey an important message of hope and resilience.

The Seder is more than a recounting of the Exodus from Egypt; it is a profound dialogue between the past and the present, a guide for navigating through darkness towards the light. Within its structure—meticulously ordered to facilitate remembrance and reflection—lies the essence of our enduring spirit.

This year, as we recite the ancient words, "In every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us, but the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands," we are reminded of the cyclical nature of our struggles. Yet, it is precisely this acknowledgement that strengthens our resolve and deepens our faith.

Passover is a testament to the belief that even in the midst of despair, there is a plan, a reason for hope.

The story of Passover is a testament to the belief that even in the midst of despair, there is a plan, a reason for hope. It teaches you that liberation from suffering is not only a possibility but a promise. When you say, "Next year in Jerusalem," you do not merely envision a physical location but yearn for a rebuilt Jerusalem, a symbol of peace and divine redemption. This aspiration encapsulates the collective yearning for a world transformed, where the sorrows of today give way to the joys of a brighter tomorrow.

Our sages teach that when you tell over the story of exodus you are to begin with your challenges and conclude with a note of triumph. This directive allows you to embrace the narrative's full complexity. It is a call to recognize that within the heart of your tribulations lies the seed of your salvation.

This perspective is mirrored in the teaching of Rabban Gamliel, who explains the main parts of the Seder are Pesach (The Pascal offering), matzah, and marror (the bitter herb). Pesach reminds us of the offering that was brought on the verge of our birth as a People while still in Egypt. The matzah reminds us that we left in such haste and didn't have time for the dough to properly rise. The bitter herb reminds us of the bitterness of slavery.

Isn’t this list out of order? Since we first experienced the bitterness, shouldn't that be mentioned first?
How the Passover Haggadah speaks directly to our current situation, conveying a relevant message of hope and resilience.

As we gather around the Passover Seder this year, amidst the backdrop of war in Israel, the heart-wrenching reality of hostages still in captivity, the threat from Iran, and the rise of antisemitism around the world, I’ve been asked by so many people: How can we alter our Seder to reflect these dire circumstances?

My answer: you don’t need to change a thing, since the Passover Haggadah, written so long ago, speaks directly to our current reality and remains as relevant today as ever. Its sacred texts and rituals, passed down through generations, convey an important message of hope and resilience.

The Seder is more than a recounting of the Exodus from Egypt; it is a profound dialogue between the past and the present, a guide for navigating through darkness towards the light. Within its structure—meticulously ordered to facilitate remembrance and reflection—lies the essence of our enduring spirit.

This year, as we recite the ancient words, "In every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us, but the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands," we are reminded of the cyclical nature of our struggles. Yet, it is precisely this acknowledgement that strengthens our resolve and deepens our faith.

Passover is a testament to the belief that even in the midst of despair, there is a plan, a reason for hope.

The story of Passover is a testament to the belief that even in the midst of despair, there is a plan, a reason for hope. It teaches you that liberation from suffering is not only a possibility but a promise. When you say, "Next year in Jerusalem," you do not merely envision a physical location but yearn for a rebuilt Jerusalem, a symbol of peace and divine redemption. This aspiration encapsulates the collective yearning for a world transformed, where the sorrows of today give way to the joys of a brighter tomorrow.

Our sages teach that when you tell over the story of exodus you are to begin with your challenges and conclude with a note of triumph. This directive allows you to embrace the narrative's full complexity. It is a call to recognize that within the heart of your tribulations lies the seed of your salvation.

This perspective is mirrored in the teaching of Rabban Gamliel, who explains the main parts of the Seder are Pesach (The Pascal offering), matzah, and marror (the bitter herb). Pesach reminds us of the offering that was brought on the verge of our birth as a People while still in Egypt. The matzah reminds us that we left in such haste and didn't have time for the dough to properly rise. The bitter herb reminds us of the bitterness of slavery.

Isn’t this list out of order? Since we first experienced the bitterness, shouldn't that be mentioned first?

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THE DESIGN ARGUMENT FOR GOD’S EXISTENCE
RABBI ELIE FEDER PH.D.
Is there a compelling, science-based argument that God exists? Check this one out.

by Rabbi Elie Feder Ph.D. and Rabbi Aaron Zimmer
April 7, 2024
10 min read

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Is there a compelling, science-based argument that God exists? Check this one out.

At some stage, nearly everyone ponders the fundamental question: Does God exist? While we each explore our own paths to answer this question, many turn to science as the ultimate guide for unraveling life's most profound mysteries.

Is there a compelling, science-based argument that God exists?

In this essay, we’ll argue that recent discoveries in modern physics provide an argument that strongly suggests that an intelligent designer, God, is behind the universe and its laws. While this particular argument is based upon discoveries that are only a few decades old, the basic form of the argument follows in the footsteps of the age-old design argument.

A Brief Historical Overview of the Design Argument
The Design Argument essentially says that highly organized or complex phenomena in the universe suggest that an intelligent agent caused them.

The argument was clearly formulated by the 11th-century Spanish Rabbi, Bahya ibn Paquda, in his book, Duties of the Heart, as follows:

There are some people who claim that the world came into being by chance, without a Creator who created it and without a Maker who formed it. It is amazing to me how a rational, healthy human being could entertain such a notion. If such a person heard someone else saying the same thing about a water wheel, which turns to irrigate part of a field or a garden, saying that it came to be without a craftsman who designed it and toiled to assemble it and placed each part for a useful purpose - the hearer would be greatly amazed about him, consider him a complete fool, and be swift to call him a liar and reject his words. And since he would reject such a notion for a mere simple, insignificant water wheel, which requires but little ingenuity and which improves but a small portion of the earth - how could he permit himself to entertain such a notion for the entire universe which encompasses the earth and everything in it, and which exhibits a wisdom that no rational human intellect is capable of fathoming, and which is prepared for the benefit of the whole earth and everything on it. How could one claim that it came to be without purposeful intent and thought of a capable wise Being?

Countless people throughout the ages have shared the basic intuition behind this argument - that the amazing design in our universe implies a designer. But not all intuitions are true. To help ground this intuition, many philosophers, theologians, and scientists have worked on formulating it as an argument. Such attempts go way back to ancient Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, and later to thinkers in the Middle Ages from different religious backgrounds like Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theologians.

In more recent times (1802), William Paley proposed his famous analogy, comparing the complexity of life to a watch. Just as one would never believe that a watch happened to emerge by chance without a skilled watchmaker, Paley argued that the same is certainly true for our entire universe which is much more complex than a single watch. This idea was very popular until Charles Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" in 1859. Darwin showed how complex life forms could develop from simpler ones through natural processes like natural selection and survival of the fittest. Modern-day biologist, Richard Dawkins, following in the footsteps of Darwin, likened evolution to a blind watchmaker that creates new life forms without any need for intelligence.

Just as one would never believe that a watch happened to emerge by chance without a skilled watchmaker, Paley argued that the same is certainly true for our entire universe which is much more complex than a single watch.

While many people are under the impression that modern science has undermined the design argument, the truth is the exact opposite. While the formulation of the design argument exclusively from biology has faced its challenges, it is a mistake to view biology in a vacuum, as life is predicated upon chemistry, which itself is ultimately rooted in physics, the bedrock of the scientific enterprise. Therefore, if design would be manifest in the very laws of physics themselves (Spoiler Alert: It is!), that would provide a much more solid foundation for the design argument and its implication of an intelligent cause of our universe.

The Modern Fine-Tuning Argument
The best version of the design argument from modern physics is found in the fine-tuning of the constants of nature. The constants are approximately 25 unchanging numbers that are built into the basic fabric of our universe and determine the quantities of our laws of nature. For example, one constant is approximately 9.109×10−31, the mass of an electron (in kilograms). You can think of this as determining the weight of every single electron, a fundamental building block in the universe. Another constant, the fine structure constant (1/137.035999084), determines how strongly a negatively charged electron is attracted to a positively charged proton.

Being that scientists seek to make sense of the world around us and develop theories that can explain everything in it, they face the big question of how to explain these seemingly arbitrary numbers. In other words, how can any theory of nature determine precise numbers like the fine structure constant - 1/137.035999084? While this question might seem unimportant to a layperson, in 1985 the great physicist, Richard Feynman, famously dubbed this problem “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics.”

How can any theory of nature determine precise numbers like the fine structure constant - 1/137.035999084? The great physicist, Richard Feynman, famously dubbed this problem “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics.”

The great clue to solving the mystery of the constants came from the surprising discovery of fine-tuning - the fact that the specific values of the constants are not arbitrary, but are highly fine-tuned to allow our complex universe to emerge. In the latter half of the 20th century, scientists discovered that if these numbers were slightly different, there would be no atoms, molecules, planets, life, stars, or galaxies.

The most remarkable case of fine-tuning surfaced with the 1998 discovery that the cosmological constant (a number that determines the expansion rate of the universe) was fine-tuned to about 120 decimal places! If it was even a little bigger, then the early universe would have expanded too quickly and galaxies would never have been able to form. Likewise, if it were a little smaller, then the early universe would have collapsed on itself, preventing galaxies' emergence.

Despite the universally accepted recognition of fine-tuning, the problem remained how to interpret this amazing discovery. No one - theists and atheists alike - thinks that it could be a lucky coincidence - the odds are simply too incomprehensibly small. Yet, the straightforward interpretation is clear: the scientific knowledge that the constants are fine-tuned directly indicates that the cause of the constants is intelligent. This follows from the definition of intelligence as the selection of one possibility from a set of larger possibilities for the purpose of achieving an objective.

Scientists’ Alternative: The Multiverse
Many scientists loathe to accept the existence of an intelligent cause; it sounds too similar to the God they automatically reject as impossible. Their most prominent alternative is the multiverse, which posits the existence of an infinite number of unobservable parallel universes, each with different values for the constants. Given all these universes, it would be no surprise that we find ourselves in a universe with the right constants of nature. After all, the universes with the wrong constants don’t have any intelligent observers to wonder about these questions in the first place.

Some immediately dismiss the multiverse for being speculative and unscientific.

Some immediately dismiss the multiverse for being speculative and unscientific. After all, it clearly deviates from the well-established scientific method rooted in the process of hypothesis, experimentation, and observation. Even though we are sympathetic to this serious charge, we think it’s helpful to to see why, even in its own framework, the multiverse fails to be a good scientific explanation for fine-tuning.

For a multiverse theory to be able to explain fine-tuning without an intelligent cause, it must establish three premises:

There are an infinite number of universes;
The values of the constants vary between universes;
Our universe is the typical universe with intelligent observers.
It’s fairly obvious why multiverse scientists must justify the first two premises. If there aren’t a massive number of universes, then it will still be unlikely for the constants of nature to have the right values by chance alone. And if there are infinitely many universes but they all have the same fine-tuned constants, obviously nothing is gained.

The need for the last premise is a bit more subtle. The best way to see why it’s necessary is to notice that without this premise, an infinite varied multiverse could literally explain anything and everything. This is because it predicts that everything possible will occur somewhere in the infinite varied multiverse. (To take this to an extreme, it even predicts a universe in which a heavenly voice declares to all humanity that all multiverse theories are false!) But the problem is that a theory that can explain anything and everything, in truth explains nothing at all. Seen from this perspective, a multiverse theory based exclusively on the first two premises fails to be able to explain anything in particular, such as the observed values for the constants of nature. (This is in contrast to the theory of an intelligent cause which explains a universe with order, structure, and complexity, but would fail to explain chaos and disorder.)

Multiverse scientists can get out of this problem if they can establish the third premise - that our universe is a typical, or a likely universe with intelligent observers. If so, scientists would only be able to explain our universe as a result of random chance but wouldn’t be able to equally explain all other possible universes with intelligent observers (like those with heavenly voices falsifying the multiverse).

The difficulty with rescuing the multiverse and establishing this third premise is that it’s impossible to naturally determine which universes are typical in an infinite varied multiverse. This is because not only does an infinite varied multiverse contain every possible universe, it contains an infinite number of copies of every type of universe. In the words of physicist Alan Guth, “In an eternally inflating universe, anything that can happen will happen; in fact, it will happen an infinite number of times.”

The problem is that if there are truly an infinite number of every type of universe, it becomes impossible to compute probabilities in a straight-forward manner, a necessary step for determining which universes are typical. This is the crux of the devastating measure problem and is the reason why some scientists reject the multiverse as being nonscientific.

While there is much more to say about fine-tuning and about why the multiverse is a bad philosophical theory, to fully clinch the argument it’s even more important to formulate a clear, coherent, compelling idea of God that answers commonly raised questions against the theory of an intelligent cause. Nevertheless, we hope this basic presentation can help you appreciate that the fine-tuning argument from modern physics is a prime representative of the ancient design argument in the modern world.

For a more detailed version of this argument as well as two additional design arguments from modern physics, see https://www.physicstogod.com/3-proofs-of-god-from-science.

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Hey there, Aish Family!

Jamie Geller, Aish CMO here, and you know I'm all about spreading joy and meaning in our homes and hearts. But what if we could share that joy and meaning with the ENTIRE WORLD?

That's the goal of Aish! And that’s the power of Jewish unity.
Last week, I was so moved and fortunate to host the Global hour of Jewish Unity. 1 million people around the world joined hostage family members, rabbis and other leaders to unite and pray for the return of the hostages. Wow!!!!
Every day, Aish.com and our social media channels reach MILLIONS of people searching for connection, purpose, and a little bit of light in a sometimes crazy world.
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But even when the battle ends in Gaza, anti-semitism, hatred and Jewish apathy will continue to be a threat to the Jewish people.

Creating Jewish unity through Jewish wisdom and values is the solution! That will turn the tide from hatred and fear to love and pride in our Jewish heritage.
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https://aish.com/joe-lieberman-7-jewish-quotes/?src=ac
Joe Lieberman: 7 Jewish Quotes
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
March 28, 2024
The former Senator, who’s died at age 82, was the first Jewish member of a major presidential ticket.

When Vice President Al Gore chose Sen. Joe Lieberman to be his running mate in the 2000 US election, the choice electrified American Jews. Proudly Zionist and Shabbat-observant, Sen. Lieberman was the first Jew to appear on a presidential ticket from a major party.

Born in Stamford, Connecticut in 1942, Joseph Isadore Lieberman grew up in an immigrant household. All of his grandparents were immigrants who’d escaped antisemitism in Europe to build new lives in the United States. After earning his BA and law degree at Yale, Lieberman served for over a decade in the Connecticut State Senate. In the 1980s he worked as Connecticut’s Attorney General, where he earned a reputation for championing consumer rights and environmental protection. He became Connecticut’s junior US Senator in 1988. When he ran for a second term in 1994, he won in the largest landslide in Connecticut history and went on to become Chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council.

Despite his grueling workload, Lieberman was always careful to avoid driving, writing, and turning lights on and off on Shabbat. When he was nominated for Connecticut Attorney General, he skipped the nominating committee meeting as it was held on a Friday night. Whenever there was an important vote in the Senate, Lieberman would stay late to vote, but was careful to do so without using the Senate’s electronic voting system. (Turning lights on and off is an activity that traditional Jews typically avoid on Shabbat.) After the votes, Lieberman would walk the 4 ½ miles back to his apartment in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington DC, rather than allowing himself to be driven on Shabbat.

In 2000, Al Gore and Joe Lieberman won a half million more votes in the American presidential election than their opponents George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. They lost the election in the midst of a fraught recount of votes in Florida. Lieberman continued to serve as a Senator until 2013. After leaving the Senate, Lieberman worked as a policy advisor and professor, teaching classes at Yeshiva University, an Orthodox Jewish school in New York City. In 2011 he published The Gift of Rest, a book about Shabbat that described the traditional way he and his wife Hadassah and children celebrated a typical Shabbat. His step-son spent time learning at Aish.

Here are 7 Jewish quotes by Joe Lieberman, showing how deeply Judaism touched every aspect of his life.

Raised in a traditional Jewish home
Lieberman spoke often about his warm memories of his close-knit, traditional Jewish family and his childhood in Connecticut:

“My Jewish faith is central to my life. I was raised in a religiously observant family. Given to me by my parents and formed by my rabbis, my faith has provided me with a foundation, an order, and a sense of purpose in my life. It has much to do with the way I strive to navigate in a constructive way though every day, both personally and professionally, in ways that are large and small.” - Speech at Brigham Young University, October 25, 2011

“My maternal grandmother, Minnie, or ‘Maintza’ as she was known in Yiddish, was the religious foundation of our home. I associate her with many things, of course, but preparing for Shabbat is high on that list. We spent the first eight years of my childhood living on the second floor of her house. We called her Baba, a Yiddish word for ‘Grandma.’ After we moved into a home of our own, Baba would spend most Sabbaths with us. She would appear at our door on Friday afternoon, Erev Shabbat, with a towel full of pastries or a pot full of some other food she had made for us. I can almost smell the pastries - the sweet, crescent-shaped rugelach - and the wonderful firm, little sugar cookies. She often brought us challah, along with delicious chicken soup.” - The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of Shabbat by Joe Lieberman (Howard Books: 2011)

Shabbat Observance in the Senate
On some Friday nights, Sen. Lieberman stayed late in the Senate to participate in important votes, then walked home rather than ride in a car on Shabbat. Here he recalls how this led to some bemused reactions from his security detail:



“It’s Friday night, raining one of those torrential downpours that we get in Washington, D.C., and I am walking from the Capitol to my home in Georgetown, getting absolutely soaked. A United States Capitol policeman is at my side, as we make our way up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol building toward our distant goal, a four-and-a-half-mile walk. Before leaving my Senate office I changed into sneakers, but now they are full of water.

As we slosh forward, a Capitol police car travels alongside for extra security at a stately pace. But I do not - indeed I cannot - accept a ride in the car.

What accounts for this strange scene? The presence of the two policemen is easily explained. As the Senate’s sergeant at arms, who oversees the Capitol police, once said to me, ‘Senator, if something happens to you on my watch while you’re walking home, it will be bad for my career.’ So that’s why the police are with me.

But why am I walking instead of riding on a rainy night? Because it’s Friday night, the Sabbath, the day of rest when observant Jews like me do not ride in cars….” - The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of Shabbat by Joe Lieberman (Howard Books: 2011)

On other occasions, when he was serving in the Senate, Al Gore insisted that Joe Lieberman stay in his apartment near the Senate. Here, Lieberman described how Gore invited him to stay after a late-night vote in 1989:

“Then Sen. Al Gore…came over to me and said, ‘This is your Sabbath. Isn’t it? Where are you going to stay tonight?’ I said, ‘I am going to sleep in my office.’ (Al Gore replied:) ‘I won’t let you do that. My parents have an apartment across the street. They’re away.’

…I rejected his offer twice. The third time, I accepted! And, that night, he took me across the street. He understood everything; turned on the lights, and turned off the lights when he left…”

Defending the USA and Israel
Sen. Lieberman served as Chairman of the Department for Homeland Security in the Senate. After retiring, he shared that his Jewish worldview helped give him the strength to serve in this role:

His service protecting the United States “had a lot to do with the view in the Torah that there is good and evil in the world. And if good nations lack the means…to defend themselves, evil will triumph.” - Speech at Yeshiva University, October 29 2014

Lieberman was equally impassioned when it came to defending Israel, a country where is daughter Hannah and his grandchildren live. In 2021 he publicly criticized far-left members of the Democratic party, his former party, who have called for an end to American arms sales to Israel:

“We’re not all on the same page. I would say that the ones who are furthest off the page, which is the page of fairness and American values and interests…seem to be unable to distinguish between Hamas - a group that has been put on the foreign terrorist list by the U.S. State Department and an enemy of the United States and our ally, Israel - and on the other side, Israel, one of our closest allies in the world and a democratic party. To jump on Israel, to threaten removal of arms sales to Israel in this kind of conflict is just outrageously unfair.”

Frightened by the rise in antisemitism today
Before his death on March 27, 2024, Lieberman spoke about his dismay at unprecedented levels of anti-Jewish hatred in the United States and around the world today:

“During the 40 years the people of Connecticut elected me to state and federal offices…the great majority of votes I received in all those elections came from people who were not Jewish. There was never even a hint of antisemitism being used against me in any of my campaigns. In the years after the 2000 election, people would ask if I was surprised that I faced no antisemitism in that national campaign. I answered that I was grateful but not surprised because that was my experience in Connecticut. However, I would always add that history taught me that there were definitely antisemites in America, but there was such a strong national ethic rejecting such bigotry that the antisemites and other haters felt pressured to stay silent.

The rise in antisemitism in America in recent years means that something serious has changed. Since the war in Gaza began, public expressions of hatred of Jews has reached a fevered pitch.” - Op-Ed published on January 24, 2024

“He was one of us.”
Lieberman’s rabbi, Daniel Cohen of Agudath Shalom in Stanford Connecticut, recalls that Lieberman was always down to earth and relatable. “He was a senator, but at the same time, he sat in seats like everybody else, he enjoyed the kiddush like everybody else. When he walked home from shul, he got soaked on rainy days. He was one of us.” https://forward.com/news/597331/joe-liebermans-rabbi-on-the-senator-who-was-one-of-us/

I can relate. My family and I bumped into Joe Lieberman and his wife Hadassah a few times over the years. During the 2000 presidential election, I remember seeing secret service members in the synagogue my husband and I attended at the time, Kesher Israel in Washington DC. “Sen. Lieberman must be here this Shabbat,” I told my husband before launching into a lengthy diatribe about my views on the election. “Shhh!” my husband said desperately, motioning for me to turn around. We were standing next to Sen. Lieberman, who - despite my gaffe - was incredibly gracious and pleasant. He was truly “one of us” in synagogue, enjoying the service and kiddush after services with the other members. He always seemed genuinely interested in getting to know new people and in what others had to say.



Last summer, some of my kids ran into Lieberman on vacation. My kids walked to a shul near our hotel on Shabbat for Mincha, the afternoon service. Afterwards, they chatted with a lovely older American couple who turned out to be Joe and Hadassah Lieberman. Again, the Liebermans were incredibly gracious, asking these teens and young adults where they were in school, what they were studying, and about their vacation. It turned out they knew people in common.

In addition to being one of the most influential politicians in recent American history, Joe Lieberman was also at heart an “ordinary” Jew, a mensch who enjoyed speaking with his fellow Americans and fellow Jews and getting to know them. He will be missed.

https://aish.com/joe-lieberman-7-jewish-quotes/?src=ac

https://aish.com/jews-awakening-october-7th-changed-my-relationship-with-judaism/?src=ac
October 7th Changed My Relationship with Judaism
by Emily B.
March 24, 2024
I thought I lived in a world where antisemitism didn’t exist. Then October 7th happened.

“Jews Awakening” is a series of profiles about American Jews from various religious and cultural backgrounds who are strengthening their Jewish identity since October 7th.

For Suzy, 40, being Jewish has always been a choice. Raised in a mixed faith household, her parents sought to expose their children to a variety of religious holidays and traditions. They never “pushed” Judaism, but instead allowed their children to identify with whatever practices made sense to them. Judaism, she says, “just spoke to me.”

As Suzy grew older, she developed a “strong reform belief” grounded in shared values between modern Judaism and her own personal philosophies. The reform movement’s approach to things like diet, dress, and holidays – and particularly its treatment of women – resonated with the lifestyle she wanted to live.

It was like 9/11 all over again.

After getting married, Suzy joined a vibrant and inclusive reform temple in Western New York, where she developed a meaningful relationship with the Rabbi. Having a special connection motivated her to become more involved with Jewish life. During this more observant period of her life, she attended synagogue weekly and observed Shabbat regularly for a period of 4-5 years. However, eventually that ended.

When Suzy’s rabbi retired in 2014, he was replaced with a new rabbi whom she did not share a meaningful connection with, and her engagement consequently diminished. Weekly synagogue visits reduced to sporadic worship on the High Holy days; Suzy stopped lighting Shabbat candles. When a planned trip to Israel was canceled due to escalating regional tensions, she did not reschedule. Going to Israel felt like “an unattainable goal” when stacked against competing personal and professional priorities. During this time she remained supportive of Israel and connected to Jewish values, but her observance dwindled significantly. Then October 7th happened.

“It was like 9/11 all over again,” she says about that day. The scope and severity of the attack took a few days to hit her, but when it finally did, she felt profoundly impacted. “I would be in business meetings and all I could think about were the hostages” she says. “I can’t tell you how deeply my heart breaks for the victims.” She is now attending synagogue regularly, lighting candles on every Shabbat, and continuing to pray for the hostages every day.

The attacks of October 7th were “devastating” and “a massive wakeup call” to her about the state of antisemitism. “I live in this flourishing Jewish community and I truly did not know antisemitism existed. Here and there were pockets, but I lived in this world where antisemitism didn’t exist.” Now, she sees the full extent of the problem: the double standard so many governments and organizations apply to Israel, the failure of American education institutions, and the cognitive dissonance of many pro-Palestine supporters who accuse Israel of committing genocide – especially those from younger generations.

Talking to people under 40 “is like talking to the twilight zone” she says. “These young kids don’t understand the Oslo Accords, they don’t understand what Arafat was offered over and over again and refused to take it. They don’t understand the history of Palestinians in Kuwait, in Lebanon, and in Jordan…” Among her many frustrations, she feels “indignant” about the short-sightedness of many pro-Palestine supporters who fail to see Hamas as a threat to the west – and to America.

Seeing Hamas’s brutality against women and children was shocking and horrifying, but it was the global reaction to October 7th that surprised her more than anything.

Seeing Hamas’s brutality against women and children was shocking and horrifying (she couldn’t bring herself to watch footage from the attacks), but it was the global reaction to October 7th that surprised her more than anything. The footage of people cheering on the slaughter of Jews “broke my heart into a million pieces” she says. “I thought I would be able to put it back together but my heart has been broken every day since then. I decided that I’m not going to put it back together — I’m going to fight.”

Despite the many risks, she feels compelled to speak up about rising antisemitism out of a sense of self-preservation. “Ninety years ago when the Nazis gradually scapegoated the Jews, people said nothing, and look where that got us. Never again is now. That means something to me.”

For Suzy, fighting involves writing weekly letters to U.S. legislators urging them to support Israel, making phone calls to politicians, and drafting emails. It’s important to her to call out people who are “wobbling” on Israel or making “ridiculous” statements – and equally important to thank celebrities and politicians who have publicly supported Israel at great cost to their reputation. Suzy’s operation is a highly organized one – she maintains a spreadsheet to track all of her outreach, and applies a strategic approach. “I know that Joe Biden isn’t sitting around reading my letters, but I also know that every communication goes into a scorecard. The more ticks you have over here versus over here, that’s going to influence the policy. I want to be a tick on the side for Israel.”

Suzy is also fighting with her pocketbook.

Suzy is also fighting with her pocketbook. This past holiday season, she purchased gifts exclusively from Israeli companies and replaced a recurring donation to the UN’s UNICEF program with American Friends of Magen David Adom. From now on, her charitable contributions are for pro-Israel organizations only.

In more subtle ways, October 7th has influenced her behavior at home as a parent to her five-year old daughter, and in her local community. She now makes a conscious effort to take her daughter to children's programs at their synagogue, and to include her in weekly Shabbat prayers, something her daughter has noticed. “I do the blessing with my daughter. This past Shabbat, I forgot and she asked, ‘Where’s my prayer?’”

Suzy cares deeply about supporting her local community amid rising antisemitism and is working to improve the relationship between secular and Orthodox communities, which she characterizes as “a bit awkward.” She now goes out of her way to chat with her Orthodox neighbors, even timing some of her walks on Shabbat to allow her to keep an eye on their safety. “I want them to know I will always be here for them and we’re in this together.”

For now, Suzy continues to “fight like tooth and nail.” She has still never been to Israel, but plans to go as soon as it is feasible. The events of October 7th have forever changed her relationship with Judaism.

“It was always important to me, but now it’s critically important - for me, for my identity, for my daughter.”

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https://aish.com/jews-awakening-october-7th-changed-my-relationship-with-judaism/?src=ac

HOSTAGES, HORROR, AND HOPE: A VISIT TO NIR OZ
RABBI CHAIM GOLDBERG
Everywhere one looked, the remnants of Death stared back.
by Rabbi Chaim Goldberg
March 24, 2024

Everywhere one looked, the remnants of Death stared back.

I needed to reconnect to October 7th and its horrors, and went down South with a group of Yeshiva University rabbinical alumni. We went to Ofakim, Sderot, and the Nova festival site, but it was the visit to Kibbutz Nir Oz which shook me to the core. Nir Oz was the hardest hit kibbutz in terms of numbers—over 25% of its residents were murdered or kidnapped on October 7th.

Our tour guide was Amit Rubin, a child of Kibbutz Nir Oz who now lives in nearby Nir Yitzchak. Rubin gives us two ominous bits of information to keep in mind throughout the tour. “First, unlike most kibbutzim, there was not a single bullet, let alone tank shells, fired by the IDF in Nir Oz. The terrorists freely finished their murderous rampage and hostage-taking, leaving 15 minutes before the IDF arrived. Every bit of devastation you will see was from Hamas. Second, whatever you see is the ‘cleaned-up’ version. Know that it was 100x worse in late October.”

I’ve interviewed Rabbi Prof. Steinberg who described unprecedented difficulties identifying DNA due to burnt victims. I’ve seen pictures of burnt kibbutz homes and other pictures of fatal house fires. But I never imagined what I saw, felt, and smelled that day.

Homes were not burnt. They were utterly incinerated.



Some homes were “merely” ransacked and destroyed. These homes still had kitchens, just with shattered china and glassware all over the floor. Or they still had safe rooms, just with blood all over the floor.

But some homes were just ash. No counters, no walls, no beds, just ash.

Death was our constant companion. Everywhere one looked, the remnants of Death stared back. If I closed my eyes, I felt Death.

Listening to Amit Rubin I get the impression that he was in the peace camp until October 7th. But now, “peace activist” is almost a dirty phrase, said with deep bitterness.



Like every other Israeli, I see hostage posters everywhere in my day-to-day life. But realizing that the posters before me now were on the victims’ very own homes—on the front doors of the very house from which they were kidnapped—sent a shiver went down my spine. Rubin hustled us from home to home, giving the briefest of snapshots of what happened to each family, with nary a moment to process.

Oded and Yocheved Lifschitz. “Oded came home from the hospital the night before. He was a peace activist, who even drove Gazans to Israeli hospitals.”

Chana Katzir. “Total vandalism,” Rubin tells us. As if murder, kidnapping, and rape weren’t bad enough, Rubin wants us to notice utter randomness to their violence, the craving to destroy and vandalize. “So-called ‘innocent’ civilians—women and children—came gleefully, looted, set fire to houses.”

Yair and Eitan Horn. “Eitan was just visiting Yair for the holiday; now the two brothers are held hostage in Gaza.”

Maya and Avner Goren. “The daycare teacher, she was outside early and one of the first kidnapped. Her husband’s body was found a week later, on the border.” A sign hung on the door asking people not to enter. While we freely entered other homes, the Goren kids grasped for a vestige of privacy from having unknown guests see the intimate space of a home, including bedrooms, in its humiliating state.

Shalev Tal. “Archeologists and forensic scientists are still working through the ash here to identify remains. Some of his family members’ fate remains unknown.”

Siman-Tov. This family of five was murdered in its entirety.

Kfir and Ariel Bibas

Bibas. Silence. Nothing needs to be said. We all know about one-year-old Kfir, the youngest hostage, and his brother Ariel. Touching Ariel’s riding toy, the same exact kind my toddler rides, pierces their story deeper into my heart.

After barely one to two minutes per home, Rubin was walking briskly on to the next one. Too much to see in too little time.

But at one home, finally, a story was told.

It was one of the incinerated, ash-only homes. Even the porcelain toilet had partially melted.

“Two couples were here,” says Rubin, “a young couple and an elderly couple, one of whom had dementia. They hid in the safe room, each couple huddled in one bed, under a blanket. Terrorists came in the house and turned it into a base of operations of sorts. Many terrorists went in and out, asking for commands or taking eating breaks. Suddenly, a terrorist went to check the safe room but after a quick look he left. A different terrorist rebuked him for not looking carefully enough and went to check himself. Inexplicably, he too, neglected to feel the blankets or even turn on the light.

After an unknown period of time, the terrorists decided they were done using the home. Before they left, they set the house on fire, “for fun.” The two couples struggled to breathe but hearing terrorists outside the window, there was no escape. After enduring as much suffering as they could handle, they decided to escape. Outside there was a chance of survival while inside there was none. And if their fate was to die, better it be instantaneous via gunshots than the unimaginable suffering of burning to death.

The younger couple helped the elderly people climb out. They tried to hide behind a shed but were fully exposed from one side, while terrorists continued roaming around, even looting that very shed which hid them. By a total miracle, they went unnoticed and survived.

“I know all this,” Rubin concluded, “because the young couple is my daughter and her boyfriend, and the elderly couple are my parents.”

The house of Amit Rubin’s parents

How are his parents doing now? “Not well,” says Rubin. “It’s too much for them to bear.”

In one home I noticed a newspaper strewn about the rubble on the floor. I knelt down to flip it over and the date jumped out at me like a punch in the gut. October 6th, 2023. Even more eerie was a poster in the kibbutz dining hall announcing a protest kibbutz members would be attending on October 7th. The target of the protest? Evacuation of Judean and Samarian towns to advance peace with the Palestinians.

This is only half of the story. The other half will be told in years to come, but it has already started. A rebuilding campaign has been launched and Nir Oz is determined to see it through. “There is a determination to rebuild,” Rubin declares. The only two other people we saw during the two-hour tour of the kibbutz were planting flowers, and others have started working the agricultural land nearby which is the kibbutz’s primary income. Rubin stresses his final message: Kibbutz Nir Oz is not going anywhere.

Featured image: Joel Pollak, Breitbart News

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https://aish.com/hostages-horror-and-hope-a-visit-to-nir-oz/?src=ac

https://aish.com/the-intense-antisemitism-of-haman-hitler-and-hamas/?src=ac
The Intense Antisemitism of Haman, Hitler and Hamas
by Rabbi Shraga Simmons
March 21, 2024
Share
The greater evil always attacks the greater good.
Hatred of Jews goes far beyond stereotypical prejudice, discrimination and scapegoating. Antisemites are driven to total genocide of the Jews.

The biblical Amalek is the prototype rabid antisemite and arch enemy of the Jews. Amalek attacks when the Jews are riding high on the miraculous Ten Plagues, Exodus from Egypt, and splitting of the Red Sea. (Exodus 17:8)

Everyone was afraid to challenge the Jews. Except Amalek.

Ancient Jewish literature (Midrash Tanchuma 9) compares his attack to someone jumping into a boiling hot vat that everyone fears to enter. Although the jumper suffers massive burns, he cools off that vat, enabling others to attack. Amalek self-sacrificed for their primary goal: to show that Jews are vulnerable.

Amalek’s ideological heir and direct descendent (through Agag – Esther 3:1) is Haman, who plotted genocide of the Jews 2,500 years ago in Persia (Iran).

Haman's hatred is so great that he offers 10,000 kikars (approximately 460 tons) of silver for the right to annihilate the Jews (Esther 3:9).
In the end, the plot fails.


Nazi Tradition
Each generation has its own ideological Amalek. In the 20th century, Hitler murdered six million while proclaiming a “righteous cause”: exterminating “Jewish vermin” to heroically save the world.

For Hitler, genocide was all-or-nothing, “either us or them.” He said: "If only one country for whatever reasons tolerates a Jewish family in it, that family will become the germ center for fresh sedition." (July 21, 1941, cited in Hitler’s Apocalypse, p. 122)

Hitler regarded the killing of Jews even more important than winning World War II.

Hitler regarded the killing of Jews even more important than winning World War II. With the Nazi invasion of Hungary in 1944, top German military officers urged Hitler to prioritize railway lines must to transport vital troops and desperately-needed supplies to the battlefront.

Ignoring their warnings, Hitler allocated the precious rail-lines to deport Hungarian Jewry en masse to the extermination camps. This “self-sacrifice to destroy the Jews” proved a key factor in debilitating the German war effort.

Channeling Haman, Hitler harbored a venomous hatred for the holiday of Purim. "Unless Germany is victorious," he proclaimed, "Jewry could then celebrate the destruction of Europe by a second triumphant Purim Festival." (January 30, 1944, cited in The Purim Anthology, 1949)

When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, he banned the reading of the Book of Esther, and ordered that on Purim all synagogues be closed. On Purim 1942 in Zdunska-Wola, a town in Nazi-occupied Poland, ten Jews were hanged by Hitler's SS, in a sadistic parody of events in the Book of Esther. (Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust)

Even after their ignoble defeat, Nazis continued to draw “inspiration” from Haman. At the Nuremberg Trials, as Julius Streicher ascended the gallows to be hanged, he shouted “Purimfest 1946.” (Newsweek, October 28, 1946)

October 7
Today, 2,500 years after the Purim confrontation with genocidal Persians, the Jewish people face another Persian enemy: the mad mullahs of Iran. The tentacles of the “Iranian octopus” are remote-controlled from Tehran: Hamas, Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and militias in Iraq and Syria. This modern-day Amalek is building nuclear weapons and – with repeated threats to "wipe Israel off the map” – is patiently waiting to strike.

On October 7, Iran’s proxy Hamas unleashed the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The sadistic cruelty was straight out of the Nazi playbook. Hamas terrorists entered the Gaza-border kibbutzim, savagely murdering, raping and pillaging, incinerating many homes along with their inhabitants.

Hamas “justifies” violent jihad as a noble, righteous holy war to “liberate their homeland stolen by the Jews,” and follows Mohammed’s directive to massacre Jews “wherever you find them” (Koran 2:191).

In the Amalek tradition of self-sacrifice, Hamas invites death and destruction on its own civilians, using them as human shields, both to protect terrorists and to cynically bolster civilian casualties in hopes of stirring global condemnation of Israel.

As Hamas Political Bureau Chairman Ismail Haniyeh declared: “We need the blood of the children, women, and elderly” to “ignite within us the spirit of revolution” against the Jewish state.

Tragically, the Hamas strategy appears to be working. Backed by conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers, antisemitism is now fashionably PC in polite society. Alarmingly, a recent Harvard-Harris Poll shows that 60% of American voters ages 18-24 believe that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and a majority believe that Israel should "be ended and given to Hamas."

Neutralizing the Final Solution
Fortunately, the Jewish people have a potent weapon to fight back.

In seeking permission to annihilate the Jews, Haman accused them of being "a nation scattered and split (Esther 3:8), a reference to Jewish division and strife. This lack of unity gave Haman the confidence to advance his genocidal plan.

Esther understood that the solution to antisemitism is Jewish unity.

Esther understood that the solution to antisemitism is Jewish unity. She told Mordechai: “Go assemble all the Jews” (Esther 4:16). Haman's threats brought the Jewish people together and triggered a 180-degree shift from disunity to unity.

This idea of shared destiny was formalized in the Purim tradition Mordechai of Mishloach Manot, sending gifts of food to one another (Esther 9:22). The idea is to increase love and friendship, and engrain the message: To prevail, we must work together.

Prior to October 7, Israeli society was polarized. There was tension on the streets, with talk of civil war and splitting into two states.

And like in the Purim story, October 7 triggered a 180-degree Jewish shift: from disunity to unity.

Though we cannot know the reason for all our suffering, it does prove a maxim: The greater evil always attacks the greater good.

During the Holocaust, a Jew was being sadistically beaten by a Nazi guard who scoffed and sneered, "How do you like being a Jew!"

The Jew looked up and proudly said, "I'd rather be in my position than in yours."

The best response to antisemitism is Jewish pride. Truth and goodness will prevail. From darkness will come light.

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https://aish.com/the-intense-antisemitism-of-haman-hitler-and-hamas/?src=ac

by Avi Abrams
February 18, 2024
15 min read

How controversial leader became king of the Jews and built a massive empire.

What do the Western Wall, the Tower of David, the fortress of Masada, the ancient city of Caesarea, and the Tomb of Patriarchs in Hebron all have in common?

They were all built by one man, King Herod the Great.

Herod is considered one of the most famous kings in Jewish history because his ambitious buildings projects dated to the first century BCE have lasted intact or partially intact over a 2000-year period until present day. The colossal structures he left behind enable us to glean into the past and learn more about Jewish life in Judea towards the end of the Second Temple period.

His legacy is mired in controversy, from his execution of the country’s leading rabbis and members of his own immediate family, to his paranoia about being overthrown, his closeness with Roman imperial forces and even questions about his lineage. So who was Herod and how did he become king of the Jews?

Herod’s Family Background
In the aftermath of the Hanukkah story, the Maccabees (aka Hasmonean dynasty) ruled Judea for more than a hundred years. Immediately to the south of the Jewish kingdom lived a people called the Idumeans (Biblical Edomites), descendants of Edom (Esau’s nickname), brother of the patriarch Jacob. They shared a common language with the Jews, Aramaic, but the commonality stopped there. The Idumeans were idol worshippers like most of humanity at the time and were cultural very much Greco-Roman.

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In the year 110 BCE, the Hasmonean king Yochanan Hyrcanus I conquered Idumaea and did something unprecedented in Jewish history. He forced the population to convert to Judaism. Such a thing never happened before and never happened since. Conversion in Judaism is typically discouraged, but when someone is genuinely interested and persistent, it is a long process of learning before being accepted as a convert. The rabbis of the time had many difficulties accepting the Idumean converts, but with time, they adopted Jewish customs and became assimilated into mainstream Jewish society.

During the Jewish conquest over Idumaea, a boy of four years old became circumcised for the first time. His name was Antipater and came from a wealthy and distinguished Idumaean family who owned mineral rights to the Dead Sea. Taking on the family business, Antipater conducted trade relations with the Nabateans, who inhabited the desert areas between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea. They controlled the spice trade from Yemen to the Mediterranean seaports southwest of Judea. As a result of his business dealings with the Nabateans, Antipater took for himself a wife, actually a princess by the name of Cypros, daughter of the Nabatean King Aretas III. They had five children together; Phasael, Joseph, Pheroras, Salome, and Herod. Baby Herod was born in 72 BCE.

Antipater’s wealth and influence over both the Idumaeans and Nabateans made him a valuable asset to the Hasmonean kings based in Jerusalem. As such, it was no surprise when King Alexander Yanai appointed Antipater as the Hasmonean governor of Idumaea. He became a respected government official amongst the political elite in Jerusalem. After the deaths of both Alexander Yanai and his wife Shlomtzion, their son Hyrcanus II was named heir to the throne in 67 BCE. Antipater saw Hyrcanus as weak-minded and easy to manipulate so he befriended him for political gain.

But not long after becoming king, Aristobulus II, brother of Hyrcanus II, attacked him and demanded the kingship. Hyrcanus surrendered and intended to withdraw from public life until Antipater convinced him to continue the struggle against his brother. Antipater introduced Hyrcanus to King Aretas III (his father in-law) in Petra (the Nabatean capital city) and arranged for him to come under his protection. Antipater left his children, including five-year-old Herod, in safekeeping with their grandfather King Aretas. With the support of 50,000 Nabatean soldiers, Hyrcanus and Antipater went to war against Aristobolus in Jerusalem.


After four years of civil war, both brothers reached out for Roman military intervention and political support. The Romans under Pompey initially backed Aristobolus, but then shifted support towards Hyrcanus, possibly as a result of a bribe. The Romans then arrested Aristobolus and shipped him off to Rome as a prisoner, while Hyrcanus was designated the position of High Priest, but no longer as a sovereign Jewish king. Antipater on the other hand demonstrated a strong loyalty to Rome and was therefore granted an even greater role than Hyrcanus in administrating Judea. From this point forward, Judea became a vassal state of the Roman Republic, but with semi-autonomous rule.

By 48-47 BCE, a civil war broke out in the Roman Republic between the forces of Pompey and those of Julius Caesar. Antipater initially backed his patron Pompey, but after being defeated in battle, Antipater aligned himself with Caesar. While Julius Caesar was under siege in Alexandria, Antipater rescued him with the support of 13,000 Jewish soldiers from Judea. Caesar, grateful for the actions of Antipater, rewarded him with great honors including Roman citizenship, exemption from taxes, designation as the first Roman procurator of Judea, and the right to appoint his children into positions of authority. For this reason, his son Phasael became governor of Jerusalem and his son Herod became governor of the Galilee. Thus, Herod’s political career kickstarted at the age of 25.

Herod’s Brutality
As with any tyrant who becomes a new ruler, Herod’s first priority was eliminating any resistance to his authority and by extension any anti-Roman activity. With the aid of Roman troops, he suppressed Jewish insurrections in the Galilee and imposed heavy Roman taxes on the region. His toughness and brutality earned him respect from Roman authorities who expanded his realm to include parts of Syria to the north and Samaria to the south. His reputation at the same time attracted condemnation from the Sanhedrin, the rabbinical Supreme Court, who were shocked by his use of brute force against the Jews of Galilee. Hyrcanus even attempted to have him stand trial, but this move was blocked both by his father Antipater and brother, Phasael.

In 40 BCE, Antigonus, the son of Aristobolus II who fought a civil war against his brother Hyrcanus some 25 years earlier, instigated a rebellion with the support of the Parthians (Persian Empire), to drive out the Romans and their supporters, re-install the Hasmonean dynasty, and reclaim Judea as an independent Jewish kingdom. Herod was visiting Jerusalem when the rebellion broke out. As enemy troops marched towards the city from the west, Hyrcanus was arrested, mutilated, and sent into exile while Phasael committed suicide. Herod, fearing for his life, decided to flee with his entire family to the east in the direction of the Dead Sea.


Heading south along the Dead Sea coastline, Herod couldn’t help but notice his family members slowing him down. Remembering his experience as a 5-year-old child when his father Antipater left him with his grandfather in Petra while he set out to war, Herod had to think quick. Sticking out from the cliff line, Herod noticed a mountain with a flat peak and steep cliffs on all sides. He commanded a contingent of his soldiers and servants to take his fiancé princess Mariamme, her mother Alexandra, his mother Cypros, his sister Salome, his youngest brother Pheroras, and fortify themselves on top of the mountain. Fortress in Hebrew is Matzada and thus the mountain became known as Masada.

Herod and his most loyal followers continued moving south, then west, crossed the Negev and Sinai deserts on foot, reached the port of Alexandria (Egypt), sailed to Rhodes (Greece), and eventually landed in Rome. Herod used his skills as a charismatic orator in the Roman Senate to demonstrate his absolute loyalty to the Republic. While in Rome, seeing the ancient urban skyline for the first time, he was highly impressed by the city’s extravagant architecture, elements of which he would later duplicate in his future building projects. By the end of his trip, he made many friends amongst Roman politicians, was designated “King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate and was granted command of a Roman legion (30,000 soldiers) for the purpose of retaking Judea.

In 39 BCE, Herod, with the support of the Roman military, landed in Acre, recaptured the Galilee, the Mediterranean coastline, and broke the Hasmonean siege on Masada, thus liberating his family by 38 BCE. Despite living under siege for about two years, the Herodian family survived due to the high cliffs that surrounded the mountain, which made Masada a natural impregnable fortress. Herod decided that in the near future, he would build up Masada into a mega military complex so that in the event of any future rebellion against his rule, he would be able to survive under siege for many years.

By 37 BCE, Herod and his Roman allies besieged Jerusalem and fought a bloody battle to liberate the city from Hasmonean rule. Antigonus was arrested and his supporters executed, including 45 pro-Hasmonean rabbis who were members of the Sanhedrin. Over the next few years, Herod would seek out and eliminate all surviving members of the Hasmonean dynasty including one of his wives and two of his children. He even invited Hyrcanus the High Priest back from exile only to execute him as well, thus fully replacing the Hasmonean dynasty with the Herodian dynasty.

Masada
Once all threats were eliminated and his throne secured, Herod would embark on a series of massive building projects throughout the country over the next three decades. The first of these projects was Masada. Based on his recent experience of saving his family, Herod knew that Masada would be the perfect location for a city of refuge in case he had to flee Jerusalem again sometime in the future. Herod also figured if he’s going to be under siege for many years, he’ll need to have certain essentials, like water, food, a jacuzzi, a sauna, and one or two royal palaces. Using an advanced system of ancient hydraulic engineering, Herod found a way to channel flash flood water from the mountains in the west into a gigantic rock cut cavern inside the interior of Masada. The indoor cisterns within the cavern had the capacity for more than 10 million gallons of water, enough to fill 15 Olympic swimming pools. With full cisterns, 1000 people could survive on Masada for up to three years, even during a drought.

Masada

Herod also had storehouses of grain and dried fruit, some of which survived for 2000 years! After being discovered in archaeological excavations in the 1960s, they were replanted in Kibbutz Ketura near Eilat. One palace wasn’t sufficient for Herod. He built two on the same mountain, one on a three-tier cliff that housed Herod’s guest dining room. There, archaeologists discovered the ceramic jars of Roman era Italian wine with inscriptions reading “To Herod, King of Judea”.

Hebron and the Cave of the Patriarchs
After completing his luxury safe haven at Masada by 31 BCE, Herod turned his eyes towards Hebron. The Cave of Patriarchs in the city of Hebron is the revered resting place for the founders of the Jewish People; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in addition to their wives Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah. At the same time, the city of Hebron during the Second Temple period was located within Idumaean territory. The dichotomy resonated with Herod whose identity was ethnically Idumaean, but religiously Jewish. Hebron was therefore the perfect place for Herod to project his legacy through architecture.

The Tomb of the Patriarchs, Hebron

The Tomb of the Patriarchs is considered to be the oldest continuously-used prayer structure in the world and the only one of Herod’s buildings to survive fully intact, avoiding destruction by armies and earthquakes over a 2000-year period. The large ashlar stone walls with Herodian margins are identical to the design of the Western Wall. In fact, only the lower rows of the Western Wall today are Herodian. The upper rows were destroyed by the Romans and later rebuilt by various Muslim regimes. The only way we know what the upper levels of the Western Wall and Temple Mount looked like 2000 years ago is by seeing it at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which was constructed using the same design.

Herod's sarcophagus, displayed at the Israel Museum (Wikipedia)
By 22 BCE, Herod embarked on a project to connect Rome with Jerusalem by constructing what would become the largest artificially built deep sea harbor in the world. Using limestone and volcanic ash imported from Italy, Herod built two massive breakwaters stretching more than 1600 feet into the open sea. The idea was to increase the Judean agricultural export that consisted of olives, dates, and wine and gain larger revenue from import taxes on construction materials and fabrics. In addition to the port, the city of Caesarea consisted of wide roads, markets, a palace, a theater, a hippodrome, an aqueduct, and a pagan temple, all of which are still partially intact and open to the public. Most of the population of the city were Greek speaking pagans and pleasing them meant scoring points with his Roman patrons.

Expansion of the Second Temple
Despite Herod’s apparent success, he was still disdained by the majority of his Jewish subjects who viewed him as a usurper to the throne, a mass murderer, and questioned the authenticity of his Judaism due to his Idumaean background and lavish lifestyle. Herod therefore needed to do some major damage control with his Jewish population. By this time, the Second Temple was hundreds of years old and badly in need of repair and renovation. As a means to appease the Jews of Judea and to atone for all the rabbis he executed, Herod initiated the largest and most ambitious project of which he’s most famous for – the expansion of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Detail of the distinctive pattern of Herodian stone-dressing as seen in the Western Wall Tunnel. (Wikipedia)

In order to enlarge the structure, Herod first had to tear it down and rebuild it from scratch. As you can imagine, the rabbis were highly skeptical of Herod’s motivation and did not agree to it until he first placed all the building materials, tools, and cranes on the Temple Mount site prior to the demolition process. The construction workers would also need to be of the Jewish priesthood since the site was considered sacred.

The building process took place between 20 BCE and 11 BCE using imported marble and gold, and reached a height of 150 feet. He also expanded the platform around the Temple from a surface area of 17 acres to 36 acres, doubling its size. In order to accomplish this task, he had to build large retaining walls on all four sides, the longest of which was the Western Wall, otherwise known as the Wailing Wall, the same one Jews pray at today.

The Western Wall is the closest point to where the Holy of Holies used to be located – the back part of the Temple that housed the Ark of the Covenant and was the dwelling place of God’s presence on Earth. The entire Western Wall of the Temple Mount spans about 1600 feet and only 230 feet is visible today in the plaza. Most of the wall is hidden behind houses in the Muslim Quarter and another small portion can be observed south of the plaza in the Jerusalem Archaeological Park. The Second Temple and surrounding Temple Mount are noted by various ancient historians and writers as being one of the most spectacular buildings in the known world. The Talmud even remarks, “He who has never seen the Temple of Herod has never seen a beautiful building” (Sukkah 51b).

Herodian
To prepare for his own death, Herod constructed an artificially built mountain (about 200 feet above ground level) in the Tekoa region south of Jerusalem. Herod chose this specific area to build his tomb because it was here that he narrowly escaped death. Back in 40 BCE when he fled Jerusalem with his family on the way to Masada, he was being pursued by Hasmonean supporters of Antigonus who ambushed him there, yet he fought them off and emerged victorious. On the peak of the mountain, he constructed a fortress, a palace, and a mausoleum that would house his tomb. He also built large structures at the base of the mountain that included a recreational swimming pool so large that Herod was known to sail a small boat on it. He named the mountain tomb site Herodian after himself. He even organized his own funeral procession from Jericho to Herodian prior to his death (talk about a control freak)!

Herodian (Wikipedia Commons)

Herod the Great has was one of the greatest builders in Jewish history and possibly one of the greatest in the ancient world. He was also responsible for a large number of executions, for the purpose of securing his throne and satiating his ego. For better or for worse, Herod led one of the country’s most stable and peaceful periods as “King of the Jews” until his death in 4 BCE.

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Alexei Navalny: What Was the Source of His Courage?
After surviving an assassination attempt, the dissident returned to Russia where he knew he’d be arrested and likely killed. Why?

The killing of Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident who courageously stood up to President Putin, was not a surprise. Putin had already tried to poison him with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020. What was surprising was that, as soon as German doctors in a Berlin hospital had succeeded in saving his life, Navalny got on a plane and returned to Russia. He knew he was flying into the jaws of the wolf, the repressive Putin government whose corruption he had exposed and which he had vociferously opposed. Indeed, as soon as Navalny landed in Moscow he was arrested on trumped-up charges and imprisoned. Navalny's team believes he was murdered on the orders of Putin.

What gave him the courage to keep fighting for truth rather than save his own life?

Alexei Navalny believed in God, in free will, in the primacy of family, and in love. He believed that people are ultimately accountable for their actions, and that the soul lives on after death. “I do not believe in death,” he wrote from his Artic prison in answer to a 13-item questionnaire sent by Boris Akunin, the famous Russian writer in exile.

In his closing statement during his 2021 trial, Navalny said he used to be a “militant atheist,” but he had become a believer, and now based his actions on the “instructions” of the Bible.

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“I am now a believer,” he proclaimed, “and that helps me a lot in my activities, because everything becomes much, much easier. … There are fewer dilemmas in my life, because there is a book in which, in general, it is more or less clearly written what action to take in every situation. It’s not always easy to follow this book, of course, but I am actually trying.”

He continued: “And so, while certainly not really enjoying the place where I am, I have no regrets about coming back, or about what I’m doing. It’s fine, because I did the right thing. On the contrary, I feel a real kind of satisfaction. Because at some difficult moment I did as required by the instructions, and did not betray the commandment.”

Navalny knowingly sacrificed his life to fight evil. He wrote, “All it takes for evil to triumph is the inaction of good people… The hypocrisy of neutrality, ‘apoliticism’, and recusal, concealing laziness, cowardice and meanness, is the principal reason why a bunch of well-organized villains have ruled over millions throughout human history.” He said the greatest benefit mankind can bring the world is “engaging in the battle of good vs. neutral.”

One God, Two Worlds
Navalny’s declaration, “I do not believe in death,” accounts for his courage in continuing to speak—indeed shout—truth to power. The belief in an immortal soul that outlives the body confers a sense of invincibility in the face of murderous threats.

Navalny’s declaration is reminiscent of a story where another spiritual hero faced the intimidations of the Russian authorities a century before. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Rebbe of the Chabad Lubavitch, was arrested by the Communist government for promulgating Jewish religious practices. When he refused to inform on any of his assistants, his interrogator pointed a gun to his head and threatened, “This little toy has made many a man change his mind!”

Without flinching, the Rebbe replied, “That little toy can scare only men who believe in many gods and one world. I believe in one God and two worlds, so I am not frightened by your little toy.”

Alexei Navalny believed in one God and two worlds. In the 13-point questionnaire he answered from his Artic prison, he wrote: “I believe that we are not alone in this universe. I believe that our deeds and actions will be evaluated.” Now that he is in the other world, where his heroic deeds and selfless actions are being evaluated, we can only say, “Bravo to you! May your example inspire all of us to live fearlessly for the Truth.”

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There has a lot of propaganda against Navalny, including his supposed antisemitism. His observant Jewish chief of staff said that his antisemitism is totally untrue and has been his Shabbos guest many times.
It's obvious that you didn't bother to read Navalny's writings in Russian. If you had, you'd know how racist and anti-semitic he was.

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VALENTINE’S DAY DIFFICULT HISTORY WITH JEWS

DR. YVETTE ALT MILLER
The history of Valentine’s Day shows there’s more to the day than greetings cards, flowers and chocolate – and some good reasons why it’s been avoided by many Jews.
ncient Roman Origins
In ancient Rome, February 13-15 used to be Lupercalia, a festival of fertility that saw three days of carousel, license, and mayhem. Cambridge University professor Mary Beard describes the holiday’s bizarre rites: “at the festival of Lupercalia…naked young men ran round the city whipping any women they met.” Lupercalia also involved some pretty bloody sacrificing of dogs to the god Lupercalia (the Roman name for the Greek god, known for his impishness and nasty sense of humor, Pan).

Lupercalia was popular for over a thousand years, from the very founding of Rome in the 8th century BCE, to the 5th century CE. (It was one of few Roman pagan holidays routinely celebrated by Christians even after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 CE.) Thousands of Jews lived in Rome during the many centuries when Lupercalia was celebrated. (The Emperor Titus deported an estimated 50,000 Jews from Judea to the city of Rome in the year 70 CE alone.) How did they view this annual libertine festival?



Prof. Beard notes that “ancient Roman religion (was not) particularly concerned with personal salvation or morality. Instead it mainly focused on the performance of rituals that were intended to keep the relationship between Rome and the gods in good order....” (quoted in SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard: 2015). It’s a view that’s opposed to contemporaneous Jewish writings. Take the example of Hillel, the 1st Century CE Jewish sage who lived at a time when Lupercalia was a major event. Hillel – like many Jewish thinkers – focused intensely on the human struggle for self-improvement. “Be among the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving people and bringing them closer to the Torah,” Hillel advised (Ethics of the Fathers 1:12), invoking the Biblical forefather Aaron, who was known to spend his time reconciling friends and relatives after quarrels. While Jewish writers were urging people to look inward for personal growth and improvement, Romans observing Lupercalia were relying on empty (and pretty bawdy) ritual to magically bring about improvements in their personal states.

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The contrast between Jewish and ancient Roman thought was huge, and earned Jews the enmity of ancient Rome. In 139 BCE and then again in 19 CE, Jews were banished from the city of Rome, though in both instances they were soon able to return. Differences over festivals such as Lupercalia – and Judaism’s emphasis on morality and personal growth – helped turn Roman public opinion against Rome’s Jews, and formed a wedge between ancient Roman Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors.

Saint Valentinus
It was Pope Gelasius I, who served as Pope from 492-496, who abolished Lupercalia. In its place, he instituted a new Christian holiday on February 14: a feast day to remember the martyrdom of Saint Valentinus. .

There’s not much agreement on exactly who Saint Valentinus was. It seems likely there were at least two and possibly three Saint “Valentini” (the plural of Valentinus) who were martyred in ancient Rome. Almost nothing is known of the first Valentinus other than that he perished in Africa along with 24 soldiers in the 3rd Century. Later on, there was another Valentinus who was beheaded in Rome by the Emperor Claudius Gothicus, who governed 269 to 270 CE and was known to execute Christians. A similar account is given of another Valentinus in nearby Umbria, who was also beheaded by Gothicus for his Christian beliefs; historians differ about whether these were separate martyrs or simply different versions of the same story. Either way, these ancient Christians became the basis for replacing Lupercallia with a new, Christian, festival which could be overseen and controlled by the Pope.

Relics of St. Valentine of Terni at the basilica of Saint Mary in Cosmedin

(In 1969, the Catholic Church removed St. Valentine’s Day from its calendar of feast days because there is so little reliable proof about his life or very existence.)

Medieval Legends of Love
In the Middle Ages, as the ideal of “Courtly Love” captured the minds and hearts of European poets and their readers, St. Valentine’s Day began to be associated with love and romance. Writers began to embroider the history of St. Valentinus.

One popular story invented then asserted that Emperor Gothicus forbade his soldiers to marry, and in defiance of this order, St. Valentinus risked his life by carrying love letters back and forth between soldiers and their sweethearts. Some legends say he even conducted weddings for them. Another version says that Valentinus brought love letters to prisoners in Gothicus’ jails.

Some Medieval writers described Valentinus curing the blindness of a young girl and then falling in love with her. (Other versions say he cured a boy of blindness.) He was said to be so loving and good that he persuaded Romans to become Christian just by talking to them.

Chaucer and Valentine’s Day

The most famous Medieval poet to contribute to the growing myth of St. Valentinus was Chaucer, who boldly declared that February 15 was a day of love and romance – for birds. In his poem Parlement of Foules, Chaucer described “Volantynys day” as a day of mating and sending messages to lovers (framed as a description of birds). Chaucer’s choice of St. Valentine’s Day spurred a craze of Medieval Europeans sending love letters on February 14.

Love and romance on St. Valentine’s Day wasn’t the only idea Chaucer popularized: his popular Canterbury Tales, still read today, described Jews as evil and malevolent, opposed to everything wholesome and good in the world. The Canterbury Tales spread a vicious blood libel about Jews and describes a stomach-turning story about Jews kidnapping and murdering an innocent Christian child (and then describes Jews being arrested, tortured, and executed while the child is declared a saint).

In 1349, Jews gained yet another reason to associate St. Valentine’s Day with dread and horror instead of romance. The Bubonic Plague was sweeping Europe and in many locales, Jews were accused of spreading the disease. On St. Valentine's Day, 1349, a Shabbat, the entire Jewish community of Strasbourg, in France, was massacred, burned alive in the town square while townspeople watched. Afterwards, townspeople searched the corpses, looking for valuables, and the property of Strasbourg’s Jews was distributed to local Gentiles.



Irresistible Love?
Cupid wasn’t traditionally a part of St. Valentine’s Day until the 1800s, when commercial greeting card manufacturers began placing pictures of the childlike Roman god of desire on cards. Today, he’s ubiquitous. Even though Cupid wasn’t a conventional part of the holiday in its early years, his inclusion in modern celebrations highlights one more difference between St. Valentine’s Day and Jewish views of love and romance.

In Greek times, Cupid was known as Eros, the god of sex and desire, and was often described as the son of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Depicted as a handsome young man, Eros carried a bow and arrow with him. Whomever he shot, whether at a god or a mortal, it was said, would fall in love. The ancient Greek poet Euripides captured the terror that Eros could bring about: “I pray that love (Eros) may never come to me / With murderous intent, in rhythms measureless and wild” (quoted in Hippolytus by Euripides). Romans included Eros in their pantheon as Cupid, generally depicted even younger, like a child, but no less sinister. Wherever Cupid’s arrows landed, it was thought, love – no matter how unwelcome or inappropriate –would follow.

Watch out for those arrows.

Judaism’s view of love is very different. Romance and attraction are crucial, but so is the hard work of getting to know our romantic partners and connect with them. Instead of being utterly random, something you happen to fall into, true love is the result of time and effort to truly know the subjects of our love. When the Torah describes sexual intimacy, it uses the Hebrew word da’at, which means to know: truly connecting romantically is only possibly when we take the time to notice, understand and be close to another person.

Jewish Day of Love
Jews have a day of romance and love. Tu B’Av celebrates several turns of good fortune for the Jewish people. In ancient Israel, it was a day for young unmarried people to ask each other out. In modern day Israel today, Tu B’Av is a day for romance, with couples spending time together, going out to dinner, and declaring their love.

With so much about Valentine’s Day anathema to Jewish values, Valentine’s Day isn’t a holiday I feel comfortable celebrating. So this Valentine’s Day – like every day – I plan on enjoying a nice meal with my husband and son. I plan on texting friends and relatives to check in on them. I intend to reach out to friends who are having a hard time and ask how I can help. Because if there’s anything being Jewish has taught me, it’s that connecting with other people is paramount, that the world is full of blessings, and it's up to all of us to choose to see and appreciate them.

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Christian Dior and the Jew
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by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
February 7, 2024
13 min read
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The true story behind Apple TV’s new series about the fashion designer’s actions during and after WWII.

Apple TV’s New Look is described as an “emotionally thrilling series” about “the shocking story of how fashion icon Christian Dior and his contemporaries…navigated the horrors of World War II and launched modern fashion.”

Biographies of Dior often emphasize his work with the wives of high-ranking Nazis during World War II. While Jews and others were being deported, tortured, and murdered in France and across Europe, Dior spent most of the Second World War in Paris, measuring and dressing German and other women with close ties to Nazi officials. Yet Christian Dior had another, less well-known side: his beloved sister Catherine was a hero in the French Resistance, and Christian offered her both emotional and material support through some of the war’s darkest times.
Here are a few facts about Christian Dior and the remarkable legacy he left behind.

Upper Class Childhood
Dior was born into a wealthy family in the picturesque French town of Granville in 1905, located in the Normandy region of France. The hyper feminine clothes that would eventually make Dior famous harked back to the romance and beauty of his childhood home before the devastation of World War I.

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Dior would conjure this magical time again and again in his fashion designs. “I picture it now as a happy, jaunty, peaceful time when all we thought about was enjoying life. We were carefree in the belief that no harm threatened the wealth and lifestyle of the rich nor the simple, thrifty existence of the poor. To us the future would bring nothing but even greater benefits for all. Whatever life might have bestowed upon me since, nothing can rival my memories of those sweet years,” he later recalled. (Quoted in Christian Dior: The Man Who Made the World Look New by Marie-France Pochna: 1994)

During the Great Depression, the Dior family lost its fortune. Christian became a fashion designer, then an art dealer, selling works by avant garde painters in Paris. Many of the painters he championed were Jews, such as Max Jacob, Man Ray, and Eugene and Leonid Berman. The goal of the gallery he ran with his business partner Jacques Bonjean “was to introduce the painters we know personally and already admire greatly.” Unlike some Frenchmen at the time, Dior mixed freely with Jews, betraying no antisemitism or sense of social superiority.

French Couture in Wartime
When World War II broke out, Dior was drafted into the French army and put to work farming in the French countryside. It was backbreaking work, but he enjoyed it. Dior realized that 1.5 million French soldiers had been captured by Nazi troops and were languishing in POW camps in Germany, and that he was lucky to have been spared.

In 1941, Christian Dior was released from the army and returned to Paris and resumed fashion designing, landing a job in the Lucien Lelong fashion house where he partnered with an up and coming designer named Pierre Balmain to create wartime fashions.



Lucien Lelong was a complex figure. He was president of the Chambre Syndicale, the organization representing the whole of the French couture industry. All French fashion houses closed down in 1939; in 1941, under German rule, a handful reopened, including Lelong’s. For years, Lelong negotiated with Nazi officials, resisting calls to move the French fashion industry to Austria or Germany. He argued that French fashion design was reliant on countless workshops in Paris and elsewhere in France which manufactured the ribbons and lace, the silks, buttons, thread, and other items necessary for every couture creation. Writer Germaine Beaumont observed in 1942 that even though a French couture dress might seem “such a little thing, so light and yet the sum of civilizations, the quintessence of equilibrium, of moderation, of grace…because a Paris gown is not really made of cloth, it is made with the streets, with the colonnades…it is gleaned from life and from books, from museums and from the unexpected events of the day. It is no more than a gown yet the whole country has made this gown…” (Quoted in Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture by Justine Picardie: 2021) It was a view that Dior shared.

Virulent Antisemitism
Most of Lucien Lelong’s customers were the wives and girlfriends of high-ranking Nazis, the only people in Paris who could afford couture dresses. Many of the Frenchmen working in couture were only too happy to oblige. When French Jewish couturiers and clothing designers such as Jacques Heim and Lotka de Prevaux were forced to close and later deported, the French couture industry made no complaints. Many openly despised their former Jewish customers; the famous designer Marcel Rochas crossed the street when he spied former Jewish customers, avoiding them.

The Diors

Designer Elsa Schiaparelli outfitted Suzanne Abetz, the wife of Otto Abetz, Germany’s fanatically antisemitic Ambassador to France. Former Harper's Bazaar editor Justine Picardie describes a tragic incident at a Schiaparelli fashion show: Elisabeth de Rothschild changed her seat so that she wouldn’t be sitting next to Ms. Abetz. In retaliation, Abetz had de Rothschild deported to the Ravensbruck concentration camp where she died.

Catherine Dior
Christian Dior’s beloved younger sister Catherine was born in 1917 when he was 12. Of the five Dior children, Christian and Catherine became the closest to one another, enjoying a bond throughout their lives.

The Dior Children

In 1941, as her brother was embarking on his fashion career in Paris, Catherine lived in Cannes in the Vichy region of southern France. Although the Vichy government was dictatorial and enforced a pro-German, anti-Jewish culture and policies, Catherine had a fiercely independent streak and was devoted to a vision of France that reflected the tolerance and openness she and her brother had witnessed before the war.

In Vichy France, it was a serious offense to listen to the radio broadcasts of Gen. Charles de Gaulle, the French hero who led the Free French government in exile in Britain. Defying arrest and imprisonment, Catherine visited a radio shop in the city of Cannes to buy a battery powered radio. In the shop, she met the manager, Herve des Charbonneries, an underground resistance hero who became her lover and who recruited Catherine into the world of the French Resistance.

Catherine Dior
Their unit was called F2, and was initially set up by members of Polish intelligence service. The men who set up F2 were forced to flee France. They settled in London where British Intelligence helped them offer support and materials to F2 agents in France. By the end of the war, F2 had about 2,500 active agents in France; nearly a quarter of them were women. Catherine was given the code name “Caro” and disseminated information about German troop movements to the Allies.

During one raid by the Gestapo on F2’s Cannes headquarters, Catherine hid secret materials before spiriting them out of the office. F2’s archives note her “composure, decisiveness, and sang-froid” in the face of imminent discovery.

In some small ways, Christian lent his support to the Resistance too, by allowing Catherine and her friends in the Resistance hid in Christian’s Paris apartment; a small attic room allowed them to escape detection. In spring of 1944, “Caro’s” identity became known to the Vichy authorities. Catherine fled Cannes and stayed with her brother in Paris.

Arrest and Torture
On June 6 1944, Catherine Dior’s luck ran out. She was tracked and arrested by the French Gestapo in Paris and sent to a fearsome torture center on the Rue de la Pompe. She later described what happened next: “When I arrived in the building, I was immediately subjected to an interrogation on my activities for the Resistance and also on the identity of the chiefs under whose orders I was working. This interrogation was accompanied by brutalities: punching, kicking, slapping, etc. When the interrogation proved unsatisfactory, I was taken to the bathroom. They undressed me, bound my hands and plunged me into the (cold) water, where I remained for about three-quarters of an hour…. From time to time, they submerged me completely and immediately afterwards they questioned me… I lied to them as much as I could.” (Quoted in Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture by Justine Picardie: 2021)


The French Resistance considered it a success if their members resisted torture for 24 hours. Catherine Dior never divulged the names of her fellow F2 members, despite being brutally tortured over and over again, and kept in ice water for hours at a time. Her torture was so brutal that she was never able to have children. To this day, scratched on the wall of the Gestapos’ center are the words “We have been tortured by the French people.”

At one point, the Gestapo issued a notice that Catherine had died, then issued another statement that she was still living. Christian Dior was frantic with worry. He phoned all his contacts to try and get his sister released. He was unsuccessful and Catherine was deported to Ravensbruck concentration camp where she was subjected to forced slave labor. She was then sent to Abteroda, a subcamp of Buchenwald, where she slaved alongside other starved, emaciated women working 12 hours a day making parts for BMW.

With the US Army closing in on Buchenwald in April 1945, Nazi guards forced Catherine, along with hundreds of thousands of other concentration camp slave laborers, on a protracted death march deeper into Nazi-held territory. About a third of prisoners on these marches died, approximately a quarter of a million people. Catherine survived a forced march to Dresden, where she somehow managed to escape from the rest of the prisoners, hiding in the city’s rubble. She was eventually liberated by the Soviet Army, and possibly was subject to sexual abuse by Soviet soldiers.

Catherine and Christian Dior Reunited
Catherine made it back to France on May 28, 1945. Christian Dior had been sick with worry throughout her imprisonment. He later wrote that “I exhausted myself in vain in trying to trace her. Work – exigent, all-absorbing work – was the only drug which enabled me to forget.

Christian met Catherine at the train station in Paris, but didn’t recognize her at first because she was so ill and thin. He took her back to his apartment and presented her with her favorite meal, a cheese souffle. Catherine was so sick she wasn’t able to eat it. She stayed with her brother and was soon joined in the apartment by Herve des Charbonneries who trained her as a flower dealer and began to rebuild her life.

Catherine Dior was awarded France’s highest awards, including the Legion of Honor, the Croix de Guerre, the King’s Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom, and the Cross of the Resistance Volunteer Combat. She died in 2008 at the age of 91.

Creating the “New Look” and Honoring His Sister
Throughout the war, high fashion was an impossible luxury: only the wives and lovers of Nazis and their sympathizers were able to afford stylish or new clothing. After years of dressing in drab, old, and skimpy clothes, Dior felt that women longed to feel feminine again. He noted that throughout the war, even when they dressed in rags, Parisian women sported creative, colorful, handmade hats. Surely, he felt, it was time to design beautiful clothes.

In 1946, Dior left Lucien Lelong’s house and founded his own fashion label. He scheduled his first show for February 1947. When his models strode onto the stage wearing his new ensembles, they scandalized a war-weary population. In contrast to the tight, plain clothes worn throughout the war, Dior’s clothes were extravagantly luxurious. Even though fabric was still being rationed, Dior featured long skirts and billowy drapes which required yard after yard of expensive materials; the average ensemble required 20 yards of fabric, an unthinkable amount at the time. Carmel Snow, the fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar, declared “Monsieur Dior, you’ve given us such a New Look!” The moniker stuck.



Not everyone was enamored with Dior’s “New Look”. Britain’s King George V refused to let his daughters Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret wear Dior’s extravagant fashions, thinking it was in poor taste to display such luxury when their country was still rationing food. Hollywood stars flocked to the new style, and Dior’s full skirts and cinched waists soon became the defining fashion of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Creating Miss Dior
One of Dior’s most enduring products is named in honor of Catherine. In 1946, Dior created his first perfume, a floral medley with notes of lily of the valley, Dior’s favorite flower and a plant that he knew Catherine traded in. He named his first perfume Miss Dior as a lasting tribute to his heroic sister.

Christian Dior’s Legacy
In 1955, Dior hired a teenager named Yves Saint Laurent to assist him. Two years later, Dior told Laurent’s mother that he wanted Laurent to head Dior after he died. Laurent’s mother was confused: after all, Dior was only in his early fifties and would likely continue to head his flourishing fashion house for many years to come. Yet soon after that conversation Dior suffered a massive heart attack and died at the age of 52. After a period of confusion, Yves Saint Laurent did become the chief designer of the Dior fashion house, before being replaced by Marc Bohan, who continued to ensure that Dior was a dominant force in French high fashion.

Today, Dior is owned by the LVMH conglomerate which counts many of the world’s luxury brands in its portfolio. From 1997 to 2011, Dior’s Creative Director was the British fashion designer John Galliano. He was fired after making a series of drunken, antisemitic rants in Paris bars. In one typical incident, Galliano yelled at a woman “I love Hitler. People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be (expletive) gassed.”

Dior’s current Creative Director is Maria Grazia Chiuri, who’s made waves recently with her latest collection, featuring moire silk and draped silhouettes. Dior’s most recent ad campaign featured proud Israeli model May Tagher, a role previously held by Bella Hadid, an international model known for her pro-Palestinian stance and criticism of Israel.

A complex and contradictory man, Christian Dior created a company which continues to shape style and public perceptions of beauty and femininity. Apple TV’s series is poised to educate a new generation about him and his remarkable family.

(I am presently writing a piece on Coco Channel’s dark history, also featured in the series.)

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The latest form of Holocaust denial
The ICJ ruling on “genocide” was contemptible. The reaction was worse
MELANIE PHILLIPS
JAN 29
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International Court of Justice prepares to hear South Africa's case against Israel
The fact that Israel expected worse from the International Court of Justice’s ruling on Friday doesn’t make it anything other than shameful. Worse still, though, was the misrepresentation of the ruling by Israel’s enemies — and even by some of its defenders — to make it seem more damning than it was.

Although the court didn’t accede to South Africa’s demand that Israel should stop its military operation in Gaza, it ruled that Israel must “take all measures within its power” to prevent a genocide.

The very suggestion that this might be a possibility is outrageous and not supported by any reliable evidence to the court. Since Israel’s war in Gaza is intended to destroy Hamas and not to destroy uninvolved Palestinians — whose lives Israel has in fact gone out its way to protect — this was a malicious smear against Israel designed to harm it in the eyes of the world and thus weaken its defences against the truly genocidal Hamas. And since the court drew uncritically upon Hamas propaganda produced by the UN to support such a smear, the court was thus implicitly aiding Hamas’s onslaught.

The very same day on which the court issued its ruling, evidence arrived that the UN sources upon which the court had drawn were themselves tainted by Hamas’s genocidal agenda. No fewer than 12 officials of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) were sacked after Israeli intelligence discovered that they had been personally involved in the October 7 pogrom. The UK, US and several other western countries promptly suspended their UNWRA funding. In addition, the monitoring group UN Watch has uncovered evidence that more than 3000 UNRWA teachers had celebrated the atrocities on the Telegram channel.

Bringing a claim of genocide against Israel for defending itself against the genocide of the Jews intended by Hamas and its patron, Iran, is obscene. As defined by the Genocide Convention, genocide involves the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.

This does not apply to Israel on a number of counts. Israel has no intention to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza “as such”. It intends to kill the terrorists of Hamas, not uninvolved Palestinians — and not because Hamas are Palestinians, but because Israel is defending itself against their genocidal onslaught.

Moreover, the Palestinians are not a discrete “national, ethnical, racial or religious group” but — as many of their own leaders have acknowledged in the past — they are an indissoluble part of the broader Arab nation. They have no culture, language or religion that makes them distinct from that broader Arab nation; many if not most of their ancestors in the last century immigrated into Palestine from neighbouring states such as Egypt and Syria; their “Palestinian” identity was forged in the 1960s purely as a weapon of war to destroy Israel and to appropriate Jewish history as their own. By this standard, they aren’t covered by the Genocide Convention at all.

On the ICJ, the one judge who dissented from the entire ruling was the Ugandan jurist, Julia Sebutinde, who took the majority decision apart. She got it absolutely right. ...


Despite the UN’s recent insistence that its employees had absolutely no idea Hamas was building a network of terror tunnels bigger than the London Tube system underneath Gaza, UNRWA officials did report that Hamas was building tunnels under their buildings two times in 2017, and again in 2021 and 2022.
UN, recently combed hundreds of UNRWA textbooks and observed UNRWA schools. It found: “Teachers and schools at the UN agency that runs education and social services for Palestinians regularly call to murder Jews, and create teaching materials that glorify terrorists, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis and incite antisemitism….” READ MORE https://aish.com/un-workers-helped-hamas-attack-israel/?src=ac

https://aish.com/jewish-kingdoms-throughout-history/?src=ac
JEWISH KINGDOMS THROUGHOUT HISTORY
AVI ABRAMS
There have been several Jewish states inside and outside the Land of Israel during ancient times, some lasting for centuries, others for only a few years.
here have been several Jewish states inside and outside the Land of Israel during ancient times, some lasting for centuries, others for only a few years.

The State of Israel that was established in 1948 was not the first Jewish state in history. Looking back into the past of ancient Israel, when we think of a Jewish government or kingdom, what typically comes to mind is King David or King Solomon, centrally located in a palace based in Jerusalem. The fact is, however, there was not just one Jewish state in ancient times, but several, some of them lasting for centuries, while others lasting only a few years. While most of these Jewish kingdoms were located in the Holy Land, some were located in other parts of the world.

Let’s take a brief tour of historical Jewish kingdoms inside and outside the Land of Israel.
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The Secrets of Confident Women
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According to both the Bible and archaeological sources, the ancient Israelites first entered the promised land as a nation under the leadership of Joshua some 3,300 years ago. Although his leadership was universally acknowledged and adhered to by all the Israelite tribes, his rule was not dynastic and was not inherited by any of his children, all of whom were daughters. For several centuries, there was no central leadership among the people of Israel. The first Jewish king who united the nation into a political entity was King Saul, but because his rule was short-lived and his death tragic, we turn to his son-in-law and successor, King David.

King David
David was the first successful Jewish king who united all the tribes of Israel for a prolonged period of time, established a neutral national capital, Jerusalem, that was previously not controlled by any of the tribes, built his own palace, brought the Ark of the Covenant into the holy city, and established a royal dynasty that ruled all or part of the country for around 450 years. The full extent of the kingdom under both David and his son Solomon stretched from the Euphrates River in northern Syria down to the Red Sea in the region of Eilat. This is considered to be the first Jewish state in history that existed in what historians call the First Temple Period.

The 10 Tribes
When David’s grandson, Rechavam, took up his post as king of Israel, a rebellion broke out as a result of high taxation. This led to 10 tribes splitting away from the Davidic dynasty and establishing their own monarchy that would retain the namesake, the “Kingdom of Israel” and whose capital would be based in Samaria (modern day northern West Bank). The two southern tribes (Judah and Benjamin) who remained loyal to the Davidic dynasty based in Jerusalem became known as the Kingdom of Judah. At times, these two Jewish kingdoms cooperated with each other against external threats, and at other times they made war against one another.


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Excavations of a unique ancient installation at the Givati Parking Lot dig in the City of David, Jerusalem

By the 8th century BCE, the Kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrian Empire and in the 6th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the rising Babylonian Empire.

The Hasmoneans
After centuries of foreign rule, in the 2nd century BCE, the Hasmonean family led a popular resistance movement known as the Maccabees that sought to liberate the Land of Israel from the Seleucid-Greek Empire. The Hanukkah story took place about five years into that war, but it took another 21 years for the Maccabees to fully liberate the Land of Israel from Greek hegemony. When they accomplished that goal, the Hasmonean family became dynastic rulers for about a century, creating the third Jewish independent state in history.

Rebels
While successful and lengthy Jewish kingdoms existed during the First and Second Temple periods, during Roman-Byzantine period that followed, there were several failed attempts to restore Jewish self-governance. Although these attempts failed to produce a long-term state structure, they did manage to rule all or part of the Land of Israel for short periods of time.

One example is the rebellion of the Zealots against the Romans that started in 66 CE. Interestingly enough, one of the leaders of that rebellion who was responsible for declaring the establishment of an independent Jewish state was a man by the name of Yosef Ben-Gurion. The rebel government based in Jerusalem functioned as a state until Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE just four years later. A similar rebellion took place some 62 years after that under the leadership of Shimon Bar Kochba. His rebel government controlled the territory of the southern Judean Hills and minted coins with imagery of the Temple as a propaganda tool to garner support from the local population.

His nascent state was toppled by the Romans in 135 CE after just three years of rule. Other short lived Jewish independent political entities controlled the Land of Israel in the 4th century with the support of Emperor Julian and later in the early 7th century under the auspices of the invading Persian Empire, each of them ruling for a period of three years before being dismantled.

The Himyrate Kingdom
By this point in time, Jews had become a minority in the Land of Israel, but prominent and largescale Jewish communities existed in Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Yemen. According to legend, the king of Yemen, Abu Kariba, was laying siege to an enemy city in Arabia in the late 4th century, during which time he became dangerously ill. Two Jewish doctors from the besieged city arrived to cure him. After healing, he learned about the Jewish faith and not only embraced it for himself, but compelled a large portion of his nation to embrace it as well. Archaeological evidence from the time period seems to indicate a disappearance of references to pagan deities from public buildings and royal inscriptions and replaced by the name of a singular deity, “the God of Israel, Lord of the Jews”. The Himyarite Jewish Kingdom of Yemen lasted until it was ultimately defeated by a coalition of Christian armies in 527 CE.

The Khazars
Another famous example of a Jewish kingdom outside the Land of Israel was the case of the Khazars. During the 8th century, the Khazar Khaganate found itself sandwiched between the Christian Byzantine Empire in the west and the rapidly expanding Arab Muslims in the south, both of whom eyed the Khazar pagan kingdom for potential conversion and political gain. According to legend, the Khazar king invited representatives of the three monotheistic religions to hear their cases. During these discussions, the Khazar king became most compelled by Judaism and historical sources seem to indicate that at least the ruling elite and nobility converted to Judaism at that time.

Coins from the period of Jewish Khazaria were found with inscriptions that read “There is no God but Allah and Moses is His messenger”! This Jewish state lasted until the end of the 10th century when it was finally conquered and destroyed by invading Medieval Russians from the north. It would be another thousand years before the next Jewish state would arise back where it started, in the land promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

While most of Jewish history finds Jews as subjects and minorities in Pagan, Christian, and Muslim societies, it’s important to remember the times when our people did function as rulers in majority Jewish kingdoms both inside and outside the Land of Israel.

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https://aish.com/jewish-kingdoms-throughout-history/?src=ac

https://aish.com/the-kindertransport-what-really-happened/?src=ac
THE KINDERTRANSPORT: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
KYLIE ORA LOBELL
A new book reveals the darker side of the operation that rescued 10,000 children from Nazi Germany.

READ MORE https://aish.com/the-kindertransport-what-really-happened/?
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https://aish.com/hadas-loewensterns-ultimate-revenge/?src=ac
On December 13th, the Israeli army sent a tank to rescue several soldiers who were wounded in southern Gaza. Hamas hit the tank with an anti-tank guided missile. Master Sgt. (res.) Rabbi Elisha Loewenstern, a 38-year-old American-Israeli reservist, was killed. He left behind his wife Hadas and their six children, as well as his parents and siblings.

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Though devastated by her husband’s death, Hadas Loewenstern is determined to give her children the best life possible. In a video tribute to her late husband, Hadas said, “We plan on living such a wonderful life that the bad guys will never merit to live… This is true victory in my eyes.” Hadas’s strength and determination touched people around the world. Those who came to comfort her felt strengthened in her presence.

Exploring Her Jewish Identity
Hadas grew up in Netanya, Israel, in a warm, non-religious family. She is the ninth generation of her family to live in Israel. As a young adult, she got involved in politics and human rights activism. At age 24, while serving in the IDF, Hadas encountered a religious Jew for the first time.

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“We got into a big fight,” Hadas says. “I thought that he belonged to the past. I thought he was the kind of Jew that we don’t need anymore.”


The encounter led Hadas to ask herself some serious questions she had never considered. “What does it mean to be Jewish? What are my values as a Jew? Why do we have so many enemies? Why do they hate us so much?”

In search of answers, Hadas began exploring her Jewish heritage. She eventually left the army and spent three years studying in a post-high school institution of Torah learning for women. Impressed with the profound wisdom she discovered in Judaism and surrounded by inspiring role models, she decided, “I don’t want to just learn Torah; I want to live Torah.”



When Hadas first met her future husband, she experienced “a huge culture shock.” Not only did he grow up in a religious family, but he was American who spoke English at home and liked American snacks. Elisha had come to Israel from New Jersey at age 8, together with his parents, Tzvi and Sharon Loewenstern, and his siblings. He grew up among other English speakers in Beit Shemesh. Hadas was skeptical that they would have anything in common, but she was immediately impressed with Elisha’s interpersonal qualities.

On the first date, Elisha barely spoke. It took Hadas some time to realize that it wasn’t because he had nothing to say. Elisha was simply more interested in listening to others than speaking about himself. As Hadas learned over their 13-year-long marriage, he was an amazing listener.

As she got to know him better, their cultural differences felt insignificant. Within a few months, they were married. And with time, Hadas gained a special appreciation of Americans who move to Israel. “Now I understand how hard it is to make aliyah,” she says.

Hadas and Elisha had six children. Their oldest son is 12 and getting ready for his Bar Mitzvah. Their youngest is not even a year old.

A Good Man
Elisha was a wonderful husband and father, kind, caring, and very honest. “Such a good man,” says Hadas. “It showed in the little things. He would always let me sleep on Shabbat afternoons. After a Shabbat meal, he would always compliment the cook, but he didn’t just say, ‘the food was good.’ He would say, ‘The chicken was very good.’ Very specific. ‘Your apple crumble is the best apple crumble I’ve ever eaten.’ He wasn’t just saying it to be polite. He truly noticed and paid attention to other people and to what was going on in their lives. When he would meet someone on the street, he wouldn’t just politely ask, ‘How are you?’ He would ask about specific things, like, ‘How was your test last week?’ or ‘How is your sister who just had surgery?’ He would really pay attention, and you could feel that he really cares.”


Elisha cultivated a positive atmosphere in the home. He studied Torah with his children, conveying his own love for Judaism to them. Whenever a child reached a milestone, such as finishing a tractate of Talmud, Elisha would make him or her a special certificate of award, showering the child with compliments and words of appreciation. They would hang the certificate on the wall, for the whole family to see, and make a special party for the child.

“This was his thing, to compliment and to motivate them to learn,” says Hadas in an exclusive interview with Aish.com. “This is something I will really miss.”

Living Life to the Fullest
For Hadas, the loss of her husband is enormous, yet she manages not only to stay positive but to inspire others.

“Nobody stays in this world for more than 120 years. The question is: how did you live in the time that was allotted to you? I look at Elisha and I say to myself, he passed the test with flying colors. He lived an exemplary life. And this also gives me comfort, because I know that God was very happy with the way Elisha lived.”

Hadas has her difficult moments, but she doesn’t let them detract from her sense of purpose. “If I only focused on my grief, and focus on the fact that my husband and the father of my six children – my youngest is not even a year old – is gone – this is insane! That’s not something normal, for a 40-year-old woman to be left a widow with six kids. If I only think about how I have to go through all the Bar Mitzvahs and Bat Mitzvahs by myself, and how I have to marry off six kids, and how I will manage – if I would think just about that, I would probably become a very sad woman. But when I focus on what I can give, on what my mission is, on what God wants me to do right now, it gives me strength. This is how I cope. If I can see the purpose, then it will give me a reason to wake up tomorrow morning and make sandwiches for my six kids.”

On a Mission
How is Hadas able to see beyond her grief and her immediate difficulties? She says that when she first began learning about Judaism in depth, she understood that “Torah is all about not thinking about yourself, not putting yourself in the center, but putting God in the center, listening to Him, doing what He wants you to do.” This is the perspective that Hadas has lived with for many years.



Hadas compares life to a video game, where you go from one challenge to another, collecting prizes along the way, throughout your childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. “You meet the person you are going to marry, and you think you know why you are marrying him, and you think you know what kind of family you will have, and you think you know many things. But God has this big plan.” One day, your role in this plan is revealed to you, and “the minute it comes, you have a choice.”

Hadas quotes the words of Mordecai to Queen Esther, “If you keep silent at such a time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jewish people from a different place.” She adds, “If it won’t be you, it will be someone else. God wants to give this message to the world, and it’s really not about me. I mean, it is about me in the sense that I really worked hard my entire life to be a good person, to be someone who looks at the bright side of life – not as a cliché, but as something very hard, something to work on and to practice: looking at the bright side and seeing God’s kindness and how everything He gives you is a gift. Both Elisha and I worked very hard to become the people we became.”

Hadas explains that her husband was involved in introspection every single day. “I have so many of his notes that he wrote to himself: ‘I want to be a better person,’ ‘I want to be a friendlier neighbor,’ ‘I want to speak in a calm voice.’ Over 20 years of working on himself. It’s hard work! It’s not something that just happened. It’s something we’ve been working on our entire lives.”



Now Hadas is on a mission to share her husband’s legacy with the world. “God decided that Elisha should live in this world for 38 years. He could have died in any other way, like in a car accident, and nobody would have heard about him. I really feel that because of his special qualities and beautiful personality, God wanted the world to know about him. This is my mission. Nothing can bring Elisha back, but if I talk about him all day long then he is here. And if millions of people know who he was, then I have a little more of Elisha here in the world.”

Thank You, God
Hadas makes a conscious effort to focus on what she is grateful for rather than what she is missing. “Elisha had a heart of gold. He was the best man I knew. And I am so privileged to have been his wife for almost 13 years. I have so much to be grateful for! I know that the story ‘ended’ not the way I would have imagined, but that won’t stop me from saying thank you for what we had. Every time I want to break down and feel bitter, I say to myself, ‘Listen, you have six kids – say thank you!’ Next to my husband in the military cemetery are buried so many young men, 19 or 20 years old, who weren’t married and didn’t have children. So many people would give anything to have just one child, and I have six – say thank you! Elisha left me with so much – say thank you! And when I start saying thank you, it makes it easier, because I’m not only focusing on what I don’t have anymore; I’m focusing on what I do have, and I have a lot!”

Hadas’s mission isn’t easy, but she chooses to undertake it with her head held high. While Hadas is willing to work hard, she is also willing to accept help from family, friends, and caring community members.

Accepting Help
“I am getting so much help,” she says. “People are coming all the time and helping with laundry, dishes, grocery shopping. You need a lot of humility to get help. My husband and I helped a lot of people in our lives, and now it’s my turn to be helped. God willing, there will come a time when I’ll be the one who helps. Being humble, understanding that you really need help, and allowing people to help you and not feeling embarrassed is also something that helps me. There is no way I could do everything on my own. This is part of life – you get some, you give some. Acts of kindness take two sides – the one who gives and the one who receives. If no one was ever in need, there would be no kindness. So I tell myself that I’m still participating in acts of kindness – just on the receiving side, not on the giving side.



“And that is something women need to know – they don’t need to cope on their own. Ask for help! Even if you feel that this war is too much for you and you need mental health help, you need someone to listen to you because you’re going out of your mind – get all the help you need! Don’t be proud.”

In addition to being a mother, Hadas is a teacher and a public speaker. Even though she didn’t choose her circumstances, she chooses to use them to make a difference in the world. “I understand that I don’t understand. I understand that God has His own plan. And this is my deal with Him: You give me the strength, and I will try to make the entire Jewish world love You more, believe in You more. And this is what keeps me alive.”

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https://aish.com/the-german-jew-who-produced-a-secret-anti-nazi-magazine/?
The German Jew Who Produced a Secret Anti-Nazi Magazin
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
January 15, 2024
Hiding in an attic, Curt Bloch created anti-Nazi journals every week for nearly two years.
The man behind The Underwater Cabaret was Curt Bloch, a German Jew living in the Netherlands. Remarkably, he produced his weekly magazine as he hid in a tiny attic. Righteous Gentiles kept him and other Jews alive, brought Curt the materials he needed to produce his weekly journal, and disseminated it.
Fleeing Germany for the Netherlands
When Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Curt Bloch was a 24-year-old legal clerk in the western German city of Dortmund. Even before Hitler’s election, Dortmund was a hotbed of anti-Jewish hatred. Home to a little over 4,000 Jews (out of over half a million residents), Dortmund soon increased its anti-Jewish persecution after Hitler’s rise to power. Local authorities arrested hundreds of Jews, the city stopped doing business with Jews and ordinary shoppers shunned Jewish stores. Volunteers stood in front of Jewish-owned businesses making sure that no customers entered. Local authorities affixed posters on the walls of buildings accusing Jews of being “traitors, murderers, warmongers and defilers of women.”
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Battalions of Nazi street fighters salute Hitler during an SA parade through Dortmund. Germany, 1933
After a co-worker threatened to kill him, Curt knew it was time to leave. He gave up his legal career and moved to Amsterdam, intending to eventually leave Europe when he could. Unable to practice law, Curt took a job with a Persian rug salesman and plotted his escape, but Germany’s invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940 trapped him in Nazi Europe once again. Within months, all Jews in the country had to register with the new Germany authorities; Curt was one of 25,000 Jewish refugees from Germany who’d fled to the Netherlands hoping (and failing) to find safety there.
Resistance and Murder in The Netherlands
The Nazis’ antisemitic decrees were met with some resistance from ordinary Dutch people. After Nazis deported hundreds of Dutch Jews who brawled with Nazi officials, workers across the Netherlands went on strike to protest this terrible decree. The nationwide strikes lasted for three days before Nazis succeeded in breaking them up. When Dutch Jews were ordered to wear a yellow Jewish star on their clothing in April 1942, some Dutch people showed solidarity with their Jewish neighbors by wearing yellow stars with the names “Catholic” or “Aryan” them. For a while, some Dutch people made a point of treating yellow star-wearing Jews with particular kindness, speaking with them warmly in public settings or offering their seats to Jews on public transportation. Nazi authorities, including collaborating Dutch officials, responded forcefully, crushing dissent and enforcing anti-Jewish decrees.
The Netherlands started deporting Jews in 1942; by 1943 nearly all Dutch Jews – about 107,000 had been sent to concentration and death camps. Only 5,000 survived. In 1943, Dutch collaborators formed groups that searched for Jews hiding in homes and in the countryside. Of approximately 25,000 Dutch Jews who hid from the Nazis, about a third were discovered and sent to Nazi death camps.

Most Jews had to find their own hiding spots, but some incredibly brave non-Jewish Dutch people rose up to help as well. As Yad Vashem describes: “A few Dutch rescue groups of students and or church circles came into being spontaneously and sporadically and helped find shelter for Jews, especially children.” Yad Vashem has recognized 5,982 Righteous Among the Nations in the Netherlands, those who risked their lives during the Holocaust in order to save Jewish lives. That number dwarfs those in often larger neighboring countries such as Belgium (1,787), Germany (651), France (4,206), or Denmark (22).

One of those Righteous Among the Nations heroes was a Dutch Reformed Church priest named Leendert Overduin in the Dutch city of Enschede. Along with about 50 fellow resistance members, Leendert Overduin formed an organization called the Group Overduin which found local families willing to shelter Jews. They saved the lives of a thousand Jews.

Jews in Westerbork boarding the deportation train to Auschwitz (Yad Vashem)
Curt Bloch’s company transferred him to Enschede to escape anti-Jewish persecution in Amsterdam and The Hague. There, Curt began to work with the local Jewish council desperately trying to find ways to help Jews escape. He met members of the Group Overduin, who offered to help Curt “disappear”. A local couple, Bertus and Aleida Menneken, agreed to hide Curt, along with two other Jews, in their modest two-story brick house on Plataanstraat 15 in the western part of Enschede. It was very risky: their neighbors would have noticed any sign that the couple was shielding Jews.
Curt Block
In August 1943, Curt said goodbye to an ordinary existence in which he could walk around, go outside, or breathe fresh air. He crammed into a tiny crawl space under the Menneken’s roof, which he shared with 44-year-old Bruno Lowenberg and a 22-year-old woman named Karola Wolf, known as Ola. The small room had one tiny window. It was their home for the next two years. The Mennekens, and a radio, would be their only contact with the outside world.
Producing the “Underwater Cabaret”
Curt Bloch refused to be silenced even in his claustrophobic hiding place. He wrote copious verse, much of it dedicated to Ola, and songs which made fun of Nazis. The Mennekens brought him paper, glue, pens, and newspapers, and soon Curt was using these to fashion his own weekly publication, The Underwater Cabaret. The name was a play on The Sunday Afternoon Cabaret, a German-language show that played on Dutch radio every week. Curt’s magazine parodied Nazis, calling them “murderers and liars” and predicting their eventual defeat, an audacious move at a time when opposing Nazi rule could mean imprisonment, torture, and death. Each cover featured original artwork, usually in collage form using pictures from magazines the Mennekens brought him.
The Underwater Cabaret often mocked Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ chief propagandist. A typical poem is this poem titled The Way to Truth, about Goebbels:
If he writes straight, read it crooked.
If he writes crooked, read it straight.
Yes, just turn his writings around.
In all his useful words, harm is found.

(Translated by Gerard Groeneveld, author of The Underwater Cabaret: The Satirical Resistance of Curt Bloch, 2023)

Curt produced an issue every week, never missing a week. He shared his magazine with Bruno, Ola, the Mennekens, and others. Writer Gerard Groenveld, who researched Curt, believes that up to 30 resistance members and Jews in hiding read each copy before returning it to Curt. Eventually, he produced 95 weekly issues.

His final issue was produced in April 1945, after he was liberated by Allied soldiers. That magazine’s title was “Above Water” and sported a collage of two figures climbing out of a hiding place. In that final issue, Curt included his only English language poem, which looked forward to the liberation of Berlin by the Soviet army, which was fast closing in on the German capital, and Hitler’s eventual comeuppance:
At Berlin with our Russian friends,
The German Nightingale,
Herr Hitler, doesn’t sing today
He’s feeling, after some delay
A tie around his neck.
Cover of the final issue
A Magazine Forgotten and Rediscovered
After the war, Curt found that he was the only member of his family who was still alive. He married another Holocaust survivor, Ruth Kan, who’d been in Auschwitz. They moved to New York, had two children, and eventually built up a business as antiques dealers. Curt seldom talked about his wartime experiences; his daughter Simone remembers him sometimes reading from and showing dinner guests his precious collection of The Underwater Cabaret editions, which he always kept on his bookshelf.

Curt died in 1975 at the age of 67. For years his collection of magazines sat unread until his granddaughter Lucy began to learn German and did research about her grandfather in Germany. As she read her grandfather’s remarkable collection of magazines, she realized it was a significant history of the Holocaust. Lucy and her mother Simone began showing it to historians and spreading awareness of this special publication.


The Underwater Cabaret is finally getting the attention it deserves. In February 2024, the Judisches Museum Berlin will feature the collection in a special exhibition which takes its title from a line of one of Curt’s poems: “My Verses are Like Dynamite.” “Any time that an almost completely unknown work of this caliber comes to the fore, it’s very significant,” explains Aubrey Pomerance, the exhibit’s curator. “The overwhelming majority of writings that were created in hiding were destroyed. If they weren’t, they’ve come to the public attention before now. So, it’s tremendously exciting.”

Curt Bloch’s brilliant works buoyed his spirits and the moods of his fellow hidden Jews every week for years. His creativity and refusal to be cowed or silenced are an inspiration.

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HEZBOLLAH: 12 FACTS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW
DR. YVETTE ALT MILLER
https://aish.com/hezbollah-12-facts-everyone-should-know/?src=ac
Key facts to help you understand events today.

Since October 7, Hezbollah has launched over 1000 rockets into Israel from its bases in southern Lebanon. Here are 12 facts about Hezbollah that everyone needs to know.

1. Hezbollah was the brainchild of Iranian religious leaders.
Hezbollah was the brainchild of two Iranian clerics and close friends: Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini and Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur. Khomeini would go on to lead the Iranian Revolution of 1979, after which he became the Supreme Leader, or Ayatollah, of Iran, with Mohtashamipur as his loyal lieutenant (and later Iran’s Minister of the Interior).

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Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur
Since soon after its founding in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) maintained military training camps in Lebanon. In the early 1970s, Mohtashamipur forged links between the troops he and Khomeini were raising and PLO fighters, allowing Iranians to train alongside the PLO. This required a great degree of diplomacy since PLO leaders adhere to the Sunni branch of Islam, while Iranians are mostly from the Shi’ite branch of Islam. Normally bitter enemies, Mohtashamipur’s fighters and the PLO found a common enemy which united them: Israel.

2. Hezbollah was designed as a tool of Iranian domination.
From the beginning, Hezbollah’s founders viewed it as a way to extend Iranian influence into its southern neighbor Lebanon, and eventually to attack Israel.


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Journalist Ronen Bergman notes “At the training bases, PLO experts taught young men the arts of sabotage, intelligence operations, and terror tactics. For (PLO leader Yassir) Arafat, having Khomeini’s men train at his bases was a way to acquire support for the Palestinian cause and to make himself into an international figure. But for Khomeini and Mohtashamipur, it was part of a long, focused strategy: to eventually extend the Islamic revolution they were fomenting in Iran to Lebanon, a small country in the heart of the Middle East, with a large population of impoverished Shiites ripe for incitement. Khomeini wanted to stake out ‘a forward strategic position that brought us close to Jerusalem’ - Lebanon’s border with Israel.” (Quoted in Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman: 2018)

Hezbollah continues to be funded primarily by Iran, and to take most of its orders from Iran’s leaders. It is also supported by Syrian leader Bashar al Assad, who provides funding and fighters to the group. In the complicated world of Lebanese politics, Hezbollah is a powerful voice for Syria’s involvement in Lebanese governance and life.

3. Hezbollah means “Party of God”.
Hezbollah formed during Lebanon’s brutal civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990. Before its civil war, Lebanon’s governance was carefully divided between three ethnic groups: Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Shiite Muslims. In order to gain allegiance from Shiites and others, Iranian clerics set up a network of Islamist schools and charities, establishing what some observers called a “state within a state”. It was particularly active in the south of Lebanon, where there is a large Shiite population. Hezbollah was formally established in 1982, though much of its infrastructure had been in place for years.

4. Hezbollah seized power after the PLO left Lebanon.
The late 1970s was a violent time along Israel’s northern border as the PLO staged a series of audacious raids into Israel. On the morning of March 11, 1978, PLO terrorists docked a boat they’d piloted from Lebanon along Israel’s coast. The terrorists shot a passerby whom they asked for directions, then killed the occupants of a taxi and used their car to drive along Israel’s coastal road. They hijacked two public buses, amassing 70 hostages, and shot at and lobbed grenades at cars on the highway. By the end of the day, 38 civilians were dead and 71 wounded.



The following year, the PLO again invaded Israel from Lebanon, landing a boat in the Israeli city of Nahariya. After shooting a police officer, terrorists entered an apartment building and kidnapped and later killed a young father named Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter Einat. Hiding from the terrorists, Danny’s wife Smadar hid with the couple’s two-year-old daughter Yael in a storage cabinet - where Smadar accidentally smothered Yael to death trying to quiet her whimpering cries lest the terrorists hear them.

After these and other attacks, Israel launched an attack on PLO bases in southern Lebanon in 1982, eventually driving the PLO out of Lebanon. (It quickly re-established its headquarters in Tunisia.) With a power vacuum in southern Lebanon, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini sent 1,500 soldiers to the region in 1982 to train local Hezbollah fighters and organize the group’s military headquarters and soldiers.

At first, Hezbollah’s stated aim was to drive Israeli soldiers out of Israel's self-declared buffer zone along Lebanon’s border with Israel. After Israel withdrew all of its troops from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah continued to build up its army and attack Israel.

5. Hezbollah soon established itself as one of the world’s most deadly terror organizations.
The year after its formation, Hezbollah began attacking not only Israeli but also American targets. On April 18, 1983, Hezbollah terrorists attacked the US Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people. Six months later, on October 23, 1983, a Hezbollah suicide bomber detonated a massive bomb outside US military barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American servicemen and women. Moments later, another Hezbollah bomber targeted a French military base, killing 58 French paratroopers.

Rescuers probe the wreckage of the U.S. Marine barracks near the Beirut airport, a day after a suicide truck bombing

Other Hezbollah attacks include: the 1984 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut (63 killed); a 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight from Egypt to the United States (1 American soldier killed); the bombing of Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 (29 killed, 242 injured) and the massive bomb that destroyed the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires two years later, in 1994 (85 killed, over 300 injured); the 2007 attack on a US military base in Iraq (killing 5 soldiers); and an attack on a tour bus carrying Israelis in Bulgaria in 2012 (killing 6 and injuring 32).

The United States declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization in 1997. Canada did the same in 2002. The EU declared Hezbollah’s “military wing” a terrorist group in 2012.

6. Hezbollah sits in Lebanon’s Parliament.
Under the terms of the ceasefire of Lebanon’s civil war, Hezbollah was the only militia group allowed to keep its weapons. Since then, Hezbollah has maintained both a massive standing army, as well as operated a Lebanese political party.

Hezbollah first ran for - and won seats in - Lebanon’s parliament in 1992. Today, it holds 13 seats in Lebanon’s 128-seat parliament. In addition to its political activities, Hezbollah provides a vast array of social services, replacing the Lebanese state in some areas of the country, and buying public support with its largess.

7. Hezbollah is worth billions of dollars and much of it comes from criminal enterprises.
In a 2021 report, the US State Department noted “Iran continues to provide Hizballah with most of its funding, training, weapons, and explosives, as well as political, diplomatic, monetary, and organizational aid.” The State Department estimates that Iran gives Hezbollah “hundreds of millions of dollars annually”.

That’s only part of Hezbollah’s extensive funding network. Syria’s leader Bashar al Assad gives Hezbollah extensive support, as do Shiite Muslims around the world. Hezbollah is funded by “profits from legal and illegal businesses. These include smuggling contraband goods, passport falsification, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and credit card, immigration, and bank fraud.”

8. Hezbollah has built up a massive army.


Hezbollah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, boasts that Hezbollah has an army of 100,000 soldiers. (That number dwarfs the size of Lebanon’s standing army.) Experts estimate that Hezbollah maintains an arsenal of 130,000 rockets, including precision missiles, armed drones, and anti-tank, anti-aircraft, and anti-ship missiles. Hezbollah claims they have the capability to send rockets to all parts of Israel.

9. Hezbollah is dedicated to Israel’s destruction.
Hezbollah is an intensely hostile enemy on Israel’s northern border. It has sent thousands of rockets into Israel through the years, and has attempted ground invasions of the Jewish state. In September 2006, Hezbollah fighters crossed into Israel and attacked Israeli forces, killing eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two. That sparked a limited war, which saw Hezbollah send over 3,000 rockets into Israel, killing over 130 people.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has sent arms, including bombs, guns, and anti-tank missiles to terrorist groups bedeviling Israel, including the Palestinian Authority, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. In June 2002, Nasrallah praised suicide bombings inside Israel for “creating a deterrence and equalizing fear.”

In 2019, Hezbollah fired antitank missiles at an Israeli army base near the Lebanon border. In 2020, Hezbollah attacked an Israeli military base in the Israeli town of Menara. The following year, Hezbollah once again sent a volley of missiles into Israel. Since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, Hezbollah has been attacking Israel daily, sending thousands of missiles into Israel.

10. Hezbollah maintains close ties with Hamas.
Hezbollah officials have boasted of their close ties with Hamas, and have said they were in contact with Hamas organizers of the massive October 7 attack which saw 1,200 Israeli murdered and about 240 taken hostage.



Reuters explains that “Hezbollah has been a source of inspiration and support for other Iranian-backed groups across the Middle East. It has trained armed groups in Iraq and taken part in fighting there.” Iran maintains proxy armies in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Iraq (various groups, including Kata’ib Hizballah), Yemen (Houthis), and Gaza and the West Bank (Hamas).

11. Hezbollah has a special unit dedicated to invading Israel.
Hezbollah maintains a special 2,500-man unit called Radwan force that is dedicated to plotting against the Jewish State. Radwan fighters wear all black - even blacked out goggles - and are highly trained and motivated to invade Israel and wreak mayhem, much as Hamas did in Israel’s south on October 7. Radwan has even built a huge network of tunnels from Lebanon into Israel; the Israeli Army monitors them and blocks them when they detect them.



A month before Hamas’ attack, Radwan forces staged their own practice, “simulating attacking Israeli communities, capturing prisoners and shooting Israeli symbols, including the Star of David. With motorcycles, unmanned aerial vessels, well-stocked weaponry… You name it, they displayed it,” explained Orna Mizrachi, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. “The unit’s aim is to infiltrate Israel and conquer swaths of the Galilee.”

On January 7, 2024, Israel assassinated Wissam Hassan al-Tawil, the deputy head of a unit inside Radwan’s forces. According to Hezbollah, he had “led several operations targeting Israeli military sites and deployments near the border since Oct. 7.”

12. Hezbollah is popular around the world.
Inside Lebanon, Hezbollah is widely popular. Roughly a third of Lebanese people want Hezbollah to declare war on Israel. (80% of people in Lebanon support Hamas’ October 7 attack.)

In the West, Hezbollah has plenty of supporters as well. Former British Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn invited Hezbollah (and Hamas) representatives to Britain’s Parliament and once called them his “friends”. (He has recently apologized for doing so.) In London, anti-Israel marches have featured Hezbollah flags and chants of “We are all Hezbollah”.

In the days and weeks to come, it is likely that we’ll be hearing more about this terror group. If the recent past is any guide, much of what we will read on social media and in the news will be inaccurate. It’s crucial we each educate ourselves about Hezbollah’s bloody history and speak out about this brutal terror organization.

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https://aish.com/finding-love-in-auschwitz/?src=ac

by Kylie Ora Lobell
January 14, 2024
8 min read
Finding Love in Auschwitz

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by Kylie Ora Lobell
January 14, 2024
8 min read

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A new book uncovers the almost-lost story of hope during the darkest of times.

David Wisnia, a clean-shaven, 17-year-old, stood in the building the SS called the Sauna, where he disinfected the clothing of new arrivals. It was the only warm place in the entire camp. It was winter in Poland, and David’s thin, striped uniform was not enough to shield him from the brutal temperatures outside.

Across the room, he saw a girl. She was petite, at 4 feet, 11 inches, with thick chestnut colored hair and deep-set brown eyes. She moved with confidence and self-assurance that was rare in these parts.

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David felt a fluttering in his stomach. She held her glance on him, and he knew: she liked him, too.

The girl, Zippi Spitzer, didn’t know that love was possible in this place. They were surrounded by darkness – two Jews rounded up and sent to Birkenau, the deadliest camp in Auschwitz, the place where hope dies.

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But now it was coming back to life.

“Lovers in Auschwitz: A True Story”

This is the beginning of “Lovers in Auschwitz: A True Story” (Little, Brown), a new book by author Keren Blankfeld, the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors. The author, who teaches at Columbia Journalism School, wrote a piece called, “Lovers in Auschwitz, Reunited 72 Years Later” for the New York Times in 2019; that piece went viral, and now, the full story is in book form.

David Wisnia

The new book details the true story of David Wisnia and Zippi Spitzer, two young people who met in Auschwitz and were instantly enamored when they saw each other at the sauna, one of the worksites at the camp.

The two embarked on a secret romance, passing each other notes and arranging private meetings with one another. Miraculously, both of them survived, but they were separated after the camp was liberated.

At Zippi’s deathbed, they were finally reunited 72 years later. There, David asked Zippi: Did you save my life?

Uncovering the True Story
Blankfeld first met David researching refugees who’d arrived in the U.S. around World War II in unusual circumstances. She sat down to interview him and learned his fascinating story. The young man survived a death march and Auschwitz, where he sang for the Nazis as part of his job, and he was adopted by an American military unit.

David and Zippi reunited after 72 years.

“He joined the unit toward the end of the war, was given an American uniform and took on an informal role as an interpreter,” the author said. “He’d transformed from being a Nazi prisoner to a soldier interrogating Nazis.”

As Blankfeld was wrapping up the interview with David, he casually mentioned that he had a girlfriend in Auschwitz.

“A girlfriend in Auschwitz? I was stunned,” she said. “How was this possible? I sat back down as he recalled the days when he fell in love with Zippi, a fellow Auschwitz prisoner, an extraordinary woman.”


Zippi had been the only woman stationed in the prisoner intake area, where she met David. While David was a Polish Jew from the Warsaw Ghetto, Zippi was a Jew from Slovakia. She was a great talker and had made connections with all sorts of prisoners and guards as her plan to survive the tragic situation. Her job was to paint the stripes on the women’s uniforms, and eventually, she worked her way up to being an assistant and graphic designer for those in charge of the women’s camp.

She used her position of power to help others, including hiring unhealthy prisoners to work in her office so she could save them, and making copies of camp diagrams and rosters in secret to hopefully utilize them to persecute the Nazis after the war was over. She was unofficially a member of the underground resistance, but she would try to keep a distance so as not to be caught.

Zippi had many brushes with death. One time, she accidentally stumbled upon Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” who was making a selection and choosing his next victims. Blankfeld writes:

“Zippi saw Mengele before he noticed her. She came to a halt and quickly averted her gaze. By the time he spotted her, she had already started to inch away.

Hey, you! he called. Where are you going?

Zippi looked straight ahead, continuing to exit the room. She was well-dressed; she wasn’t a common prisoner, she told herself. Surely he saw that; surely she’d be safe. But she also knew that this was someone who casually castrated boys and drugged children, leaving them to writhe in pain until their deaths. Zippi told herself to remain calm. No matter what, she couldn’t betray her fear.

Hey! Mengele called again.

She had to get out of there. As she hastened away, she heard someone tell Mengele that she worked at the camp office. Mengele had been running; now, he gave up the chase. Once again, she’d survived by a slender thread of chance.”

In between cheating death, Zippi and David would pass each other notes and meet once a month in secret. David, who was captivated by Zippi, said he felt special: “She chose me,” he told Blankfeld.

At these meetings, which were guarded by fellow prisoners, they didn’t talk very much, but they did give each other a glimpse into their life before the camp. David’s father loved the opera, and this sparked a love of singing in David. Everyone in David’s family died in the Warsaw Ghetto. Zippi played the mandolin and piano and loved music, just like David. She only had one surviving family member, a brother.


David and Zippi’s relationship lasted several months; at their last meeting, they knew that death might be imminent. It was 1944, more than two years since they were first sent to Auschwitz. The Nazis were sending the last of the prisoners on death marches and getting rid of all the evidence of their crimes. David and Zippi survived much longer than most prisoners but they felt the end was near.

They promised to meet up in Warsaw once the war was over, just in case they made it out.

Lost Time and Reuniting
David was sent to Dachau concentration camp where he was put on a death march. He saw a hand shovel, used it to knock out a Nazi guard, and ran to hide in a barn. The next day, the Americans liberated him.

He started working for the Army and was determined to go to America to sing opera. The dream of meeting Zippi in Warsaw, who also evaded a death march, faded away. Still, they had near encounters, as Zippi was placed in Feldafing, the first all-Jewish displaced persons camp, and David was delivering supplies to the camp.

Helen Spitzer, from Mr. Wisnia’s copy of the book of interviews with the woman he knew as Zippi.

Zippi ended up marrying a man she met at the camp and settled in New York. She would talk about her experience with historians over the years but never mentioned David. David also married and had four children and six grandchildren. Sporadically, he tried to make contact with Zippi, but it wasn’t until she was on her deathbed that they reunited.

He drove from Levittown, Pennsylvania, where he lived and worked as a cantor, to Manhattan, to see her. They talked for two hours, and even though Zippi was going blind and deaf and suffering from illness, she lit up when she saw David. He finally had the chance to ask her: Did you save me?

“I saved you five times from bad shipment,” she told him, including removing his name from the crematorium list.

Then, she told him, “I was waiting for you.” She had gone to Warsaw to see David, but he never came. She told him she loved him; he told her the same. He sang a song, a Hungarian tune she had taught to him in Auschwitz, and held her hand. Then, the meeting ended.


She died at age 100 in 2018, and David died in 2021 at the age of 94.

Blankfeld has a message of hope for readers. “David and Zippi’s story is also a lesson in human resilience and optimism,” she said. “Even in the midst of terror, we have the capability to find love, to develop friendships, and to look for the best in the world. We hold the power to create art, to express love and kindness. It’s important to remain optimistic about the future and never give up hope.”

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https://aish.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-genocide-case-against-israel/?src=ac
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE GENOCIDE CASE AGAINST ISRAEL
DR. YVETTE ALT MILLER
Israel stands accused of genocide in the International Court of Justice. The accusation is baseless and wholly unfounded.
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
January 14, 2024
11 min read
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Israel stands accused of genocide in the International Court of Justice. The accusation is baseless and wholly unfounded.

Israel is currently defending itself from accusations of genocide in the International Court of Justice. With much of the world uninformed about the many intricate details of the accusations, many are left with the general impression that Israel somehow must be guilty of the odious charges leveled against it. It’s a classic case of the question, “When did you stop beating your wife?” It is an absurd situation to find the victim of attempted genocide being accused of this heinous of all crimes.

Here are the answers to 5 common questions about the current trial, and advice for staying up to date with latest developments.

1. What is the International Court of Justice?
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The International Court of Justice (ICJ), sometimes known as the World Court, is the United Nations’ supreme court. It dates to 1945, when the UN was established and is located in the coastal Dutch city The Hague. The ICJ has many functions, including hearing disputes between states.

Jurisdiction

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The ICJ doesn’t rule on individual behavior or criminality: that is the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is also based in The Hague. Unlike the ICJ, the ICC only has jurisdiction over people living in countries which have signed a treaty giving the ICC power to try its citizens. Fearing politically motivated prosecutions, Israel has chosen not to be a signatory to the ICC. (Lack of jurisdiction hasn’t stopped Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, Djibouti, and South Africa asking the ICC to begin investigating Israel for potential crimes.)


The ICJ has jurisdiction over Israel because Israel, like nearly every country around the world, signed the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (explained in more detail below). It’s this convention that the ICJ is now charged with deciding whether or not Israel violated.

Who are the Judges?

There are 15 ICJ judges who are elected by a majority of all UN members for nine-year terms. The current judges hail from Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Jamaica, Japan, Lebanon, Morocco, Russia, Slovakia, Somalia, Uganda, and the USA. Four of the judges (from Jamaica, Morocco, Russia, and the USA) are slated to end their terms in February 2024, in the midst of Israel’s trial, and will be replaced by new judges from Mexico, Romania, South Africa, and the USA.

2. Why is South Africa bringing this case against Israel?
Support for Hamas

South African President Cyrial Ramaphosa, suffering from dismal poll numbers, is seizing on this case as a way to distract South Africans from the country’s internal problems. “The war in Gaza is an opportunity to turn (Ramaphosa’s low approval rating) around,” notes The Economist. It quotes South African analyst Ronak Gopaldas: “The ANC (Ramaphosa’s party) is trying to elevate this into an election issue, to potentially try and distract from some of the core economic issues.”

Hamas is very popular in South Africa. When South Africa officially marked the 10th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s death on December 5, 2023, a Hamas delegation was given pride of place in the official parade; Hamas official Bassem Naim laid a wreath at the official statue honoring Mandela along with South Africa’s Social-Development Minister, Lindiwe Zulu. This alliance goes back decades, when the African National Congress (ANC), the current governing party, identified with the PLO, Hamas, and other violent anti-Israel groups as a model of political insurgency.

Protesters wave flags and pictures of the hostages kidnapped during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, outside the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday, Jan. 12, 2024.

Immediately after Hamas’ brutal October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which saw 1,200 people tortured and killed, thousands injured, and approximately 240 people taken hostage, South Africa’s Foreign Minister, Naledi Pandor, telephoned Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and expressed her support for the terrorist group. She later traveled to Tehran, where she met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Hamas’ sponsor. In November 2023, South Africa recalled its Ambassador and all diplomatic staff from its embassy in Israel, and demanded that Israel shut down its embassy in Pretoria as well.

Moral Bankruptcy

South Africa’s self-professed concern with genocide rings hollow in light of its government’s recent actions. On January 4, President Ramaphosa hosted a state visit with one of the world’s most notorious war criminals who’s been accused of genocide: Sudanese warlord Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, whole fearsome Arab-led Janjaweed militia is killing thousands of Black Africans with impunity. Exactly one week later, on January 11, South Africa filed an official case with the ICJ accusing Israel of genocide.

Precedent

It’s notable that the case against Israel is being brought by South Africa, a nation over 5,000 miles away from the Middle East with seemingly few ties to the region, besides an ardent support for Israel’s most violent enemies.

In 2022, the ICJ accepted a claim from the African nation of Gambia to investigate charges of genocide in Myanmar, a country with which Gambia has few ties. The court accepted this case, setting the precedent that any nation that is a signatory to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide can bring charges against any other signatory.

3. What is South Africa charging?
The South African legal team is being led by John Dugard, a Trustee of the British activist group Law4Palestine, which seeks to prosecute Israel in courts around the world. He is charging that Israel has violated the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The term genocide was coined in 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish jurist who’d managed to escape from Poland to the United States.

By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word…is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and Latin cide (Killing)...It is intended…to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group. (Quoted in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe by Raphael Lemkin: 1944.)

Four years later, an international Convention on Genocide was drafted, signed by most nations in the world, which Israel is now accused of violating. The Convention is broad. It defines genocide as: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

South Africa contends that Israel has violated the terms of the 1948 Convention by killing large numbers of people, particularly children; evacuating Gazans from their homes; imposing blockades on food, water and medicine; and preventing Gazan births by forcing hospitals in Gaza to close. The facts that Hamas embeds itself in civilian populations in Gaza; uses hospitals, schools, mosques, and apartment buildings as military centers; and that Israel instructed civilians to flee from war zones in northern Gaza for their own safety went unsaid.

In its initial three-hour presentation, South African lawyers charged Israel with systematically killing and maiming civilians with genocidal intent. Lawyer Adila Hassim asserted that Israel’s “first genocidal act is mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza,” adding that Israel spared nobody, including newborn babies in its murderous killing sprees. She contended that Israel also engaged in genocidal behavior by inflicting “serious bodily or mental harm” on Gazans by fighting Hamas.

A second South African lawyer, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, described inflammatory comments made by Israeli leaders speaking about Hamas. He pointed especially to words said by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to soldiers about to enter Gaza to locate Hamas members to “remember what Amalek has done to you” (Deuteronomy 25:17), referring to an ancient tribe which tried to wipe out the people of Israel and whom the Israelites were commanded to destroy. “This refers to the biblical command by God to Saul for the retaliatory destruction of an entire group of people,” Ngcukaitobi argued.

Shielding Hamas

South Africa has also emphasized that Hamas is not a signatory to the 1948 Convention, and so cannot be tried for genocide, circumventing efforts to bring the terrorist group which is still attacking Israel to justice.

Other Nations Joining the Case

Since filing its case, South Africa has been joined by other countries and organizations, including Bolivia, Columbia, Brazil, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Belgium's Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter has encouraged Belgium to formally support South Africa’s case.

4. What is Israel’s Defense?
Israel’s legal team responded to South Africa’s accusations on Friday, January 12, pointing out that Israel is engaged in the legitimate military goal of rooting out Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that has vowed to repeat October 7-style attacks “again and again”, which continues to fire deadly rockets at Israeli civilian populations, continues to hold over 130 Israelis captive in Gaza, and embeds itself in population centers, turning all of Gazans into human shields. As it fights this relentless foe, Israeli troops, far from trying to maximize civilian casualties or commit genocide, are risking troops’ lives by engaging in surgical strike and careful urban warfare, trying to eliminate Hamas while minimizing civilian casualties.

Israeli lawyer Dr. Tal Becker dismissed South Africa’s case as “a grossly distorted story” with “curated” accusations. “If there were acts of genocide, they have been perpetrated against Israel,” he noted, as Israel hunts for Hamas fighters who are hiding in a civilian population while continuing to lob missiles at Israel and promise to carry out future mass attacks. Israel has a right to defend itself, he asserted: “The appalling suffering of civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, is first and foremost the result of Hamas strategy.”

Dr. Becker continued: “If the claim of the applicant is that Israel must be denied the ability to defend citizens, the absurd upshot is that under guise of genocide claims this court is trying to stop Israel defending its civilians against an organization which pursues a genocidal agenda against them.” He emphasized that Israel is dedicated to following international agreements on the rules of war, “but it does so in the face of Hamas’ utter contempt for the law.”

Speaking for Israel’s team, another lawyer, Prof. Malcolm Shaw, asserted that South Africa’s claim seemed to preclude any and all military action. “Not every conflict is genocidal,” he argued. “The crime of genocide in international law and under the Genocide Convention is a uniquely malicious manifestation and stands alone among violations of international law as a zenith of evil, the crime of crimes, ultimate in wickedness.”

The Israeli team argued that individual inflammatory statements, such as Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant calling Hamas attackers “human animals” in announcing a blockade on goods entering Gaza two days after the October 7 attack, or the calls of some individual Israeli politicians to reestablish Israeli settlements in Gaza (Israel ordered all Jews to leave Gaza - even removing Jewish graves - in 2005) do not represent an official Israeli policy of dehumanization and genocide.

United States’ National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called the genocide allegations “unfounded,” saying, “That’s not a word that ought to be thrown around lightly, and we certainly don’t believe that it applies here.”

US State Department spokesman Matt Miller said, “It is those who are violently attacking Israel who continue to openly call for the annihilation of Israel and the mass murder of Jews…

Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas’s terrorist acts — acts that Hamas has vowed to repeat again and again until Israel is completely destroyed.”

5. What happens next?
South Africa and Israel have presented their arguments. South Africa has requested that the ICJ impose emergency measures to stop Israel’s military engagement with Hamas. The Court does have this ability - in practice, it could conceivably instruct the UN to intervene to stop Israel from fighting - but in practice the Court will take many years to issue a ruling.

Recognizing this, South Africa has requested Provisional Measures, also called Emergency Measures, ordering Israel to stop all military activity in Gaza. A ruling on this could come within a few weeks. If the ICJ issues these Measures, Israel would have no right to appeal. The ICJ has no way of enforcing Provisional Measures, but violating them would weaken Israel’s standing in the international community.

In the coming weeks, we all will hear more about this outrageous, baseless case. It’s imperative to stay informed so that you can speak out when you hear Israel being slandered.

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https://aish.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-genocide-case-against-israel/?src=ac

Dear Elaine

You recently signed the petition “Delay the ban on rehoming and owning XL Bully dogs for 18 months”:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/650474

The Petitions Committee (the group of MPs who oversee the petitions system) has considered the Government’s response to this petition. They felt that the response explains the Government’s policy on banning XL Bully type dogs, but does not respond directly to the request of the petition, for the Government to delay the ban on rehoming and owning XL Bully dogs for 18 months and have therefore asked the Government to provide a revised response.

When the Committee receives a revised response from the Government, we will publish this and share it with you.

Thanks,
The Petitions team
UK Government and Parliament