ISRAEL HISTORY

https://aish.com/what-it-means-to-be-a-jew-in-america-today/?src=ac
What It Means to Be a Jew in America Today
by Debbie Gutfreund
October 31, 2023
5 min read
It’s knowing the world will never be the same again and wondering how we will ever go back to any kind of normalcy.
Being a Jew in America today is watching in horror as videos are posted of demonstrations for Hamas marching on your college campus. It’s contacting the head of your alumni association and the university president to protest allowing these groups on campus, only t
It’s being a Jewish student at an Ivy League university who went home last week because he was terrified to walk to class.
Aish
Two Brothers Mobilized in the Aftermath of the War to Provide Food to Thousands of Israelis
READ MORE
It’s being locked in a university library because there is a pro-Palestinian group surrounding the building and police are “afraid” to interfere.
It’s signing petitions and resigning from executive boards only to have the demonstrations continue.
SUBSCRIBE
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...
Enter your email address
GET OUR EMAILS
It’s sitting in a staff meeting and having a colleague suggest a pro-Palestinian support group for a client. It’s biting your lip to keep yourself from saying something unprofessional in your meeting because you are beyond furious and losing your composure.


It’s having to look in the eyes of the people in your office who are protesting donating money to help Israel because it might cause a controversy. It’s having to go to the office the next day and pretend nothing happened.

It’s having dozens of police cars outside of your children’s day school and watching your child look out the window at drop off with an unfamiliar look of despair flickering in their eyes.

It’s watching the news and wishing you hadn’t watched it. It’s staying away from the news and then feeling guilty for not knowing what is happening.

It is going to demonstrations for Israel and prayer gatherings and feeling like you’ve hardly helped at all.

It’s waking up nauseous in the middle of the night thinking about the hostages. It’s wondering where they are and picturing the kidnapped children. It’s walking into your children’s bedroom and sitting on the floor to watch them sleep as you cry for the parents and children across the ocean.

It’s calling relatives in Israel and asking if they are ok multiple times a day.

It’s making a trip to Israel with equipment and safety gear for soldiers and coming right back to collect more and go back again.

It’s putting up pictures of the hostages all over your city, only to have anti-Israel activists tear them down.

It’s being unable to stop looking at your phone at all hours of the day and night even though you know you should put it down. It’s waiting every day for something to change and being frustrated at night when the news is the same as it was yesterday. It’s waking up and immediately checking to see what happened in Israel while you were sleeping.

It’s wearing your IDF shirt and Jewish star and wondering if you will be attacked for it. It’s knowing the world will never be the same again and wondering how we will ever go back to any kind of normalcy.

It’s looking at a map of Israel being bombarded with hundreds of rockets and listening to people insisting on sending more fuel into Gaza.

It’s praying for our soldiers but trying not to look too closely at their pictures so you don’t have to see how young they actually are. It’s wanting our soldiers to go into Gaza and simultaneously wanting them to go right back home to their families.

It’s feeling the incredible unity of the Jewish people and wondering why it took such a tremendous tragedy to realize we are all one family.

It’s hearing the pain from the families who have lost loved ones or are waiting for their relatives to come home, and it’s being speechless in the face of such unimaginable loss. It’s knowing that you can’t go on with your life the way it was before but not knowing how exactly to go on.

It’s speaking to your mother early in the morning and hearing in her voice that she was up in the middle of the night too. It’s knowing she also could not get the images of the children being held hostage out of her mind, without her having to say a word.

It’s lighting candles and saying Psalms and trying not to talk about the news in front of your children.

It’s being shocked by the people who are silent in the face of our suffering.

It’s exclaiming “mazel tov” in shul for the birth of a new baby and moments later crying silently into your siddur as you pray for our soldiers protecting Israel’s borders.

It’s realizing that Israel is not just the home of every Jew around the world but the insurance policy for each and every one of us. Because saying the Holocaust could never have happened in America sounds naive now.

It’s waking up to a new reality in which we need to fight every day for our right to exist. It’s knowing that we are in a moment of history in which we will all be asked: Did you speak up for Israel and defend its right to fight against terror, no matter what the world said?

It’s waking up tomorrow and not giving up, no matter how many petitions and letters and gatherings and donations and trips and prayers it’s going to take. Because we are fighting not only for Israel but for our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren.

It’s waking up in the middle of the night and hearing that faint whisper in your heart that says: the Jewish people need you. And to realize that you can no longer ignore that whisper.

https://aish.com/gazas-long-jewish-history/?src=ac
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
October 29, 2023
9 min read
10 facts about Jewish communities in Gaza, from ancient to modern times.
A Jewish rabbi in Gaza? The great Gaza Yeshiva? Ancient Jewish Gazan villages? Yes, they were all real. Here are 10 surprising facts about Jews’ long relationship with the region.

1. Possession of the Tribe of Judah
The area of Gaza has been inhabited since Neolithic times. Four thousand years ago, during the time of the Jewish patriarch Jacob, it was inhabited by a tribe known as “the Avvim who dwell in (unwalled) cities until Gaza” (Deuteronomy 2:23). When Jacob divided up the Land of Israel between his twelve sons, Gaza was allocated to Judah and his descendants.
The tribe of Judah didn’t live in Gaza; it eventually passed into Canaanite hands, then was colonized by Egypt as an outpost of the Egyptian empire.
2. Ancient Greek Outpost
In the 13th Century BCE, a group of Greek sailors attacked and sacked Anatolia, Cyprus, and Syria, before attacking Egypt. The earliest mention of this group is recorded inside the mortuary temple of Ramses III in Egypt; King Ramses repulsed the would-be invaders, and encouraged them to settle nearby in Gaza instead. There, the invaders called themselves Philistines (Plishtim in Hebrew).
SUBSCRIBE
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...
Philistine bichrome pottery was produced during the Iron I
period in ancient Canaan (circa 1200–1000 B.C.E.)
The Philistines differed greatly from the Israelites who inhabited the area. Though they adopted some local customs, the Philistines continued to worship Greek gods. They also ate a diet heavy in pigs and dogs, as evidenced in archeological remains of their cities, in stark contrast to Jewish settlements of the same era.
Philistines built five cities which formed a Philistine political union: Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath and Ekron, all in modern-day Israel, plus Gaza. The ancient Greeks called the area Philistia, which later evolved into the Greek name Palestine. Gaza became an outpost of Greek culture within ancient Judah.
3. Samson and Delilah in Gaza
Philistines were relentless enemies of the Jews; the Torah describes a terrible period in Jewish history when the “Children of Israel (were) delivered…into the hands of the Philistines” who oppressed them (Judges 13:1).
One of the most heartbreaking stories in Jewish history occurred in Gaza: Samson, a hero of Israel, went to Gaza and fell in love with a Philistine woman named Delilah. Philistine leaders urged her to pretend to be in love with Samson and to find out what made him so strong: “The governors of the Philistines went up to her and said to her, ‘Entice him and find out by what (means) his strength is so great, and by what means we may overpower him, so that we may bind him, to afflict him. Each one of us will give you eleven hundred pieces of silver” (Judges 16:1).
Johann Georg Platzer (1704-1761), “The Death of Samson”
Delilah eventually learned Samson’s secret: he possessed superhuman strength because he abstained from wine and had never cut his hair. While he was sleeping, Philistines cut off Samson’s hair then tortured him. They brought him to one of their temples to continue his torture during a great feast there. In desperation, Samson asked God for one more moment of strength, and pushed down the pillars supporting the temple, killing himself along with all the revelers inside.
4. Jewish Conquest During the Time of Hanukkah
As a Greek outpost, Gaza was a center of Hellenizing influence in ancient Israel and became a battle zone during the revolt of the Maccabees. Jonathan the Hasmonean – Judah Maccabee’s brother – conquered Gaza and moved there in the year 145 BCE, 20 years after the Temple in Jerusalem was captured and the miracle of one container of oil lasting for eight days. Gaza was absorbed into the Kingdom of Judah, ruled by the Jewish Hasmonean kings.
5. Why are There Jewish Symbols on the Great Mosque of Gaza?
Gaza became a major Jewish center during Talmudic times, boasting magnificent synagogues and a renowned Gaza Yeshiva (Jewish school). The city of Gaza was home to a large Jewish community; the Talmud also mentions a small Jewish town in the Gaza region called Kfar Darom. In 1965, Egyptian archeologists discovered the remains of an ancient synagogue near Gaza’s harbor. Beautiful mosaic floors declared that the synagogue was built in 508-9 CE, and depicted a picture of King David, with his name written in Hebrew above.
Menorah engraving at the Great Mosque of Gaza
More evidence of Gaza’s ancient Jewish roots can be found in the Great Mosque of Gaza: a pillar of this mosque contains carvings of Jewish symbols: a lulav and etrog, a shofar, a menorah, plus Hebrew inscriptions. Jewish life flourished in Gaza for hundreds of years, until Crusaders destroyed the area, putting a temporary stop to normal life in the area.
6. Famous Shabbat Song Written in Gaza
Jews returned to Gaza after the devastation of the Crusades, and once again built a flourishing Jewish community. The famous author and spiritual leader Rabbi Avraham Azoulai moved to Gaza from Morocco in the early 1600s and wrote his mystical work Chesed l”Avraham there.
Around the same time, Rabbi Yisrael Najara moved from Safed to Gaza. The popular Shabbat song he wrote, Kah Ribon Olam, is a fervent plea for God to rescue Jews from danger and exile; it beseeches the Divine to “save (Israel) Your sheep from the mouth of lions….” Its words are as true in Gaza today as they were 400 years ago when they were written.
7. 1929 Pogrom
After a decade of increasing anti-Jewish rhetoric from Arab leaders in Mandatory Palestine, armed Arab groups rose up to attack Jews in August, 1929. Anti-Jewish riots began in late August in the new Jewish neighborhoods that were springing up around Jerusalem. The riots began to spread to other areas, including the cities of Safed and Hebron, and Gaza; scores of Jews were killed.

Gaza ruins 1898 (American Colony Photograph at the Library of Congress)
After taking no action for six days during the riots, on August 26, 1929, British soldiers stepped in to stop the riots - and to remove Jews from areas where they’d lived for centuries. All of the Jews living in Hebron and Gaza were forced from their homes and forbidden by the British authorities to return.
8. Rebuilding Jewish Gaza
Jews soon returned to Gaza and established a kibbutz, or collective farm, there in 1946. They called it Kfar Darom, after an ancient Gazan Jewish town by that name. But Jewish life in Gaza was to be short-lived. In the United Nations’ proposed division of Mandatory Palestine, Gaza itself was divided between a proposed Arab state and Israel. Israel accepted the UN’s plan, but the Arab states did not, attacking Israel the moment it declared independence in 1948. In the bitter fighting that followed, Israel captured Gaza. In subsequent ceasefire negotiations, Israel gave Gaza to Egypt in return for control over the nearby cities of Ashdod and Ashkelon. At the same time, the Arab population of Gaza swelled as Palestinians moved to Gaza from the newly founded State of Israel.

Israel conquered Gaza once more during its 1956 war with Egypt, and once again gave the territory to Egypt. During the 1967 Six Day War, Israel once again conquered Gaza. In the 1970s, Jews began to return to Gaza once again: over the next thirty years, Jews built 21 new farms and towns in Gaza. Gaza became home to most of Israel’s organic farms and accounted for 15% of Israel’s overall agricultural output.
9. Making Gaza “Jew-Free”
For over a decade, Arabs and Jews lived and farmed side by side in Gaza. With the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, however, peaceful coexistence came to a halt. In the Oslo Accords of 1993 Israel promised to evacuate most of Gaza, giving way for it to be governed by the newly-formed Palestinian Authority. That peace agreement fell apart, however, and tensions continued to rise.
Jewish children at a greenhouse in the Gadid settlement a week before disengagement (Photo Tom Gross)
In 2005, after heavy political pressure from world leaders and domestically, Israel agreed to withdraw from all of Gaza and to force every Jew living there out of the territory. Gaza was to be entirely self-governed; Israel believed that by disengaging, they would be free of the terrorism and international opprobrium that governing Gaza had exposed them to.
Starting on August 17, 2005, Israel’s army moved in to remove all of Gaza’s Jews. The process was highly emotional and took a week. A total of 1,700 Jewish families left their farms and homes in Gaza. Knowing that Jewish graves would be desecrated, Israel’s chief rabbis ordered all Jewish cemeteries to be dug up and their bodies reburied in Israel. .
Before Gaza became entirely “Jew free,” American Jewish donors spent $14 million buying greenhouses from the Jewish farmers there and donated them to Gaza’s new Arab government. Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn even gave half a million of his own money to the scheme. Within moments of the final Jew leaving Gaza, however, the greenhouses were utterly destroyed, looted and smashed while Gaza’s police officers stood watching.
10. Violence Out of Gaza
Since 2005, anti-Jewish sentiment has swelled in Gaza. With the election of Hamas to govern the region in 2007, attacks on Israeli targets from Gaza increased. In the past 18 years, dozens of Israelis - as well as many Palestinians in Gaza and in areas under Palestinian Authority control - have been killed and injured by tens of thousands of rockets launched from Gaza. (Click here for a list of casualties preceding the October 7, 2023 attacks.) On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists entering Israel from Gaza perpetrated their worst massacre since the Holocaust, killing over 1,400 people and abducting over 220 prisoners.
The Israeli Iron Dome missile defense system (left) intercepts rockets fired by Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip toward southern Israel
Long a Jewish outpost, Gaza has also been the site of some of the most intense hatred against Jews throughout history. From the ancient Philistines, to antisemitic Greeks during the Hanukkah era, to fanatical Islamist resentment today, Gaza has been a place where Jews have been targeted - and yet have managed to survive and even triumph. May it be so again soon.

https://www.israellycool.com/2017/04/16/know-your-history-israeli-arab-rustum-bastuni-advocates-for-israel-to-hold-on-to-judea-and-samaria/vy5RA7ahrd4pDetslgCupMexHY5mOdhDM

Know Your History: Israeli Arab Rustum Bastuni Advocates For Israel To Hold On To Judea And Samaria, 1968
David Lange
|
Apr 16, 2017
A series where I look at old news articles and use history to debunk common misconceptions about the Middle East conflict.

In the February 01, 1968 edition of The Sentinel, Israeli Arab Rustum Bastuni – a former member of the Knesset and very accomplished man – spoke out in strongly in favor of Israel holding on to Judea and Samaria, which we had recaptured less than a year earlier in the Six Day War.
Note in particular:
Rustum acknowledging how Israel had “created a major social, cultural and economic revolution among its Arab citizens” in the 20 years since its establishment.
The Arabs of the “West Bank” and “Gaza” had not been happy under Jordanian and Egyptian rule respectively
Rustum mentioning how some Gazans had previously wanted to cooperate with Israel, but after we withdrew, they were punished by the Egyptians.....

They mean “pre 1967 borders“ and mean 1949 armistic lines. But as the Palestinians were invented in 1965 , any mentioning of an earlier date would reveal the truth, that the didnt exist then. What about the 1973 boarders? By all arguments of sanity these were borders after a war of defense. Remember who started this war?

https://aish.com/wikipedia-editors-deliberately-distorted-holocaust-articles/?src=ac
Wikipedia Editors Deliberately Distorted Holocaust Articles
Enter your email address
GET OUR EMAILS
Our privacy policy

by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
March 19, 2023
For over a decade, a group of nefarious editors has been distorting Holocaust entries.

If you’ve used Wikipedia to research the Holocaust, you may be a victim of a group of self-appointed “editors” who have been deliberately warping Wikipedia’s Holocaust articles for years.

For the last ten years, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia whitewashing the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolstering stereotypes about Jews,” explains Shira Klein, an associate professor of history at Chapman University in California, who’s tracked this gang’s insidious activities.

Due to this group’s zealous handiwork,” explains University of Ottawa professor Jan Grabowski, who collaborated with Dr. Klein, “Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles, blame Jews for their own persecution, and inflate Jewish collaboration with the Nazis.”

Drs. Klein and Grabowski spent many months pouring over Wikipedia articles, checking facts, and scrutinizing editors’ work and the sources they used. They published their shocking conclusions in an article titled “Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust” in The Journal of Holocaust Research. Their article went viral, garnering tens of thousands of views in an academic field in which that sort of exposure is unheard of.

In an unprecedented move, Wikipedia has initiated an internal review

The "Pogrom" in Hawara - What Really Happened

My message to Jewish leaders regarding their response to what happened in Hawara ...
written by Shmuel Sackett March 13, 2023 339 views
Share on Facebook
Tweet
Rabbi Moshe Hauer, Executive Vice President of the Orthodox Union (OU), issued a statement after some Jewish men went into the Arab town of Hawara and destroyed property. This was in response to the brutal murder of two brothers, from Har Bracha, who were shot – execution-style – while driving through this town.

Rabbi Hauer opened his words with a question: “How can such a thing happen? How could it come to this, that Jewish young men should ransack and burn homes and cars?” Ok, Rabbi Hauer… you want to know how such a thing can happen? I’ll tell you.

The town of Hawara is the center of Jihadists in the Shomron. Yes, there are some nice and innocent people living there, but most of the 8,000 residents are vicious, violent anti-Semites who advocate, support and celebrate the spilling of Jewish blood. Every day, the Jews who live nearby drive through the center of this Amalekite village. There is no “bypass road” or way around this hate-filled place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONirBnZqCQ0&t=1s
1,600 Jewish families live in Har Bracha, Yitzhar, Itamar and Elon Moreh and their only way home, from the main Tapuach junction, is via this town. Every day, yes! – every single day – at least 20 Jewish cars get stoned while driving through Hawara. I highly doubt that this has ever happened to Rabbi Hauer…

It’s important to note that “stoning cars” is not what you think. None of the violent Jew-haters are throwing pebbles. They are throwing bricks and dropping cinder blocks from rooftops. Imagine a young mother with 3 children in her car, driving home from the supermarket. As she is driving, a brick comes crashing through her windshield. The shock of what happened is enough to give her a heart attack! The children start screaming, and there is broken glass everywhere but she cannot stop for help… because she’s in the middle of Hawara with a mob just waiting to finish the job.

This is not an exaggeration. This happens every day and the murder of Hillel and Yagel Yaniv was something that Hawara residents live for. After the brutal murder, candies and sweets were handed out, cake was distributed, and people were singing. When did all this stop? When did the Jew-haters of Hawara finally run, hide and shake in fear? When the Jewish young men, the ones Rabbi Hauer wrote about, entered the town and taught them the Jewish lesson of vengeance. Since that day, not one rock has been thrown at Jewish cars.

Dearest Rabbi Hauer; you are a good man and the organization you represent – the OU – is one of the finest around. Yet, on this concept you are totally wrong… but you’re not to blame. Most Jewish leaders responded exactly the way you did. As a matter of fact, former Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg said that he has more sympathy for the residents of Hawara than for the Jewish community of Har Bracha! “It is not wise to sympathize with the people on Har Bracha – it is wise to sympathize with the victims in Hawara,” Burg told 103FM Israel Radio. He added that “Har Bracha should be evacuated. It cannot be allowed to remain.”

What should Jewish leaders have said? Nothing fancy and definitely not politically correct. Allow me to state – loud and clear, with no fear – what my response would have been: The town of Hawara got what they deserved and the next time a brick is thrown, the response will be even more severe. Ideally, the IDF needs to respond this way, but if their hands are tied by political sissies then the residents need to teach the lesson themselves. Our goal is to live in peace but “peace” does not mean “weakness”. We will not tolerate living in Israel in a state of fear and if the Jihadists in Hawara want war… they will get it.

Am Yisrael Chai!
TWO CHRISTIANS WENT INSIDE AN ARAB VILLAGE TO DESTROY THE MEDIA’S LIES ABOUT ISRAEL

Read More https://www.israelunwired.com/the-pogrom-in-hawara-what-really-happened/?utm_source=jeeng&utm_medium=email

PERSONAL GROWTH
16 Jewish Principles to Live By
by Shekhiynah Larks
February 14, 2023
5 min read
As a Jew of color, I believe both Black and Jewish communities are equally unknowledgeable about the intricacies and intersectionalities of the other community.

The response to Jonah Hill and Kenya Barris' Netflix feature film "You People" has been a mixed bag. Many find the film lacked nuance and played into harmful stereotypes of Black and Jewish identities.

The Cohen family played into many of the assumptions and antisemitic beliefs some Black people hold about Jewish people, antisemitic beliefs held by a significant portion of American and European society. From accused pedophiles in the synagogue and outsized wealth, to Jewish white privilege and the lack of cultural competence that made Cohen's well-meaning desire to be inclusive read as awkward, a little racist, and full of hesitation to address antisemitism.

The film exploits and exasperates existing tensions that legitimize anti-Black and antisemitic beliefs for the purpose of entertainment.

I've heard this hesitation to stand up against antisemitism echoed when I teach about Racial and Ethnic Diversity and inclusion in Jewish spaces, especially among teens when we discuss navigating antisemitism as it intersects with anti-Blackness and racism more broadly. Concerned about being perceived as racist, Jews often hesitate to address the disinformation, ignorance, and bigotry in an antisemetic comment.

Similarly, the Mohammed family played into a lot of the assumptions and stereotypes I've heard echoed about Black people in the Jewish community, especially related to Farakhan and the sensationalization of the prominence of antisemitic beliefs associated with extremist sects of Black Hebrew Israelites and The Nation of Islam.

https://www.israelunwired.com/hanukkah-and-the-new-imperialist-assault-on-judaism/
HANUKKAH AND THE NEW IMPERIALIST ASSAULT ON JUDAISM
written by Caroline Glick December 26, 2022 525 views
Share on Facebook
Tweet
Campus antisemites are seeking to destroy not just Israel, but Jewish identity itself.

(JNS) Ahead of Hanukkah, two students at Colgate University in New York vandalized a campus menorah. When they were caught, they explained that they didn’t mean it. They were just drunk.

The incident at Colgate isn’t a big story in and of itself, because anti-Jewish incidents on campuses happen every day, all over the United States. However, the explanation the students provided for their behavior—“We were drunk”—exposes a larger truth. Their thinking, apparently, was that their drunkenness made their deed understandable. Of course, if you’re drunk, you’d think it was a good idea to vandalize a Jewish religious symbol. Everyone hates Jews, so if you want to prove that you’re cool and with it, as drunken students invariably do, the right move is to destroy a menorah.

Last month, the AMCHA Initiative published an extraordinary and vital study on the design and aim of antisemitism on U.S. campuses. In the aftermath of the latest round of Hamas’s terror war against Israel in May 2021, assaults against Jews at U.S. colleges and universities doubled. The AMCHA Initiative report, “Campus Antisemitism and the Assault on Jewish Identity,” was authored by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith. Benjamin and Beckwith explained that antisemitism on college campuses cannot be understood simply by counting the number of verbal and physical assaults on Jewish students. The phenomenon is much broader and far more insidious than mere attacks like the drunken vandalization of a menorah.

The AMCHA Initiative report demonstrates that antisemitism on campus is an all-out assault on Jewish identity. The assault is undertaken by three groups: Faculty members who support and work to advance the campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel and its supporters on their campuses; non-Jewish BDS campus groups like Students for Justice in Palestine; and Jewish anti-Zionist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace. Working separately and together, faculty, non-Jewish BDS groups and Jewish BDS groups assault Jewish identity in three ways.

First, they seek to redefine what Judaism is. Consistent, multiyear surveys show that some 80% of American Jews say that supporting Israel is an essential component of their Jewish identity. This isn’t surprising. Identification with the Jewish people and the Land of Israel have been foundational components of Jewish identity from time immemorial. The campus antisemitic groups insist that Zionism—that is, support for and identification with Israel—is alien to Judaism, that Judaism has been “occupied” by Zionism and that Zionism is an assault against “authentic” Judaism.

In other words, Zionism is a form of antisemitism. By the same token, not only is anti-Zionism—that is, support for the destruction of the Jewish state and rejection of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their homeland—not a form of antisemitism, it is pro-Jewish. The good Jews, the authentic Jews, under this new “Judaism,” are the anti-Zionist Jews in Jewish Voice for Peace and its aligned Jewish groups.

Having redefined Judaism as the opposite of what Judaism actually is, the groups involved in assaulting Jewish identity on campus then use the “good Jews” who embrace the new invented Jewish “identity” as a means to justify the persecution of the “bad Jews” who reject the appropriation and redefinition of their identity.

Persecution of “bad Jews,” is undertaken in two ways. First, Jewish identity—the real one—is denigrated. Zionist Jews and Zionism are castigated as anti-progressive and racist. They are “Jewish supremacists,” and “colonialists.”

Having invented a new Judaism, with “good Jews,” the groups assaulting Jewish identity have a way to protect themselves from charges of antisemitism. Not only are they not antisemites, they say, they are the good Jews’ best friends. They are protecting and defending these anti-Zionist Jews from the racist, evil “antisemitic” Jews who are trying to compel the “good Jews” to accept the alien, “anti-Jewish” concept of Zionism and support for the Jewish state as part of their Jewish identity.

Having redefined Judaism in a manner that empties it of its actual content, and transformed the newly minted anti-Jewish Judaism into “authentic” Judaism, the BDS-supporting faculty, non-Jewish BDS student groups and anti-Zionist Jewish student groups work to suppress expressions and manifestations of Zionism and Jewish pride on campuses. Efforts to boycott Jewish professors who support Israel, ban Zionist speakers from schools, boycott Birthright trips to Israel for Jewish students and intimidate Jews into avoiding expressions of their Judaism are all part of this suppression effort. Taken together, the purpose of the assault on Jewish identity on college campuses is to wipe out Jewish life on campus and replace it with a fake Judaism and fake Jewish life.

One of the remarkable aspects of this effort is its similarity to the events we commemorate on Hanukkah. Nearly 2,200 years ago, following their conquest of Judea, the Greeks engaged in an all-out assault on Jewish identity in all its component parts. Jewish faith and religious practice, Jewish national identity and Jewish sovereignty were all denigrated, suppressed or redefined. The Greek effort to wipe out Jewish identity involved prohibition of Torah study, circumcision, Shabbat observance and other Jewish rituals. They were replaced by Greek paganism and culture. To advance their effort to redefine Judaism as Hellenism, the Greeks mobilized Hellenized Jews who they promoted to positions of power and religious authority.

The Maccabees and their comrades revolted against this cultural imperialism. They waged both a civil war against Hellenized Jews and an anti-imperialist struggle against Greek colonial rule of Judea. It is their victory over both forces that we celebrate on Hanukkah.

Persecution of Jews on campuses and the dismantling of their communities is only one aspect of the effort to blot out Jewish identity. The other side is what it does for non-Jews, because the assault on Jewish identity is not only directed against Jews. It is also directed towards non-Jews. It is a marketing tool for popularizing antisemitism and making progressives antisemitic.

Progressives are trained to hate two types of people—those who are defined as members of racial (or sexual identity groups) defined as oppressors; and right-wingers/conservatives/fascists. The campus assault on Jewish identity redefines Judaism as of a piece with both hated categories of people. Jews must be hated because they are “white.” And Jews must be hated because Zionism is “racism,” “Jewish supremacism” and “fascism.” Under the circumstances, all right-thinking progressives must hate and despise the Jews.

This is not a new ploy. The communists acted in a similar fashion. From Karl Marx on, to mobilize communists to hate Jews, communists defined Jews as capitalists and rootless cosmopolitans. Likewise, for more than a thousand years, Christians defined Jews as Christ-killers who rejected God and were, in turn, rejected by God. Both communists and the Christians used Jews who converted to their cause to demonize the Jews who maintained faith in Judaism and their Jewish identity. They used their demonization of Jews to make their societies antisemitic.

The AMCHA Initiative’s new study enables us to see the insidious scope and nature of the campus assault on Jews. By redefining Judaism as anti-Judaism, they define Jews who try to defend themselves as “antisemites.”

With the understanding of the actual scope and aim of this antisemitic assault on Jewish identity in hand, it becomes apparent that Jews cannot engage with those assaulting them. This isn’t about Israel. It is about them. This isn’t about the best way to achieve Middle East peace or human rights. It is a bigoted assault aimed at making antisemitism a component of progressive identity, destroying Jewish life on campuses and eventually destroying Jewish communal life throughout the United States. Defending Judaism against progressive allegations of racism and Jewish supremacism is like arguing with a communist that Jews aren’t rootless cosmopolitans. The minute you engage in the debate you lose it. These people don’t care if a Hillel or AIPAC or Jews on campus support the establishment of a two-state solution. They don’t want a two-state solution. They want to eradicate Israel and destroy Jewish life in America. They are antisemites, not sparring partners.

The AMCHA report, and a follow-up report published this week, discuss ways to use campus codes of conduct and the Civil Rights Act to defend Jewish students. Whatever efforts are made to protect Jewish students, however, the best protection for Jewish life on campuses and in the United States more generally is disengagement from antisemitic discourse. With help from Jewish organizations and Israeli consulates, American Jewish parents, students and faculty need to develop and deepen their Jewish identity and pride in who they are. To stand up to the antisemitic assault, Jews need to embrace the truth and authenticity of Zionism and their membership in the Jewish people.

More than spinning dreidels or lighting the menorah, the best way for Jewish students in American colleges and universities, and the American Jewish community as a whole, to truly celebrate the miraculous victory of the Maccabees over the cultural imperialists of their day is to stand up to the cultural imperialists of our day; not by the sword, but by embracing the truth, the beauty and the spirit of Judaism throughout the ages.

COLLEGE CAMPUSESHANUKKAHIMPERIALISMJEWISH IDENTITY

https://theisraelbible.com/the-warrior-legacy-of-king-david/
The Warrior Legacy of King David
אֱלֹהִים בְּאָזְנֵינוּ שָׁמַעְנוּ אֲבוֹתֵינוּ סִפְּרוּ־לָנוּ פֹּעַל פָּעַלְתָּ בִימֵיהֶם בִּימֵי קֶדֶם׃
We have heard, O Hashem, our fathers have told us the deeds You performed in their time, in days of old.
e-lo-HEEM b'-oz-NAY-nu sha-MA-nu a-vo-TAY-nu si-p'-ru LA-nu PO-al pa-AL-ta vee-may-HEM BEE-may KE-dem
Psalms 44:2
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz
King David started life as a shepherd but he came from a military family. I imagine his brothers coming home on leave, sitting at the dinner table, telling war stories to their red-headed little brother. Of course, David’s rise to the throne began on the battlefield, facing off against the giant Goliath.
Military tales were surely a part of Israelite culture, ranging from the Battle of Five Kings in the Valley of Siddim in the time of Abraham, to the conquest of the Promised Land under Joshua, to the struggle against the Philistines in David’s time.
One theme that must have run throughout all of these tales was the role of God in each of these battles.

This tradition continues in modern times, as the stunning victories in the 1948 War of Independence and the 1967 Six-Day War are described as miracles. I once spoke with an old Israeli veteran who had fought in the Golan as a tanker in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when 160 outclassed Israeli tanks faced over 1,000 Syrian tanks. He told me how he was young and terrified but carried out his tasks until he was numb with fatigue, and then kept fighting on. A secular Jew, he described how he stumbled out of his tank in the morning and looked out over the Valley of Tears.

“We were firing blindly all night,” he said. “But what I saw in the morning was a vast field of tanks that had been crushed by the hand of God. There was no way we did that.”

Today, Israelies reassure each other that they have a holy Iron Dome in heaven protecting them from Hamas rockets which is even more effective than the mechanical version.

David’s oral tradition that kept alive the military exploits of previous generations, and God’s hand in them all, was his message in Psalm 44.

David writes:

We have heard, O Hashem, our fathers have told us the deeds You performed in their time, in days of old. With Your hand You planted them, displacing nations; You brought misfortune on peoples, and drove them out. It was not by their sword that they took the land, their arm did not give them victory, but Your right hand, Your arm, and Your goodwill, for You favored them. Psalm 44:2-4

Rabbi David Kimhi (1160–1235), also known by the Hebrew acronym RaDaK, taught that the tradition that King David received accompanied the Jews into exile:

“Although the Jews who witnessed the miracles could not personally recount them to their descendants born centuries later, the Psalmist implies that the transmission of this tradition was not broken. This tradition was transmitted from father to son through the generations until it reached the generation that went into exile.”

Picturing David the warrior as the ancestor of the shtetl Jews of Europe can seem a bit incongruous, but the military tradition of the Jews is deeply embedded in their collective subconscious. The candles lit on Hanukkah are prominently displayed in order to advertise the military victory of the tiny nation of Judah against the mighty Seleucids.

Unlike other warlike nations, however, the nation of Israel has a higher purpose and a higher source for this military tradition. As David noted in graphic terms:

“You are my king, O Hashem; decree victories for Yaakov! Through You we gore our foes; by Your name we trample our adversaries; I do not trust in my bow; it is not my sword that gives me victory;You give us victory over our foes; You thwart those who hate us. Psalm 44:5-8

But what good is passing on a warrior tradition when in exile? Without a land or an army, the Jewish people have suffered horribly, reciting this psalm about God leading them to victory. Often, they had to resign themselves to that grim reality, while calling out:

Rouse Yourself; why do You sleep, O Hashem? Awaken, do not reject us forever! Psalm 44:24

Yet their warrior past was not lost with the Temple. It was this tradition, passed through the generations, that enabled them to rise from the ashes of the Holocaust and build an army that could stand against five Arab nations.

This warrior tradition was not limited to the battlefield, but also influenced the cultural and political landscape of the Jewish people. The strength and resilience they had acquired through their warrior past helped them to overcome numerous challenges and establish a thriving and sovereign nation in the modern era. Today, with the help of God, the legacy of their warrior past continues to inspire and guide the Jewish people in their quest for peace and justice in the world.

Spread the love
1 Shares
Connect with Israel and Bible lovers from across the world

by joining the Israel Bible Tribe- the fastest growing Israel Bible community in the world!
https://purchase.theisraelbible.com/daily-bible-subscription-page/

242 AND THE MISRULE OF LAW
written by Ted Belman January 22, 2023 793 views
Israel is the legal owner of all lands west of the Jordan River, as the San Remo Resolution of 1920, The Palestine Mandate of 1922 and Section 80 of the United Nations Charter prove.

After the Six Day War in 1967, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) weighed in with Resolution 242 to set the parameters for the achievement of peace among the Arab states in the area. The Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs published Understanding UN Security Council Resolution 242 which is the most definitive analysis of this resolution anywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd9EF1ohMLA&t=1s
In it, the UNSC allowed Israel to remain in occupation of the acquired land until she had agreements with all the Arab states in the area for “secure and recognized boundaries.” But even then, she need not withdraw from all territories. Thus, Israel’s “occupation” cannot be considered as illegal as she has the permission of the Security Council to remain there.

It also called for “a just settlement of the refugee issue,” but did not make mention of a Palestinian people nor require a peace agreement with them, nor call for the creation of a Palestinian state.

Finally, it included one noteworthy recital: “Emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.…”

But there is no such principle in law. To the contrary, in a defensive war, which this undeniably was, the defender gets to keep the lands acquired. In any event, a recital is not an operative clause.

Recitals are meant as background only. Normally, one would expect that Israel’s legal rights would have been noted in a recital but they weren’t. Particularly so when this war, which was commenced in 1948, was all about terminating Israel’s existence. Surely, Israel’s legal rights should have been recited.

All subsequent peace efforts, including the Oslo Accords and the Roadmap to Peace 2005, were merely pathways to ending the Arab/Israel conflict according to Resolution 242.

Yet the international discourse today is all about Israel’s “illegal occupation” and the need to create a Palestinian state. No mention is made of Israel’s regal rights or the right to have “secure and recognized boundaries”. It’s all about the “oppressed Palestinians” and the “brutal Israelis”.

In my article, Since when did the Palestinians become entitled to a state?, I traced this development. It started in the Rogers Plan (1969) and was furthered in the Reagan Plan (1982) and the Oslo Accords. The Rogers Plan actually referred to these lands as “Arab territory occupied in the 1967 war.” which it wasn’t and isn’t.

Essentially the US State Department, egged on by Saudi Arabia, ignored the true meaning of Resolution 242 and called for the creation of a Palestinian State and Israel’s full withdrawal. The State Department never mentions Israel’s legal rights but is quick to mention Israel’s “illegal settlements” and “illegal occupation”.

Even the Abraham Accords and the peace agreements signed in accordance with them made no mention of either Israel’s legal rights or her right to insist on “secure boundaries”.

President Trump supported “secure boundaries” for Israel and so recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights as legitimate and warranted and went so far as to allow Israel to annex the Jordan Valley. Even so, he still allowed for a Palestinian state.

Robert L Meyer recently wrote 25 Years After Oslo: The Elephant in the Room. The elephant in the room is the Koran:

“The Koran, chapter 2, verse 191 states: “Drive them out from where they drove you out.”

“Islamic scholars universally have interpreted this verse to mean that once land becomes Islamic, by conquest or otherwise, it stays Islamic forever and that Muslims must drive out any non-Muslim government that takes power in a land once ruled under Islamic law.

“For these reasons, the exchange of Muslim “Land for Peace” with Israel simply is impossible under Islam.”

It is for this reason the Anwar Sadat demanded the return of “every square inch” of the Sinai in the Camp David Accords and Arafat turned down PM Barak’s offer made in 2000 of 97% of the land.

Going forward, Israel has announced its intention to annex the Jordan Valley, thereby achieving secure boundaries. The international hue and cry will be enormous.

The international community is quick to condemn Israel’s alleged violation of non-existing international laws while at the same time it ignores recognized international law cited in the first paragraph above.

The rule of law has become the misrule of law.

Israeli Settlements in Judea & Samaria are Legal According to International Law

224JORDANPALESTINESAN REMO

In this CUFI Weekly Review
Louvre Museum discovers references to King David after deciphering ancient writings || European Parliament calls upon EU to outlaw IRGC || CUFI Prayer

Louvre Museum discovers references to King David after deciphering ancient writings
Researchers at the Louvre Museum in Paris have confirmed that the text on an ancient stone on display there, the Moabite Stone, also known as the Mesha Stele, dating back to 840BC, refers to King David in the Bible. 

The stele includes phrases such as “House of David” and “Altar of David,” but the damage to the stone’s face has made accurate translation of the text difficult until now with new technology allowing researchers to confirm the text refers to King David.

Click here to read https://www.cufi.org.uk/news/louvre-museum-discovers-references-to-king-david-after-deciphering-ancient-writings/

Albert Reichmann: A Towering Life

TRENDING
Expand Your Knowledge
Get fascinating takes on Jewish history

Enter your email address
Get Our Emails
Our privacy policy
Advertisements

by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
January 15, 2023
9 min read

FacebookTwitterLinkedInPrintFriendlyShare
The wealthy Jewish property developer exemplified a life of giving.

Albert Reichmann, the famous philanthropist and property developer who’s passed away at the age of 93, helped build some of the world’s most iconic buildings, including the World Financial Center in Manhattan, Canary Wharf in London and First Canadian Place in Toronto.

For a time, he and his brothers – who together built the iconic business Olympia & York Developments – ranked amongst the world’s largest landowners. Yet, to Albert, his astronomical business success was always secondary to being a mensch. His Jewish beliefs defined everything in Albert’s life and gave him a strong sense of purpose.

Albert Reichmann
“His faith was everything to him. He wasn't a businessman who was a Jew. He was a Jew who was a businessman,” his son in law, Stephen Gross, described.

Legacy of Giving
Albert and his family narrowly escaped the Holocaust. Born in 1929 in Vienna, Albert was one of six children in an intensely devout Jewish family. When Germany looked poised to take over Austria in 1938, Albert’s parents Samuel and Renee realized they had to leave immediately. Albert later recalled the day he saw Nazis marching in Vienna: “I remember looking out the window of our apartment and seeing the Germans come. It was on Shabbos. I was nine years old – too young to really understand the danger.” The next day, the family fled to Paris.

SUBSCRIBE
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...

Enter your email address
GET OUR EMAILS
Their relative safety there was short lived. Two years later, just before Nazi troops invaded the city, the family fled again, bribing a truck driver with gold coins to take them out of the city. They moved to Morocco, where the family did all they could to help their fellow Jews.

There, Albert's parents built up a currency trading business. They used the financial security they were able to accrue to help others. Some of Albert’s earliest memories were of packing thousands of boxes along with his mother and siblings to send to prisoners in Nazi concentration camps back in Europe. (Albert’s mother Renee has been commemorated with plaques in both the Moroccan city of Tangier and the Czech town of Terezin, which was home to the fearsome concentration camp Theresienstadt.)

Albert lived modestly, eschewing flashy displays of wealth and making charity and giving to others a central pillar of his life.

Many of Albert’s friends, relations and business partners long noted that he always lived well below his means, a habit that he formed during his wartime years in Morocco as a child. Even when he became one of the world’s wealthiest men, Albert lived modestly, eschewing flashy displays of wealth and making charity and giving to others a central pillar of his life.

Finding a Wife
After the end of the Second World War, Albert’s siblings received visas to settle in Canada and moved to Toronto. Albert remained behind in Morocco. A trip to Israel in 1954 changed his life. In Tel Aviv, Albert met a young woman named Egosah whose world view seemed similar to his own. While she was far from wealthy, Egosah viewed herself as exceedingly fortunate and focused on giving to others.

Albert and Egosah Reichmann

Born in 1932 in the town of Satmar in Romania, Egosah was the youngest of 11 children in a pious Jewish home. She and her family moved to the Land of Israel in the late 1930s, settling in Tel Aviv where she saw incredible poverty. Egosah later told her children that she always considered herself rich, as her parents were able to send her to school with a sandwich for lunch every day, something many of her friends’ families were unable to do. Egosah would often give her lunch away to friends whose families couldn’t afford the basic necessities at home.

In the evenings, Egosah’s family invited poor neighbors for dinner each night, helping to feed many of their neighbors and teaching their children the importance of always reaching out to help.

Albert and Egosah married and returned to Tangier, Morocco, to run the currency business that Albert’s family had established there.

Building Jewish Life in Morocco and Canada
In Tangier, Albert and Egosah had their first son, given the Jewish name Ephraim, and worked to strengthen the Jewish community in the city. They helped found a Jewish elementary school in Tangier, and Egosah worked as a teacher.

They moved to Toronto in 1959, joining Albert’s siblings there. Albert set up an industrial property company named York Factory Developments. In 1964 it merged with a company his brothers had founded, Olympia Floor and Wall Tile. The new firm was named Olympia & York and soon became a juggernaut in Canada’s property development sector.



Even more than building Olympia & York, Albert and Egosah were occupied with building Jewish life in their new home of Toronto. They had three more children in Canada, and did all they could to build a strong Jewish home in their new city. Shabbat and Jewish holidays were joyous occasions. They opened their house to guests, and endowed many of the new institutions in Toronto’s growing Jewish community.

Business Success and Failure
In the 1970s, Olympia & York grew into one of the world’s largest property firms, known for its integrity and high business standards. Albert’s brother Paul was the primary leader; Albert worked behind the scenes as Paul’s trusted advisor. In 1988, Albert described their working relationship: “We don’t have the personality problems, the competitiveness, the jealousies, that some people do. With bankers and investment dealers, Paul is more active. With administration and construction, I’m more active. It always works out.”

Paul Reichmann

For a time, Olympia & York was wildly successful at buying undervalued properties, building a portfolio that included 24 million square feet at its peak in the 1980s and was valued at $3 billion. At the time, Olympia & York was the largest landlord in New York City. In the late 1980s, the firm embarked on developing Canary Wharf to the east of London, at the time the largest new office development in the world. When property prices crashed soon after, the company was overextended. They filed for bankruptcy in 1992. Brookfield Properties Corporation of Toronto purchased 47% of the firm, which was renamed World Financial Properties.

Helping Soviet Jews
In the 1970s and 1980s, when his business success was at its height, one of Albert’s greatest passions was helping Jews trapped in the Soviet Union. Albert had already created high level political connections through his business; he’d even been instrumental in bringing Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to Canada in 1983 for a political summit. Albert later described meeting Gorbachev for the first time:

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was coming to Canada, so people asked me to talk to Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and ask him to give Mr. Gorbachev a letter about the Refuseniks…when he came, Mr. Gorbachev asked Mr. Mulroney, “Who is your friend who asked you to give me this letter?” He told him. Mr. Gorbachev said, “Why don’t you ask Mr. Reichmann to talk to me personally?” The next day, I spoke to the prime minister, who told me what he had said. I said, “Okay, I’ll go to Moscow….”

(Gorbachev) was very friendly to me. I told him what I wanted. He started to make excuses and to say that it’s nothing against the Jews; they just didn’t want smart and experienced people to leave the country. I said, “That sounds like a good reason, but then why does a Jew lose his job as soon as he applies to leave? How is it helping you to keep them here if these smart people are not allowed to work?”

I went several more times to Moscow to meet him. Whenever I went, it was covered by Russian television and radio. At that time, it was a priority for Gorbachev to open up the Soviet Union economically and to do business with the West. That’s why he ordered news coverage of a Western businessman coming to Russia; he was trying to show that this was happening. I understood what he was trying to do to modernize his country and I believed that he was sincere in his efforts. I was receptive to the idea of working with him – not because it was a big priority for me to do business in Russia but because I knew it would give me opportunities to help the Yidden (Jews) there if Gorbachev valued my presence.

Whenever he visited the Soviet Union, Albert made a point of appearing in public wearing a kippah, helping to encourage Soviet Jews who were barred from making such a public gesture of their Jewish identity. It was crucial to Albert that Soviet Jews see an example of a proud Orthodox Jew, living according to timeless Jewish values, on Soviet soil, something that was impossible for Soviet Jews to do.

Two of the most famous Soviet Jews Albert managed to rescue were Vladimir Raiz and his eight-year-old son Shaul. In 1977, Vladimir applied for permission to emigrate from Moscow to Israel and was refused, becoming one of countless “refuseniks” who lost their jobs, friends and social standing while they waited in vain for years and decades for permission to leave the Soviet Union. Albert lobbied for Vladimir’s and Shaul’s release. Finally, his ceaseless entreaties of Soviet Authorities paid off: in 1990, Albert chartered a plane to Moscow to pick up Vladimir and Shaul and bring them to Israel.

Albert’s son-in-law Stephen Gross later recalled that Albert was willing to become the center of attention when he needed to. In Moscow, Albert got off the plane and was photographed meeting with officials. Later on, when the plane landed in Israel, Albert stayed on board while Vladimir and Shaul got off, refusing to take any of the attention away from the refuseniks he’d aided.

Appealing to Gorbachev directly, Albert received permission to finance a Jewish school in Russia. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Albert eventually funded scores of Jewish schools in Russia, eastern Europe and around the world.

Living a Life of Purpose
When he was asked what life advice he’d like to give to others, Albert replied, “The general idea is: work hard and be ehrlich”, using the Yiddish word that means honest and honorable, denoting a level of kindness and refinement. An ehrlich person is one who is genuinely concerned with his or her fellow human beings, and who wishes them well.

“Work hard and be ehrlich” is also a fitting description of Albert Reichmann. I can think of no better tribute than to emulate the traits he exemplified: to look at the world with an attitude of giving, and to do so with modesty and love.

Like What You Read?  Give Jews around the world the chance to experience engaging Jewish wisdom with more articles and videos on Aish. As a nonprofit organization it's your support that keeps us going. Thanks so much!
ONE TIME $54 $108 $1000 OTHERMONTHLY $10 $18 $100 OTHER
Submit
Share this article
FacebookTwitterLinkedInPrintFriendlyShare
More About The Author


Dr. Yvette Alt Miller

Dr. Alt Miller lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics. Her latest book Portraits of Valor: Heroic Jewish Women You Should Know describes the lives of 40 remarkable women who inhabited different eras and lands, giving a sense of the vast diversity of Jewish experience.  It's been praised as inspirational, fascinating, fun and educational.

More from this Author >
https://aish.com/authors/84110707

Asarah B'Tevet (Tevet 10)
Jerusalem Under Siege
On Asarah B'Tevet, the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tevet, in the year 3336 from Creation (425 BCE), the armies of the Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem. Asarah B'Tevet (this year, January 3, 2023) is observed as a day of fasting, mourning and repentance.
Art by Sefira Lightstone
Art by Sefira Lightstone
On Asarah B'Tevet, the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tevet, in the year 3336 from Creation (425 BCE), the armies of the Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem. Thirty months later—on 9 Tammuz 3338—the city walls were breached, and on 9 Av of that year the Holy Temple was destroyed. The Jewish people were exiled to Babylonia for 70 years.

Asarah B'Tevet (this year, January 3, 2023) is observed as a day of fasting, mourning and repentance. We refrain from food and drink from daybreak to nightfall, and add selichot and other special supplements to our prayers. The fast ends at nightfall or as soon as you see three medium sized stars in the sky (breaking the fast after Kiddush, when the fast is on Friday).
Read more about Asarah B'Tevet
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3170662/jewish/What-Is-Asarah-BTevet-Tevet-10.htm

Empower Your Jewish Journey

by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller

Five little-known facts about the January 1 “New Year” holiday, and its meaning for Jews.
Happy New Year! Or is it? For Jews, January 1 can pose a conundrum: most of us live by the modern secular calendar in which January 1 is New Year’s Day. But according to the Jewish calendar, Rosh Hashanah ushers in the New Year. Jewish tensions around celebrating January 1 go back for generations. Here are five little-known facts about the January 1 “New Year” holiday, and its meaning for Jews.

Recent Invention
While many of us think of January 1 as having been “New Year” forever, the holiday is relatively recent and has undergone many changes through the years. For much of European history, New Year occurred in March, when Spring began to make flowers and other fauna grow again.

According to the Roman historian Livy, it was the Roman King Numa Pompilius (715-673 BCE) who first introduced a twelve month calendar with January as its first month. (January was named after the Roman god Janus, which had two faces, making it appropriate for the start of the new year, when the month could symbolically look into the past and forwards into the future.)

Roman King Numa PompiliusRoman King Numa Pompilius
SUBSCRIBE
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...

Enter your email address
GET OUR EMAILS
Despite the fact that January was the first month, the Roman New Year was March 15 for hundreds of years. This changed in 153 BCE when it was switched to January 1. Years later, in 45 BCE, a more comprehensive calendar was adopted by the Roman priest-turned-ruler Julius Caesar. His “Julian” calendar kept January 1 as the New Year, but the holiday didn’t last in many of the Roman Empire’s territories. With the fall of the Roman Empire, European nations began to revert to their old New Year days. Some celebrated the New Year on March 25; other European groups celebrated December 25 as the New Year instead.

By the 1500s it became clear that the Julian calendar had serious shortcomings: leap years were miscalculated, and as a result the Christian festivals were changing days, migrating through the calendar. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new calendar: this Gregorian Calendar is still in use today. Among its many innovations, it restored January 1 as New Year’s Day in Christian lands.

Not all European countries made the switch. Protestant and Eastern Orthodox nations were slow to make the change. In Great Britain and the American Colonies, New Year’s Day continued to be March 25. It was only in 1752, when an Act of Parliament mandated January 1 as New Years, that English speaking lands adopted January 1 as their New Year’s Day.

Why January 1?
The Romans had a unique numbering system for the days of the month: the first day of each month was called a “Kalend” (we get our word calendar from this); the seventh day of each month was called “Nones” ;and the 15th day of each month was known as the “Ides”. Other days were counted only by how close they were to these three significant days.

The Talmud notes that Kalend days were celebrated as festivals of idolatry in ancient Rome and cautioned Jews not to do business with Romans on those days in order to avoid taking any part in activities that could be construed as idol worship (Mishnah Avodah Zarah 1:1-5).

In ancient times, the Kalends of January (January 1) in particular was a riotous affair, capping a two-week period that began with the Romans’ mid-December Saturnalia festival. This was a period when normal rules of behavior and mores were suspended: a slave was chosen to be elevated to a position of temporary king, and he ruled over a period of dissolution and wild parties. Homes were decorated with greenery and lights, and gifts were given to children. According to some accounts, at the end of this festive period, the slave who’d been named as master of ceremonies was then killed. This violence and period of moral lapses led Jews to avoid taking part in the mid-December and January 1 Roman holidays.

Celebrating a Bris?
As Christianity spread and developed, Christian celebrations incorporated earlier holiday customs. The Christian Bible doesn’t specify the date of Jesus’ birth, and it seems that in the early years of Christianity it was not celebrated in December, as it is today. The first record of December 25 being celebrated as a holiday commemorating Jesus’ birthday dates from a Roman calendar in the year 336 CE; some of the customs surrounding this holiday seem to have been borrowed from the ancient Roman festivals of Saturnalia and Kalends.

The day of January 1 - the old Roman Kalends holiday - became associated with a feast day called the Feast of the Circumcision in some denominations (including Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican traditions). Count the days: January 1 is eight days after December 25, the day that a Jewish baby boy would have had his brit milah (circumcision) in the Jewish faith.

Dark Day in Jewish History
January 1 has seen harsh anti-Jewish decrees. On January 1, 1791, Russian ruler Catherine the Great established the Pale of Settlement, an area in the western part of her empire which became the only district in Russia’s vast empire where Jews were permitted to live. The terms of the Pale of Settlement varied over the years: its borders were adjusted and rules allowing Jews exemptions to live in other parts of Russia were introduced. Yet the Pale of Settlement affected a huge portion of the world’s Jews. At its peak, it’s estimated that fully 40% of the world’s Jews (about five million Jews) lived in the Pale of Settlement. This law lasted until the Russian Revolution of 1917, when Russian Jews were finally allowed to live outside the Pale.

Starting on January 1, 1798, all Hebrew language books began to be censored in Russia. A decade later, on January 1, 1807, Russia’s Czar Alexander I introduced wide-ranging new laws governing what Jews could do and how they could be educated and earn their livings. The draconian new law put restrictions on Jews’ ability to purchase property and restricted the trades to which Jews could belong. The law also forbade Jewish children from speaking Yiddish in schools. Jews were not allowed to hold office and even were banned from working as rabbis and other community officials if Yiddish was their sole language.

In Nazi Germany, January 1 saw more harsh measures. On January 1, 1939, all Jews had to add the names Sarah (for women) and Israel (for men) to their names. They also had to start carrying identity cards with them at all times. (I still possess my great grandmother’s passport to leave Nazi Germany later that year: even though her name was Kamilla, her name is listed as Sarah on her passport.) A decree also took effect on that day, closing all Jewish-owned businesses. The following year, on January 1, 1940, Jews were forbidden from gathering for prayer, either in synagogues or in private homes, in Nazi-controlled lands.

New Year’s Celebrations
Some New Year’s customs have surprising Jewish links. In the American south it’s customary to eat black eyed peas on New Year’s as a symbol of good luck. This echoes Sephardi Jewish traditions of eating beans on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, as a symbol of good fortune; some historians have speculated that the custom was brought to the United States by Sephardi Jews.

First ball dropped in Times SquareThe first ball dropped in Times Square in 1907 (Library of Congress)
Each year millions of people around the world watch the ball drop in Times Square in New York to mark the start of the New Year. Few realize that this annual stunt was the brainchild of a Jewish businessman in the 1800s. Adolph S. Ochs was the child of Jewish immigrants from Germany; he entered the newspaper business when he was eleven years old working as an office boy for the Knoxville Chronicle. In 1896 he bought the New York Times and announced an ambitious plan to make it a high-quality newspaper. To increase publicity for the paper, Ochs started holding a fireworks show in front of the offices on New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31.

In 1907 the city refused to grant him a permit for the fireworks show and Ochs instead commissioned an enormous ball covered with light bulbs to lower at midnight. (It was customary at the time for merchant seamen to mark the hour by lowering an enormous ball that could be seen far out at sea; Och’s ball was simply a larger and more festive twist on this maritime tradition.) Och’s tradition has continued; the ball used today is now nearly 12,000 pounds and twelve feet in diameter.

Like What You Read?  Give Jews around the world the chance to experience engaging Jewish wisdom with more articles and videos on Aish. As a nonprofit organization it's your support that keeps us going. Thanks so much!
ONE TIME $54 $108 $1000 OTHERMONTHLY $10 $18 $100 OTHER
Submit

Dr. Yvette Alt Miller

Dr. Alt Miller lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics. Her latest book Portraits of Valor: Heroic Jewish Women You Should Know describes the lives of 40 remarkable women who inhabited different eras and lands, giving a sense of the vast diversity of Jewish experience.  It's been praised as inspirational, fascinating, fun and educational.

https://israel365news.com/359246/jacobs-sheep-arrive-at-beit-el-house-of-god/?
Jacob’s Sheep arrive at Beit El (House of God)
Let me pass through your whole flock today, removing from there every speckled and spotted animal—every dark-colored sheep and every spotted and speckled goat. Such shall be my wages.
GENESIS 30:32
(THE ISRAEL BIBLE)
Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz
ADAM ELIYAHU BERKOWITZ
BIBLICAL NEWS
NOVEMBER 14, 2022
3 MIN READ
Home » Jacob’s Sheep arrive at Beit El (House of God)
JACOB'S SHEEP
The flock of Jacob’s Sheep has arrived at the next stop in their journey home: Beit El, the house of God, the scene of Jacob’s prophetic dream of a ladder connecting heaven and earth. And for the first time, a pair of rams can now be viewed by the public.

In 2017, a flock of a rare breed of Jacob’s Sheep arrived in Israel from western Canada. But after arriving in the Holy Land, the flock was unable to find a permanent home. Last year, the flock was taken under new management with the intention of maintaining the rare breed.

Despite the extraordinary efforts of the previous owners, Jenna and Gil Lewinsky, the flock dwindled from 119 to about 50 head.

Naama Rue, who is managing the herd, explained that the herd is in need of rejuvenation.

“The situation was dire one year ago but it is getting better,” she told Israel365 News. “They are being raised in an undisclosed location. We are working to make sure they are being cared for properly and getting the necessary medical attention. When the Ministry of Agriculture gave permission to bring them to Israel, it was for the purpose of maintaining this rare heritage breed for the diversity of livestock.”

“There are only about 20,000 purebred Jacob’s Sheep in the world,” she said.

According to breed aficionados, the sheep originated in the north of Biblical Israel and were sold to Egypt. By way of North Africa and Morocco, the sheep made their way to Spain, and finally to Britain, where they were favored by the landed gentry for their distinctive spotted appearance and four horns.

Though they are indigenous to the Middle East, none of the breed remain in the region. The sheep most commonly seen in Israel are from the Awassi breed and originated in Syria.

It is speculated that their unique appearance links them to Biblical Jacob who made a deal with his deceitful uncle Laban (Genesis 30:39). In the story, Jacob demands his wages for working for 14 years, claiming the speckled and black sheep that would be born. He removed all the speckled and black sheep and placed poplar, plane, and almond branches in the troughs of the stronger sheep, with the bark stripped off in stripes. He separated out the striped and speckled sheep as his own.

Called Ovis Aries, the continuation of diverse breeds is necessary for the preservation of the genetic biodiversity of livestock, contributing to global food security. This is, in fact, the only breed in the world to produce spots and speckles in offspring,

Two rams from the herd arrived at Havat Ephraim Bet El’s Pinat Hai (Children’s Zoo) last month.

“There have been so many requests to see the sheep,” Rue said. “But it was important to protect and nurture the herd. Serious infrastructure was required. Fortunately, most of the herd is rams so these two were not required for breeding.

“Havat Ephraim Bet El’s Pinat Hai is pleased to welcome two beautiful Jacob Rams into our community. We are happy to provide an opportunity for fans of the heritage livestock to visit the Jacob Sheep,” said Tuvia Victor of the Children’s Zoo.

The children’s zoo is a place where many types of animals are raised in an environment in which children can interact and experience nature. The zoo is an informal learning environment that is open to the public and located about 20 miles north of Jerusalem.

The Bible relates how the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob built altars in Bet El to honor God.

When Jacob fled from his brother, Esau, he slept in Bet El, dreaming of angels ascending and descending Heaven on a ladder. Beit El is situated along the Path of The Patriarchs, the road by which Jacob returned to the land of his heritage, with his new flock and family.

The Jacob Rams arrived at the Children’s Zoo on 10 Cheshvan 5783, one day before 11 Cheshvan which is the yahrzeit of both the Matriarch Rachel (1553 BCE) and of Methuselah (2105 BCE) who was the longest-lived human being of all time. Rachel is the first shepherd mentioned in the Torah.

The Prophet Ezekiel compares the Jews to Sheep when he described them returning to the Land of Israel.

For thus said Hashem: Here am I! I am going to take thought for My flock and I will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when some [animals] in his flock have gotten separated, so I will seek out My flock, I will rescue them from all the places to which they were scattered on a day of cloud and gloom. Ezekiel 34:11-12More information can be found on the zoo’s website.

https://cufi.org/micro-history/
CHRISTIANS UNITED FOR ISRAEL
Israel Micro History
Do you want to learn more about Israel in just a few minutes?

In less than 3 minutes each, these micro-educational videos explore significant developments in Israel’s history, from her rebirth as a modern state to the trials she faces today, including the threat of terrorism, and her miraculous thriving after 70 years of statehood. You’ll receive in-depth information about Israel in the same time it takes you to scroll through your social media feed.

Watch these Micro History videos on your break at work or school, and share them with your friends so they can learn more in minutes, too!

play btn
1894
The Dreyfus Affair and Theodor Herzl

Balfour Declaration

play btn
1917
play btn
1938
The Night of Broken Glass

The Voyage of the St. Louis

play btn
1939
play btn
1943
The Rescue Of Denmark's Jews

UN Plan II

play btn
1947
play btn
1948
Independence

Eli Cohen 1924-1965

play btn
1965
play btn
1967
Six Day War

The Three No's of Khartoum

play btn
1967
play btn
1972
The Munich Olympics Massacre

Yom Kippur War

play btn
1973
play btn
1978
Camp David Accords

Iran's Global Terror

play btn
1979
play btn
1979
Iran Hostage Crisis

Held Hostage by Iran

play btn
1979
play btn
1981
Crisis With Iraq

First Lebanon War

play btn
1982
play btn
1985
Operation Wooden Leg

First Intifada

play btn
1987
play btn
1991
Operation Solomon

AMIA Bombing

play btn
1994
play btn
1994
Peace with Jordan

Second Intifada

play btn
2000
play btn
2001
The Sbarro Pizzeria Bombing

Gaza Disengagement

play btn
2004
play btn
2005
The BDS Movement

Second Lebanon War

play btn
2006
play btn
2008
Operation Cast Lead

Gaza Flotilla Incident

play btn
2010
play btn
2011
Iron Dome is Deployed

Cafe Milano

play btn
2011
play btn
2012
Operation Pillar of Defense

Operation Protective Edge

play btn
2014
play btn
2014
Israel's Sacrifice for Peace

The Iran Deal

play btn
2015
play btn
2015
Stabbing Intifada

Operation Good Neighbor

play btn
2016
play btn
2017
U.S. Embassy Move

Israel at 70

play btn
2018
play btn
2019
Golan Heights

Abraham Accords

play btn
2020

How Job 13:15 Encourages Us on Our Darkest Days
Lisa Loraine Baker Contributing Writer
November 08, 2022
https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/how-job-1315-encourages-us-on-our-darkest-days.html?
How Job 13:15 Encourages Us on Our Darkest Days
The book of Job troubles people. How can a loving God permit such devastation in the life of a man the Bible says was, “blameless and upright,” (Job 1:1) and of whom God Himself said, “there is none like him on the earth” (Job 1:8)? And yet God allowed Satan to touch Job’s life with calamity and Job lost his property and his children. But in all his loss, Job worshiped God and did not charge God with wrongdoing or sin (Job 1:20, 22).

Throughout the book, Job faces adversity — first the losses, then from his wife, and then from his friends. At one point, we read this heart-wrenching utterance, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. Even so, I will defend my own ways before Him” (Job 13:15).

What Is the Context of This Verse?
As readers, we get to take a peek behind the curtain, so to speak, as God reveals a scene from heaven. The introduction and explanation of the behind-the-scenes events are encompassed in Job 1:6-2:10. Satan, being the accuser (Revelation 12:10), goes before the throne of God to give an account of his travels on earth. God asked him if he knew of Job, His servant, a blameless man.

God allows Satan to touch first Job’s family and his belongings (buildings, beasts, and land). And then, because Job worshiped God when stricken by the news, Satan told God Job would surely curse Him if Job was physically touched. God gives Satan permission and Job suffers from boils on his body (Job 1-2).

When his friends arrive, they wisely sit with him in silence for seven days but in chapter 3 their wisdom turns to accusations and windy wisdom (because they too are ignorant of the facts).

According to John MacArthur, three cycles exist in the book of Job. Cycle One encompasses Job 3:1-14:22. It is the first round of conversations between Job and his acquaintances. Cycle Two includes Job 15:1 – 21:34, where the second sequence of accusations and answers ensue between Job and the three. Cycle Three (Job 32-37) shows us the entrance of Elihu, a younger man who speaks some truth, but he is as clueless as are the others. Chapters 38-42 reveal Job’s deliverance.

Who Is Speaking in This Verse, and to Whom?

In chapters twelve and thirteen, Job is acknowledging and lamenting his situation to Zophar’s latest rebukes and counsel.

In this particular passage, Job is speaking to his friends (and yet to God) as he laments his condition. He is ignorant of the why, so he cries out to all within earshot, the closest being his wife (Job 2:9), his friend, Zophar (his immediate audience), with Bildad (Job 8), and Eliphaz (Job 4, 5) close by. God is always within hearing range, and we can assume Satan hears the discourse between Job, these people, and God.

What Else Happens in Job 13?
As we have seen, Job is answering Zophar’s latest charge against Job’s ways. Job:

- Tells him he is not inferior to them (v. 2)

- Wants to “argue his case with God (v. 3)

- Rebukes his friends for their wrong counsel (v. 4)

- Tells them it would have been wiser had they remained silent (v. 5)

- Tells them to listen to his argument in his pleas to God (v. 6-7)

- Asks them who are they to speak for God (v. 8)

- Reminds them they are not without sin and God will rebuke them for partiality (vv. 9-10)


- Asks if they fear Him (v. 11)

- Rebukes them for their false defenses and maxims ( v.12)

- Counsels them to hush so he can speak (v. 13)

Job then asked why he should set himself up for God’s wrath (v. 14). He seems to lead to verse 15 by inferring his defense is just and God will vindicate him. He said he trusted God, no matter the outcome — even to death. And his salvation will include the knowledge that godless people will not be in God’s presence. He knows who he is and he knows he is “in the right” because no one can say he is other than righteous.

Job switched his direct audience to God in verse 20 when he asked God to take His hand off him and keep him from terror of Him. He then asked God to point out his transgressions. He accused God of hiding from him and calling him (Job) an enemy.

What Does This Verse Mean, and What Does It NOT Mean?
Job is stating his case to his earthly audience and also to God. He is sure of his righteousness but is not sure of how God sees him. Even if God would bring Job to death, Job’s trust in God would not fail. He still planned to argue his innocence before God and not as a self-righteous man or a fraud, but as one who loved and trusted his God.

We have found the first part of Job 13 means Job would not be surprised if God took his life. The verse does not mean God would be anything other than just or righteous. God’s character is fully “operational” in whole. Not one of His attributes supersedes another. He is fully loving and He is fully just all the time.

The second part of the verse could be taken as Job thinking he can change God’s mind or that Job knows better who he is than does the Lord God. Again, God knows everything about us. Job said he would defend his ways before God by virtue of God’s goodness and not his own.

Why Can We Trust in God, Even When We Are Facing Difficult Trials?
God is sovereign over every aspect of our lives, including physical and spiritual exterior influences. Nothing surprises Him. His Word tells us that for those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose, He works all things together for good — His glory and our good (Romans 8:28). This is an oft-quoted verse, and rightly so, but the following verse gives even greater hope. Romans 8:29 tells us He created us to be conformed to the image of His Son, our Savior.

When a person makes a promise, so much of it is conditional. The person may have all good intentions, but what if that promise maker lied, or has a change of heart, or even dies? What if something makes the promise impossible to fulfill? God is eternal and is unchanging. When He makes a promise, He always delivers. It’s impossible for God to lie (Hebrews 6:18). He also tells us in His Word He will never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:15).

This was as true for Job as it is true for us as believers. Job faced extreme calamity, and many of us do, too. We are not alone. God wastes nothing and will use whatever we endure to grow us more into the image of Christ — Christ who suffered crucifixion and death so we may live.

Jesus told us to expect hardship, even tribulation (John 16:33; Romans 12:12), and He told us to “take heart” for He has overcome the world. James 1:2 tells us to consider it a joy to meet trials. And 1 Peter 1:6 gives us more assurance – no matter what we face here on earth, we have a heavenly dwelling awaiting us. That’s good news!

One day we believers will meet our biblical “heroes.” Yet we, as did Job (we can assume), will seek Jesus first! After our initial face-to-face introduction to our Lord and Savior, we might be afforded the chance to talk with all the righteous people we have read about in the Scriptures. We might want to ask Job how he endured. I can imagine him saying nothing as he points to Jesus. May we be speechless as well.

Photo credit: Getty Images/PORNCHAI SODA

Lisa BakerLisa Loraine Baker is the award-winning author of Someplace to Be Somebody (End Game Press, February 2022). Lisa writes fiction and nonfiction and is currently co-writing a Christian living book with her husband, and a suspense novel.
Lisa is a member of Word Weavers, Int’l (as a critique partner and mentor), AWSA, ACFW, Serious Writer Group, and BRRC.
Lisa and her husband, Stephen, inhabit their home as the “Newlyweds of Minerva” with crazy cat, Lewis.

https://www.israel365news.com/274422/remains-of-17-jews-from-medieval-pogrom-in-england-identified-by-dna/?
REMAINS OF 17 JEWS FROM MEDIEVAL POGROM IN ENGLAND IDENTIFIED BY DNA
BY ADAM ELIYAHU BERKOWITZ | SEP 2, 2022 | ANTISEMITISM

For you are a people consecrated to Hashem your God: of all the peoples on earth Hashem your God chose you to be His treasured people. Deuteronomy 7:6 (The Israel BibleTM)
Researchers reconstructed the images of a boy and an adult male based on the skeletal remains of Jews massacred in Norwich in 1190. (Professor Caroline Wilkinson/Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Dundee)

In 2004, the remains of at least 17 people including 11 children were discovered at the bottom of a medieval well during the construction of a shopping mall in Norwich England. The identity of the bodies and the story behind them remained a mystery until this week when the results of DNA analysis confirmed that they were Ashkenazi Jews, the victims of an antisemitic riot that took place on February 6,  in 1190 CE. Of the 17 people, six had well-preserved enough DNA to test and sequence. The analysis used radiocarbon dating of the bones as well as analysis of the pottery fragments found at the site. The results suggested that they had been alive between 1161 and 1216. The findings indicated that three of them were sisters, and the others were likely also related.

The scientists involved extracted DNA from the remains and compared it to samples taken from modern Ashkenazi Jews.

“I’m delighted and relieved that 12 years after we first started analyzing the remains of these individuals, technology has caught up and helped us to understand this historical cold case of who these people were and why we think they were murdered,” said Dr. Selina Brace, a specialist at the Natural History Museum in London and the lead author on the study.

Their DNA included variants associated with genetic diseases more commonly found in Ashkenazi Jewish populations today.

The mass murder was recorded by the chronicler Ralph de Diceto in his Imagines Historiarum II where he wrote: “Accordingly on 6th February [in 1190 AD] all the Jews who were found in their own houses at Norwich were butchered; some had taken refuge in the castle.” The medieval cleric described how in February 1190 “many of those who were hastening to Jerusalem” to partake in the recently launched Third Crusade were “determined first to rise against the Jews,”

The mass murder of the Jews of York came in the wake of the first accusation in history that Jews murdered Christian children in order to use their blood for baking Matza. This accusation, called a blood libel, became a common source of antisemitism that persisted until the 19th century. The murder accusation in York was initiated by a Benedictine Monk investigating the murder. Historians believe the true motive behind the libel was the debts that many of  theChristians owed to Jewish money lenders. These debts had increased due to the Third Crusades. It is believed that in one incident, some 150 Jews from 140 families were trapped in a tower on Shabbat Hagadol, the sabbath preceding Passover. The mob offered to release any Jews who converted to Christianity. A few chose this option but were murdered as they left the tower. The rest were burned to death in the tower. Hostility against Jews continued until, in 1290, Jews were expelled from England. Jews were not officially allowed to resettle in England until after 1655.

Researchers noted that the victims were thrown in headfirst, with the bodies of the adults cushioning the children’s fall. Because the skeletons showed no signs of trauma associated with trying to break a fall, the victims were likely already dead when deposited into the well. In 2013, Norwich’s Jewish community buried the remains at the Jewish Cemetery in Earlham Cemetery.

Excellent Notices. 
For over 3,000 years Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel. The Jewish people are theonly nation who face Jerusalem while praying. All prayers ascend to heaven from the Temple Mount the gateway to Heaven (Talmud Brachot)

https://aish.com/jerusalem-facts-and-figures/?src=ac-txt

https://vfinews.com/news/israel-ushered-in-memorial-day-for-soldiers-terror/israel-ushered-in-memorial-day-for-soldiers-terror?subscribed=true
Israel Ushered in Memorial Day for Soldiers, Terror Victims with 8 p.m. Siren
Israelis bowed their heads at 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 3, for a minute of silence as sirens sounded throughout the country in remembrance of the country’s fallen soldiers and terror victims.

Fifty-six soldiers died during their military service since Israel’s last Memorial Day. Another 84 disabled veterans died due to complications from injuries sustained during their service. The numbers brought the total of those who have died during service to the country since 1860 to 24,068.

The nationwide ceremonies for Israel’s Memorial Day, which began at sundown, started in the afternoon with a commemoration event at the Yad Lebanim memorial for fallen soldiers in Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Knesset Speaker Mickey Levy took part in the ceremony, as well as top army brass and families of fallen soldiers. (TOI / VFI News)

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. - Revelation 21:4

The articles included in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Vision for Israel. We try to provide accurate reporting on news pertinent to Israel, the Middle East, the diaspora, and Jewish issues around the world—and we hope that you find it both informative and useful for intercessory prayer.

https://aish.com/when-the-state-of-israel-was-born-6-fascinating-eyewitness-accounts/?src=ac-txt
When the State of Israel Was Born: 6 Fascinating Eyewitness Accounts.May 2, 2022 | by Dr. Yvette Alt

On Israel’s first Independence Day, May 14, 1948, the country’s Jews were fighting for their lives.

Friday, May 14, 1948 dawned over an apprehensive Jewish community in the land of Israel. That day, the British Mandate over Palestine expired. The armies of the surrounding Arab countries warned that they would invade should the Jews declare a state. Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv and other Jewish settlements were already under siege from sniper attacks.

Yet in Tel Aviv, at 4 PM, leaders from the Jewish People’s Council assembled in an art museum. With Shabbat approaching, they wanted to make sure their momentous meeting concluded in time for people to return home before sundown. In a solemn voice, David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, declared “the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel - the State of Israel.” Jews throughout the land listened to his momentous words on crackling radios. For the first time in 1,878 years, the Jewish people had a national homeland.

Immediately, the armies of five surrounding Arab nations attacked the new Jewish state. Journalist Daniel S. Chertoff noted that the “declaration was like a starter’s pistol for the ‘conventional’ war: Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq immediately declared war and invaded.” (Saudia Arabia sent soldiers to invade Israel, too, under Egyptian command.) The attacks on Jews by Arabs, which had been going on for months, “was instantly transformed into a full-fledged clash of armies.”

Here are six eyewitness accounts of that first Israeli Independence Day.

1. George Adler, Holocaust Survivor
Born in Hungary in 1932, George Adler survived the Holocaust and sailed to Israel in 1947 on the Exodus, a ship that carried Holocaust survivors which was intercepted and turned back by the British. Interred in Germany by the British, Adler managed to travel to Israel in 1948 and recalled the spontaneous celebrations that broke out following Ben-Gurion’s announcement.

“We were dancing in the street. It was like when (World War II) ended. Everyone was happy.”

Adler’s celebration was short-lived. The next day, he recalls, “the shooting started.” Adler volunteered to fight with Israel’s new army.

2. Golda Meir, future Prime Minister
In 1948, Golda Meir was a key member of the Jewish leadership administration. She’d been born in 1898 in Kiev, and her family fled pogroms. She was in the room where David Ben Gurion declared Israel an independent state.

Golda Meir signing Israel’s Declaration of Independence

The State of Israel! My eyes filled with tears, and my hands shook. We had done it. We had brought the Jewish state into existence - and I…had lived to see the day. Whatever happened now, whatever price any of us would have to pay for it, we had re-created the Jewish national home. The long exile was over. From this day on we would no longer live on sufferance in the land of our forefathers. Now we were a nation like other nations… As Ben-Gurion read, I thought again about my children and the children they would have, how different their lives would be from mine…. And I thought about my colleagues in besieged Jerusalem, gathered in the offices of the Jewish Agency, listening to the ceremony through static on the radio…

Just before dawn…I saw for myself through the windows of my room what might be called the formal start of the War of Independence: four Egyptian Spitfires zooming across the city on their way to bomb Tel Aviv’s power station and airport in what was the first air raid of the war. Then, a little later, I watched the first boatload of Jewish immigrants - no longer ‘illegals’ - enter the port of Tel Aviv, freely and proudly. No one hunted them down anymore or chased them or punished them for coming home…. (from My Life by Golda Meir, 1975.)

3. Yehuda Avner - Israeli Speechwriter and Diplomat
At the moment Ben-Gurion announced the Jewish state in Tel Aviv, Yehuda Avner (who would one day go on to serve as Israel’s Ambassador to Britain) was a 20-year-old volunteer in the underground Jewish fighting force the Haganah, assigned to defending the western edge of Jerusalem from Arab attacks.



One of his fellow fighters was Leopold Mahler, a Jewish violinist who’d fled Nazi Germany; he was the grand-nephew of the famous composer Gustav Mahler. Cut off from the rest of Jerusalem, Avner’s group of fighting men had no way of knowing whether Ben-Gurion had actually declared independence. They dispatched Mahler to make the treacherous journey into the center of the town to find out. He returned to his unit’s defensive position near midnight, bearing a bottle of Israeli wine he’d found in Britain’s now-abandoned central police station.

‘Has Ben-Gurion declared independence, yes or no?’ asked Elisha Linder, beside himself.

Mahler took a deep breath and solemnly said, ‘David Ben-Gurion declared independence this afternoon in Tel Aviv. The Jewish State comes into being at midnight.

There was a dead silence. Even the air seemed to be holding its breath. Midnight was minutes away… And then the air exploded in joyful tears and laughter. Every breast filled with exultation as we pumped hands and embraced, and roared the national anthem at the top of our voices.

‘Hey, Mahler!’ shouted Elisha cutting through the hullabaloo. ‘Our state - what’s its name?’

The violinist stared back blankly. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask.’

‘You don’t know?’

Mahler shook his head.

‘How about Yehuda?’ suggested someone. ‘After all, King David’s kingdom was called Yehuda - Judea.’

‘Zion,’ cried another. ‘It’s an obvious choice.’

‘Israel!’ called a third. ‘What’s wrong with Israel?’

‘Let’s drink to that,’ said Elisha with delight, breaking open the bottle of wine and filling a tin mug to the brim. ‘A l’chaim to our new State…’

‘Wait!’ shouted a Chassid whom everybody knew as Nussen der chazzan - a canter by calling, and a most diligent volunteer…from Meah Shearim, the ultra-Orthodox area of Jerusalem. ‘It’s Shabbos. Kiddush first.’

Our crowd gathered around him in a hush, as Nussen der chazzan clasped the mug and, in a sweet cantorial tune began to chant ‘Yom hashishi’ - the blessing for the sanctification of the Sabbath day.

As Nussen’s sacred verses floated off to a higher place of Sabbath bliss his voice swelled, ululated, and trilled into the night, octave upon octave, eyes closed, his cup stretched out and up. And as he concluded the final consecration ‘Blessed art thou O Lord who has hallowed the Sabbath’ - he rose on tiptoe, his arm stiffened, and rocking back and forth, voice trembling with emotion, he added the triumphantly exulted festival blessing to the commemorate this first day of independence - ‘shehecheyanu, vekiyemanu vehegiyanu lazman hazeh’ - Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has given us life, sustained us, and brought us to this time.

‘Amen!’

(from The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner, 2012.)

4. Zippy Porath - Jewish Fighter
Zippy Porath was an American student who arrived in the Land of Israel in 1947 to attend Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She joined the Jewish fighting group the Haganah (precursor to today’s Israeli army) and fought to defend Jerusalem. The following is a letter she wrote to her family in America on May 15, 1948, the day after Israel’s founding.

Dearest Family…Awareness of the full impact of the significance of this day has been somewhat lost to me in the immensity of rapidly developing events that have gripped Jerusalem. The British are actually leaving. We are fighting desperately to take over their strongholds…For the last three days we have been on full alert and this is the ZERO HOUR.

We are waiting impatiently for the return of the contingents of boys dispatched for today’s engagements. Many dear friends are among them… What am I doing here? I’m in charge of the first aid post… Everything we have is ready - blankets, bandages, a bit of cognac, ready for…we don’t know what. This afternoon, it was heavy mortar fire, 25 pounders or more. Tonight, it may be air bombardment… (From Letters from Jerusalem, 1947-1948 by Zipporah Porath, published in 1987.)

5. Chaim Herzog - Future President of Israel
In 1948, Chaim Herzog was a 20-year-old intelligence officer who’d served in the British Army, and now was one of the leaders in the Land of Israel’s Haganah fighting force. On May 14, 1948, Jerusalem was under brutal, sustained attack from Arab forces.

Herzog was ordered to go to the home of the highly excitable French Consul General, Rene Neuville, in Jerusalem, and try to negotiate a ceasefire. Consul General Neuville’s house was located in the middle of no man’s land between Jewish and Jordanian forces.

I knew that Ben-Gurion would announce the creation of a Jewish State that afternoon… At 4pm, with everybody sitting around morosely and nervously, listening to the shooting and shelling and waiting for yet another telephone call from the Old City telling us that the Arabs had agreed to yet another cease-fire, I announced to Neuville and (Belgian Consul General Jean) Nieuwenhuys, ‘I wish to make it clear to you now that as from this moment I represent a Jewish State which has just been proclaimed.’ This was all Neuville needed in order to throw yet another tantrum. He launched into a diatribe against the Jewish State…

Inside the French consulate, I didn’t feel very independent. Bullets came through the open windows, and by nightfall six of us were wounded. Madam Neuville, in direct contrast to her husband, remained calm throughout the proceedings and even brought a makeshift meal for those in our negotiating room. Despite the extreme danger, she did not forget to serve a good French wine. Avoiding the bullets, she crawled on the floor to pour it.

After nightfall - and countless cease-fires - I proposed that we attempt to get back to the Jewish (part of the) city. I would take anybody who wished to go, including the wounded…

(Quoted from Living History: The Memoirs of a Great Israeli Freedom-Fighter, Soldier, Diplomat and Statesman by Chaim Herzog, 1997.)

6. Report in Newsweek, May 14, 1948
Newsweek reported on David Ben-Gurion’s declaration of the Jewish state, and on American President Harry Truman’s recognition of the State of Israel just 11 minutes later - and the subsequent celebrations in the streets of Tel Aviv:

…a small man with shaggy white hair stood in the main gallery of the modern, two-story Tel Aviv Museum of Art on Rothschild Boulevard. He spoke slowly: ‘We hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish State…to be called Israel. Thus, David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Palestine National Council and now Premier of Israel, brought to a climax the half-century struggle of the Jews to recreate their ancient homeland.

In Tel Aviv, Jewish flags flashed on all buildings, automobiles appeared with Jewish license plates, and Haganah officers exchanged toasts in the cafes. That night Tel Aviv was blacked out, but behind the cafe doors the celebrations went on. Just before midnight, when Israel became officially established, doors were flung open and rejoicing crowds again poured into the streets.

Live footage from Israel’s very first Independence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jQcGXYK8Hw&t=18s
About the Author
Dr. Yvette Alt Miller

More from this Author >

Dr. Alt Miller lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics. Her book Angels at the table: a Practical Guide to Celebrating Shabbat takes readers through the rituals of Shabbat and more, explaining the full beautiful spectrum of Jewish traditions with warmth and humor. It has been praised as "life-changing", a modern classic, and used in classes and discussion groups around the world.

https://www.israel365news.com/268365/an-israeli-astronaut-is-about-to-celebrate-a-passover-seder-in-space/?
AN ISRAELI ASTRONAUT IS ABOUT TO CELEBRATE A PASSOVER SEDER IN SPACE
BY ADAM ELIYAHU BERKOWITZ | APR 11, 2022 | UNCATEGORIZED

And you shall explain to your son on that day, ‘It is because of what Hashem did for me when I went free from Egypt.' Exodus 13:8 (The Israel BibleTM)

Israel’s second Jew-in-orbit arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) just in time to celebrate Passover. He came equipped with handmade Matzah and planned to have a lel seder that is literally out of this world. 


Eytan Stibbe, age 64, is a former IAF fighter pilot and businessman. In November 2020, he signed a contract with Axiom Space to fly a ten-day mission to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on Axiom Mission 1, a private crewed orbital spaceflight. Estimates place the price of a ticket at more than $50 million.

Stibbe launched on Friday and boarded the space station on Saturday.

https://www.israel365news.com/264990/kabbalist-rabbi-reveals-how-to-avoid-war-of-gog-magog/?+Stories&utm_campaign=I3N+-+AM+-+January+06%2C+2022
KABBALIST RABBI REVEALS HOW TO COME OUT OF GOG-MAGOG WAR UNSCATHED
BY DAVID SIDMAN | JAN 6, 2022 | BIBLICAL NEWS

O mortal, turn your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. Prophesy against him Ezekiel 38:2 (The Israel BibleTM)
Final War (courtesy: Shutterstock)

Share this article
In a recent lecture, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Gottlieb warned of the final war of Gog and Magog. He explained that the war is going to be war first and foremost for “the crown” and the spiritual identity of mankind.

The rabbi based his warning on the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572), renowned as the greatest kabbalist of modern times, also known as the ARI, an acronym standing for he Godly Rabbi Isaac.

From the spiritual perspective, Rabbi Gottlieb said that the final battle will be between those who believe that God is one with consistent, united commandments against those who believe that God is fragmented with a whole slew of decrees – some good and some bad. He then explained that many people will be fooled by pain and suffering in the world to believe that God does bad things rather than compel us to acknowledge the bad and choose morality.

The rabbi then warned that if humanity cannot arrive at the realization that God is one and that everything he does is for the best, the war of Gog and Magog will go from an inner spiritual battle to an external violent one.

The rabbi then explained that the Gematria (numerical value) of Gog and Magog is 70, which corresponds to the seventy nations that are prophesied to descend upon Israel. Relating the phenomenon to the modern-day, the rabbi highlights the conflict with the Arabs both inside and surrounding Israel as well as increasing anti-semitism worldwide. He adds that the Arabs are “buying control” under the guise of ‘equality.’

Even before Moses arrived in Egypt, G‑d told him to warn Pharaoh about a plague. Not the plague of blood, which came first, but a warning about the last and harshest plague of them all: the smiting of the Egyptian firstborn.

It seems, then, that all nine previous plagues were actually nine ways to deliver one warning: If Egypt would not permit the Israelites to leave, the firstborn of Egypt would die.
https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/5358337/jewish/Why-Did-G-d-Smite-the-Firstborn.htm#

Indeed, read those verses in which G‑d tells Moses to warn Pharaoh about the plague of the firstborn, and you see G‑d is clearly providing His reason for it:

And you shall say to Pharaoh, “So said the Lord, ‘My firstborn son is Israel.’ So I say to you, ‘Send out My son so that he will worship Me, but if you refuse to send him out, behold, I am going to slay your firstborn son.’ ”1

In other words, the Israelities are called G‑d's firstborn, so the consequence of failing to release them would result in Egypt losing its firstborn.

Furthermore, as Rashi and other commentaries explain, just as the Egyptians made G‑d’s firstborn suffer (and killed many of their children), G‑d punished—measure for measure—the Egyptians’ firstborn.

However, when we actually get to the warning before the plague of the firstborn, we find a deeper reason. This was not just about punishing Egyptians—the plagues were intended to destroy the Egyptian gods.

This is especially stressed with the plague of the firstborn, as the verse states:

I will pass through the land of Egypt on this night, and I will smite every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and upon all the gods of Egypt will I wreak judgments I, the L‑rd.2

There’s an obvious question here: Over and over, the Torah tells us that there is only one G‑d, ruler of heaven and earth. If the gods of Egypt are fictitious, what need is there to “judge” them or destroy them?

Here is where we need to refer to the wisdom of Rabbi Yitzchak Luria (“the Ari”), the esteemed Kabbalist of 16th-century Tzfat, whose deep cosmology swiftly became embedded in Jewish thought almost universally.

Indeed, both Rabbi Chaim ibn Atar, in his classic commentary, Ohr Hachaim, and Rabbi Yechezkel Landau, one of the most esteemed halachic authorities of the 18th century, provide explanations of this issue that assumes knowledge of the teachings of the Ari.

In the Ari’s narrative, the creation of our universe was partially through emanation, partially through catastrophe. Primordial worlds were shattered and divine sparks were scattered and fell, eventually giving life to our reality.

Everything that exists in our world—other than the divine soul hidden deep within humankind—is an artifact of some lost divine spark. But, since the sparks have lost their connection to their origin, as well as the coherence between them, they become entrapped within kelipot (literally, “shells” or “husks”) that distort and pervert their energy into evil and denial of anything divine or meaningful.

The task of humankind is to rescue these divine sparks and reconnect them to their origin. Torah and its mitzvahs provide the means and tools to fulfill this mission. With each mitzvah, we are wrestling another divine spark out of its exile, and finding its true place in the intended order of our universe. With this, the world is perfected to become the ultimate of all worlds.

The Exodus from Egypt was not simply a migration of a tribe. It was the necessary prerequisite to Torah entering our world. Before any mitzvah could have its desired effect, G‑d Himself had to initiate the process of liberation.

The Israelite souls were intrinsically tied to the divine sparks. Rescuing them from there required first rescuing the divine sparks from the dark forces, the kelipot, of Ancient Egypt.

At the time that the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, it was the epitome and center of spiritual impurity, both in terms of morality and idolatry. The worship of the time centered around the firstborn, who were a priestly caste. Pharaoh himself was a firstborn and worshipped as a demigod. The first of the constellations, Aries, the lamb, was considered the prime power of the Zodiac.3

The firstborn indeed represented the most stubborn strength. In terms of the Ari’s cosmology, Egypt was a mighty fortress holding those divine sparks in captivity.

The Israelites served as a mirror image. G‑d called them His firstborn, yet they were oppressed as slaves. Their liberation hung upon the liberation of those sparks held tightly in the hands of the Egyptian gods—forces of darkness and concealment of truth—and the exalted firstborn.

To free G‑d’s chosen firstborn, their spiritual counterpart had to first be taken away.4 The first nine plagues did their job to weaken the tight clasp of the kelipot of Egypt, but the smiting of the firstborn was the final, crucial step in achieving that goal. And then, this monstrous force broken, the human soul could begin the task of rescuing and reconnecting the remaining divine sparks.

This explains why the smiting of the firstborn was carried out “not through an angel or a seraph or a messenger,” but through G‑d himself:

The other plagues, being simply a preparation, could be carried out via G‑d’s emissaries—through heavenly forces that had been in place since the six days of creation. But now came time to begin an entirely new order within that creation. The powers of darkness had to be deposed from their tyranny over the universe, so that human beings could begin the work of Torah. Due to this great cosmic shift, all the firstborn—even the very young—would lose the life-energy that until then kept them alive.

Therefore, this could not be given over to a messenger, no matter how holy they were, be they of flesh-and-blood or even an angel.5

The Chassidic masters explain that now, once we have left Egypt and received the Torah on Mount Sinai, our personal, spiritual “exodus from Egypt” involves refining and rectifying the world. Liberating ourselves from the limits and boundaries of the world, but at the same time remaining within the world.6

We no longer need to break the forces of darkness in the way that occurred in Egypt. That has been done for us. Now our job is to find the divine sparks hidden within each person, each object and each event, and let that shine.

In other words, while functioning within this world we must transcend its perceived limitations. Revealing the holiness and goodness concealed within the world. Turning the darkness into light.

Torches Waived on Hilltops Throughout Israel Marking the New Month as was Done by Sanhedrin
The Sanhedrin would declare the new month to be sanctified (mekudash). The following night, messengers were sent out and a series of mountaintop pyres were lit to spread the word to outlying communities.
SANHEDRIN
BY ADAM ELIYAHU BERKOWITZ | JAN 4, 2022 | BIBLICAL NEWS
And on your joyous occasions—your fixed festivals and new moon days—you shall sound the trumpets over your burnt offerings and your sacrifices of well-being. They shall be a reminder of you before your God: I, Hashem, am your God Numbers 10:10 (The Israel BibleTM)
On Monday evening, as the Gregorian calendar, instituted by Papal decree and based on Jew-hatred, began a new year, people gathered on hilltops and scenic overlooks in several locations around Israel to mark a new month in preparation for a “calendar reset.”
The event seemed quite simple; waving a pair of torches on a hilltop just after sunset. But it symbolized an essential part of the Sanhedrin’s activities, announcing the calendar to the communities outside of Israel. The Sanhedrin initiated the event by receiving and interviewing two witnesses on Mount Zion. They then signaled Joshua Wander who stood ready on the Mount of Olives. Wander lit two torches and waved them in the specified manner.
‘For thousands of years, our nation has sufficed with one Festival of Lights; Hanukkah,” Wander told Israel365 News. “Now, we are bringing back the true Jewish tradition of having lights every month. This is an essential sign of our return from the exile.”

MORE https://www.israel365news.com/264919/torches-waived-on-hilltops-throughout-israel-marking-the-new-month-as-was-dome-by-sanhedrin/?




Rare Hailstorm Pounds Egypt as Jews Read About That Very Plague in Torah
BY ADAM ELIYAHU BERKOWITZ | JAN 4, 2022 | BIBLICAL NEWS
The hail was very heavy—fire flashing in the midst of the hail—such as had not fallen on the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. Exodus 9:24 (The Israel BibleTM)
It is written in Midrash Tanchuma, homiletic teachings collected around the fifth century, that "just as God struck the Egyptians with 10 plagues, so too He will strike the enemies of the Jewish people at the time of the Redemption."
On the first day of the New Year, the Egyptian Red Sea resort in Hurghada was hit by a hailstorm that left destruction in its wake.
Schools in the area were ordered to close on Sunday due to the storm, while Minister of Local Development Mahmoud Shaarawy advised people to stay away from potentially dangerous objects such as trees and lamp posts.
Several comments on social media noted that the resort is popular with Russian tourists who probably felt at home now that the Red Sea location now “looked like Moscow.”
Coincidentally (or not), the hailstorm hit the Egyptian town on Shabbat while Jews around the world were in synagogues, reading the section of the Torah describing the plague of hail that hit Egypt over 3,300 years ago. 
MORE https://www.israel365news.com/264912/rare-hailstorm-pounds-egypt-as-jews-read-about-that-very-plague-in-torah/?